The walk from the omnibus was cold and wet. When she reached Park Lane and the Duke of Weston’s town house came into view, she stopped for a moment to stare. It was grand, of course, but rather ugly, the front plain, clad in Bath stone, an austere portico the only relief from flatness. A chilly-looking place.
Good. Serves him right.
A sudden cloudburst forced her to run across the forecourt. She dashed up the steps and took shelter between pediments, glaring at the enormous door. Had a more bedraggled person ever banged the knocker? She doubted it.
The butler confirmed her suspicions. His face was expressionless, its denial absolute. He cut an extraordinary figure, whippet thin, tall and straight, holding the door open at a doubtful angle. His baldness seemed to indict hair itself for mess and immoderation. Certainly, Lucy had never so felt quite so painfully self-aware of hers. She looked a fright.
She tried to sniff to recover her dignity and sneezed.
“Please advise His Grace that Miss Coover is here,” she said. “The painter.”
The butler’s disapproval deepened. The sharp lines in his face might have been carved with a knife. She peered past him into the entrance hall, high ceilinged and brightly lit. At the end of it, a marble staircase curved toward the upper story, the handrail and newel-posts twinkling like gems. They were made of crystal.
She was so close. But that glowing interior seemed another world. Infinitely out of reach.
She should have tried the servants’ entrance. Why in God’s name had she marched up the front steps? She could blame the rain, but her pride was the culprit.
Probably she’d have fared no better with a footman. She might have pretended she was after a job in service, begged to see the housekeeper, then dodged down a hall and crept to Weston’s study via the back stairs. But this was not a house likely to tolerate irregularities of dress or temperament in prospective maids. Front door, back door. There was no entrance that suited.
“Do you have a card, Miss Coover?” The butler’s posture did not change, but the door creaked slightly, giving him away. He was already angling back inside, preparing to shut her out. Desperation forced her hand.
She couldn’t turn back now.
“A card?” She hesitated. “Of course. My card.”
She lowered her head, hunching over, as though preparing to rifle through her bag for the requested item. From that position, she lunged forward and ducked beneath his arm. Her wet shoes squelched on the marble floor as she darted down the hall.
Lavinia Yardley was ignoring the commotion in the hallway, pressing determinedly on with her side of the conversation. Her side was the only side.
Anthony had spent the past quarter hour twisted uncomfortably in an overstuffed chair, trying to catch her father’s eye. He’d called a meeting with Yardley to query him about the rent increases on the Hampshire estate. Somehow that request had translated into a tea party. Yardley seemed to imagine Lavinia’s presence would lift Anthony’s spirits. Certainly, Yardley was in good humor. He nodded frequently as his daughter spoke. Sometimes he laughed.
He was a gingery man, with the sort of broad face that positively wreathed with smiles. Throughout Anthony’s boyhood, his ready warmth had provided a welcome contrast to his father’s unremitting coldness. In fact, it was hard to reconcile the differences in their personalities with their decades-long friendship. But friends they’d been, grown close through the first family tragedy, and inseparable after the second. Yardley had become his father’s confidant and adviser. And his go-between.
Lavinia was saying something about Parisian chocolates, and Yardley was nodding benignly. Anthony shifted in his chair. One day—soon—he’d make a bonfire of all this furniture.
That sound came again. Squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak.
Was an unusually large rodent tearing helter-skelter through the house?
“Papa says she has gone to the Riviera, so I won’t see her, which makes me feel wretched,” Lavinia whined. “It has been such a terribly long time. But mother is a tyrant. I’ll be trapped in Paris the whole two weeks getting stuck with pins by dressmakers.”
Anthony looked at Lavinia, meeting her eyes for the first time. They were round and blue, like her father’s, but without his mildness of expression. Her eyes accused him. High spots of color burned on her alabaster cheeks. She was quite cognizant of his distraction, and not a little put out. She was a lively girl, dressed for more appreciative company in a gown shimmering green, fussy with lace panels. He’d known her from the cradle. As a little child, she’d been a favorite playmate of his sister. She deserved better from him, but he lacked, at least at the present moment, the capacity to worry about her feelings.
