She’d been so often alone. Her upbringing and education had been entrusted to a cadre of governesses and dancing masters and pianoforte teachers and the like, all of whom had been patient and amusing in turns, but they had been paid to be with her. And while she’d met pleasant girls among the daughters ofother embassy officials in dancing or archery lessons, and now and again had them for tea, it had always been difficult to deepen the acquaintances into friendships when her uncle’s work required them to relocate from Spain to Switzerland to Belgium before they finally settled again in Spain.
So she’d had no true sense of herself as seen through anyone else’s eyes—Am I pretty? Am I likable?—until she was finally of age to attend embassy assemblies and balls. She’d blossomed in the realization that others not only liked her, but actually seemed to delight in her company—especially men. She had, indeed, caused a bit of an uproar. She had always taken such care to be quiet and dutiful, and the discovery that she was considered both charming and beautiful went to her head like bolted champagne.
But the sophisticated attentions of the handsome, dashing, older, very important English ambassador—an earl, no less—enthralled her. And once his courtship was earnestly underway, she’d known, with relief, how the rest of her life would unfurl. It would be very like it had always been, only much, much better, and surrounded by family she could call her own.
Her complacency now seemed criminally foolish. Why had she assumed her life would go according to plan? After all, her parents had not expected to be murdered by a guillotine. Her brother Louis had not expected to die in an uprising. How had she not seen the necessity of identifying an escape route, just in case?
Given a choice, would people bother to be born if they knew what fates awaited them?
And she was reminded again of a man she’d seen only twice in Spain, but had never forgotten. When she was still too young to attend the balls held at her guardian’s house she would sometimes sneak outonto the landing, and, in a feat of acrobatic craning, peer down from the stairwell through the ballroom doorway and imagine she was one of the ladies twirling past. And there he’d been, framed in the doorway: a charismatic glow at the center of a small crowd of radiant feminine faces, all raptly turned up to his. Aurelie had stopped breathing, as if in so doing she could stop time, and forever experience that piercing delight of coming upon that particular man and that moment. She carried that memory about like the emerald and diamond necklace now sewn into her bodice.
Years later she’d read in the newspaper that this man had gone to prison for espionage. She had always found it impossible to imagine that glowing man in a cell. Likely he’d never dreamed that was the fate that awaited him.
Part of Aurelie’s own fate was sewn into her bodice.
The other half hinged upon one of the letters her brother had sent to her. Time was of the essence. She retrieved them from her trunk now.
Dear LiLi,
All of Edouard’s letters began this way. He had called her that since she could remember. All of her letters to him began “Dear Dodo,” which wasn’t quite as nice but it had never stopped being funny to her—it was the best she could do with his name when she was two years old. He tolerated it, with the stipulation that she never slip up and call him that in front of pretty women, or his friends.
If you need assistance with anything when you are in London, please do send a message on to my dear friend Mr. ErasmusMonroe. I have written to tell him you will be visiting London soon as a grand married lady complete with a titled husband and townhouse on St. James Square. He owes a favor (something to do with gambling—do not scold me! I won!) and he has informed me that he’ll gladly do one for you, instead. Just bring this letter to him. Your husband (it feels so strange to write that, my darling idiot sister) probably lolls about with the king or some such, but Mr. Monroe knows where to buy the best ices. The Strand, which is quite an exciting area and probably not one a lady ought to visit alone, which I know will merely serve to intrigue you.
He had included an address to Mr. Erasmus Monroe’s home in this famous place, The Strand.
“Your husband.” How proud she had been to read those words in her brother’s hand. What a thrill it had been to whisper them out loud to herself, rehearsing various inflections and cadences. Both words equally cherished—“My,” because someone would belong to her and she to them, at last, and “husband,” because the man she was engaged to was anearl, and she would be a countess, and this nourished her Bourbon pride. She’d liked to imagine her parents would have approved. She could never know for certain. Unlike her brothers, she had no specific memories of them; she knew them only as a feeling as distinct as weather. It was as though their love had ignited a little hearth inside her, which burned low and eternally. Throughout her more desolately lonely days she had turned to this warmth to remind herself that she had been loved.
She had nothing of her parents’ legacy apart from the mother-of-pearl comb her mother had tucked into her hair the very day her parents had been arrested and taken away.
She had looked forward to being a wife, with everything—everything—that entailed. And sheknewwhat that entailed, because she’d found books not meant for young ladies to read in her guardian’s library, and she’d read them, and had blushed, and was beset by a surely unseemly but titillating restlessness.
“Oh, Aurelie, I must have you. Please say you’ll be my wife!”
So somber, so gallant, so torturously restrained, Brundage’s proposal, muttered against her hair as he’d pulled her into his arms in a corner of a ballroom, near a fern. Surely Byron himself had never said anything so passionate, she’d thought at the time.I must have you!She could feel the thrilling, unnerving truth of this vibrating in his body. She’d said, “Yes, please, thank you,” and... he’d kissed her. She could feel her body respond to this in startlingly specific ways, quite separate from her emotions, which had careened between fear and exhilaration and uncertainty, and were so overwhelming they were nearly inebriating. Odd to think that her body harbored heretofore unsuspected knowledge and needs that only a man could awake.
Brundage had not been humbly grateful for her acceptance, which she would have liked. Or bashful, or speechless, or joyous. He had seemed triumphant. She saw that now. As though she were a prize he had won. As though her acquiescence was proof of his supremacy. And at the time, the notion of this had thrilled her. It conferred value upon her, too.
She ought to have understood. Prizes are objects, after all. Like vases or spittoons.
One could do the unimaginable to an object.
Despite the now healthily leaping fire, she shivered.
She could not imagine Brundage finding her here, in this little room, in this little place. She also knew too well he did not like to be thwarted.
She didn’t think there was any question he would try to find her.
And all at once, urgency was upon her, and her breath came as shallowly and swiftly as though even now she was cornered. She yanked the chair out from the little writing desk and scrabbled for one of the sheets of foolscap.
The quill trembled a little in her hand as she wrote.
Dear Mr. Monroe,
My dear brother Edouard Capet has spoken of you in the highest, most affectionate terms and thinks the world of your character. I am his sister, and I am presently in London. Edouard suggested that I make your acquaintance, as you know many useful things, among them where to find the nicest ices, very important indeed! I sincerely hoped you would be able to provide me with some advice regarding the disposition of some of my personal property in London. I intend to sail for America to see Edouard as soon as possible, so the matter is of some urgency. I would like to call upon you this week. If you would kindly reply to my message by addressing it to “Mrs. Mary Gallagher” at The Grand Palace on the Thames, I shouldbe much obliged. I will explain the name when we meet.
Yours Sincerely,
Aurelie, Lady Capet