Wilful Impropriety (7 page)

Agatha felt, more than saw, the curl of Miss Blenheim’s upper lip and the quick flick of Miss Blenheim’s gaze cataloging her features, no different now than they had been throughout her childhood.

She kept her mouth shut despite all temptation. She would not humiliate herself by protests that were clearly futile.

The next evening she entered Lady Sherington’s glittering drawing room in a new gown of deep golden silk, with a domed skirt that swept two full feet in either direction of her nipped-in waist, sustained underneath by uncomfortably thick and heavy horsehair petticoats. Her hair was, of course, still unmistakably copper, but it was also carefully teased into silly ringlets and puffed over her ears before rising to a chignon behind her head.

(“This is all useless anyway,” Miss Blenheim had muttered, as she’d held the hot curling tongs by Agatha’s face. “We can’t disguise the color, can we?”

And Clarisse had sighed in regretful agreement.)

The drawing room was richly lit by candles, and a dozen mirrors flung the candlelight’s reflection onto the velvets and silks of the assembled company. The reflected light flashed against the diamonds and garnets on the bare skin of the women and the ornamental dress swords strapped to the sides of the officers.

Agatha lifted her chin and glared defiantly at them all. She refused to duck her head to hide her nose or her hair. All the better to frighten off any would-be suitors and save her the trouble of refusing them.

“My dearest Clarisse!” Lady Sherington rustled toward Agatha’s aunt, emeralds and rubies glinting on her outstretched fingers. “How delightful to see you home at last. And this is your dear niece? Oh, yes.” She exchanged a conspiratorial glance with Clarisse, as Agatha’s back stiffened. “I do see what you mean. Well, I may tell you that every gentleman on your list is here tonight, and they are most impatient to make her acquaintance.” She turned a kind smile on Agatha. “You needn’t worry about being a wallflower tonight, my dear.”

“I wasn’t worrying,” Agatha said, through gritted teeth.

Lady Sherington’s eyes widened. Then she and Clarisse both burst into laughter as they linked arms and steered Agatha into the room.

Two hours later, Agatha took ignominious shelter in the lady’s retiring room. Thankfully, it was empty, but she could still hear the laughter and voices from the dance nearby ringing through the walls and grating against her ears. She tipped her head against the cool glass of the mirror and closed her eyes.

I am ice. I am stone. This cannot affect me.

“Oh, where has that foolish girl got to now?” Her aunt’s voice sounded through the door of the retiring room, and Agatha gave a start that rapped her head against the mirror. As she straightened with a jerk, her aunt continued, “Have no fear, Captain de Lacey. She shall be only too delighted to dance with you a second time—couldn’t you see how ecstatic she was to be noticed by you in the first place? Just let me . . .”

The door handle began to turn. Agatha spun around. Her gaze landed on the servants’ door hidden in the wall. She lunged for the crack in the wallpaper, slipped through into darkness—

—and bumped hard into another girl already hiding there.

“Oof!” Agatha’s breath was knocked out of her.

“Quick!” hissed the other girl, and pushed the door shut just in time.

“Agatha?” Clarisse’s voice sounded in the retiring room. “You aren’t trying to hide somewhere in here, are you? Because you know there’s no use . . . ah, well.” Her voice softened to wry amusement. “Probably gone to the library,” she murmured. “Not that that fool will care. All the better not to let her muck it up, anyway.”

Footsteps moved away. The door opened and shut. Agatha finally breathed again.

In the unlit, windowless corridor, she couldn’t make out any of the other girl’s features, only a general impression of warmth, soft breathing, and a shape a little smaller than her own. Their domed skirts were so bulky, they took up all the width in the narrow corridor, and Agatha could feel her silk skirts being crushed by the enclosing walls. Thinking of Clarisse’s irritation at the sight was her one consolation for the indignity of her position.

“Your mother?” the other girl asked sympathetically. From her matter-of-fact tone, it might have been a perfectly customary experience to have a casual social meeting in a darkened servants’ corridor.

“My aunt.” It came out as a growl from Agatha’s throat. “She’s determined to marry me off.”

