Judith Ivory Read online

  Submit scrubbed her face and put on a fresh dress, her only vanity being a great many buttons. Her black dress buttoned from her waist, up her throat, to her chin with small buttons made of cut jet. She looked in the mirror. Neat, clean, no foolishness; substantive. She felt perfectly prepared to go down and ask the earl if she might talk to him briefly alone. For one second more, she stared into the mirror.

  What was it she wanted? There was a small, distressed voice in her head now, growing stronger. It said Henry had hidden things from her. Yet she still could not believe he’d hidden a secret, salacious life, a life of onanism or worse. Some men were the sort to relish private vice. Others simply were not. What she wanted, she supposed, was to hear Graham Wessit say, yes, he himself had a small collection of boudoir art. (He would be a little embarrassed, a little uneasy about admitting this.) He was something of an erotologist, a very interesting area of study, this. (He wouldn’t admit to actually drooling over the pictures.) Henry, the earl would say, left these as a kindness to his former ward, knowing the earl had an interest in such things. These were especially good examples of the more graceful erotica, aimed at an audience with artistic sensibilities….

  She longed to hear an intelligent reason for Henry’s keeping then bequeathing this box. It was more than mere convenience that had made her stay here last night; it was more than mere duty: She very much needed a good answer to the mystery of Henry’s—no, Netham’s—black box.

  Down a corridor then around, Submit worked her way toward the center of the house. Mrs. Schild’s London residence was built for entertaining. The ballroom downstairs had such a high ceiling that for three floors nothing but corridors wrapped around it. Tiny guest rooms were tucked along these, so that Submit walked along the outside of the building looking out on neat, tended gardens, the terrace and fountain in back. The master living quarters lay over the dining room, entry room, and front parlor. This complicated the maze and slowly distracted Submit. As she wove her way through hallways and stairwells, she became more or less pleasantly involved in the process of trying to map the house.

  On the last set of stairs, the sight of Graham Wessit coming into the central entry room below stopped her. He was walking backward, laughing, speaking to the people outside, while his hands reached behind him for the knobs of the double terrace doors. For a moment, he stood in a wedge of sunlight, a kind of halo outlining him, casting his shadow backward into the room along the floor. Then he closed the doors, turned around, and stopped dead. Submit stood on the last step of the staircase. Over the banister she faced the same man as last night, ridiculously handsome, conspicuously decorated to emphasize the fact. Something about him set her teeth on edge. There was an aggression to the way he dresseds if he wanted not merely to bowl a person over but knock her down with his good looks.

  “Well,” he said. Conversation chattered on the other side of lace curtains and glass doors. Inside, the room had grown shady and still. “Aren’t you the quiet one.”

  “May I speak to you for a moment?”

  He came toward her, his watch chains jangling against buttons and fobs, his heels marking this sound off like measures of music, a little symphony of rococo taste. Without breaking rhythm, he said, “I have to get something. They’re waiting for me outside.” He made a kind of graceful pivot as he went past her, walking backward again. “I’m sorry.”

  His contrition lasted for less than a second, the space of a quick, brilliant smile. He turned around and kept going.

  “Wait.”

  He glanced over his shoulder.

  “I want to talk to you about the box.”

  “Ah, the box.” He nodded soberly but didn’t break stride.

  “It will only take a second.”

  The smile over his shoulder this time seemed wry. “All right. You have a second.” He hesitated for exactly that much time, then headed into the dining room.

  Submit followed, trying to hold the distance he was putting between them. Her hooped skirt had begun to swing and wobble. She grabbed up the sides of her dress in handfuls.

  The dinner tables from the night before had been stripped and pushed into the center of the room, while chairs had been stacked along the walls. “I—ah—” She frowned. With a push of his arm, he leaped a table, while she was having to thread and steer her way through them. He headed toward a passageway that would lead to the servants’ hall downstairs.

  At the doorway, he paused. “Sorry.” He held out his hands, a man helpless against demanding, impatient friends. “They really are waiting for me.” For an instant more, he looked at her. Again she faced his smile, aware of how charming, social, and practiced it was. Then, surprisingly, she faced something else. There seemed a nuance to this smile, a faint irony, as if there were a subtext to this whole silly chase. Submit felt a warm fluster rise into her face as she watched him disappear from sight.

  What in the world? she thought. She was left standing among the tables, feeling blank and stupid and, as she looked around, trapped. Her skirts were pressed into a contorted shape. From all sides, she was at least three tables away from any straight path back. With a deep sigh, she began to work her way out of the dining room’s network of furniture. She would wait with the others outside.

  On the terrace, two men and another woman had joined Mrs. Schild and the gentleman. A great many people from the evening before had spent the night. Submit became a quiet part of the group as they congregated at one end of the terrace. She gravitated to their periphery, looking down over a railing to a lawn and fountain, the fountain graced by a few too many cherubs. Otherwise, the back garden was pleasantly simple, green grass partitioned by borders of flowers, colorfully geometric. Submit was enjoying this view, the warmth of sun filtering through sparse branches overhead, and the generally undemanding company, when she heard Graham Wessit come out again. He had a distinctive way of moving, she realized, a quick, athletic gait that seemed at odds with a man so tall.