“Effie?” he asked roughly.
“Of course, Effie,” said Lavinia, sulking now that she had his attention. “She’s in Cassis, isn’t she? I know I’d prefer Cassis to Paris, but I don’t get a say in anything. I hope she’s not so very ill anymore. Have you heard how she finds the resort?”
“She is enjoying the sea bathing,” interjected Yardley.
Anthony drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, ignoring Yardley’s warning glance.
“I have not heard,” he said. But he went no further.
This explanation of Effie’s whereabouts remained universally accepted, a fact that alarmed him. She herself had kept her love affair, and subsequent elopement, a secret. Only he had known of it, and his father, who condemned it. And Yardley. But why, once she’d found herself abandoned by her husband, disowned by her family, hadn’t she confided in a friend, if not Lavinia, then Rose Ponsonby or Cora Ashbee? Why hadn’t she gone to someone for help? Why had she disappeared, leaving Yardley to maintain her reputation with bland lies as to her whereabouts?
Anthony had questioned everyone with whom she’d ever shared the least tie of affection. He’d broken the rules that bound him and sent Humphreys to Leicester Square with a message for his aunt Helen. The reply brought back bore out the claims of the others.
No one had had the least word from her.
“As soon as Papa gives me her address, I will write and see if she’s well enough to meet me in Paris.” Lavinia tapped her father’s arm reprovingly.
“I keep forgetting.” Yardley crossed his legs, then uncrossed them to lean forward and lift his teacup.
It came again, the squeaking. And now pounding footsteps.
Suddenly, a voice rang out in the hallway, a husky female voice, roughened further with indignation.
“Don’t flap me about! I’m not a bed linen.”
In an instant, Anthony had flung the door open. The sight that greeted him made his chin hit his chest. He closed his mouth with difficulty.
Miss Coover stood dripping in the hallway, looking angry as a wet cat. Her shoulders were up around her ears, and she’d tucked her chin like a boxer. She was glaring at the footmen ringed around her. By the way one of them had just leapt back, Anthony had the distinct impression she’d stamped his toes.
“Miss Coover,” he said, and she turned to flash Collins a look of triumph. The butler was standing outside the ring of footmen, motionless and deadly calm. If Miss Coover thought she could provoke Collins, she was sorely mistaken. He had the composure of a clockwork automaton.
“Your Grace.” As she spoke, Collins’s eyes rotated until they centered on Anthony.
She had promised silence on their acquaintanceship, and yet she had turned up on his doorstep, rain soaked and mud spattered. Worse, if he read the situation right, she had charged past Collins and led the footmen on a merry chase, and, in the process, she had startled him into revealing that they had some connection.
The fact that he had fantasized about seeing her again added vinegar to the wound.
All the proofs of probity Anthony had displayed over the past months—Miss Coover’s arrival had given them the lie.
He could feel Lavinia and Yardley stirring in the room behind him. How to contain the damage?
“It was good of you to come,” he said, surprising her, surprising himself. “I feared the weather would dissuade you.”
A puddle had formed on the marble beneath Miss Coover’s feet.
She narrowed her long eyes at him, golden-brown in the gaslight. He met her gaze steadily. He didn’t know what caprice had directed her thus far. Now she would follow his lead, or she would regret it keenly.
He hoped his own eyes made this very, very clear.
Collins reached out to accept Miss Coover’s cloak and gloves. He tried to take her shoulder bag, but she gripped the strap tighter. The struggle was brief and infinitesimal, but both parties gave their all. Collins retreated without the bag.
Anthony watched him go, dragging a long breath through his nose. Dammit. The butler’s scrutiny of his actions was bound to increase now that the house had been breached by a chit of a girl behaving for all the world as though she had some claim on his attention. When he’d mastered himself, he turned to Miss Coover. The words died on his lips.