“Aren’t they all? Well, apart from mine, anyway. She gave up on me ages ago.”

“Why?” asked Agatha. Then she realized, too late, all that the darkness might be hiding. She winced.
Graceless as ever, Agatha.
She could almost hear the amused, scornful words spoken in her ex-governess’s voice.
This
was why she was better off alone with her studies, not trying to make conversation with party guests. “I apologize,” she said stiffly. “You needn’t answer if—”

“Oh, I’m not deformed,” the other girl said cheerfully. “Only hopelessly poor, and not beautiful enough to make up for it. Worse yet, I’m bookish, to round it all off. In fact, I’m a naturalist, like Mr. Darwin.”

There was a pause as Agatha assimilated the news. An inexplicable feeling of warmth and ease was slipping through her, relaxing the muscles in her back for the first time in five days. The dark, narrow corridor felt seductively safe, the close air like a protective bubble that held the two of them separate from reality. She felt a dangerous urge to reveal all her own secrets in response to that warm, cheerfully open voice.

As she struggled with herself, the other girl spoke again, this time sounding subdued. “You probably think it’s unladylike or absurd to call myself a naturalist, don’t you? I shouldn’t have told you, I suppose.”

“No!” Startled, Agatha reached out. Her fingers found the other girl’s gloved hand. “I think it’s wonderful, actually.”

The other girl’s fingers felt warm and strong through the fabric of their gloves. The weight of their skirts seemed to push them closer together in the narrow corridor. Suddenly dizzy, Agatha said, “I practice magic. That’s not ladylike either.”

“Do you really?” The other girl sounded delighted. “I knew there was something about you! From the moment I saw you in that doorway . . .”

Agatha dropped her hand as if she’d been burned. “I know,” she said. Her shoulders hunched as her voice turned flat. “My features and my hair color and my deportment. You needn’t remind me.”

“I beg your pardon?” Agatha could feel the other girl’s astonished stare, even though she couldn’t see it. “What are you talking about?”

Agatha gritted her teeth. “Large. Red. And awkward. That is what you meant, isn’t it? Believe me, I harbor no illusions about my lack of attractions, so you really needn’t—”

“That’s not what I meant at all. Who was ever mad enough to call you unattractive?” Warm fingers closed around Agatha’s gloved hand in the darkness. “But there is something about you, something different. I didn’t know what it was until now. It’s the magic, isn’t it? I can feel it sparking in your skin. It’s amazing.”

Agatha swallowed. Her throat was dry, her pulse oddly rapid. She could feel sparks, too, suddenly racing up and down her skin, but they didn’t feel like magic. They didn’t feel like anything she recognized. “That’s not how magic works,” she said. “Magic is all about using the proper grimoires, with exactly the right words in Greek. It has nothing to do with talent, only diligence, and using the right supplies. You can’t even use normal candles, they have to be specially prepared. They’re very expensive . . .”

Her voice trailed to a halt. The air in the servants’ corridor felt so hot, she was tingling and lightheaded. She spoke almost at random as she finished: “My aunt stole all my grimoires and supplies, so I can’t do magic anymore.”

The other girl laughed, a shockingly intimate sound in the darkness. “Who told you that?”

Agatha blinked. “Everyone! All my father’s treatises say—”

“Well, isn’t that what gentlemen always say? And no wonder. If you need to mouth exactly the same Greek phrases some man came up with three hundred years ago, you’ll need money and education to get hold of the texts and make use of them, won’t you? And if you’ve been told you can’t even try it without expensive supplies . . .”

“The treatises all say it would be too dangerous,” said Agatha.

“Then that keeps women and the lower orders safely in their place, doesn’t it? Leaving the magic to the gentlemen who rule the Empire.” The other girl snorted. “Of course they don’t want anyone else sharing their power. They wouldn’t let me into university either, even though I’d taught myself Latin and Greek as well as any Eton student. But do you think I’m going to let them stop me?”

“No?” Agatha said. Somehow, they were standing even closer now. She could feel the other girl’s breath brush warm against her cheek. It felt like a spring breeze waking her at last from the icy chill of helplessness that had gripped her for the last five days. Every inch of her body tingled with reaction.

