The Bargain (4 page)

“You need someone other than servants,” he declared. “In these circumstances…” He looked around the room as if he now found the place uncanny. “I would be happy to send for anyone you name,” he finished.

“I have no family,” she informed him stiffly.

He looked as if he found the idea incredible. “There must be someone.”

“There isn't,” she told him in a tone that she hoped would close the subject.

“That's impossible.”

He sounded maddeningly certain. “Do you claim to know more about my family than I do?” she demanded. “Bess had no family, and I had only… Bess.” Her voice wavered on the last word, and Ariel bit her lip to stop its trembling. This was intolerable, she thought. He had no right to look at her that way, with some sort of irritated kindness.

“Your father?” he suggested.

Ariel's fingers curled into fists in her lap. This conversation was going exactly where she did not wish it to go. “He is… not available,” she said.

Lord Alan's face grew hard. “He could be made to be.”

“No, he couldn't,” she answered curtly. She wasn't going to tell him about the many, many times she had asked Bess about her father. Or about the stories Bess had made up, changing them each time, so that it became a kind of game between them, though terribly serious to Ariel. She wasn't going to mention the agate ring, the only thing in the house that she knew had come from her unknown parent, and which she had been frantically searching for since her return. She refused to expose herself to this aristocrat and risk the kind of ridicule and contempt she had learned to endure at school.

“He might be important to the investigation,” Lord Alan urged.

If he was, she couldn't do anything about it, Ariel thought, since she had no clue to his identity. She caught her breath on a sob and immediately suppressed it.

A silence fell. Ariel waited for Lord Alan to probe further, to force her to admit that she was the bastard child of a common actress and then he'd reject any further contact with her. Let him, she thought. She had hoped for help, but she would go on without it if necessary. She was accustomed to isolation, and to relying on her own resources.

“Aunts and uncles?” he said finally, sounding not at all censorious. “Cousins? There has to be someone.”

Ariel shook her head.

“Are you sure? We could consult records, ask neighbors. Where did your mother come from?”

He seemed genuinely engaged with the subject. There was none of the mock solicitude and sly entrapment she had endured over the last ten years. “Nowhere,” Ariel blurted out. “She came from nowhere.”

Lord Alan raised his auburn brows in inquiry.

Something in his eyes, or the silent house, or the situation made Ariel, uncharacteristically, rush on. “Once when I was small, we were driving somewhere. There was a fire up ahead, and we had to stop. Bess pointed to it and told me to look. I remember she said, ‘What a spectacle.'”

The picture was sharp in her mind. She had had to struggle to her knees on the seat of the coach and hang on tight to the strap to see out. The fire was being swept by high winds along an ancient row of tall wooden houses, many of them caulked with pitch so that they went up like torches, with a burst and a roar. Rainbows of sparks crackled over the street and a great pall of red smoke billowed into the heavens. Even far from the flames, ash fell, and the smell of charred wood caught at Ariel's throat. Dazzled and terrified, she had listened to the fire breathing like a gigantic animal.

“It took a while to turn the carriage, because the street was so crowded,” she said breathlessly. “Bess was laughing and saying the fire was glorious. And then when we finally were moving again, all of a sudden she pounded on the roof and told John to stop the coach. She made me get up again and look out.” The pall of smoke had made it seem like dusk, she remembered. “There were people walking along the street, carrying whatever they'd managed to save from the fire. But Bess was pointing at an alleyway beyond them.”

Ariel glanced quickly at her companion, then away. “It was narrow and twisting and muddy. The houses leaned, and their doors were all cracked and broken. There were piles of garbage rotting, and some kind of disgusting liquid running along the center of the lane.”

Ariel stared at the wall and recited from memory. “My mother said: ‘I came from a place like that. When I was younger than you, I lived in just such a street. I fought dogs for scraps. I stole from the dead. Plenty of people died on that street.'” She let out her breath. “She shook me a little, then she said, ‘I want you to remember that. Will you remember?'”

Lord Alan made a quick gesture, but said nothing.

“I couldn't forget,” Ariel finished with a shiver. “How could I? It was the only thing she ever told me about her past.” She looked down at her hands clenched on her lap. “She didn't leave anything either. How will I ever find out her secrets?”

