“What was she like then, when you first met her?”
Augusta tipped her head back, resting it on the chair as she looked at the ceiling. It had been painted with a scene of Mars preparing for war, a singularly unsuitable theme for a library, I should have thought. But the brushwork was excellent and the colours sublime. It was also subversive. I noticed that Venus was distracting the god of war whilst her tiny winged son, Cupid, made away with his enchanted armour.
“Do you see that little cloud in the corner?” she asked, pointing upwards with a graceful hand.
“The one with the cherub peeking out?”
“That was Elspeth. Always watching, neverdoing. The rest of us used to get up to silly games—Blindman’s Bluff, charades, that sort of thing. It was just boisterous fun, but she always gave the impression she disapproved of our little romps. She was forever wandering off, book in hand, usually to read on St. Frideswide’s chair. It was her great escape since Timothy has no head for heights and could never abide going there to find her. And when she did join us, she always gave theimpression she had better things to do with her time. We began to make a point of eluding her. Not very kind, in retrospect, but perhaps we may be excused on the grounds of youth and thoughtlessness,” she said with a wistful look.
“I think none of us are as kind as we could be,” I told her frankly.
“You are too gracious by half.” She paused and glanced about the library. “It is curious. I always associate her with this room. Lord Templeton-Vane was very generous with his books. He gave us the run of the house and told us we were welcome to read anything we liked. Elspeth was forever turning up and borrowing books—natural history. I thought she was a dreadful bluestocking. My mother would never have permitted me to be found reading such serious books! But with no mother to guide her and only Timothy to act as guardian, she was perhaps not chaperoned as she might have been.”
“Your own mother was here at the time?” I asked. I knew the answer, but feigning ignorance is, in my experience, the simplest way to introduce a topic of conversation.
“Oh heavens, yes.” Her smile turned rueful. “We used to make a game of eluding her when we were at our most high-spirited. We were forever wandering off through the gardens or into the little copses where Mamma would never think to look. But I would never have been permitted to visit James here if she had not come. My virtue had been auctioned to the highest bidder, and it was to be protected until my wedding night.”
“But I thought—” I broke off. There was no polite way to phrase my enquiry, but Augusta merely laughed, and it was a kindly laugh.
“I do not mean it literally, my dear. James had not a bean, bless him. It was my father who had the wealth. James was heir to a title and an estate he would never be able to afford to keep without my money. So, our fathers struck a bargain. James’ blue blood in exchange for my gold. Their grandsons would be the benefactors of both. Does it surprise you to know such things happen?”
“No,” I told her truthfully. “Only that you speak forthrightly. Most people make a huge pretence about it.”
“I am a pragmatic woman, Veronica. And I pay you the compliment of recognising that you are as well. There are far worse foundations for a marriage than security. James’ family had been marrying their cousins for two centuries. They needed fresh, vigourous blood and an infusion of cash. My family wanted the sort of respectability that comes from thousands of acres and a title. Everyone was made happy.”
“A sound enough basis for a marriage, provided affection comes in the wake of such an arrangement.”
“Respect and consideration are the most one may expect at the outset,” she told me. “One is indeed lucky when affection follows.”
Her frankness upon the subject led me to an indelicate enquiry. “And has it for you?”
She smiled. “How could one not feel affection for James? He is a good man. And he is an excellent father. He denies me nothing, and whenever he is made aware of my preferences, he is amiable enough to acquiesce to them.”
“Made aware? He does not intuit them?”
She laughed, a rich, mellow laugh. “My dear, have you ever met the man who could intuit a woman’s wishes? No, do not answer. If you have, I should be extremely envious and I should not care to be jealous of a new friend. Let it be sufficient to say that I have contentment in my marriage, and that is more than most women in my position.”
“Did you never wish for more?”
“What more? You mean a grand passion?” She paused and looked heavenwards again, pointing to the god of war and his purloined armour. “That is what happens when grand passions are involved. Mars is seduced and his very purpose is thwarted. He lost sight of what is most important to him and love robbed him blind.”
“A valuable lesson for us all, I suppose,” I said.
“Indeed. I suppose you think me very mercenary,” she said, smiling again.
“Not at all. I admire your willingness to view the truth through an unclouded glass.”
“Illusions are the playthings of children. And we are women grown,” she reminded me. She rose and shook out her skirts. “I have been too much with my own thoughts today and I am growing morbid. I think I will pay a call upon Nanny MacQueen. I met her when I was here last, and she might like some little delicacy from the kitchens.”
“It is kind of you to think of her,” I replied. I regarded Nanny MacQueen’s cottage with the same degree of pleasure I might contemplate the gates of Hell.
Augusta smiled wearily. “If there is one thing I have learnt in my years of Good Works, it is that thinking of others can be a blessed respite from thinking of oneself.”
She left in a rustle of skirts. For all her forty thousand acres, her sons, and her title, I did not envy Augusta MacIver. She had made a common bargain—exchanging her youth, money, and beauty for the security of an ancient title and the position it purchased within society. She had leveraged it to become one of the most celebrated hostesses in London, the sort of woman whose table accommodated ministers and ambassadors, philosophers and aristocrats. And yet there was a vein of some emotion I could not precisely identify that ran within her. Not regret, for she seemed contented with her lot. Nostalgia perhaps, for the girl she had been and the other choices she might have made?
Whatever my musings on Augusta MacIver, they had no bearing on the matter at hand. Alone at last, I settled myself in one of the window embrasures, tucking my feet up under my skirts. The heavy velvet draperies were drawn back but loosely, so that the deep folds concealed me from the casual visitor to the library. I had no wish to be interrupted as I perused Lorenzo’s notebook, and the light was excellent. I took anapple from my pocket and munched contentedly as I studied the slender volume. It still smelt of leather, but faintly, and the little gilded bee upon the cover was nearly undetectable. There were marks on the cover, seawater, perhaps? And the entries were made with whatever Lorenzo had had to hand—a stub of pencil, a stray pen, the nib unmended and spluttering ink in blots. A corner of the book had been nibbled away—rats, I thought, with some distaste, and other pages bore the stains of a life well travelled: food, wine, candle grease.
It was easy to see where he had sketched on the fly, rendering his impressions in a few bold strokes. In other places, he wrote more carefully, dating his pages and heading them with his location. He matched his language to the setting, switching from lyrical Italian during what was apparently the last few days the party were in Florence to somewhat stilted English for their stay at Cherboys. There were misspellings, some corrected with a single, elegant stroke of the pen as he struggled to find the proper word. He spoke kindly of Lord Templeton-Vane—it always surprised me when someone had a good opinion of the bête noire of Stoker’s childhood—and he waxed poetic about the cliffs themselves. The entry written the day he discovered the fossil was rhapsodic, evidenced by his lapsing once or twice into his native tongue. The following pages were full of sketches of the various bones in as much detail as he could manage without the skeleton being fully excavated. There were little jottings in the margins, aides-mémoire regarding mundane matters such as a coat sent to a tailor or a donation given in aid of a countryman who had fallen upon hard times. There was a note to remind him to reply to his sister’s letter, and I felt a dart of pity for Beatrice, knowing how she must have lamented seeing a reference to herself in her beloved brother’s journal.