  A half dozen more people followed him. He had brought with him a small chunk of silvery metal and a file. As he squatted in the middle of the terrace, Submit too was drawn. Everyone clustered around.

  Graham Wessit was filing powdery shavings onto the terrace’s marble floor. Submit bent over, observing, pressing her hands onto her knees.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Others murmured answers, but nothing very specific. Rosalyn was giggly. “It’s stuff, he says, that explodes if you make it powdery and set a match to it.”

  Submit was a little alarmed, though everyone else seemed enthralled. The rasp of metal on metal held each person’s attention.

  “Where did you get it?” someone asked.

  “A chemist.” The earl teased the American woman. “A ‘pharmacist’ if you speak Philadelphia English.”

  Submit straightened up. “It’s magnesium.”

  Fireworks. The publication of Mortimer’s Manual of Pyrotechny had been greeted with great interest a year and a half ago. It was a study of the ancient Chinese secrets of exploding light displays, which London society—the queen herself—considered high entertainment.

  The earl looked at her a moment, putting a brief pause in the rhythm of his task.

  She frowned. “You’ll hardly see it in the sunlight. And it’s dangerous. It pops.”

  He tilted his head at her again, seeming more amused than forewarned by her pertinent information. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of matches.

  Submit stepped back. “That’s not very smart,” she warned.

  “Ah, is that what you’re doing?” He smiled up at her. “Trying to be smart?”

  “No—” She changed her mind. “Yes. Is there something wrong with that?”

  “It can be a terrible hindrance to simply having a good time.”

  He struck a match and threw it onto the pile of silvery powder. It made more light than she’d imagined, a rather nice whfft and a white burst accompanied by several sharp snaps.

  �
�Ahh!” The earl jumped back, quickly brushing off cinders.

  As Submit watched him examine a neat hole in his trousers, a little jolt of satisfaction ran through her. It was surprisingly sharp. The fancy-pants know-it-all, she thought. A novice had no business fooling with fireworks, and they remained dangerous even if one knew very well the chemistry and mechanics involved. Netham should have stuck to the properties of gold, how gravity draped it from watch pocket to watch pocket on a glittering vest.

  Feeling as though she’d won something, she repeated, “I’d like to speak with you. Could I do so now?”

  He threw her a look of exasperation, though for a moment there seemed a hint of humor in his expression. “No,” he said emphatically and smiled, as truculent and rational as a two-year-old. He was on the move again, heading toward the far terrace steps at the end of the house.

  “Where are you going?” Submit had to walk quickly, or she was going to lose him again.

  “To get more magnesium.” Between statuary and stone urns, he began down the steps, taking them in leaps, two at a time.

  “More? Aren’t you finished ruining your clothes?”

  At the bottom of the steps, he glanced down. He picked at something on his pant leg, inspecting the damage now with what seemed like fastidious concern. “You think I’ve ruined my trousers?”

  “Without doubt.”

  But when he turned, he had a smile that was thoroughly unabashed. “And such a dandy as myself,” he said, “should be aghast at that.”

  The humor, creased deeply into a wide smile, took her by surprise—as did something else. There was an astuteness in his face, an awareness that said he might not be quite so easily summed up as she’d first thought.

  She was left standing halfway down the stairs, perplexed, trying to puzzle him out. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  This held him there a moment, interested in her apology, though not impressed.

  She added, “I’m sorry if I’ve treated you like some sort of dandiprat.”

  “I am a dandiprat.” He cocked his head and leaned his arm on the plinth beneath a stone urn. “Why do you think you’re so damned smart?”

  She blinked. “I don’t.”

  “Why do you think I’m not?”

  She laughed a little nervously. She was beginning to feel giddy, like someone turned upside down. “All right. You’re a clever dandiprat.” He liked that better; so much so, in fact, she couldn’t resist adding, “Still, you don’t know much about magnesium.”

  “Mag-what? Those big words confuse me.”

  “Mag-NEEZ—” She realized he’d said it a few moments before and stopped.

  He laughed, shaking his head at her. “I make my own fireworks. From copper and niter.” He shrugged. “I’ve used other things, lately magnesium, depending on what color I want. I know a great deal about magnesium. I’d just prefer to brush off the sparks rather than miss them close up.” His smile broadened into something strangely uninhibited. “I rather like it, in fact, when they explode all over me.”

  “How very dangerous.”

  “It’s thrilling actually. It doesn’t hurt.”

  All she could say was, “I’d bet it takes a toll on your clothes, though.”

  He began walking, backward again, along the path that ran against the house. He was still looking at her when he said, “Nothing, I’d bet, compared to the toll your caution takes on your sparks.” He turned out of sight.

  Submit felt confused for a moment, then turned around and felt an unreasonable embarrassment.

  Rosalyn Schild was standing at the top of the stairs. She did not look happy, and beyond her stood a curiously quiet little crowd.

  Chapter 8

  Submit found Graham Wessit to be paradoxically elusive in this house. He was either everywhere, marching right into the center of things, or nowhere in sight. By early afternoon, she had still not spoken to him about the box; she could not even find him. Finally, in a front corridor, she stopped a servant to ask if he knew where the man was.