The last came out on a desperate, rising note, and Ariel at once bit it back. Why had she told him this? Hadn't she learned years ago that anything she confided would be giggled over in corners and used to humiliate? She had resolved never to tell anyone about herself again. And yet after two days' acquaintance she had taken that terrible risk with this duke's son. Her mind was becoming unhinged with grief, Ariel concluded. She had to get hold of herself—now. She had to change the subject. But looking up and meeting Lord Alan's acute blue eyes, she could think of nothing to say.

The girl looked positively frightened, Alan was thinking. He could see no reason for it, but the shadows in her eyes and the tension of her body were unmistakable. She was trying to hide the trembling of her hands. Clearly, the death of her mother had deeply affected her. But why fear? No doubt she was afraid of being alone, he decided. She was young and female, and thus constitutionally unable to appreciate the pleasures of solitary work and thought. It must be rather odd to have no family at all. “I have always been surrounded by dozens of relatives,” he said almost meditatively.

Ariel stared as if he had said something completely unexpected.

“A burdensome number,” he added.

“Burdensome?” She looked even more astonished.

That was better than frightened, he thought. “Yes. It often takes a good deal of ingenuity to keep clear of them.”

She shook her head, as if a bit dazed. “Clear? You want to avoid seeing your family?”

“Some disreputable third cousin or eccentric great-aunt is always popping up and creating a nuisance,” he told her, relieved to see that she seemed to have recovered her composure.

“Nuisance?” she echoed.

“They want to borrow money or be squired about London or stay at the house for months at a time to save themselves a few guineas when they haven't the least need to do so.”

She smiled slightly, and Alan felt a surge of gratification all out of proportion with the occasion. “My great-uncle Oliver amassed one of the largest fortunes in England by the simple expedient of never going home,” he added. “Indeed, he didn't have a home. He saved the expense by visiting his relatives, in turn, through the year. You could judge the season by it. If Uncle Oliver was visiting, it must be April.”

She laughed, and Alan felt his heart lift in the most incomprehensible way. “They can't all be like that,” she protested.

“Not all,” he conceded.

“You told me you have brothers?”

“Brothers,” he echoed feelingly. “You can't imagine what it's like having five older brothers.”

“No,” replied Ariel softly. “I don't suppose I can.”

“Everything has been done before you get to it. Everyone you meet has opinions about you—and not always favorable ones. You are born part of a mob, and you have to fight to become yourself.”

“You do?”

Alan looked up and found that she was gazing at him very steadily. Why had he said that, he wondered? It had nothing to do with the matter at hand. He had come here for information, and so far he had gotten none at all. “I'm happy to visit the family at holidays and do my duty on great occasions,” he said, closing the subject. “But I need the rest of my time for my work.”

“Your work with light?”

“Yes.” He was amazed that she'd remembered.

“How can you study light?” she asked. She gestured at the shaft of sunlight flooding through the window. “It's just… there.” She moved her hand in and out of the glow, briefly illuminating its delicate shape.

She really was like a creature of light herself, Alan thought. He had seldom seen such coloring. The rich brown of her hair, the greens and browns of her eyes, the peach tones of her skin emphasized by the golden sun—they all seemed to fit with the subtly rounded figure, those full lips that made a man…

“Like air,” she added.

“What?”

“Light is like air—all around but insubstantial. How can you study it? You can't put it in a jar and… and pour chemicals over it.”

“No. But you can bend it and refract it through prisms and… other things.” She couldn't really understand this, he thought, though she looked genuinely interested.

“Prisms,” she repeated. “And mirrors. People use mirrors to send signals because they reflect light. I've read about that.”

“They do,” he replied, more and more surprised. She actually seemed able to hold on to an abstract idea for more than an instant. That was most unusual.

Ariel moved uneasily under his gaze, seeming suddenly self-conscious. “We are supposed to be discussing our investigation,” she said.

They were, thought Alan, and he did not precisely understand how they had gotten so far off the subject. He did not even recognize his twinge of regret as he took a slip of paper from his waistcoat pocket and unfolded it. “I have laid out an investigative plan following last night's incident. After you have given me all the information you possess, I will proceed to—”

“We must find the servants,” interrupted Ariel. “Mama's dresser, Clarisse, was a very… resourceful person.”

Alan looked at her.

“And John the coachman was a man of… varied experience.”

She had been about to say something else, Alan noted, wondering what. The things he had learned about Bess Harding so far made him suspect it was unflattering.

“The whole staff was well acquainted with the prince's servants and Carlton House,” she explained. “It would be quite simple for them to get in. I wonder if they have something to do with the haunting.”