No longer swathed in yards of dark wool, she seemed suddenly to burnish the marble hall with warmth and color. Her dress was a soft shade of brown, embroidered with red chrysanthemums, which brought out the coppery tint of her hair. The dress, although artistic as you please, wasn’t—thank God—entirely without structure. A bodice of pleated silk and a heavy sash at the waist kept him from seeing the natural curves of her belly and hips through the fabric.
The footmen were looking, too, from the corners of their eyes.
His scowl matched hers as he propelled her into the sitting room.
“Miss Coover,” he announced. “My painting teacher.”
He felt her startled twitch, the brush of her hip against his thigh.
“Allow me to present Mr. Yardley. And this is his daughter, Miss Yardley.”
Lavinia gawked at Miss Coover as she rose in greeting.
Yardley’s raised eyebrows were all for Anthony.
“Is this a new passion?” he asked Anthony after he’d taken Miss Coover’s hand.
“Pardon?” Anthony inched sideways, putting more distance between himself and Miss Coover, whose face was in the process of undermining his attempt to salvage the situation she’d created. Her eyes flicked from one person to the next, scrunched brows communicating her confusion.
Or maybe she’d caught a chill. The tip of her nose was bright pink. Her teeth chattered lightly until she gritted them. Whatever rictus contorted her features, it certainly didn’t pass as a smile.
He’d like to station her beneath the eves of the house, under a waterspout, and let nature take its course.
“I didn’t know you plied the brush.” Yardley smiled with open curiosity.
Anthony smiled back. “Oh, well. Yes, I’ve a mind to try my hand at painting horses.”
Lavinia resettled herself on the sofa, rolling her eyes. She made no move to pour out tea for the new visitor.
“Unless you mean painting on the horses, I don’t believe you.” She looked at Miss Coover. “He can’t possibly make a picture of horses.”
Anthony’s smile slipped. Lavinia saw competition everywhere and did not tolerate it kindly.
Miss Coover pushed a wet lock of hair behind her ear, a wary gesture.
Wariness at such a late stage struck Anthony as nearly obscene.
“I suppose he can, if he applies himself,” said Miss Coover slowly. “Just horses?” she asked Anthony. “Or do you mean to paint foxhunts and steeplechases? Polo perhaps?”
“Just horses,” said Anthony. “Please, have a seat.”
“That simplifies things,” said Miss Coover. Her eyes locked on his.
Could the others feel the air snap between them?
She set down her bag and perched on the sofa. Lavinia smiled a closed-lipped smile and edged away.
There was a communicable quality to Miss Coover’s dampness. Her bag appeared as muddy and battered as her shoes.
Anthony returned to his chair, trying to think of what to say. At least Miss Coover hadn’t contradicted him. He’d half expected a torrent of abuse.
When she’d exited the sculpture gallery, right after he told her he’d destroyed her picture, she’d looked as though he’d pulled her heart out with a rusty pair of fire tongs.
She did not think of him fondly. Her sketches had arrived addressed to The Philistine. Luckily, he had taken to having Humphreys lie in wait for the letter carriers and pluck out the important envelopes.
She wanted something from him now, wanted it enough to play along.
His fingers drummed the chair arm.
“He’s never been able to stay still,” said Lavinia, with a pointed look at his drumming fingers. “When we were children, he couldn’t sit through a game of whist, or a little melody by Mozart, and he’s no better now. I wouldn’t want him for a painting pupil.”
Now that Lavinia had managed to put both Anthony and Miss Coover in their places, she looked happier. Miss Coover glanced at her and then at Anthony, rather coolly. She didn’t want him for a painting pupil either. Before she could say something to that effect, he sprawled in his chair, aping carelessness. Physically restless, quick-witted but slow to decipher words and sums—as a boy, he’d practiced buffoonery as self-protection. And maybe Lavinia was right. He was no better now.
