Tasha Alexander - A Fatal Waltz

“I may have held you in the highest esteem, Kristiana, but I never loved you, nor did you love me.”

“We both know that’s not true. But it was never your love that I wanted, mein Schatz. Wasn’t that always our problem?” She was moving away from him, her heels clicking on the marble floor as she stepped into the hall under the balcony. Once her footsteps had faded, I tentatively peeked over the railing and saw Colin leaning against a pillar, arms crossed, countenance imperturbable. I counted to one hundred in Greek before speaking.

“There is a deplorable lack of fires in this house, don’t you think?” I asked, calling down from above. “I’ve not been warm since I arrived.”

“Don’t move,” he said, and crossed the hall to the Elizabethan staircase. When he reached the top, he took me by the arms and in one swift motion pressed me to the wall and kissed me with an urgent passion. Delicious though the moment should have been, I found myself distracted. Was he, in his usual charming manner, doing his best to keep me warm? Or was this display fueled by his encounter with Kristiana? Kristiana. Already I hated the name.

He pulled back and straightened his jacket, turning his head towards the stairs.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Wait,” he said. An instant later, I heard heavy, slow footsteps coming from the direction of the bedrooms.

“Hargreaves, let’s go.” Lord Fortescue, clutching a thick stack of papers to his chest, nodded sharply at him but ignored me. “I want to speak with you privately before Harrison and the rest descend upon us.”

“I’m not quite done here,” Colin said. Fortescue grunted and gave me a disparaging look before going back downstairs.

“You’re not afraid of him?” I asked. “Everyone else in England is.”

“I’m not afraid of anyone. And there’s no one in Britain or elsewhere who is going to keep me away when I want to be with you.” He kissed me again, and this time I did not think of the countess at all.

27 November 1891

Somerville Hall, Oxford

Dear Emily,

I’m timing the sending of this letter so that it will arrive during your stay at Beaumont Towers, hoping that it may provide a fleeting bright spot in what will no doubt be an otherwise dull weekend. How I wish you were here at Oxford with me instead!

Do you remember the don we heard lecture when you visited at the beginning of term? Mr. Michaels? Who wouldn’t deign to so much as acknowledge our presence afterwards? Who pointedly refused to answer my questions? After three weeks of hounding him, he agreed to speak to me about my work on Ovid. Imagine his astonishment when he found our views on the Metamorphosis perfectly complementary.

Now that another fortnight has passed, he’s decided to take me under his wing. I’ll begin formally reading with him during Hilary Term, but in the meantime he’s doing all he can to advance my studies, even though, in theory, he doesn’t believe women should be full members of the university. He will reconsider that position before I’m through with him.

I saw Jeremy last week. He’s been cavorting with Lady Templeton, but insists that he’s more bored than ever. I told him where you were spending the weekend and his face brightened—said he was going to wangle an invitation to a neighboring house (the Langstons’, I think) so that he could descend upon you. If your darling fiancé continues to postpone wedding plans, he may find himself in the midst of a fierce competition.

Have you ever met Gertrude Bell? She’s planning a trip to Persia, and it sounds absolutely marvelous. I think, Emily, that you and I should embark on an exploration of the world before you succumb once again to the bonds of marriage.

I am, as always, your most devoted and corrupt friend,

Margaret Seward

I was delighted to find that Margaret had sent me a note. The reading and writing of correspondence were some of the few activities available to ladies at a shooting party, and as we were only to be at Beaumont Towers for a short time, I had not expected to receive any letters. In the year we had known each other, Margaret and I had become closer than most friends after a lifetime. A mutual interest in the study of classics brought us together initially, but we soon discovered that our common ground was not limited to the intellectual. Her parents preferred to keep her at their home in New York—so far as I could tell, her father owned nearly every railroad in America—but she had convinced them to let her go to Oxford after finishing a degree at Bryn Mawr.

I folded her letter and paused. After the gentlemen, clad in tweed jackets and trousers, had gone outside to shoot, we ladies and the count had retired to the morning room, an oppressively gorgeous space. As with the drawing room, every object was of the best quality. The wallpaper was navy, its darkness relieved by a pattern of gold, but one did not see much of the walls, as a fine collection of old masters covered nearly every inch of them. The details of the paintings were lost against the midnight background, and the overall effect was claustrophobic. Palm trees, brought in from the sprawling winter garden, stood in three of the corners, and the amount of silk used to upholster couches and chairs made me wonder if any was left in China.

The count was doing an admirable job trying to keep the ladies occupied, and he proved a charming companion. He made a point of dividing his time as equally as possible among the ladies—although I noticed that he paid very little attention to his wife. While he, Flora, and Ivy looked at old stereoscope pictures of scenes of the English countryside, I wrote back to Margaret. The countess was reading a book whose title she kept hidden, and Lady Fortescue, who stayed so quiet that I’d nearly forgotten she was with us, was embroidering in the corner farthest from the fireplace, above which hung an enormous portrait of her husband.

It would have been difficult to find a woman more meek and unassuming—gray, really, despite her youth—than the new Lady Fortescue. She jumped, startled, whenever she was spoken to, not so much because she was shy as because she had grown accustomed to being ignored. Her husband was not openly cruel to her; that would have reflected badly on him. Instead, he treated her with an easy indifference, as if she were little more than a favored servant or a trinket he had received as a gift, but had never really wanted.