“It isn't the work of servants. How would they have the time, or the funds necessary?”

“Oh. I suppose you're right. But we must speak to them!”

Her impassioned tone unsettled him a bit. She seemed to take everything with such emotion. “They'll be searched for,” he said. “The prince has put a number of men at my disposal. But what I most want is to speak to the actors who performed with Bess Harding. And they seem reluctant to meet me.”

“They would be eager to help Bess's daughter.”

“Would they?”

“Yes.”

She looked as if she hoped she was right, Alan thought.

“We could go to the theater tonight,” she said, clasping her hands together. “Actors are usually in good spirits after a performance.” She looked suddenly delighted. “We might even attend the play. It has been so long since I was in a proper theater.”

“I don't see the need for that.” Alan found playacting a waste of time.

“It would be fun,” declared Ariel.

He frowned.

“And… and more to the point, you could get a look at everyone before you meet them. Form a… an opinion of their characters, so you could better judge whether they are hoaxing the prince.”

Alan hesitated. The vast silence of the house descended again. A shadow moved in the corner of his eye, but when he turned, there was nothing there. She obviously dearly wanted to go. He supposed it couldn't do any harm. “Very well,” he said slowly. “I'll procure a box.”

Though she looked exultant, Ariel made no reply.

Ariel opened the door of the big wooden wardrobe standing in the corner of her bedchamber and looked at the dresses that hung there. They were all made of pale pastel fabrics; they all had moderate, tasteful ruffles or ribbon trim; they were modest, unobtrusive, and extremely suitable. Every item of clothing she possessed had been approved by the headmistress of the school where she'd lived for so long. In fact, every single thing about her had been evaluated and reshaped by Miss Ames.

It hadn't been long after that night at the dining table, when Bess had repudiated love, that she told Ariel she was being sent off to school. When Ariel had protested, saying she wanted to stay home with Bess and the theater, her mother had cut her off ruthlessly.

“Is it your ambition to grow into a young woman and be auctioned to the highest bidder?” she nearly growled. “That's what they'll expect of me, I suppose.”

At the time, Ariel didn't understand what she meant, but she knew that angry gleam in her mother's eyes, and she kept quiet.

Bess let her fist fall on the dressing table, rattling all the vials and bottles sitting there. “Not while I'm living,” she cried.

And so she'd been sent away, Ariel thought—all the way to the other end of Britain, in fact. She had been exiled from the thrilling world of the theater and from her mother's vivid, complicated presence. She'd been forced to become somebody else, at least on the surface.

How she had hated Miss Ames when she'd first arrived at school as a resentful, rebellious ten-year-old, she remembered. The place was the antithesis of her life up to then. Instead of the color and noise and bustle of the London streets, it had offered cool gray mists and moors, endless quiet, and what had seemed to Ariel an unhealthy obsession with neatness and order. Accustomed to flamboyance and the broadly expressed emotions of actors, she came up against an ideal of restraint, a whole system of conduct based on the unspoken. The only way she'd survived those first weeks was to think of it as a performance, to assume the role of the gentlewoman. But what was role and what was real by this time? she wondered as she continued to stare at her row of pale insipid gowns.

Closing the wardrobe door with a snap, she turned and left her bedchamber, walking up the winding stairs to the top floor of the house, where she had to duck her head to pass through the low doorway of a large peaked storeroom. Tonight, she was going once more to the theater, which she had missed so much, and for so long. She was returning to the world of her childhood. She was
not
going to do so as a dowdy schoolgirl! People—especially men—were easily impressed by one's appearance. She had a sudden vision of Lord Alan Gresham, his cool gaze shaken by surprise, his stern jaw dropping in admiration. It was an amazingly gratifying picture. She wanted to dazzle him, she realized. Just as she wanted to show him how very useful she could be, and how knowledgeable she was about certain things, at least. Like the magistrate and the solicitor, he seemed to find her negligible, and a hot determination was growing in her to prove how wrong they all were. Nodding, she turned to the long wall of the storeroom that was crammed with wardrobes set side by side.

Bess Harding had adored beautiful clothes—beautiful new clothes. Scarcely a week had passed when she did not order a costume from her genius of a dressmaker. Some of them she never even wore. Some she gave away to her friends. Most made a brief appearance at plays and parties and then ended up here for a time, until the space was exhausted and a great sorting and discarding occurred. A smile touched Ariel's full lips. Her mother had had the most magnificently dressed maidservants in the city. And she was pretty sure John the coachman had lined his pockets by selling the garments that were rejected. Miss Ames would have been shocked to her civilized core by the extravagance and waste of it.

