The Dark Volume (47 page)

She knew she was dawdling, to keep away from outright danger and to indulge herself in the luxury to which she had been for far too long denied. She had even, as she washed herself and patted powder along her limbs, enjoyed the sensual tension of the Contessa's book, hovering like a cloud of golden bees just beyond reach, testing the limits of what she might allow and when she must bite the inside of her mouth to quell the sweetening tides. But then she came aware of another strain—an impatience with the petty vanity of her toilette— and she watched with fascination, both within the emotion and apart enough to see it, as the impatience grew into anger—with herself, with the luxury around her, with everything the useless life of Lydia Vandaariff had stood for. She shot home the latches on the case and picked it up. Without any thought but bitter disapproval, Miss Temple's hand lashed out at an especially over-glazed Chinese ginger jar and boxed it from its stand. The jar broke on the floor like a disconsolate egg, and she smiled. She stopped and snatched up another just like it. With grim satisfaction Miss Temple hurled the thing all the way back into the closet's mahogany door, the completeness of its destruction the exact expression of sharp justice she had desired.

MISS TEMPLE, now unsettled and sour, retraced her path down the corridor. If she could suppress the glass books' active interference with her thoughts, she could not expunge the
fact
of their encroachment—nor pretend that suppression was any lasting victory. As she walked, she sensed the prison's bones behind the paint and powder of Harschmort's splendor. Was she any different? Just as the lurid memories from the Contessa's book mocked Miss Temple's most secret desires, the Comte's book made clear its own web of grim connection—that death was shot through her past, her family, her wealth, and in her every morsel of anger or condescension or contempt.

She glanced into a mirror on the wall, its heavy gold frame carved with impossibly lush peonies, the blossoms blown open in a way that made Miss Temple uncomfortable. But what caused her to stop before the glass and rise to her toes was the pallor of her face. There had been mirrors in Lydia's chamber, and she had naturally glanced at her own body as she bathed—the shape of her legs, the appearance of her bosom, the tightly curled hair between her legs when it was wet and soaped—but this was a way of looking and not seeing. Miss Temple poked a finger into the skin below her eye and took it away—there was a brief impression of pink where the fingertip had been, but it faded at once, leaving her complexion waxy and drawn. She bared her teeth and was distressed to see the edges of her gums were red as the flesh of a fresh-cut strawberry.

MISS TEMPLE peeked over the railing of the main staircase, her newly set curls hanging over her face, and saw a passing line of bright red uniforms far below. There had been no soldiers accompanying their coach, which meant others had arrived. Did this mean Colonel Aspiche? She could not descend to the foyer if there was anyone who might recognize her. She quickly darted down one flight, just to the next landing. She would cut along this hallway, stay out of sight, and find a servant's staircase to the ground. But when Miss Temple hurried around the first corner she nearly collided with a Captain of Dragoons.

He was fair-haired with an elegantly curled moustache and side whiskers. It was the officer she'd seen in the corridor of Stäelmaere House, sick and tottering after his audience with the Duke. Behind him in a line, the oldest holding hands with the Captain, were three primly dressed children.

“Good afternoon,” said Miss Temple, bobbing in a tardy sketch of a curtsey.

“Closer to evening, I think,” replied the Captain. His voice was soft but sharp, like a talking fox in a tale.

“And who are all of you?” asked Miss Temple (who did not appreciate foxes), smiling past the officer at the three children. She did not especially appreciate children either, but could be kind to them when they were silent. All three watched her with wide, solemn eyes.

“I am Charles,” said the middle child, a ginger-haired boy in a brushed black-velvet suit. He sniffed. “Master Charles Trapping.”

“Hello, Charles.” Miss Temple loathed the boy at once.

“I am Francesca,” said the oldest, a girl with hair near the color of Miss Temple's own. Her chin was small and her eyes too round, but her dress was a shade of lilac Miss Temple very much approved of. The girl's voice was low, as if she was not at all confident of her surroundings but as the oldest needed to assert precedence over her brash younger brother. Francesca turned to the third, a boy of perhaps three years, also in a velvet suit, holding in one hand the remains of a chocolate biscuit. “That is Ronald.”