“I can already see the horse I want to paint, so that should make the task go quicker.” He shut his eyes. The sudden darkness soothed him. What a relief, to escape, however briefly, this cursed sitting room.
“Describe the scene,” came Miss Coover’s voice. Listening to her voice with his eyes closed . . . it felt . . . intimate.
He opened his eyes.
“A horse on a dusty plain,” he said. “Midstride. A large gray Arabian charger, saddled, no rider.”
He cleared his throat, reached for his teacup. He hadn’t expected the words to emerge with such earnest force. He’d bought Mizoa from a horse dealer in Bombay and lost him on the road to Kandahar. Days he didn’t think of that long, bloody road were days he counted lucky.
He could count those lucky days on one hand.
He felt Miss Coover’s gaze on him as he blew—needlessly—across the surface of his tea. The sip he took was lukewarm.
After a moment, she nodded.
“Very good. You’ll start, though, with anatomy. They use a plaster cast of a flayed horse as a teaching aid at the Royal Academy. It’s a wonderful tool but for students only. You’ll have to make do with drawings.”
“A flayed horse!” Lavinia shuddered. “I’d rather look at anything else.”
“The Antique School keeps a cast of a flayed man as well.” Miss Coover considered Lavinia for a moment before continuing. “The man was first nailed to a cross, to settle a debate about the position of the crucified body.”
Lavinia took this in. She looked personally aggrieved by the information.
“Are they training artists or ghouls?” she demanded.
“He was a notorious murderer in his time,” said Miss Coover. The hint of a smile tilted the corners of her mouth.
Anthony frowned. She had no right to enjoy herself.
Yardley leaned forward with interest.
“You’re a student in the Academy Schools? I attended the Schools myself. In my day, of course, things were very different.”
Miss Coover bridled slightly. Anthony supposed she represented the chief difference, and resented it.
“The ladies make good students, I’ve heard.” Yardley smiled as he confirmed Anthony’s suspicion. “Especially the pretty ones.” His wink was avuncular. “At the very least, I imagine the presence of ladies in the halls checks the unrulier impulses we men indulged from time to time, at whichever unsuspecting Visitor’s expense.”
He wore a fond expression, recalling some bit of youthful raillery. Miss Coover, Anthony noted, appeared less pleased.
He remembered the two very pretty young ladies he’d met in the Schools, their interest in him, their seeming ambivalence about their instruction. Prettiness, he was willing to guess, was not the modifier most important to Miss Coover when assessing the merits of female students. Nor would she think taming indocile males their chief function.
“Tell me,” said Lavinia, giving Miss Coover a sly smile, “what do you think of Weston Hall?”
Miss Coover hesitated, puzzled.
“Weston Hall,” she said. “This Weston Hall?”
“There’s no other.” Lavinia raised her thin brows.
“Should I respond as a social caller?” asked Miss Coover. “Or do you want my opinion as an artist?”
She looked at Anthony, who shook his head in warning.
“Oh, as an artist, surely,” said Lavinia. “No one on a social call ever said anything interesting.”
“From the outside, it looks like a warehouse,” said Miss Coover promptly. “And from the inside, it looks like a gilded warehouse. All the rooms are overlarge, with fathoms of air overhead. Lifelessness on a grand scale. Of course, I’m speaking of the general impression only. I’m sure the furnishings are lovely.”
She shifted dubiously on the sofa, a horror in rose damask, with cushions that made no concessions to the human form. Her self-satisfaction was almost comical. She liked hearing her own aesthetic judgments and did not restrain herself from expressing them. Anthony knew her to cleave to them.
You are not my subject, she’d said to him, adamant. Love. Beauty. Those are the subjects of the painting.
Lavinia was a minx, but Miss Coover might not have walked so blithely into her trap.
“Papa designed the house.” Lavinia spoke with relish. “He studied architecture at the Royal Academy, then took a degree in structural science at University College. He’s very proud of Weston Hall.”
