Sophie awoke smiling, stretching languorously in her narrow bed, even though she knew that last night had in sober truth been a mistake that she should regret. The fact was, she didn’t wish away a single second of it. Whatever she had shared so briefly with Drake wouldn’t turn her from her purpose – nothing would – but it had been glorious, exhilarating and deeply satisfying, and her life held little enough pleasure, so she would not feel guilty. Guilt was a waste of time and energy.
She found that the Dowager had been up and in her sitting room for a while when she went to see how she was after the exertions of the previous evening. The old lady looked tired, and it struck Sophie that she had been crying, but she did not want to press her as to why. Lord Wyverne’s mother might have many reasons for private tears, she thought.
Delphine did not acknowledge her own tears in any way, nor show any further signs of distress, saying only, ‘I am glad to see you, my dear. Do not read to me, not today – I am not in the humour for it. I want to talk to you.’
A little curl of dismay rippled through Sophie’s stomach. There were many topics she would rather not discuss withDelphine; the whole subject of the old woman’s grandson headed the list after last night, but there was a great deal more besides. ‘Yes, madame la marquise?’
‘I started to speak to you last night, to warn you, but we were interrupted and I was not able to finish, but now I must. Lord Wyverne plans another gathering tonight, I am sorry to say.’
‘Another dinner?’ Sophie grimaced.
‘Oh, no, dear child. If it were only that. It is ridiculous – at my age and with all my experience, you would not imagine that there is anything I am afraid or embarrassed to speak of, and yet I find that it is so.’
‘It must be something very terrible,’ said Sophie with an attempt at lightness.
‘I fear it is. Did you learn Latin in your youth, my dear?’
Sophie presumed that this odd question was not the non sequitur it appeared to be, for Delphine’s wits were far from wandering. ‘I did, a little,’ she said cautiously.
‘I do not suppose that your studies included the work of Suetonius?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I remember I have seen his name upon a volume…’ She almost said, In my grandfather’s library at the Chateau de Montfaucon, but she just stopped the words in time. ‘I cannot recall where. In any case, I have not read any text by a person of that name, nor heard anything that I can recall.’
‘It is scarcely surprising, for his work would not have been at all suitable for a young lady. I wonder then if you have ever heard of the Empress Messalina?’
‘I believe I have, though I do not know any details. Is she not proverbial for wickedness?’
‘Indeed,’ said the Dowager drily. ‘There are many scandalous stories Suetonius tells of her, but one of them is that she once challenged Rome’s most famous prostitute, Scylla, to a contest, to see which of them could… engage with the most men insuccession before tiring of it. And that, I am sorry to say, is the theme of Lord Wyverne’s party tonight, with Lady Wyverne, I need scarcely say, in the role of Messalina. I believe her opponent, if that is the word I seek, has been brought from London and employed at vast expense. She is quite celebrated in her own right, apparently, as such women sometimes are, and Marchand tells me that she is to receive an enormous bonus in gold if she wins. I understand that large bets are being laid on the outcome.’
‘Good God,’ Sophie said. And then again, ‘Good God. And all this is to happen…’
‘In public. In the Marble Saloon.’ With a little hiccup of laughter that might easily have been a sob, Delphine said, ‘It’s terribly draughty in there. All that marble – so chilly. It is so typical of men – they cannot possibly have considered.’
‘And everybody will be…’ Sophie had thought herself beyond being astonished, but she now discovered she’d been wrong. She’d been moving in low circles, she’d thought, over the last eight years, and consorting with all manner of thieves, rogues, artists and whores. She’d seen people drunk, so often that it was no longer any sort of novelty, and in the grip of lust and murderous rage. The two things could be all but synonymous. She knew that some men, many men, harboured all sorts of dark impulses, and she knew that women could too; not by any means all the women on the streets were victims, or just victims. She’d seen women offer to sell their own children for a flagon of gin, and no way to prevent it. She wasn’t an innocent; she wasn’t at all easily shocked. It was possible to argue that no one would be hurt by what would happen tonight, and certainly she was no enemy of passion or of pleasure. But could this be described as passion, or even honest lust? There was something so cold-blooded about it, so deliberate. To make a contest of it…
‘Everyone will be watching?’ asked the Dowager wearily. ‘Yes. I imagine that’s the point of it. The display, the show it makes. No doubt, since she is to play the part of an empress, she will be wearing every jewel she possesses, if little else. I am sure he will insist upon that. We must not delude ourselves that this would be happening if Wyverne did not want it. I would assume that it was his idea; it certainly bears the stamp of his nature. Whether his wife is an enthusiastic participant or takes part merely in order to please him, I cannot say. I don’t understand the nature of the bond between them, and I don’t care to, really. She had made her bed, quite literally on this occasion. If she were ever an innocent, which I suppose even she must have been once, it was long ago. My concern is only for the servants, and for you.’
