A Proper Education for Girls (12 page)

“Tiger-skin cushions will, I think, grace any parlor. I shall be the envy of all the ladies!

“With love to you and to my aunts
,

“Your sister
,

“Lilian.”

A
UNT
L
AMBERT AND
Alice exchanged baffled glances.

“Could you read that again, my dear?” said Aunt Pendleton. “I think I must have misheard you.”

“What in heaven's name is she talking about?” said Aunt Lambert.

“Did you not hear? She has been sick after her long journey to this dreadful Indian backwater. Oh, the poor girl,” cried Old Mrs. Talbot, sinking onto a sofa and fanning herself with a handkerchief.

“But tiger-skin cushions?” said Aunt Rushton-Bell. “Lilian is not interested in such things, surely?”

“Indeed,” said Alice. “And as for ‘my most beloved husband,’ what can she mean?”

“I can't believe Lilian would write something so mundane,” said Aunt Lambert. “Has she lost her mind? Why, it's hardly worth reading at all.”

“And what about this photograph,” said Aunt Statham. She was holding it in shaking hands at the end of her nose. “It doesn't look much like Lilian, though she's wearing a hat, of course. Perhaps you should try Mrs. Pendleton's magnifying glass, just to be sure.”

“What?” said Alice. “Lilian's not in this photograph.”

“Excuse me, my dear,” said Aunt Statham, “but I think she is. In the middle. I am an artist. I have an artist's eye and I very rarely forget a face. Certainly not the face of one of my own relatives. Mrs. Pendleton, your magnifying glass, if you please.”

Aunt Pendleton rooted in the drawer of the sideboard and produced a leather-bound box, prising it open with shaking hands. Scarcely able to contain her impatience, Alice waited as Aunt Pendleton slowly buffed its gleaming ellipse with her shawl. At last, she handed it over.

Alice peered through it at the photograph. The figure in the center of the composition was tall and slim and wearing a large
topi
. The brim of the hat threw a shadow over the upper part of the face, but the part that was visible—the jaw unadorned with whiskers of any kind, the stray tendril of wispy hair escaping to tickle its owner's cheek, the half-amused smile—Aunt Statham was right. It was Lilian. Alice blushed. How could she not have recognized her own sister?

She was now looking through the magnifying glass at the face she had thought she recognized earlier—the man in profile, tall, with dark eyes and black side whiskers. “The man at the end,” she said to Aunt Statham cautiously. “Do you recognize him too?”

Aunt Statham took the magnifying glass. “He looks familiar,” she said after a moment. “It's Lilian's husband, isn't it? Mr. Fraser.”

“No,” said Alice. “Mr. Fraser is not in this picture.”

“So who is that fellow?” said Aunt Statham with a frown. “I know his face.”

“So do I,” said Aunt Lambert as she gazed through the lens. “I would recognize him anywhere.” She looked up at Alice, quickly. “But surely it can't be him.”

“Who?” cried the aunts in unison. “Who can't it be?”

Alice nodded. “Yes,” she said. “It's Mr. Hunter.”

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
Alice read her sister's letter again. She pushed aside the plant leaves that pressed against the glass walls of
the hothouse and held the crumpled sheet up to the spring sunlight to see whether Lilian had scratched a secret message on the damp paper with a dry pen. But even with the help of Aunt Pendleton's magnifying glass she could distinguish nothing. Alice shook her head in despair.
Tiger-skin furnishings? My most beloved husband?
Why some of the sentences scarcely even made sense. And yet … Alice unfolded the letter once more. Perhaps Lilian had used a cipher, or some sort of code, to communicate?

Alice was disturbed from her thoughts by the sound of someone struggling through the hothouse toward her. She heard a grunt as a foot caught on an exposed root, followed by a muttered curse and a furious thrashing of leaves. As she slid Lilian's letter into her pocket the photographer's red face emerged from between the fronds of an immense parlor palm.

“Good morning, Mr. Blake.” Alice showed neither alarm nor distaste at his disheveled appearance. “We missed you at breakfast. My aunts assumed you had left. My father thought you were already at work.”

Mr. Blake stepped forward, hastily removing a twig from his hair. “And may I ask what
you
thought?”

“Me?” Alice blinked. “I didn't think anything at all.”