Miss Coover pressed her lips together. Yardley’s face was red. His architecture career had largely focused on commercial structures, none renowned for their beauty. Long before Anthony was born, he’d been commissioned by Anthony’s mother’s family to design a new warehouse for their shipping firm, Rodis & Metaxas. That was how he met Anthony’s mother and, eventually, his father.
His work on Weston Hall had failed conspicuously to garner him more commissions from lords with mansions to remodel. He’d returned to warehouses, and, under the aegis of the Board of Works, roads.
Unfortunate, Miss Coover’s critique. But astute.
“The house was built in the era of George the Second.” Yardley pressed his hands flat on his knees.
Effie always said Lavinia hadn’t a malicious spirit. Rather, self-absorption made her oblivious. Watching her lips curve into an expectant smile, Anthony doubted she’d realized that the subject of Weston Hall had touched a nerve. She was waiting for her father to give Miss Coover a good setting down.
“I was charged with alterations only,” said Yardley. “I amalgamated smaller rooms.”
“And created the double height in the hall, the dining room, and the gallery?” asked Miss Coover.
Anthony bit his tongue. Had she surveyed the whole house at a run, footmen trailing behind like gulls after a steamer?
“It was easily done. Several of the upstairs bedrooms were outmoded, entirely superfluous.”
“Ballrooms instead of bedrooms,” said Miss Coover thoughtfully. “That was my point. Display is the reason for being, not day-to-day living.”
Lavinia seemed to find her tone inadequately incendiary.
“Which you despise?” she proposed.
The look Miss Coover gave her boded ill, but her response was matter-of-fact.
“As a domicile, it isn’t to my taste,” she said. “But I was not the patron.” She nodded at Yardley. “I don’t doubt your design answered to his specifications.”
Anthony had shoved his hand into his jacket to prevent his fingers from drumming. Now he realized they were twisting his watch chain.
“It did at that,” said Yardley. He relaxed his shoulders, draped one of his arms across the back of a chair.
Anthony’s father had commissioned Yardley for the alterations shortly after Anthony’s mother had died. It had never occurred to Anthony until now that destroying his mother’s chambers had been his father’s aim.
“Miss Coover, you’re still chilled.” Anthony said it mechanically and rose, moving to the fireplace. He leaned on the marble mantelpiece and stirred the coals in the grate. Yardley rose, too, and joined him. He was nearly as tall as Anthony, and wider, a big, bluff man who gave the impression of being in the prime of life. Anthony’s father had been only a few years his senior, but he’d seemed brittle, feeble, old, by the time he died.
Lavinia was leaning forward on the sofa, pouring out tea.
“Which do you prefer,” he heard her ask Miss Coover, “Paris or the Riviera?”
“Horse painting.” Yardley chuckled. His amiability seemed fully restored. “You and your horses. I heard that yesterday the grooms couldn’t flush you from the stables.”
Yardley never mentioned how he heard what he heard. He and everyone else around Anthony seemed to talk a great deal given how much they all prized their bloody discretion.
Anthony grunted. His visits to the stable were only in part a cover for his visits to the glasshouse. The coach horses were strong, well-fleshed, stouthearted beasts, and the saddle horses, creams and blacks, were big and splendid. He preferred their stalls any day of the week to his study, where Yardley would have him stare himself cross-eyed at his father’s files. Yardley urged him to comb through blue books, records of parliamentary sessions, reports authored by the Committee on Intemperance, to prepare himself to fill his father’s shoes as a statesman.
He was proving far less willing to discuss Anthony’s duties as a landholder.
“For once, I don’t want to talk horses.” Anthony lowered his voice. This room, the smallest on the floor, was still quite large. A large sitting room offered certain affordances. For example, it accommodated concurrent conversations. Lavinia suddenly pealed with laughter at some remark of Miss Coover’s. Anthony looked over. They’d drawn closer together, a mismatched pair. Lavinia’s head, capped by carefully molded blond ringlets, inclined toward Miss Coover, who was securing a pin in a wind-blown mass of coarse curls that seemed to swallow it.