Sophie looked at her in silence; she almost feared to ask. ‘There will be no maids downstairs this evening, and the stair that leads to their – to your – chambers will be guarded. They have all been warned to stay away, to make sure they are safe, and now I am warning you too. You most of all, I think, for they must imagine you entirely unprotected and friendless, and Rosanna has begun to dislike you into the bargain. I could see that well enough last night.’
‘You’re not just worried that I, or any of them, will see things we should not see? It’s more than that. You are concerned for our physical safety too?’
‘I am.’ The old lady sounded very tired suddenly. ‘I do what little I can. Perhaps I am over-reacting – no, I am not. I would believe anything of Wyverne’s so-called friends – I cannot know what they might do, but I would not be at all surprised; recall how that creature last night tried to accost you not five minutes after you had sat down. As for Wyverne himself, I have no specific reason to think him a rapist, but I know how very wicked he is, and that he has no scrap of morality or fear ofconsequences to restrain him. I do know for a fact that he has blood on his hands. And I think you must know it too.’ She paused and then said very deliberately, ‘Your father’s blood. Your family’s.’
17
Sophie sat frozen in shock. At length she gathered together her scattered wits and said in as steady a voice as she could manage, ‘How can you possibly know this?’
‘My dear child,’ said the Dowager with a sad little smile. ‘I knew your great-grandmother Adele so very well – we were contemporaries. Rivals, for the King’s affections, though it seems foolish now, when she is long dead and so is he. I remember when she married de Montfaucon, and when your grandfather was born, and your father. I knew your mother’s family intimately too. She was a distant cousin of mine, in fact. I forget what happened last week, probably because very little did, but I can remember very clearly what happened eighty years ago. I can see bright pictures in my mind, as vivid as you sitting here before me. You have a great look of Adele about you; I could not possibly mistake it. Even with that ridiculous hair you have dyed to try to make yourself look ordinary. You are not ordinary in the least.’
Sophie – Clemence, as she had not been for eight years – found herself perilously close to tears. ‘I did not know,’ she said.‘That I resembled her so greatly, I mean. There is no one left to tell me such things. They are all dead. Every one of them.’
‘I am so sorry,’ Delphine said with a little difficulty. ‘For everything. I did try to find you – you, and Marie-Claude, and your brother. As soon as I saw the Stella Rosa around that woman’s neck, where it had no business to be, as soon as I heard what had happened to your poor father, I realised that you must be in terrible trouble. I sent people to look for you, but it was too late. They had both died, and you had disappeared. No one could find you. I did try, Clemence. Please believe me.’
She had not heard her mother’s name spoken in eight years. That, and the knowledge that someone had cared enough in that desperate time to seek her family out, to try to help them, broke down the last of her defences, and she sobbed, deep racking sobs that shook her whole body, as she had not done for so many long years. She cried until she thought she had no tears left. But even as she wept, she refused to dwell on how different her life might have been, if the Dowager had come a little sooner and saved her. That would do her no good now, and she could not afford to indulge this weakness for long. The rescue that had come had been of a very different nature, and she had become the person she was now because of it. At length she took out her handkerchief and dried her tears with resolution, then said a little unsteadily, ‘You do not think, now that you know all this, to ask me why I am here, and why I have deceived you?’
‘You have not deceived me. Not for more than a minute or so. I was very glad to see you – nothing has made me so happy for a long, long time. I had thought you must surely be dead, and perhaps that your life had been one of such suffering that death came as a release. And as for why you are here, I think I know. There can only be one reason. Revenge. I must presume you plan to take the Stella back.’
‘That and more,’ Sophie said with a mirthless little laugh. ‘I will take everything I can, and it still will not be enough to punish him as he deserves to be punished. But you will not give me up? Tell your son, or his wife, of what I mean to do?’