Ivy, who had grown tired of the stereoscope, came to me, leaning on the gilded table at which I sat. “I don’t understand why he married her,” she said, keeping her voice low enough that she would not be overheard.

“She does seem an unlikely choice for such a man,” I said. “I should have thought he would want either a stunning beauty or someone with a significant fortune. And it’s certainly safe to assume his motive wasn’t love.”

“She’s practically penniless.”

“All of society raved about how generous it was of him to marry her and bring her back to her ancestral home.”

Poor Mary Fortescue. Her mother and father had died when she was very young, leaving her under the care of her elder brother, Albert Sanburne, who did not long survive his parents. After his death less than a year later there was no one left to inherit, and his barony, along with Beaumont Towers, the estate on which the girl had been raised, reverted back to the Crown. The queen, exercising her right to grant the title to someone else, bestowed it some years later upon her favorite political adviser, Lord Fortescue. Until his proposal, everyone assumed that Mary, who for ten years had been passed from distant relative to distant relative, would be forced to take a position as a governess. By marrying her, her husband appeared—for the first time in his life—a kindhearted, considerate, and selfless gentleman.

The engagement had enhanced his standing in society; for while he was a man to be feared, obeyed, perhaps even begrudgingly respected, it could not be said that Lord Fortescue was admired on a personal level by any but his staunchest supporters. I, for one, questioned even their sincerity. He was too powerful to be much concerned with being well liked, but if choosing the right bride might improve his reputation, he certainly didn’t object to being lauded by the matrons of London.

“I thought the wedding was a bit ostentatious,” Ivy said. “It was his third, after all. And she had seven bridesmaids.”

“It’s her first marriage,” I said.

“You’re right, of course. She ought to have had the sort of celebration she wanted to.” Ivy’s eyebrows shot together. “But I can’t imagine it, can you? Being someone’s third wife? Knowing that he’d adored two others before you?”

“You make the mistake of assuming that Lord Fortescue adored any of his wives.”

“Still, I shouldn’t like to think that my husband loved someone before me. It’s…unseemly.”

I knew not how to reply to this. I had loved my first husband before I loved Colin, and Colin obviously had been entangled with the countess before he’d met me. “It’s…” I hesitated, not wanting to use the word “naïve.” “It’s lovely to think that one’s first love will be one’s last, but that’s not always possible.”

“Oh, Emily, I didn’t mean—” She stopped at the sound of a commotion in the hallway that announced the return of the gentlemen, still dressed in tweeds from their afternoon activities. Kristiana watched, her eyes narrowing, as Colin crossed to me the moment he entered the room. Robert kissed Ivy’s hand, and she leapt to his side, leaving me to my fiancé.

“Finished with your letter?” Colin looked over my shoulder.

“I’ve hardly begun,” I said. “But I’ll happily stop.” I blotted the still wet ink before folding the paper in half.

“Come.” He led me to a settee with a high, curved back, where we could sit close enough together that he could touch my hand without drawing anyone’s attention. “This is absurd, you know. We’re all but married, and I’m hardly allowed to touch you.”

“This party would be much easier to bear if we were married,” I said.

“If we were married, we wouldn’t be at this party. We’d be in Greece.” My late husband had left me a spectacular villa perched on a cliff on the Greek island Santorini, and it was there that I retreated whenever possible, there that Colin had twice proposed to me.

“Or Ephesus,” I said, remembering a conversation we’d had in Paris about the Roman ruins found in Turkey.

“Egypt?”

“Anywhere.” I smiled, and he rubbed his thumb against the back of my hand. It was all I could do not to sigh with delighted pleasure.

“I’m more sorry than I can say for having to postpone the wedding,” he said.

“I’ve told you before, there’s no need to apologize. It couldn’t be helped.”

“Now that my work’s finished, there’s no need for further delay. I see no reason why we couldn’t be married within the next month.”

“You’ll hear no objections from me,” I said. He squeezed my hand, and I wished I could fall into his arms. Our eyes met, full of longing, and we both knew that it would be best to change the direction of our conversation. I glanced around the room, my gaze resting on Sir Julian Knowles, owner of one of London’s newspapers. “Why did Lord Fortescue invite Sir Julian? I shouldn’t think he’d want the details of a political meeting exposed by the press.”

“Lord Fortescue never does anything without a precise plan. There must be something he wants publicly known.” He paused. “Hard to imagine, though, given the sensitivity of the issues we’re discussing. He’s been quite direct in insisting that this all remain quiet.”

“Who opposes him on whatever this mysterious issue is? Could that person’s position be undermined by some well-timed bad publicity? Scandals in the country aren’t limited to the political, you know. Is anyone here on the brink of a personal disaster?”

“A very interesting idea, Emily,” he said. We both turned at the sound of Sir Julian’s voice booming with laughter. The newspaper man was sitting next to Lady Fortescue, close enough to Colin and me that it was impossible not to hear his words, spoken too loudly.

“Ah, there was something new every day then! Scandals enough to delight us all.”

Lady Fortescue winced, her face pale, and rushed from the room. Her husband did not follow her; I don’t think her absence registered with him in the least, particularly as he was sitting with Flora, who was glowing at his attention.