Why was she here? He forced his thoughts away from the mystery that was Miss Coover. This was his opportunity. He turned to Yardley. “I wanted to discuss the rent increases in Hampshire.”
Yardley threw a pointed look toward the women and shook his head. “It’s not the time.”
“It’s never the time.” Too loud. He lowered his voice. “Etiquette be damned. I didn’t ask you to bring your daughter. I asked you to bring Mr. Cruitshank’s reports.”
“I hardly thought the matter urgent.” Yardley’s brows drew together. “I would know, after all, if anything was seriously amiss with the estate.”
He would at that. He’d worked directly with Cruitshank, the estate manager, on the new cottages, and since Anthony’s father’s death, he’d been empowered to make all the financial decisions concerning them, and everything else.
“That’s part of what troubles me.” Anthony searched Yardley’s face, hating the worm of distrust coiling in his belly. “The letters I received from the tenants describe a situation that is, in fact, seriously amiss. Why haven’t you acted?”
“Letters from tenants.” Yardley sighed. “Tenants will always make mountains out of molehills.”
“They are bearing the costs of improvements my father foisted upon them.”
Yardley shook his head. “They’re not. The rents are the same.”
As Anthony opened his mouth to protest, Yardley made a conciliatory gesture.
“They’re feeling a pinch, I don’t doubt. It takes more fuel to heat a larger house, more candles to light one. Those tenants who wrote to complain—your father provided them with new homes, equipped their farms with modern machines. Now they expect that every stick of firewood and loaf of bread will be handed to them.”
Anthony stared at him. “The rent was their chief concern.”
“They’re confused. Or else they’re trying to take advantage of your—”
He broke off.
“What?” Anthony tried to speak lightly. “My what?”
Lavinia’s laughter pealed again.
“Miss Coover has saved me from irremediable dullness,” she called. “You must hear her latest opinion.”
Yardley put her off with a raised hand, and she flung herself back on the sofa, with a whispered remark to Miss Coover.
“Trying to take advantage,” said Yardley.
“I’ll see for myself, then.” Anthony could feel a vein in his temple throb. “I’ll go to Hampshire. Per the codicil,” he spit, “I must ask that you accompany me.”
There it was, that sad look, half apology, half disappointment.
Yardley exhaled.
“Anthony,” he said. “You know your father wanted you in London, in Parliament, taking this year to familiarize yourself with his political legacy, to make new alliances, to find your legs as a statesman. He put the properties in trust to unburden you.”
Anthony’s smile was humorless.
“You know,” he said. “You know very well, in fact, that my father wanted to control me, not to unburden me, as you say.” He shrugged, as he’d been shrugging his whole life, as if it didn’t hurt. He had shrugged when he’d first learned of the codicil. This can’t be valid.
The solicitors had assured him that his father’s myriad requirements were, in fact, perfectly valid, legally speaking. Provisions that injure the public aren’t enforceable, nor are those that require the beneficiary to take illegal or immoral action. They’d explained it slowly, with placid smiles. But a testator may otherwise condition his gifts. These particular conditions are to the public good, as well as to the benefit of your character. Moreover, they apply for short duration, only until you attain the age of thirty. Thirty-five is actually more common. It’s all properly drafted, and also reasonable. Our advice to you is, of course, compliance.
Anthony’s smile became a grimace. “He didn’t think I could control myself.”
“Then control yourself,” said Yardley. “Show the world that you can.”
Anthony looked down, pressing the side of his fist into the mantelpiece, hard, so he felt the cold edge of the marble dig into his skin.
His father had never asked what had happened on the retreat from Maiwand. Anthony had never offered his side of the story. That day in Hampshire, when he’d walked with Yardley in the village before heading to London, he’d begun to speak of it and Yardley had stopped him by laying a hand on his shoulder.