“Of course.” The photographer's cheeks became a deeper shade of crimson. He pulled out a handkerchief and busied himself with dabbing at a smear of green on his shirtsleeve. “The fact is, Miss Talbot, I missed breakfast because I was exploring the grounds. The conservatory looks spectacular from outside, especially in the rosy light of daybreak. Then I made my way up to the roof, through a trap door in the attic. The view is quite remarkable.”

“Indeed,” said Alice, as though the roof was quite the usual place to go on arrival in someone else's house. “An excellent idea. One can see right over to Bispham St. Michael on a clear day. Sometimes the light is quite luminous.”

“Why yes, Miss Talbot. That is exactly what I found.” Mr. Blake opened his mouth as though to add something else. Alice waited politely, but he appeared to change his mind. He gazed at her
in silence. “Miss Talbot, your father said I was to speak to you,” he said suddenly. “He said you would be happy to act as my … my assistant. In moderation, of course.” Mr. Blake looked uncomfortable. “He said that I must insist to you that ‘his vigilance remains undimmed.’ He charged me to use those precise words, though I don't pretend to know what he means. And it must not impinge on your other duties among the Collection. He was most particular about that.”

“I'm sure,” murmured Alice. “And what is your view of the situation?”

“I would enjoy some company. That is to say, I would enjoy
your
company.”

Alice's face remained impassive as she returned the photographer's gaze. “Have you found your trunk?” she asked.

“What? No. No, I haven't found it. Have you seen it? Do you know where it might be?”

“I'm sure it'll turn up. I hope it didn't contain anything valuable?”

Mr. Blake forced a smile. “Valuable only to me, Miss Talbot.” He wiped a hand across his perspiring brow. “Would you mind awfully if we continued this conversation in the temperate house?”

A
LICE AND
M
R.
Blake made their way through the greenery toward the great doors that led into the temperate house. Mr. Blake sprang forward again and again, holding the foliage back to prevent overgrown leaves and creepers from slapping Alice's face and pulling her hair. But the vegetation was so dense that it soon became almost impossible for him to perform this civilized task without appearing to be about to embrace her. At first, he thought she was going to tell him to stop such unnecessary courteousness. After all, she had passed that way a thousand times without his, or anyone else's, assistance. But she merely nodded, giving him a curious look and a faint smile. He smiled back. In that damp and sweltering atmosphere Mr. Blake found himself rather embarrassed by Alice's
close proximity. He shook his head in disbelief—he, Henry Blake, feel uncomfortable at the nearness of a woman? He almost laughed out loud. He had never shown any self-consciousness in front of the fairer sex in his life. But as Alice's skirts brushed against his legs he felt his cheeks turn pink—not that Miss Talbot would notice his discomfort, he said to himself, his face was crimson with the heat anyway.

At last, they reached the doors to the temperate house. A naked female figure peered at them uncertainly through the greenery. It was
Truth Overcoming Prejudice
.

“Did you bring this through on your own?” said Alice in surprise.

“Sluce helped me, but he was too feeble to be of much use. And then he disappeared when my back was turned.” Mr. Blake shrugged. “All those roots across the pathway make it difficult to manoeuvre objects as large as this through to the studio. But, well, she's almost there.”

“But will you bring everything through to the temperate house to be photographed? The long case clocks? The suits of armor? The marble statues? Mr. Blake, the task is impossible!”

“We'll have to adapt our methods to suit individual pieces. I was happy to start with smaller objects—the Oriental vases or the Mycenaean pottery, for instance. But your father was most insistent that I photograph this lady first. The light in the dining room where she was lodged is poor, so I decided to bring her through. A decision I'm already regretting. I could move her no further without assistance.”

“I'll help you.”

“Oh no.” Mr. Blake swabbed his scarlet brow with his sodden handkerchief and glanced longingly at the doors of the temperate house. “I don't require your assistance as a porter. It was your expertise as a photographer I was after. Miss Talbot, I insist.”

“As do I, Mr. Blake. Have you seen these hands?” She held out strong, wide-palmed hands. “Far better suited to moving large objects than fiddling about with needlepoint and piano playing. Can
you bear to remain in the hothouse a little longer? Might I suggest you take off your coat and roll up your sleeves? Good. Then shall we proceed?”

