The Moon by Night (9 page)

“Looking for her lover, who has gone in search of treasure?” Cheney asked, smiling.

“Of course, what else? Except that she's half mad with fear for her lost Hoël—”

“Hoël?” Cheney repeated incredulously. “Is that the goat?”

“No, it's the lover's name,” Victoria answered, her clear blue eyes dancing.

“How unfortunate for the poor boy,” Cheney said.

“Yes, but lucky for the goat,” Victoria declared. “Anyway, Dinorah sees her shadow by the light of the moon, and she thinks it's a friend, so she dances and sings with it. It's really a lovely song. Minerva, I think you should learn it.”

“It's coloratura,” she said absently. “I don't know if I could.”

“I do. You can,” Victoria insisted. “I'll accompany you.”

“May I do the ‘Shadow Dance' with it?”

“Of course.”

“May I have a goat?”

“Minerva!”

She put down her glasses, as they were dimming the gas lamps for the performance to begin. “I was just teasing you,” she said lightly, “but then again it would be so funny in your mother's Thursday evening
salon
.”

Victoria's eyes widened, and then she smiled angelically at her cousin. “Perhaps you may have a goat.”

On the other side of the spacious auditorium, in the third tier, Dr. Marcus Pettijohn sat squeezed into a hard wooden seat with his cheap glasses pressed so hard to his eyes he would have odd raccoon rings for a few minutes after he put them down. Next to him was a slight young woman with jet black hair and eyes and very white skin. Her face was bony, with sculpted hollows under sharp cheekbones, a small pointed nose, and a wide mouth that was more well-shaped than it was full. As was the fashion, she was wearing a formal gown in a garish bright green with a low neckline. Her collarbones jutted out, and the hollow in her long graceful neck was so deep it looked like a hole. The confusing impression of her appearance was that she was either a small wiry woman or a slender young man.

But when she spoke, there was no doubt that she was female, for she had a high-pitched nasal voice that penetrated even the loudest noises. “What are you staring at, Marcus?” she demanded. “You haven't moved one inch for ten minutes!”

“Stop talking so loudly,” he said. “In fact, stop talking at all.”

“I will if you'll give me the glasses.”

“You wouldn't know who you were looking at if I did,” Marcus scoffed without moving.

She sniffed. “As if you do.”

With ill temper he jabbed the glasses up to her eyes. “Look there, do you see that enormous box on the second tier? With four women sitting in the front? Those people are my employers.”

“Cooee and hoity-toity to you,” she said acidly. “Ooh, that blond woman is a stunner, isn't she? Bet your eyeballs freeze if you dare look at her.”

“You're wrong,” Marcus said hotly, grabbing the glasses. “That is Victoria Elizabeth Steen de Lancie Buchanan. She's practically American aristocracy.”

“And what's that mean?” the woman asked, stifling a yawn.

“Never mind. You couldn't begin to comprehend what a lady like Victoria is,” he said savagely.

“Uh-huh. And I'm sure you call her Victoria too. I mean, you're such good friends with the high-hats down there that they're rattling around in a box that could seat twenty people while you're stuck up here in the cheap seats with the farriers and colliers and stevedores. And me, o' course. Your poor old Star.”

“Shut up, Star,” he said through gritted teeth. “We're at the opera. I do expect to watch and hear the opera. Not you.”

“Fine,” she said, shrugging.

But he kept his glasses trained across the vast auditorium for three hours. Until the end.

As Cheney dashed by them, giggling, Sketes and Jauncy barely had time to flatten themselves against the wall of the staircase.

“I'm going to get that old fishskin right now and give it to the ragpickers!” Cheney shrieked.

“Oh no you're not!” Shiloh boomed as he chased her. He reached out and made a grab for her on the landing, but Cheney used the big smooth knob on the landing banister post to slingshot herself around so he only nabbed a fistful of empty air. “Hello, Sketes, PJ,” he threw in passing, then yelled, “Forget it, Doc!”

“Am so! And then I'm going to buy you a…a…sealskin coat! With pearl buttons! And a bowler hat!” Her voice came up the stairwell from the ground floor. Her light footsteps clattered, while Shiloh's thundered all the way down to the basement floor.

“Won't catch me in it 'less you're layin' me out for my funeral!”

At this point their words became indistinguishable, although Sketes and Jauncy, still cowering against the stairwell wall on the first chamber floor landing, could clearly hear them running and laughing and finally the basement door slamming.