Ariel hadn't had time to come up here before, but now was obviously the moment. With a kind of triumph, Ariel flung open the door of the first wardrobe and began to examine the contents.

***

Two hours later, she stood again in her own room, before the open wardrobe doors, examining herself in the long mirror mounted on one of them. The pale gowns were gone from the hooks, replaced by a rainbow of color. And the young woman who stared back from the depths of the mirror was transformed as well. Her narrow dress was of emerald satin, drawing glints of green from her hazel eyes. The high waist and low neck emphasized the curve of her bosom, and the short puffed sleeves showed off her arms. The gown was a little long, for she was shorter than her mother had been, but not enough to matter if she managed the skirts properly. An emerald pendant dangled from a golden chain at her neck, and she had found a spangled green scarf for a wrap.

She looked like a different creature altogether, Ariel thought with great satisfaction. “I'm not a debutante,” she told Prospero, who sat in the corner like a statue of a cat. “And I never will be. Why shouldn't I wear what I like?”

Prospero gave a long, slow blink.

“There is nothing wrong with trying for an effect,” Ariel responded. “My mother used to say that good clothes give one an air of authority.”

The cat rose and walked around her in a circle before drifting out of the room.

“I will not be treated like a child,” Ariel called after him, “so I should not dress like one.”

Predictably, there was no reply.

***

When Lord Alan Gresham arrived to fetch her, he wore evening dress. And he looked quite handsome in it, Ariel thought. But it was the flicker of surprise and admiration in his blue eyes that she really savored. There was something deeply gratifying about the way he offered his arm and continued to gaze down at her as he escorted her to the carriage waiting outside. A current of excitement rippled through her as he sat down beside her and the carriage started off on the short journey to the theater. It was as if something long buried was coming to life again, like a flame stirring out of banked coals.

“What is the play tonight?” she asked.

“Something called
The
Pirate's Revenge
,” Lord Alan replied dubiously.

Not one she knew, Ariel thought, with a mixture of anticipation and disappointment. “A melodrama,” she replied. “I'm sure there'll be sword work.”

He looked slightly startled.

“And a ship. I wonder if they'll use… but I mustn't spoil it for you.” She smiled at her companion, who was gazing at her as if she had said something curious. “You'll enjoy it,” she added encouragingly.

“Unlikely. I have no time for playacting. There are far too many intriguing problems in reality to be diverted by fictions.”

“You can learn a great deal from plays,” Ariel told him.

His expression showed that he disagreed, though he said nothing. She started to argue, then decided to bide her time.

***

When they entered the theater and made their way to the box Lord Alan had reserved, Ariel was nearly overwhelmed by the sights and sounds and smells of the place. She had not forgotten any of it, she realized. It was all there, only temporarily obscured by years of rules and conformity.

“There are peepholes in the curtain,” she said as she sat down. “You can't see them, but some of the actors are most likely observing us right now, checking whether the house is filled. My mother used to let me look when I was so small I had to stand on a chair to see out.”

Every detail of that first time came flooding back to her. “You can see through here,” Bess said, lifting her up. Ariel put her eye to the tiny hole and gazed out into the noisy theater.

It was nearly full that day; there was a new play, and the king and queen were expected. The sight of the audience took Ariel's breath away. The glitter of innumerable candles illuminated the wealthier patrons in the tiers of boxes at the sides. Their clothes were strewn with gilt thread and jewels. In the galleries along the back sat scores of lesser members of the audience. Even from behind the curtain, Ariel smelled the heavy mixture of melting wax, a hundred perfumes, and unwashed bodies. The noise was terrific. In the pit, which occupied the floor of the theater, extravagantly dressed gallants strolled and flirted outrageously with any lady who caught their eye. A little intimidated by it all, Ariel drew back to make sure that her mother still stood beside her. She was there, gazing through another peephole.

Reassured, Ariel let her gaze rove over the theater itself, with its carved and gilded walls and ceiling. Garlands, cupids, and great symbolic figures of comedy and tragedy graced them, a riot of shape and color that was almost dizzying.

“It was like magic,” Ariel murmured. In this building, she had been repeatedly enthralled by tales of ghosts and heroes, princesses from far isles, witty ladies of fashion, and villains deep dyed in evil.