“Never,” said the girl. “If they won’t let me study at Cambridge with the gentlemen, I’ll simply teach myself. That’s the message of the Great Exhibition, isn’t it? Times are changing, at long last. And when I start publishing treatises about my discoveries, no one will care whether or not I ever sat in a university classroom with a whole crowd of wealthy idiots.”

“I believe you,” Agatha said. And she did. She felt more wide awake than she had in days, and wild with curiosity. “What’s your name?”

There was a long pause. Then, “Isobel,” said the girl. “Isobel Cunningham. I’m Mrs. Wesley Stanhope’s companion, for my sins. She’s probably calling for me again by now.” She sighed, her fingers relaxing their warm grip around Agatha’s. “I should go. But thank you. It was lovely to meet you, whoever you are.”

“Agatha Tremain,” said Agatha. She moved forward when Isobel stepped back. “Wait,” she said. “Can I call on you tomorrow? If I can escape my aunt—”

“Mrs. Stanhope doesn’t like me to receive callers,” Isobel said.

“But—”

“We’ll be at the Tennants’ ball tomorrow,” said Isobel. “Who knows?” She moved closer, her voice lowering to a whisper. “Maybe you’ll find me in a servants’ corridor again, where no one else can see us.”

Her breath brushed against Agatha’s mouth. Agatha felt her heart begin to race. She held perfectly still, waiting for . . . for . . .

“Goodbye, Agatha,” said Isobel softly.

She opened the door and slipped swiftly into the retiring room, revealing only the back of her rich brown hair and her modest gray bombazine dress in the candlelit doorway. By the time Agatha forced herself out of her trance to push the door open again and search for more, Isobel had vanished from the room.

•   •   •

Agatha moved through the rest of the evening in a daze, dancing without protest with each gentleman her aunt presented to her, but making only monosyllabic, distracted answers to the conversation that sounded like buzzing insects around her ears. No matter how she craned her head over her various partners’ shoulders, she couldn’t catch sight of that plain gray bombazine gown anywhere in the crowd.

All she lived for, in the endless hours that remained, was the moment when she would be allowed to return to her room in the rented townhouse, to turn over every memory of that brief, electric meeting in her mind. As she and her aunt rode back in their carriage, she let Clarisse’s icy stream of words wash over her, as harmless as rain against a sturdy umbrella.

The Tennants’ ball would be tomorrow. She would have another new gown by then, the modiste had promised. Not that appearances mattered in a servants’ corridor, of course. But still . . .

When she started down the corridor toward her bedroom, Clarisse’s hand shot out as quickly as a striking snake to fasten around her arm. “Oh, no, my dear. We have important matters still to discuss.”

Yanked out of her thoughts, Agatha pulled her arm free. “I’m sure tomorrow will be soon enough.”

“Tomorrow,” said Clarisse, “we shall announce the news of your betrothal. I will compose the notice to the newspapers tonight.”

“What?” Agatha stared at her. “But I haven’t—no one has even proposed to me yet.”

“Goodness, what a romantic you are. I had no idea of it!” Clarisse tittered as she walked gracefully into her own bedroom, her vast skirts and petticoats rustling and her Indian shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders. “Your fiancé arranged it with me himself, of course, just as mine did with my own parents. You have nothing to do with the decision.”

“But . . .” Stopping short in the doorway, Agatha stumbled to a halt. Miss Blenheim stood at the dressing table, holding Clarisse’s fur-lined dressing gown. Under her ex-governess’s gleaming gaze, Agatha’s instinctive urge was to freeze or, better yet, retreat to safety.

She remembered Isobel’s words.
Do you think I’m going to let that stop me?

No,
Agatha told herself, and her shoulders straightened. “I believe,” she said coolly, “it is customary for a gentleman to ask for a young lady’s consent as well.”

“Oh, well, in love matches, perhaps . . .” Clarisse waved a careless hand in dismissal.

Miss Blenheim tsk’ed compassionately. “Did you really expect someone to fall in love with
your
face, miss?”