“Mr. Shiloh keeps his canvas coat and his riding hat down in the basement storeroom,” Sketes told Jauncy, rolling her eyes. “Dr. Cheney's all the time threatening to get rid of them, being as how they're old and worn, though Mr. Shiloh does keep them clean.”

Jauncy managed to catch his breath. “Good heavens, do all Americans behave in this wild, rash manner in their homes?”

“Not generally,” Sketes answered, taking his arm to restart their slow, painstaking descent, which was for Jauncy's benefit because he was still very weak. “But Mr. Shiloh and Dr. Cheney do take spells of running and shouting. You'll grow accustomed to it.”

“Will I?” Jauncy asked with disbelief. “One moment, Sketes. Please stop here. Have they left the house? Or are they just outside running and shouting?”

“Oh, they've left, all right,” Sketes assured him. “Today's Saturday and Dr. Cheney has a fencing lesson at Duvall Court. She and Mr. Shiloh always ride there unless it's pouring down rain.”

“She fences? Not—oh, never mind that right now, Sketes. I was asking because I'd very much like to see their chambers now, if possible,” Jauncy said. Although he was still weak, he had insisted on getting up and taking a tour of the house when Sketes had brought up his breakfast. “I plan to do some light chores today, including polishing Mr. Shiloh's shoes, so I'd like to see exactly where his clothes and accessories and so on are.”

Obediently Sketes turned to go back up the stairs to the first chamber floor. “You know, there's five floors in this house and not a one of them's called by the number. Would that be something English, I've always wondered, Mr. Jauncy? Now take this floor, which we're supposed to call the first chamber floor. But here, look out this window! I ask you! Is this the
third
floor for people who can count, or not?”

“Actually,” Jauncy replied weakly, “if one counts the basement floor, Sketes, this could be called the
fourth
floor.”

“Oh, pshaw, that's more of that English foolishness, now, isn't it, Mr. Jauncy?” she asked. “But I must admit that even Mr. Shiloh and Dr. Cheney didn't know how many floors their own house had, they were so mad in love and all when they first bought the place from Dr. Buchanan. He's sort of an adopted brother.”

Sketes was mostly correct about Shiloh and Cheney being mistaken about Dev's house. Even though Shiloh had stayed with Dev after that amazing night on the docks when he almost died but instead was born again, Dev had only used three floors of the house, so Shiloh never really noticed the upper stories. As for Cheney, she was in Dev's house only once—that next morning after her own adventurous night of being kidnapped and held in a brothel—and needless to say, her mind was nowhere near evaluating Dev's square footage at the time.

It was, however, a generous corner row house, and Cheney and Shiloh had decided to go ahead and open up all the floors, furnishing them and installing bathrooms and at least one fireplace on each floor. There were six floors if one counted both the basement and the attic: the basement floor with the kitchen, pantry, generous work area, and storeroom; the ground floor, with the parlor and dining room; the parlor floor with the big drawing room/library and study; the first chamber floor with the master bedroom and dressing rooms; the second chamber floor, which they had designated for the servants; and the attic floor, which they furnished with its own bathroom and two bedrooms that guests could use. Shiloh, of course, hoped that soon it would be called the nursery floor.

Jauncy frowned and asked, “Dr. Buchanan is Dr. Irons-Winslow's adopted brother? Or Mr. Irons-Winslow's?”

“No, Mr. Irons-Winslow is an orphan, an only orphan, though there is that Bain Winslow—you'll notice I don't call him
mister,
and there's plenty of reason for that, I'm telling you—who, as far as I can tell from ship's gossip, is either a half brother or first or second cousin, but there! If I start reciting all Mr. Shiloh's doings with his family and Dr. Cheney's doings too, you won't know if you're coming or going. You'll learn all the ins and outs soon enough. For now just remember that Dr. Buchanan is Dr. Cheney's adopted brother.”

For his part Phinehas Jauncy reflected that for a servant who had practically had to memorize DeBrett's “stud book,” learning the family of two Americans surely could not be that difficult. But at the moment he was busily wondering what Mr. Bain Winslow could possibly have done to merit such vitriol from Sketes. He fervently hoped it was something much more horrible than, say, inviting a young person into his employer's hotel room, drinking enough of his liquor to pass out, and then awakening to find said young person absconded with the employer's best gold cuff links, one's own money, and the brandy decanter with the silver medallion.