  “Why, he’s gone home, madam.”

  “Home?” This possibility hadn’t occurred to her. She sank onto a little stuffed bench in the hall. Which home? she wondered. Home to the house in Belgravia or home to the flat on Haymoore Street or, she wondered, was the family house in Netham itself “home”? She was right back where she had started last night.

  “He’ll return, I assure you, madam,” the servant told her.

  Yes, she thought, he probably would. All the same, she felt a little irritated and just plain tired of the whole game. If he had been trying, Henry’s cousin could not have made asking about the box more difficult.

  Of course, Graham was trying.

  In the aftermath of last night, he had developed a kind of resentful gratitude toward Submit Channing-Downes. The excuses she’d made for him over the box, her repossession of it without so much as a word, were favors he both appreciated very much and minded in the extreme—unsought favors badly needed, which he wouldn’t, on a bet, repay in kind. If Henry’s widow expected any sort of discussion to ensue over that stupid box, she had another think coming.

  Cheerful in this knowledge, Graham bounded through the side carriage entrance of his London house, past fluted alabaster columns and up spiral marble stairs. His shoes tapped and echoed throughout the round, wide stairchamber, a tattoo that rose up, around, and above him, spiraling with the stairs toward his private rooms.

  “John,” he called, his voice preceding him up three winding flights. High above him, he saw the man’s head pop over the railing. “Draw me a bath! I want to be gone again in an hour!”

  Graham was in fine spirits. He looked forward to a change of clothes, then a day of pure fun. He had come home to pick up more magnesium by the bagful. He might even bring back some of the other components of his fireworks. In his shed behind his London house, he had bags of gunpowder, niter, copper sulfide, magnesium, barium nitrate, sulfur, and more. He knew how to build green stars and skyrockets and tourbillions; there was hardly a known fire display he couldn’t make, and he could extemporize new ones offhand. He always laughed when he talked about this. “One of my many useful accomplishments.” The general uselessness of this knowledge, however, didn’t stop him from enjoying it—particularly when other people became enthusiastic and wanted to see more, as they had at Rosalyn’s today.

  At the top of the staircase, John handed him his mail.

  “Thank you. Is there hot water?”

  “I lit the coal half an hour ago.”

  “Good fellow.”

  His man already had hold of the top of Graham’s coat, lifting it off his shoulders. Graham shrugged out of the arms as he walked, alternating his hold on the mail. He undid his own neckcloth and top shirt buttons, discarding behind him his tie and shirt collar. His manservant followed along, gathering items in his arms.

  Graham handed back an empty envelope. His mail consisted of a bill for twenty-five teapots, two quid each, silverplate, a bill from the plumber who’d converted his dressing room to a bath, and a letter from Claire, Graham’s daughter.

  Graham had two children, Charles and Claire. Both lived in boarding schools abroad. He tore open Claire’s letter and began to decode her tiny, elaborate handwriting. The letter’s contents were not particularly newsworthy. She needed “a small advance on next month’s allowance.”

  “When you go down for fresh towels,” he told his manservant, “tell Sheffield to come up.” Sheffield was Graham’s secretary.

  “Sheffield, sir,” the man replied, “has been conscripted into tallying accounts and writing receipts. There has been a bit of a crush on today.”

  By a “crush” the man meant a larger than usual crowd roaming the grounds and downstairs interior of the house.

  Graham had a slightly unusual living arrangement. On a Sunday at this time of year, his house and back gardens were always swarming with people. This was due to an interplay of economics and family history.

&n
bsp; All the earls of Netham had been wealthy, but not monumentally so, yet Graham lived in a house fit for a king. His London property took up a square English block. This was a lot of land to own in the best part of the city; the only person who owned more was his neighbor, the queen. He could see Buckingham Palace from his northwest windows. His house was older than the palace and almost as ornate. Graham lived in only the upper rear portion, however. The house was much more than any one family, let alone one person, could ever inhabit. It was also too large to afford and too valuable to give up.

  Historically, much of the building and grounds had been closed until Graham’s great-grandfather had opened up the back gardens to “friends.” This had been a magnanimous, and probably exhibitionistic, gesture. Tea had been served three afternoons a week to whoever wished to come and admire. This had become somewhat popular. Then the next earl, Graham’s grandfather, had opened up the front portion of the house itself, and it had gone from being merely popular to being public. He had instituted a brass dish for donations to help defray costs. Eventually guides and caterers had been allowed to come in. By contract, they answered questions and served tea five days a week for a percentage of the profits. By the end of the last century, the house had been given over to the phenomenon of domestic tourism.

  Graham’s own father had added his bit when he so famously shot his wife, then himself. People flocked. For a shilling in the dish, most of London and its visitors had walked through Graham’s house at one time or another. It had acquired a strong sense of public ownership. Graham simply had never had the strength, or money for that matter, to turn this around. He had learned to live companionably with tourism, residing in the upstairs rear of the house in the private quarters entered through the carriage foyer. It was ample. No one disturbed him. He had become comfortable with the fact that his steps were heard overhead, explained and interpreted by some historian below. “Now, that is the present earl….”