Lady Midnight (23 page)

Kate watched the girl with a strange mix of awe and envy in her heart. Christina was so young to be so learned, to know what she loved and what she wanted in life. Would Kate ever have that for herself? Or was she damned to wander forever, never knowing her place or purpose?

Impatiently, Kate shook away these pangs of self-pity. They were quite unwarranted, she thought—she was already learning about herself, here at Thorn Hill. She was learning that she could care about other people, about Christina and little Amelia. About the handsome, charming Michael Lindley, who carried such sadness in his celestial blue eyes.

If she could, she would hold them all to herself forever. But that was impossible. They didn't belong to her. They never could. It was enough that she could love them secretly in her heart, and know they would be a part of her forever.

"Yes, Christina," she said, knowing that her silence had gone on too long. "I do understand."

"When you first came here, Mrs. Brown, I told Michael and Mother that I had no need of a governess."

"And you don't. I could never teach you more of the things you love. I know nothing of science or plants—except how to arrange flowers, of course." She knew nothing of the mind of God—except that it worked in very strange ways indeed.

"But you
can
help me!" Christina cried. "You can show me how to move about in Society, how I can stop feeling so strange and awkward every time I go to a party. You can help me..." Her voice faltered.

"I can help you what, Christina?" Kate encouraged.

Christina stared down at her book, a red blush spreading its stain over her cheeks. "You could help me to find a proper suitor, someone I could like and who would understand me."

Kate smiled gently. Yes. That she
could
help her with. She thought of the young man she had met tonight, Mr. Price, and how he watched Christina with such admiration. "Of course. I will do my very best."

At that moment, a door opened farther down the corridor, spilling firelight in golden squares onto the carpet runner. Lady Darcy appeared there, a large shawl draped over her nightdress, her hair covered in a ruffled muslin cap.

"Christina?" she called. "Is that you, my dear?"

"Yes, Mother," Christina answered dutifully. She slipped the new book into her reticule with the volume she had smuggled into the assembly. "Mrs. Brown and I were just retiring."

Lady Darcy pressed her hand to her brow and said, "Well, come in here and tell me all about the assembly. I'm desolate that I had to miss it!"

Christina leaned forward and whispered in Kate's ear, "Desolate that she had to leave Lady Ross as sole queen of the assembly rooms!" Louder, she said, "Of course, Mother. Good night, Mrs. Brown."

"Good night, Lady Christina." Kate waited until the door shut behind Christina before she returned to her own room. The silence felt thick after the music and chatter of the assembly, the shadows lurking in the corners deep. Kate went to open the draperies at her window, perching on the windowsill to stare down at the quiet gardens. It was all so peaceful and perfect. She could become accustomed to it.

Too
accustomed to it.

Kate laughed at herself, longing after things she could never have. Her mother would have said it was all the fanciful poetry she consumed, giving her romantic notions. She lacked the pragmatism to be a true courtesan. Even if the accident had never happened, even if she had gone on in her mother's Venetian footsteps, she would never have been as glorious and famous as Lucrezia was. Her soul would have always longed for something other than what she had. For freedom.

She saw that so clearly now. In Venice, she had tried to tell herself that she wanted parties and jewels, admiration and fame, lust, renown. But it was not true. Here, stripped of those luxurious trappings, she was happy.

Kate the curst.
Cursed to seek and wander, and never possess.

Kate reached up to pull the pins and ribbons from her hair, letting the heavy black mass tumble over her shoulders. Her reflection in the window glass stared back at her, and for one shocked moment she thought she saw her mother there.

People had always remarked on her resemblance to Lucrezia, the same pale oval face and glossy hair, the same winged brows and slightly too long nose.

Kate reached out to touch that face, but all her fingertips encountered was cold glass. She closed her eyes tightly.

She had hoped—feared—that her mother's ghost came back to advise her. Kate had not seen her, even in her dreams, since that night in Maria's cottage. But no. Kate was all alone.

Alone, with a sudden sharp urge to see those Italian objects displayed in the library.

Kate grabbed a shawl and left her chamber, not bothering to put her hair back up. Just as on the other night she had slipped down to the library, the house was silent. Christina either was still talking with her mother or had gone to bed, and it was quiet behind Amelia's door. Kate peeked in there, but the child was tucked in safe and warm, her arm around her doll.

She knew her routine in the library now. She lit the tall candelabras by the fireplace, and also a smaller branch of candles to carry over to the glass cases. As she held the flickering light high, she almost gasped aloud at the glittering beauty she found there.

One case held the Murano glass she fantasized about, a myriad of tiny animals and flowers in shades of red, green, blue, amber, and diamond-bright clearness. There was even a small gondola, perfect in every detail, down to the plump cushions and the flat hat on the gondolier's head. Another case held more ancient treasures: Roman coins, a gold Etruscan vase, fragments of colorful mosaics, a chipped marble head of Athena almost ethereal in its beauty.

On the wall above the cases were paintings, a Giorgione of a nude Aphrodite, slumbering on velvet blankets in the midst of an Italian landscape. A Titian of a bright-haired Madonna ascending into heaven. A darker Caravaggio, of a Gypsy woman reading the palm of a richly dressed gentleman while a small, ragged urchin stole his purse.

"Well, Mr. Lindley," Kate murmured aloud as she examined these exquisite canvases. "You have quite the eye."

"Thank you," a man's voice answered.

A scream of cold fear strangled in Kate's throat.
A ghost!
A thief! She whirled around, holding her candelabra high as a weapon—only to find Michael Lindley himself sitting in a dark corner far from the Italian display. He still wore his evening clothes but had discarded his coat and cravat. His brocade waistcoat and fine linen shirt hung open, revealing a deep vee of strong, bronzed chest, a sprinkling of crisp light brown hair.

