The Gates of Sleep (26 page)

And he did exactly that, taking the half-extended hand and
kissing the back of it, letting it go with a mocking little click of bootheels.

“So, the mater thinks we ought to have a turn or two
around the ballroom,” he continued. “I understand you don’t
dance?”

“Only country dances,” she repeated
reluctantly, as he cranked the gramophone and selected a recording, then
mounted it on the machine, dropped the needle in the groove, and held out his
hand to her imperiously as a waltz sounded from the horn.

“You don’t dance,” he repeated,
dismissively. “Well, I’m reckoned handy at it; you need have no
fear, fair cuz. Just do what I do, only opposite and backwards.” His
eyebrow raised, drawing her attention to his cleverness.

Annoyingly enough, he was a good dancer, and didn’t make
her feel as if she had no more grace than a young calf. In fact, if it hadn’t
been for the not-altogether-hidden smirk of superiority he wore, she might have
enjoyed herself. He was not only a good dancer, he was a good instructor. She
was good at country dances, and her skill carried over into the popular and
ballroom dances that he showed her.

Fortunately, the other half of the program—that
polite conversation he was supposed to be teaching her—didn’t
require much on her part except to listen attentively and murmur vague
agreement while
he
talked.

And how he talked—she had to wonder how much of it
was true and how much boasting.

Not that it mattered much; whichever it was, so far as she
was concerned, his general attitude was so detestable that she was hard put to
conceal it from him—and she did so in the only way she could think of.
She stared fixedly at him as if she hung on his every word, while all the time
trying to work out how she could get away from him.

In the end, she didn’t have to; Mary Anne arrived to
announce the advent of teatime, and Reggie sprang to his feet with an oath that
wasn’t quite muffled enough.

“You won’t catch me sipping that cursed stuff!”
he laughed rudely. “Well, cuz, I’ll be off; I’ll have my tea
down in the village pub. I expect this will be a regular meeting for us from
now on. Mater wants you to be ready for the gay old social whirl as soon as you’re
out of mourning, don’t you know. So, I’ll be giving you my coaching
for a while.” He laughed. “Now, don’t you go pretending you
haven’t learned anything just so you can keep the lessons going! The
mater isn’t fooled that easily.”

She dropped her eyes to hide the contempt she felt for his
assumption that she would do anything just to be in his company. “I won’t,”
she murmured.

“There’s a good gel,” he said, patting
the back of her hand. “Well then, I’ll be pushing off, and I’ll
see you tomorrow.”

And as Marina followed Mary Anne to wherever her aunt was
holding court among the teapots, she found herself resolving to learn these new
dances in record time. The sooner she learned them, the sooner she’d be
rid of Reggie, and by her way of thinking that could not possibly be soon
enough.

MADAM Arachne, I’ll be going to church tomorrow,”
Marina announced over dinner, as the soup was cleared away. By the second day,
she had begun calling her aunt by that name, and since the woman didn’t
object—

I can’t
call her Aunt, I just can’t.
Aunts were nothing like this cold woman, who held the household at Oakhurst in
such an iron grip that the servants leaped to obey her. Aunts were warm and
loving, and were more likely to indulge a niece than correct her.

“I suppose I’ll need a carriage? It seems
rather far to walk—I could, easily enough, but it’s an hour to the
village at least. I don’t suppose I could ride—I’d have to
stable the horse, and I’m not sure where in the village I could do
that…” The riding-habit had just been delivered today, too late for
her to go out for a ride. So far, she’d been out of the house itself only
twice, both times for a walk in the gardens. She supposed that they were
lovely—and she certainly detected the now-fading magic of an Earth Master
in the robust health of all of the plantings. But the gardens weren’t her
half-wild orchard, and the only water in them was a tame—and at the
moment, inactive—fountain. It was all very lush, but very planned and
mannered—reflective of the woman of all those letters.

None of this was much like Margherita; Margherita’s
magic was cozier, more domestic, and at the same time, wilder—Alanna’s
broad and wide, and controlled. Marina could only compare her mother’s
magic to that of the goddess Demeter, a thing of ordered, rich harvests and
settled fields.