“Hello, Ronald.”

Ronald looked at his feet in silence.

“Who are
you?”
demanded Charles.

Miss Temple smiled. “I am a dear friend of Miss Lydia Vandaariff, whose house you are in. She has journeyed to Macklenburg to be married.”

“Did she forget something?” Charles pointed to her case.

“She did not,” replied Miss Temple. “
I
did.”

“Don't you have servants to fetch it for you?”

Miss Temple smiled icily, wanting to strike him. “One does not simply send servants to Harschmort House. We had been celebrating Lydia's engagement—”

“My mother has a case just like that,” said Francesca. “For her silver bracelets.”

“Is that full of silver bracelets?” the officer asked Miss Temple. His gaze gently ranged across her body. He negligently met her eyes and smiled, but the smile seemed unconnected to his thoughts.

“What I forgot,” Miss Temple replied with a winning smile, “was a set of combs and brushes. As a
treat
, Lydia's closest friends all prepared her for the
gala evening
. But now I need them back again.”

“Haven't you a maid?” asked Charles.

“I have as many maids as I like,” snapped Miss Temple. “But one is accustomed to a particular degree of
bristle
. I'm sure your sister understands.” She smiled at Francesca, but the girl was rubbing her eye.

“When Maria brushes Ronald's hair it makes him
cry,”
announced Charles.

Ronald said nothing, but looked at Miss Temple with hopeless little eyes.

“And what brings all of
you
to Harschmort?” Miss Temple asked brightly.

“I don't believe I heard your name,” stated the officer.

“I am Miss Stearne.” Miss Temple raised her eyebrow to let him know she held it to be an impertinent question. “Miss Isobel Stearne.”

“David Tackham, Captain of Dragoons.” The officer clicked his heels with another wry smile. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Stearne. Are you related to
Caroline
Stearne?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Caroline Stearne. Also an intimate of Miss Vandaariff, I believe.”

“We are cousins,” said Miss Temple tartly. “Caroline is presently traveling with Miss Vandaariff, as they are especially close to one another. Do you know her? She did not mention you.”

“I know
of
her only. A handsome woman, I am told.”

Tackham's blue eyes were both lovely and absent. Miss Temple looked at them for just a touch too long and they began to appear inhuman—blue eyes so often did that, Miss Temple felt.

“Were you off to anywhere in particular, Miss Stearne?” he asked.

Miss Temple did not reply, bending forward to Francesca with a smile.

“Where is your mother, darling?”

“I do not know,” answered the girl, her lip quivering.

MISS TEMPLE turned at a sound on the main stairs. A young man in a black coat with a yellow waxed moustache and blue eyes approached them, a sheaf of papers under one arm. In his Ministry topcoat, he could have been a lesser cousin of Roger Bascombe, but as he came nearer Miss Temple saw the pallor of his skin, and the bloodied nails on the hand that held the white papers.

“There you are.” He noted Miss Temple's presence with an irritated frown. “Who is this?”

“I am Miss Stearne.”

“What is she doing here?” the man asked Tackham.

“I am a friend of Lydia Vandaariff,” Miss Temple answered him. “What are
you
doing so freely in my friend's house?”

“This is Miss Stearne.” Captain Tackham smiled.

The Ministry man ignored her. “You are well behind schedule, Captain. There is no time—”

“If there's so little time, where in hell have you been?” Tackham snapped.

The other man's eyes shot wide at such language in front of the children, but he erupted in a wicked sneeze, and then two more in rapid succession, even as he shifted the papers to his other arm and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. He finally wiped his nose but not before they had all seen the first smear of blood on the yellow waxed hair on his upper lip.

“I'll not have this impertinence. Mr. Phelps is waiting with the Duke.”

“Will you join us?” Captain Tackham asked Miss Temple.

“Yes, please,” said Francesca in a small voice.

“Of course she will not,” snapped the man from the Ministry.

“She has a case of hairbrushes,” announced Charles, as if this were especially significant. The Ministry man ignored him and folded his handkerchief away.

“Captain Tackham! The
Duke!”

“What is
your
name?” Miss Temple asked the man.

“He is Mr. Harcourt,” replied Tackham.