Suddenly, something far different from fright caused Kate's breath to quicken.

Michael grinned at her, and she noticed that on a table beside him were a decanter of brandy and a half-empty glass. He was drinking, which would explain the careless way he lounged in his chair, his long legs stretched out, and that happy grin. He hadn't had very much time to imbibe, of course, and he wasn't in the least bit sloppy, as many of her mother's friends became when they drank. He just seemed casual and—happy.

Happy, but with a strange, dark edge. His smile was a bit
too
careless. And Michael was not a careless man.

Kate lowered her candelabra, and stepped back until she felt the edge of the case against the small of her back.

"I didn't know anyone was in here," she said. "I'm sorry to intrude, Mr. Lindley."

"You are not intruding at all, Mrs. Brown," he answered. His words were steady, not at all slurred, but there was an undercurrent to his tone she could not understand. "You are welcome in here anytime you like."

"Thank you. I could not sleep, and I thought I would catch a glimpse of your Italian collection."

"Ah, yes. Feeling homesick tonight?"

Kate gave a vague smile as she remembered her thoughts and memories while she was alone in her room, her fright when she thought her own reflection was the ghost of her mother. "Perhaps a bit."

"And who could blame you? Who would
not
long for Italy after an evening at the Suddley assembly rooms?" He held up the decanter invitingly. "Care for some brandy?"

Suddenly, brandy was
just
what Kate cared for. The feeling of the warm, rich liquid sliding down her throat, bringing heavy oblivion. "Thank you, Mr. Lindley. I
would
like a brandy."

He drew another chair up beside his and gestured for Kate to be seated before he poured out another glass of the amber-colored liquor. "Please, Mrs. Brown, it seems ridiculous for you to call me Mr. Lindley in here. This library is beginning to feel like our own sanctum, is it not? You must call me Michael."

Kate sipped at her drink, as it was as smooth and warm as she had hoped. It made her toes tingle most pleasantly inside her new stockings. She had thought of him as Michael, her own archangel, so many times. But to say it aloud... "I'm not sure I can."

"Oh, come now," he coaxed, with a smile that could persuade a woman to do anything at all—even call him by his given name. "It is a simple name, really. Very easy. Michael. And my mother is not in here to catch us being improper."

Kate laughed, and took another drink of brandy. It was really quite fine. "Very well, then. Michael it is." The name felt so dark and sweet on her tongue, so perfect. "Michael."

"Va bene.
And what of you?"

"Me?"

"What is your first name? I am sure it cannot be just
Kate.
You are as Italian as that Giorgione over there, and Kate is a most prosaic English name."

Kate glanced over at the Venus, sleeping so incongruously in the countryside. She remembered, quite irrelevantly, how she had thought Michael to be Botticelli's Mars when she first saw him. "My full name is Katerina." And it was the first time she had said it—even thought it—in months. It didn't seem like her name anymore.

Michael smiled into his glass. "'They call me Katherina that do talk of me.'"

"How clever of you, Michael!" His name came more easily to her now, as if she had been saying it for years and years. "My mother so admired that play, I was named for it. But now I am not Katerina. 'You lie, in faith; for you are called plain Kate.'"

"'And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst; / But, Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom,'" Michael said, finishing the quote. He watched her as he spoke, with his fathomless blue eyes. "But was your mother not Venetian? How did she come to be a devotee of Shakespeare?"

He refilled their glasses, and Kate took another smooth swallow. "My father was English," she said, the alcohol giving her the bravery to tell a truth she had never spoken of before. "A scholar. He came to Italy to study literature, Boccaccio, Dante, Petrarch, and he met my mother on an excursion to Venice. They were very young, my mother barely sixteen, and apparently quite giddy with love and the joys of art, books, and the theater. He introduced her to Shakespeare."

"And what happened?"

"He died before I was born." Kate took a deeper drink of her brandy. "Of one of the fevers that sweep through Venice from time to time. All my mother had left of him was Shakespeare—and me." And a life Lucrezia had only so briefly broken away from, the life of her own mother—a courtesan.

"She raised you all by herself?" He seemed so very interested in her mundane, sordid tale.

"Yes." By herself—and the
comte,
the baron, the archbishop, the general, the prince, and Edward the duke. Kate's scholar father had been Lucrezia's first lover, but not her last.

Yet he
was
her only love. Lucrezia declared that to Kate until her dying day.

"She sounds like a very courageous woman," Michael said.

"Indeed she was."

"What became of her? You said she died in a boating accident?"

"Yes. Shortly before I—before I married and came to England. It was the accident where I got this scar of mine."

"I am very sorry, Kate. I never meant to bring up memories for you that must be painful. I would never want to make you sad." He slid his hand over hers where it lay on the arm of her chair, his fingers strong and rough, but very warm. Kate turned her hand over to entwine those fingers with her own, holding them tightly. Somehow, she felt safe with that touch, anchored into a reality that was free from ghosts.

"I'm not sad," she answered. "Not now. My mother gave me much—particularly in her death. I think of a different Shakespeare work now when I remember her—'Full fathom five thy father lies; / Those are pearls that were his eyes.'"

They sat in silence for a long moment, bound by the touch of their hands, the glow of brandy and candlelight, the bittersweet ache of loss and memories.

Kate stared back at the paintings, at the way they evoked her home with only a few brilliant brushstrokes. They were glorious in their beauty—and they said much of the man who had collected them. "I do love your paintings, Michael. Especially the Caravaggio. He does not get the appreciation he deserves."

Michael laughed. "Indeed not, which is why I was able to procure that canvas so cheaply. I like the mischief on the pickpocket's face, the light of the woman's dark eyes. And the vacuous smile of the man—he is getting just what he deserves. It is so sly, so true to life."