You don’t have to explain, to me or anyone else. We’ve kept it out of the papers, so that’s that. You can start fresh, do you hear me? Your father will come around.
For Yardley’s sake, Anthony had shrugged, as though in agreement. But as soon as he’d arrived in London, he’d mired himself in the old rottenness. He went to the Rose and Myrtle and fought with George’s friends, beating them bloody because George himself was out of reach. He drank and then he drank more. His father was never going to “come around,” as Yardley put it. He’d always believed the worst. He’d died believing it.
Anthony crossed his arms.
“How can I control myself?” he said. “It’s not a question of self-control if I can’t choose who I see, where I go, and what I bloody well drink.”
Yardley glanced toward Lavinia and Miss Coover to satisfy himself that they were still battling dullness.
“Don’t spite yourself to spite him,” he said. “Get out of the stables. Take your seat in the House of Lords. Unlike Lavinia, I do recollect you sitting. And to good effect.”
Anthony rocked on his heels, unable to meet Yardley’s eyes. It was to Yardley he’d confessed his boyhood agony with books, how he couldn’t make sense of the letters, couldn’t sound them out or arrange them.
Memorize the words, then, Yardley had suggested. You’ve got a good mind. Pretend they’re pictures, like in Egypt.
He’d taken Anthony to the British Museum and showed him the hieroglyphics. Anthony had pored over his books after that, committing the words to memory. He never learned to take pleasure in reading, or writing, but he could do both, without fear of ridicule. Yardley alone understood the focus that had required.
He owed the man something but could give no satisfactory response. His spite was already running its course.
“She’s a ghoul, it’s decided,” cried Lavinia, waving to get their attention. “She claims”—Lavinia widened her eyes and clasped her hands to her breast in mock horror—“I’m dying!”
Anthony’s eyes flew to Miss Coover. One minute, savior from irremediable dullness, the next minute, harbinger of death. It was evident that both appellations grated. She took a deep breath and released it.
“I never said you were dying. I said you are absorbing poison through your skin.”
“What’s this?” Yardley glanced at Anthony as though he should have some answer.
Anthony spread out his hands. He certainly couldn’t account for what came out of Miss Coover’s mouth.
“Her gown. There’s arsenic in the dye,” said Miss Coover. “You can tell just by looking.”
“It’s green, yes,” said Lavinia, sniffing. “That doesn’t mean it’s poison.”
“It’s emerald green,” Miss Coover snapped, her patience wearing thin. “The pigment is made with white arsenic.”
“I know that.” Lavinia smoothed her skirts. “I know about emerald green. It kills the artificial flower makers. But this gown is different. It’s extremely expensive.”
She smiled forgivingly at Miss Coover. Then she rounded on Anthony, who had approached with her father.
“I would never say it so baldly, but I have to make her understand somehow or she’ll go running off to the coroner.”
“Of course it’s expensive; it’s a Worth gown.” Miss Coover crossed her arms. “The fit is excellent. I have no quarrel with Worth’s tailoring or his styles. The fabric, however, is guaranteed to do you injury.”
Lavinia’s mouth dropped open. Miss Coover ignored her and reached for her bag. Open, it seemed larger. She was up to her elbows, fumbling inside. Wood knocked on wood, and glass clinked on glass.
What the devil did she lug about? An entire apothecary, from the sound of it.
“Don’t move,” she said, turning to Lavinia with a small phial in her hand.
“What is that?” Lavinia started, pressing back into the arm of the sofa.
“Ammonia.” Miss Coover’s hands were steady as she unscrewed the lid. “I use it in solution to strip the varnish from my brushes. If you jostle me, I’ll spill more than I intend.”
“What are you doing? Are you mad? You’ll ruin my dress!”
“I don’t think—” Yardley started forward. But he was too slow.