Between them, Mr. Blake and Alice inched the statue forward across the pathway's uneven tiles. Mr. Blake muttered under his breath as he struggled to raise its electroplated plinth over a bristling knuckle of root that had forced its way up through one of the heating vents in the floor. At this rate he would be in Mr. Talbot's employ forever, dragging cumbersome objets d'art through an ever-encroaching domestic jungle. He gave a despairing sigh. What had at first seemed like a perfect opportunity to escape the growing demands of Mrs. Cattermole suddenly seemed a far more taxing and prolonged physical ordeal. He mopped his brow again. He was really beginning to feel quite weak. Alice, however, appeared entirely unaffected by the heat. Mr. Blake watched as she seized one of Truth's ample electroplated thighs, braced her shoulder beneath a bronzed breast, and heaved. When the statue jerked forward, Mr. Blake was catapulted backward.

He disappeared from view, a mass of wide glossy fronds closing over him like the waves of the sea.

Had his head struck a rock? He could not be sure. It was throbbing, that much he knew, but that could be the result of the heat, combined with his recent physical exertion, not to mention his lack of sleep and the aftereffects of the ether-soaked handkerchief he had turned to once again in a bid to overcome his insomnia. He heard a distant voice call his name but felt no urgency to reply. Alice's face appeared above him, framed by the canopy of bobbing leaves. The light from the glass panels of the conservatory roof lit up her hair in a golden halo. She smiled. Entranced by this angelic vision Mr. Blake smiled back. How soft the earth felt beneath his head. How pleasing the smell of damp loam that filled his nostrils—nostrils sadly accustomed to the olfactory assaults of the darkroom. He breathed deeply. The heat of the hothouse seemed as warm and loving as a mother's embrace, the throbbing of the pipes beneath the floor at one with the beating of his heart …

A hand seized his shoulder and shook him roughly. “Mr. Blake? Mr. Blake?”

Mr. Blake scrambled hastily to his feet. “My apologies, Miss Talbot. Yes, yes, I am quite well, thank you. Winded, but no damage done.” He pawed ineffectually at another green stain that had appeared on his waistcoat. “I had little sleep last night, on top of my journey from London and the hours spent with your father in the stables waiting for mice to enter his perpetual mousetrap. And then the heat here … and I missed breakfast, of course.”

“Would you like to sit down? A glass of water perhaps? Why did you not sleep well? Was your room not to your satisfaction?”

“Perfectly satisfactory, thank you.” Mr. Blake allowed himself to be led through to the aunts' furniture. He was relieved to find none of them there. He accepted the glass of water Alice brought to him, downing it in thirsty gulps.

“Then what was wrong?” insisted Alice. “Why couldn't you sleep?”

“I have insomnia.”

“But you're a photographer. There's no need to … to go without sleep.”

Mr. Blake raised his eyebrows. Had she divined his weakness already? Perhaps she was testing him. He hastily composed his features into an expression of confusion. “I'm not sure I follow you.”

Alice clicked her tongue. “And as a trained doctor you'll be familiar with the medicinal uses of ether, Mr. Blake. It's central to the wet collodion process. You must have a substantial supply for your work. You couldn't possibly claim to be a modern photographer if you didn't. One can inhale the fumes to some considerable soporific effect. Come, come, man. You know perfectly well what I mean!”

Mr. Blake felt a need to unburden himself. Surely she would have some sympathy for him; at the very least she would understand. “I have used it many times,” he said with a rueful smile. “But the dreams that come to me—they are almost worse than a state of perpetual sleeplessness. Sometimes I wake up exhausted.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Perhaps it's all that time I
spent in the mortuary. Last night, as you suggest, I took a little ether—the remains of a bottle I had in my pocket. But it had no perceivable effects—a loss of motor control for a while, certainly, but sleep eluded me. I think I lost consciousness for a few minutes—I'm almost certain I had a dream—but it was hardly sufficient and not at all relaxing.”

“What did you dream?” said Alice after a moment's silence.

“Oh, nothing I can recall.” He blushed. He could not tell her that he had dreamed powerfully and vividly of a breathless encounter with Mrs. Cattermole. He had woken moist and exasperated and even more exhausted than when he had climbed into bed six hours earlier. “You must think me mad, Miss Talbot,” he murmured, sipping the last of his water.

“Not at all, Mr. Blake,” said Alice soothingly. “Not at all.”