“But this Mr. Bain Winslow,” Jauncy persisted, albeit with some caution. “Mr. Irons-Winslow's nearest kin, is he?”

“Mr. Shiloh does have family,” Sketes answered. “His aunt, uncle, and lady cousin live in Hawaii. Mr. Bain Winslow lives in the West Indies on the island of Bequia.”

“You have met him?”

“Oh yes, have I met him! He's a bad lot, it seems to me, Mr. Jauncy. And as I say, ship's gossip, though it may be exaggerated summat, is still as near as true,” she said sturdily as they made their slow way back up the stairs. “He's not like Mr. Shiloh at all.”

“What do you mean? What, exactly, is wrong with him? Or what wrongs has he done?” Jauncy asked with dread.

Sketes said thoughtfully, “I'm not privy to all the pertick'lars, but it seems like Mr. Shiloh got lost, you might say, when he was a baby, and his parents died in a shipwreck. He was just an orphan, and no one knew about his family or where he came from. Then a few years ago, with Dr. Cheney's help, Mr. Shiloh found his family, the Winslows of Hawaii. But Mr. Bain Winslow was jealous of Mr. Shiloh, because he's the firstborn, you know, and heir to a lot of the Winslow holdings, if I understand it aright. And Mr. Bain Winslow did some shameful things—ship's gossip mentioned knives and murder done and kidnappings and piracy, but I don't think it was all of that,” she said scornfully. “Still, he did have to leave New York because Mr. Shiloh and Dr. Cheney's family were considering having him arrested. And then—to Mr. Bain's perturbation, I can tell you—they went and found him on his little island when they were on their honeymoon! But the islanders had the gaol fever, and by the time Dr. Cheney and Mr. Shiloh finished taking care of everyone, it seemed like Mr. Bain wasn't quite so mad at them. Not to the point of murder done, anyway.”

“Good heavens, what a lurid story,” Jauncy exclaimed with ill-disguised relief. “I would be very interested in hearing the details sometime, Sketes. You do relate the events so colorfully.”

“Why, thank you, Mr. Jauncy, I'm sure,” she said, her chubby cheeks blushing a pleased rose. Throwing open the door of Shiloh's dressing room, Sketes continued in a more businesslike tone, “Now here is Mr. Shiloh's dressing room. As you can see, it has this door leading out into the hall and that door leading into the master bedchamber. His shoes will be in his closet, I know, for he's just naturally neat and picks up after himself. Now, here's the master bathroom—”

“Good heavens, does every floor have a bathroom?”

“Surely does,” Sketes said with pride.

“With hot and cold running water? And a full-sized bathtub?”

“Surely does. Dr. Cheney and Mr. Shiloh are what you might call extraordinary clean persons,” Sketes said thoughtfully. “You don't know what scrubbing is, Mr. Jauncy, until you go through a typhus epidemic with those two. Likely scrub their skins off, they do. But in this house I must say it's a real pleasure to have a hot bath every day, and they don't mind you using up the hot water so long as they have it late at night when they bathe.”

Jauncy said with disbelief, “So far I've seen three of the floors, and I've noticed real wood for the fireplaces on every floor, including the servants' chamber floor. Am I to understand that Mr. and Mrs. Irons-Winslow also provide wood instead of coal for the servants to burn?”

“There you are,” Sketes said smugly. “It's more of that extraordinary cleanness. Dr. Cheney can't bear the coal dust. Says it's bad for the lungs and coats everything grimy, and besides, it stinks. And there I must agree with her. Now Fiona and me, we do try to be as light on the wood as we can—for instance, we don't keep a fire going all day in our suite, but yes, they do keep us well-supplied with wood, candles—and I do mean good beeswax candles instead of those stinkin' tallow ones—food, linens, soap, things such as what some other employers might skimp on. Now here's the master bedchamber—”

“You mean Mr. Irons-Winslow sleeps on that?” Jauncy interrupted.

“Bit short for him, isn't it?” Sketes observed. The full-sized double bed had to have been about half a foot short for Shiloh. “But he told me he's ordered a new bed for him and Dr. Cheney. It's a surprise for her, he said, but he had to tell me because he had to ask where and how he might get some extra-long and extra-wide linens made. Now there's Dr. Cheney's dressing room, but of course you won't have to worry about that. Fiona takes good care of her.”