“I beg your pardon?” said Lord Alan, leaning closer.

“My mother used to tell me things about people in the audience,” she replied. “She knew everyone.” Best not to say the sorts of things she had told, Ariel thought, remembering.

“Ah, the new Countess of Mallon,” Bess pointed out one night. “See, third box in the second tier.” Ariel looked and discovered a young woman, a girl really, very finely dressed in white with silver lace. “The great romance of last year.” Her mother laughed. “The lovely innocent and the rake. People said it was like a storybook. He full of protestations of reform, swearing he'd never met her like. She prettily doubting, and then convinced. Her parents forbidding and then giving in. And now we find her at the play alone, and her new husband squiring his latest mistress.”

“Where is he?” Ariel asked. She couldn't follow all of her mother's sarcastic narratives, but she relished them nonetheless, not for the content, but rather because she knew Bess talked this way to no one else.

“Just across. Both wearing black. And so dies a love match.”

“Who are all those people in the first tier?” Ariel asked.

Her mother looked. “The Sandersons. All eight of them hugger-mugger in one box, as usual.” Bess laughed without humor. “Take note, my dear. The rich are wondrously tightfisted. They'll squeeze a penny till it shrieks. That's why they're rich. You'd think one of the wealthiest men in England could take a second box, would you not?”

“Who are the children?” A richly dressed boy and girl in the box had first attracted her attention. She had little contact with those her own age.

Her mother laughed again. “Children? That pair celebrated their betrothal not a sennight since.”

Ariel looked again. She couldn't believe the girl was much older than ten. The boy might be twelve. “Betrothal?” she repeated.

“An old-fashioned family,” replied Bess. “Child marriage isn't common now, but old Sanderson had a very important reason for it.”

“What?”

“Money. Those two are cousins, and heirs to vast chunks of England on both sides. It all flows together on their marriage, and Sanderson is making very sure that it does, before they are old enough to make any false steps.”

Ariel gazed at them. “Do they want to marry?”

“The gossips say that they hate each other most cordially. Ah, there's the duchess and her footman. I've been longing to see him.”

“Why?” Her mother never showed much interest in other people's servants.

“Indeed, most handsome,” Bess murmured, her eye to the peephole. “And from what they say, a man of
large
—” She broke off and straightened. “Never mind. You should go to your place now.”

Something that she wasn't supposed to hear, Ariel concluded. The theater always teemed with gossip. Like her own home, it was a place of mysteries and secrets.

“I had a hidden seat in the prompt box,” she said softly now. “I was there nearly every day. I learned some of my mother's parts by heart.” She could almost see her, Ariel thought—confident, resplendent before the painted scenery, speaking in perfect rounded phrases. Ariel was always amazed at the contrast between her mother in life and the gallery of characters she portrayed. Rather than the mother she knew—carelessly improvident, ruled by flashes of mood, doting on and then quarreling with an endless succession of servants—in the theater she saw women with purpose as well as fire, strength along with style. Sometimes, guiltily, she found herself wishing for a mother like one of these imaginary characters.

The musicians began to play. “Oh, it's starting,” exclaimed Ariel, and she leaned forward to watch the curtain rise.

Ignoring the first speeches spoken by the actors, Alan watched her taking it all in. His gaze ran over the taut line of her throat, the glow of her skin where it curved into the bodice of her gown. What had become of the pert schoolgirl he had met at Carlton House, he wondered? There was little trace of her tonight, in this sleek, glittering creature in emerald-green, with her hair piled high and jewels shining at her throat. Had he made a mistake? Was she, in fact, the high flyer he had at first taken her for? And if so, what was she after?

He had no large fortune to tempt such a woman. The life he had chosen allowed him to live very comfortably on the income that came to him from two small estates, but it would not stretch to the kind of gifts and luxuries a fashionable mistress expected, to the kind of emerald pendant this one wore, for example.

No, she couldn't be after money. But what then? This talk of investigation and discovering the truth was nonsense, of course. Women hadn't the tenacity or sense of purpose for such a thing. What did she want?

Alan's insatiable curiosity, either an admirable trait or a besetting sin, depending on who one asked, was becoming thoroughly roused. He was certainly not ignorant of women. His family had made sure that he met a large number of lovely, eligible females of the
haut
ton
, hoping that one of them would convince him to abandon his eccentric plan of staying on at the university. And he had not denied himself other sorts of female company when desire drew him to some willing woman who understood that such diversions meant nothing.