And her own? She didn’t know—except that it
wasn’t
tame.

She wasn’t sure why, but she felt very uneasy about
using any magic of her own here at Oakhurst.

What was it about this place here, Oakhurst, that made her
so afraid—yes,
afraid
—and made her hide her power behind
those masking shields that Elizabeth had taught her?

She glanced at Arachne from under her lashes, waiting for a
response to her announcement, and realized that it wasn’t Oakhurst that
made her feel as if she dared not work magic—after all, it was plain
enough that magic had been worked in plenty here. No, her unease was centered
around using magic
near her aunt.
Not that Arachne showed any signs of
magic herself, nor did Reggie, nor the supercilious Mary Anne. But Elizabeth
had taught her when to trust her instincts, and her instincts told her that any
magic use should be kept under heavy shields and never, ever, where Arachne or
her people were.

Which was everywhere, it seemed, within the walls of
Oakhurst.

Tonight, not only was Madam Arachne present at dinner, so
was Reginald. At Marina’s announcement, which he evidently found
surprising, his eyebrows rose.

“It is too far to walk, and it would be in poor taste
to display yourself at a church service in a riding habit,” Madam
admitted, without betraying any expression. “But is this really necessary?”

Marina’s chin rose, and she looked her aunt directly
in the eyes. A confrontation of sorts—a testing. “Yes, Madam, it
is,” she said, and did not elaborate on why. Let Arachne assume it was
because she was religious. That might even confuse her a bit, for she surely
wouldn’t expect a religious upbringing out of pack of wild artists!

It was just an excuse to get out of the house and grounds,
and she knew it, although in Killatree she and the other inhabitants of
Blackbird Cottage had been regulars at the village church, except when the
weather was particularly foul. She was curious about the village from which
Oakhurst took its name; as much to the point, the people of the village were
probably curious about her, the daughter that no one had ever seen. She might
as well go to church where they could look their fill at her. It would be
better and more comfortable to have her first encounter with them in the church
than in the village street. And besides—there was one inhabitant of the
village that Madam could not possibly object to. The vicar was the one man in a
village whose position allowed him to cross class lines. He was as welcome a
guest at dinner in a great house as he was at tea in the smallest, lowliest
farmer’s cottage. Once Marina actually introduced herself to him, he
would have to pay a visit. And at the moment, she didn’t care if he was
the most boring old snob imaginable, he would at least keep Madam’s
corrections to a minimum just by his presence.

“Well, you might as well go if you really want to,
and let all the gossips and clatter-tongues look their fill at you,” said
Madam dismissively, in an unconscious echo of Marina’s own reasoning. “At
least they will know that you haven’t got two heads, or devil’s
hooves, or any of the other nonsense that has probably been mooted about in the
teashop and the pub. I will order the carriage for you.”

“Thank you, Madam,” Marina said, lowering her
eyes to her plate—which was promptly whisked away. Not that she minded;
this course looked like chopped pasteboard and mayonnaise, and tasted about the
same. She had figured out by now that there were no more than two or three
dishes in a meal that she found palatable, and she took care to get exactly the
right implements for them and to eat them quickly when they appeared. Usually
she got at least half of the portions set in front of her that she
wanted
to eat,
if she managed to maneuver bites around Madam’s mandatory
polite conversation.

That, and her hearty breakfasts and midnight feasts
supplied by Sally, kept her from feeling as if she was going to starve to death
any time soon. Perhaps when spring and summer arrived, she could convince her
aunt to let her have picnic luncheons or teas out of doors.

But I suppose that will only happen if they’re in
fashion.

“What was that telegraph about, that you ran off so
quickly today?” Arachne asked her son, who was eating his portion of the
next course with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

“Another one of the paintresses left the Okehampton
works—or, as their foreman said, ‘disappeared,’“ he
said, setting his fork aside. “That’s two this week, and there’s
been some talk that somehow we’re responsible for the disappearances. The
manager reckoned I’d better come deal with the talk before it got out of
hand. He was right; not only did I have to talk to the girls—all of them,
not just the paintresses—but every one of the shop foremen cornered me
before I left. They all wanted to know if there was any truth to the talk that
for some reason we’d gotten rid of her and hushed it up.”

