Those had been her parting words to him. A few days ago, she’d meant them, but now she saw the matter differently. To keep quiet about Percy would betray all she and Olivia meant to one another. It would make her no better than Nick.
Olivia had come to her with the news of Nick’s “affair” before it reached her ears any other way. She would do the same for Olivia. It was only a matter of time before the gossip rags caught wind of Percy. She only hoped she could find the right words. Whatever they might be.
The carriage hooked another right, offering the first full view of the Folly’s mish-mash of a house that sprawled too haphazardly to be called beautiful. Yet now it felt somewhat stripped of its usual welcome warmth.
Uncle Bertie had been in some way involved with the French assassination plot. It was her prerogative to avoid the issue and pretend it never happened. After all, their only discussion about it had been veiled. But it wasn’t her nature. When she next saw Uncle Bertie, which could be in minutes as the carriage was now slowing to a stop, she would have to confront the issue straightaway. She suspected him as guilty as Nick, perhaps more so, in the Percy business. But she would hear it from his lips before she jumped to any rash conclusions.
Hortense’s coal black lashes fluttered open, revealing eyes the opaque and striking blue of a stone from the Americas that she’d once beheld. Turquoise. How was it she hadn’t noticed before now that the girl was quite a beauty?
“We’ve arrived,” Mariana began. “How shall we—”
“I shall be your lady’s maid until I hear otherwise,” Hortense supplied.
The carriage ground to a stop, and a coachman handed Mariana down. She heard the crunch of Hortense’s boot on gravel behind her.
“This place is much grander than I’d ever imagined.”
Mariana faced the girl. “Have you spent much time imagining the Folly?”
Hortense shifted on her feet. “I’ve heard bits and pieces about Bertrand Montfort’s Folly,” she said, her gaze sliding away noncommittally.
Mariana couldn’t recall ever having mentioned the place to Hortense in any detail, but once her feet crossed the house’s threshold, the sound of girlish laughter drifting down a corridor entirely distracted her from the matter. She didn’t want to continue with these spy intrigues; she wanted to feel the warm embrace of her sister and a pair of giggly girls.
She wanted soft and fuzzy love, not cold, hard reality. In short, she wanted a respite.
She assured the attending servants that she would prefer to announce herself before allowing her feet to cross the sun-bright foyer toward the inviting melodies of song, piano, and laughter. It was pure, unrestrained laughter—the sound of happiness and the joy of a family gathered round, enjoying a private joke. She wanted nothing more than to be nestled inside the center of that joke.
When she reached the drawing room, she hesitated in the relative dark of the corridor and observed the tableau spread before her. Lavinia and Lucy, giggling and singing ditties at the piano, were on one side of the room, blithely indifferent to Olivia on the other side of the room. She was crouched nearly into a ball on a footstool, her eyes lifted toward the raucous duo, even as her hand busily moved across the paper on her lap. Everyone in the family had long grown accustomed to Olivia whipping out her sketchbook when inspiration struck, a pastime she’d taken up after Percy’s death.
The pleasant momentum of Mariana’s thoughts screeched to a halt.Percy’s death.
Percy wasn’t dead. Percy was alive.
“Auntie Mari!” sounded Lucy’s voice.
Mariana shook off the unwelcome thought of Percy and stepped out of the shadow, all three sets of smiling eyes upon her and making it easy to forget the unpleasantness of Paris.
Lavinia sprang off the piano bench and bounded across the room into her arms. “I’m so happy to see you, dearest,” Mariana said into her daughter’s sable hair that smelled of lily and horse.
“Me, too, Mamma,” she replied, already shaking off her mother’s embrace and scampering off to rejoin Lucy at the piano. “Did you hear our new song?”
Mariana thought back. Ten seconds could have been ten days ago. “Was it Herr Beethoven’s Symphony Number 5?”
“Lulu is writing lyrics for it,” Lavinia said, adoration for her slightly older cousin evident in her bright, shining eyes.
As if on cue, Lucy began banging at the piano, reducing the sublimity of Herr Beethoven’s masterpiece to its most rudimentary notes. She cleared her throat before singing out:
“Lavinia loves horses
Catherine the Great did, too
So much in fact
It made her husband blue
It’s even said . . .
With horrible dread . . .