“Mr. Harcourt has not answered my question about what he is doing with another man's children in my good friend's house.”

Harcourt fixed her with an unpleasant glare.

“Perhaps you'd like to come with us after all? Perhaps you'd care to explain—” He sniffed again, for the dark pearl of blood had reappeared “—to the
Duke
just where your good friend's
father
has gone off to!”

Harcourt wheeled toward the stairs. Tackham snapped his fingers for Francesca's hand without shifting his gaze from Miss Temple, who was shocked to see, as the girl extended her arm to the officer, the sleeve of the child's dress slide up to reveal a blot of cotton wool stuck to the hollow of her elbow with blood. As the unlikely party disappeared behind the balcony rail, all three children looked back to her, like lambs on a leash to market.

IT HAD been gratifying how easily her being disagreeable to Harcourt had resulted in his leaving her behind—but unless the Captain was a fool, there would be immediate inquiries about one Isobel Stearne, and soldiers sent to find her. That the children were being brought to the Duke—that the Duke was still in play—meant Mrs. Marchmoor had survived, and that the children were being brought to
her
. Yet the shock Miss Temple had felt in her mind as she fled the garden had been real. Something
had
hurt the glass woman dearly, but not dearly enough.

She smiled at Harcourt's slip revealing that they'd
still
no idea how Robert Vandaariff had disappeared, pleased with an opportunity to puzzle something out for herself—such puzzling being an excellent distraction from the distressing urges of her body (had it been necessary to so notice the delicate curve of Captain Tackham's throat?) and the foul taste that would not leave the back of her throat. Vandaariff's absence must be related to the fires at Harschmort—but had he been taken, or murdered?

Miss Temple paused on the landing, wondering why a Dragoon officer had been guarding children—and then what the Trapping children were doing here to begin with. Had they been taken hostage against their mother's cooperation? Why waste time kidnapping the children of a powerless woman? Thus, Charlotte Trapping was
not
powerless, but a person Mrs. Marchmoor needed to control… could
she
be the new adversary? With the death of her husband she surely had a motive.

On the carpet lay a crumble of chocolate biscuit, directly outside a door. Miss Temple walked to the door and opened it. On a spindle-legged side table next to a mirror-fronted cabinet sat an unfinished snifter of brandy and a half-smoked cheroot in a ceramic dish. Clearly Captain Tackham had found his own distractions. Farther into the room were two uncomfortable-looking armchairs with yellow cushions, and across from these (beneath a strange painting of an old man glaring oddly at two half-dressed young women) was a fancily carved camp bed, with a long, blue-striped bolster. Beneath it lay more chocolate crumbs.

Beyond the camp bed was another doorway. Through it came the sound of the scuffling of papers, and then a dry voice croaking with impatience.

“Are you back again, Tackham? What have you cocked up
this
time?”

Miss Temple clapped a hand across her mouth to stifle a gasp. In the mirrored cabinet, she could see, reflected from the far side of the doorway—disheveled, sickly, but still without question—of all people, Andrew Rawsbarthe, Roger Bascombe's aide. On his desk top lay an open leather case lined with orange felt and containing inset depressions for small glass-stoppered vials. Three of these spaces were empty. These vials, their ruby contents glowing darkly, lay before Rawsbarthe, who was in the midst of gluing to each, with shaking fingers (each ending in a ragged and split purpled nail) small labels. To the side lay jumbled wads of cotton wool, streaked with still-bright blood. He finished the last label, slipped the vials into the case, and snapped it closed.

“Captain Tackham! I am in no state for
teasing.”

The chair scraped as Mr. Rawsbarthe stood. He would know her—they had been in each other's company a score of times. Had Roger taken him into his confidence? Or was he another of Mrs. Marchmoor's minions, to be occupied and consumed? Did he know of Miss Temple's actions against the Cabal? Ought she snatch up the brandy bottle and crack him on the head?

Rawsbarthe called, less certain, “Mr. Fochtmann?”

He appeared in the doorway, the leather case tucked under one arm. Miss Temple had not moved. They stared at one another.

“Hello, Mr. Rawsbarthe. I'm sure I did not expect to find you
here.”