“Talk?” Arachne said sharply. “We’re
the ones who’ve been injured! Doesn’t it occur to those people that
it takes
time
to train a paintress? Why would we want to be rid of
trained
ones? It costs us time and money when one of the little ingrates decides to try
her prospects elsewhere.”

“That’s what I told them,” Reggie replied
with a shrug. “And eventually they all admitted what I’d already
known—” He gave a sharp glance at Marina, who was pretending great
interest in her plate. “Once those girls start the easy life of a
paintress, they start getting airs.
You
know what I mean, Mater.”

Arachne laughed, and actually looked fully at her niece. “This,
Marina, is
not
considered polite conversation. For one thing, it is
about the inner workings of our business, and it is not polite to discuss these
things in front of those who are not involved in the business themselves. For
another—well, the petty lives of little factory girls with money to spend
who find that they have become interesting to men are not appropriate subjects
for conversation at any time.”

“Yes, Madam,” Marina murmured.

“However, this is something that Reginald and I must
discuss, so—well, remember that this sort of thing is not to be brought
up in public.”

“Yes, Madam,” Marina agreed, softly.

She turned back to Reggie. “Now, there has to be some
reason why these foremen were convinced we had anything to do with these girls
running off,” Arachne continued, fixing her son with a cool gaze. “You
might as well tell me what it is.”

Reggie groaned. “Never could get anything by you,
Mater, could I? Some pesky Suffragists brought in their pet female doctor and
commenced whinging about the entire painting room, especially about the paints
and glazes, saying we’re poisoning the girls and that’s why they
disappear. Some of the men were daft enough to listen to her.”

“Suffragists!” Arachne’s voice rose
incredulously. “What possible quarrel can they have with me? Am I not a
woman? Have I not, by my own hard work and despite the machinations of men who
would see me fail, turned my single manufactory into four? Do I not employ
women?
And at good wages, too!”

Reggie just shrugged. “How should I know? They’re
mad, that’s all. They say the lead in the glazes—the woman
doctor
says that the lead in the glazes—poisons the girls, makes them go mad,
and we know all about it. So when they start becoming unhinged we have them
taken away.”

“Pfft!” said Arachne. “A little lead is
what makes them so pretty—just like arsenic does, everyone knows that. I’ve
never heard that a little lead ever did more than clear up their complexions,
but now some ill-trained woman doctor says it is dangerous and—”
She shrugged. “Who gave her this medical degree? No university in
England, I am sure! No university in England would be so foolish as to grant a
woman a medical degree!”

“I don’t know, Mater—”

She fixed him with an icy stare. “I trust you made it
very clear to the men that these accusations are groundless and that this
so-called doctor is a quack and a fraud.”

“I made it very clear to the men that it is easy
enough to replace them if they stir up trouble and spread tales, Mater,”
Reggie told her, with that smirk that so annoyed Marina.

“Well done.” Arachne thawed a trifle, and
smiled. “Now we have disposed of the
impolite
conversation,
perhaps we can discuss other things.” With no more warning than that, she
turned to her niece. “Well, Marina? What shall we discuss?”

Her mind went blank. She couldn’t remember the topics
that Arachne had indicated were appropriate. “Why shouldn’t a woman
be a doctor, Madam?” she asked, the first question that came into her
head.

But Arachne raised an admonitory eyebrow. “Not
appropriate, child,” she replied. “That particular question comes
under any number of inappropriate topics, from politics to religion. Polite
conversation, if you please.”

“Um—” She pummeled her brain frantically.
“The concerts in Bath? The London opera season?”

“Ah. The London opera season. That will do nicely.”
Arachne smiled graciously. “Now, since you have never been to London, and
in any case, you cannot go to the opera until you are out of mourning, what
could you possibly say about the London opera season?”