“Done!” With precise movements, Miss Coover had bent, lifted the hem of Lavinia’s skirt, and coaxed a single drop from the phial, which she rapidly tilted up and capped.
“Now.” She nodded curtly. “See for yourselves.”
Anthony and Yardley exchanged glances. As one, they knelt by the sofa.
“The arsenic in the dye is arsenite of copper,” said Miss Coover. “And ammonia turns blue in the presence of copper.”
“The mark is blue.” Anthony whistled through his teeth, sitting back on his heels. “Arsenic.”
Lavinia grabbed fistfuls of her skirt, as though to lift it away from her legs, then dropped the skirt and rubbed her hands on the cushion of the sofa.
“I feel faint,” she said, drooping. “I’m dying after all.”
“I’ll call the doctor.” Yardley’s face was full of concern as he stood. “You may have to postpone your trip to Paris.”
“Oh.” Lavinia straightened. “I don’t feel so very faint.”
“Even so,” said Yardley. “Let’s get you home at once.”
“She’ll survive, I think,” said Miss Coover, returning her phial to her bag. “But if I were you, Miss Yardley, I would bury that Worth gown in a hole. Stand up.”
Anthony backed away from the sofa, stifling a laugh at Lavinia’s bewildered expression. Even Effie hadn’t bossed her with such aplomb. Uncertainly, Lavinia stood.
“I could sew you a gown with the same silhouette, if you like this look, with the bodice and the skirt cut in one piece,” said Miss Coover, as her gaze swept Lavinia up and down. “But I’d choose blue silk. Less deadly, and more becoming with your eyes.”
She glanced at Anthony.
His eyes were green, like his mother’s and Effie’s, darker than the green silk but not by much. The color of poison. Was that what she was thinking?
“But . . . are you a dressmaker?” Lavinia asked.
“I’m a painter,” said Miss Coover briskly. “But I also work in my aunt’s dress shop. She’s the finest dressmaker in London, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find her equal in Paris. She designed all of Celestia Jordan’s gowns.”
“The Celestia Jordan? The actress?” Lavinia frowned. “Her gowns were divine, but, darling, Dodie Thistleship designed them.”
A storm cloud formed on Miss Coover’s brow.
“Dodie Thistleship,” she bit out. “The woman is a hack. And a thief.”
“Never!” gasped Lavinia.
“A ham sandwich has more talent.” The wet cat was back. Miss Coover had raised her shoulders, spitting mad.
Impatient, Yardley started for the door, and Anthony followed him.
“I don’t think she’s dying.” Anthony cast a look over his shoulder at Lavinia. Lavinia and Miss Coover were nose to nose. Some people would call what they were doing shouting.
“No.” Yardley turned to beckon. “Lavinia!” He sounded more weary than worried.
“I imagine she and Moira”—he named his wife—“will be off to the ferry tomorrow morning as planned. I’ll be off too, not nearly so far as Paris, just to Putney, but I’ll stay a few days. To oversee one of my ongoing projects.”
He looked at Anthony, then sighed and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “When I return, we’ll meet to discuss the estates, if that’s what you’d like. I’ll show you the annual reports. If you’re not satisfied, I’ll accompany you to Hampshire.”
Anthony managed a faint nod, but that worm of distrust still twisted inside him. He used to believe in Robert Yardley’s good intentions. Now he wasn’t so sure.
But, Christ, this life his father had devised for him bred distrust.
The shouting tapered off, and Lavinia and Miss Coover presented themselves.
“Thank you, Miss Coover.” Yardley pressed her hand. “Painter, dressmaker, chemist.” He bowed. “A true Renaissance woman.”
“A miracle worker as well, if he ends up painting a plausible horse.” Lavinia beamed at Anthony. A good row, and her brush with death, had buoyed her spirits.
Then they were gone, the Yardleys, his dear old friends, letting themselves out. He braced himself against the doorframe, then wheeled around to face Miss Coover, who did not shrink.
“Time for my lesson,” he said.