Lizzie was tender. “But yet, I still reach back to find your wings.”
“So shall I,” Will said. The spell utterly cast, they each took a turn rubbing a hand between Angelika’s shoulder blades, while she stood, overcome with every lovely emotion. Rather than declaring her mortal, Will concluded, “She will show us her wings when she is ready.”
Lizzie clapped. “So you are in fact good fun, my dear nameless, handsome man. Jolly good. We must make our own theater out here.” She raised her sparkling brown eyes up to the house. “Blackthorne Manor,” she said reverently. “At last. What a house.”
It was time for Angelika to make the introductions. “Lady Elizabeth Lavenza, this is Sir William Black.”
“How do you do, Lady Lavenza, or should I call you the duchess? I am Will.” He bowed formally.
“Oh, goodness. If another man called me Duchess, I think Vic would take him apart. Better call me Lizzie. Or my various noms de plume. Or, very soon, Mrs. Frankenstein.” The women giggled and clutched at each other’s arms. “He’s lovely. You finally met your match, Jelly, marooned out here, without telling me?” She cast another look over at Will, clearly approving. “Where did you dig up such a handsome bachelor on this hill?”
Angelika had to laugh as Will coughed. “Will is my very dear, special friend and guest, for as long as he wishes to stay. I shall fill you in when—”
“When we are alone, and you can explain in detail.”
Lizzie appeared tired from her journey but was still beautiful to Angelika. She was tanned gold, with that famous onyx hair. She had mischievous dark eyes, and the blackest eyebrows, permanently lifted in a questioning arch. Her mother was Spanish, and she enhanced her looks with jewel-tone clothes and stained her lips red. Judging by the trunks labeled COSTUMES and PROPS, ETC., she had interesting plans.
Lizzie noticed Angelika’s perusal, then sniffed at her own armpit. “Well? Will I pass your brother’s inspection? Oh, I stink.”
“He thinks you’re divine. The only star in the sky, and he speaks of no one else. Please ask him to stop leaving apple cores on the stair rail.”
Lizzie’s smile was bright. “Shall do. Oh, look—she enters, stage right: a lovely big pig to greet me. Good day, madam, do you bring word from London?”
They all turned. Belladonna’s beady eyes surveyed the black-haired woman, the luggage, and the girls’ clasped hands. Her head began to lower. A front leg lifted.
“Come now, Lizzie,” Angelika said, grabbing her arm. “Inside, quickly.”
Once safely in the foyer, Lizzie ran her hand on the stair rail like she was introducing herself. “I love this house,” she said.
“I’m sick of it,” Angelika countered. How lovely it must be to move into your marital home. In the midst of such excitement, her anxiety was beginning to build. She was likely never going to pack her trunks to leave for her own house.
Victor was right. She was going to end up hurt.
Will took Angelika’s hand, like he felt the shift in her mood. “Whatever happens tomorrow,” he said, referring to the visit with Clara, “we will deal with it together. I promise, I will help you through. Just as you have helped me so much.” With that, his cold hand released hers, and he went to assist with the luggage.
“What’s that about?” Lizzie asked.
“I’ll tell you everything later. Stay in my room tonight. Goodness, so many trunks,” Angelika said as they linked arms. “It looks like you are moving in permanently.”
“Well, now that you mention it,” Lizzie said on a laugh, and they both fell into squeals of laughter, hugging each other, and in that moment Angelika thought that she probably could bear what the future would bring. There was much fuss and ado in the foyer, and even more when the bell above the door rang again.
“He’s a day early?” Angelika shrieked, and dragged her fingers through Lizzie’s hair to tidy it. “Couldn’t he give her a single minute to bathe, and rest?”
“That’s my bear,” Lizzie replied, panicking, too. “Please, please. I need a bath. A wet flannel would be fine. I can’t let him smell me this way.”
“I bought you some apple-scented soap. A joke a year in the making.”
“Jelly, it’s the strangest thing,” Lizzie said as they ran up the staircase. “I know it can’t be true, and I’m probably imagining things again . . .”
Angelika was startled by her serious tone. “What is it?”
“I believe that pig did not like me.”
Chapter Ten
Angelika’s eyes opened in the darkness, and she lay completely still with her blankets pulled up to her chin. Everything was now silent, except for her own heartbeat and breath.
She had fallen asleep to Victor and Lizzie’s distant mattress rhythm. It was like being lulled by the creaking of a ship that periodically hit stormy seas. Occasionally there were the cries of a woman drowning. Lizzie would certainly be walking unsteady across decks in the morning, and she had been sternly warned not to venture outside alone. She had taken the news of Belladonna as expected: she’d laughed her incredible husky laugh until tears had streamed down her face. Am I the other woman? Oh, what a play this would be.
Victor saw no point in waiting for matrimony. I’ll be damned if that spotty old corpse they call Father Porter influences what happens in my own bedchamber. We are human beings, doing what humans do. It is natural science! I plan on fucking Lizzie senseless tonight, should she be amenable. After such a monologue—delivered at dinnertime, as Lizzie choked on her drink, then nodded—it was confirmed that a bedroom shuffle was not required. Victor’s door slammed so hard that it would have been heard in the village.
When told he would retain his room, Will had paced around and stood in his own doorway, struggling to explain himself. In the end, he could not. All he knew was he did not like it.
In the darkness, Angelika ran her fingers across her quilt. It was embroidered with thousands of little stars. For the first time, she thought about that unknown person who had labored over something she liked but also barely noticed. They were probably paid a pittance. Her thoughts then turned to the new chambermaid, Sarah, sleeping in a very cold and uncomfortable room at the boardinghouse. Angelika had no idea of how to ration coal.
She turned over, plumped up her goose-down pillow, and wondered at the randomness of wealth. It was her luck to be asleep in this ornate room, and her maid Sarah’s misfortune to have a gambling father. It was clear which woman worked harder, and who had the greater difficulties to overcome.
Will was another example of how, in an instant, everything could change. Angelika tried to imagine waking up tomorrow, with no name, belongings, home, wealth, or options. How would she survive? She’d have to work underneath a cantankerous old Mary in some grand house and would certainly be thrashed for her incompetence.
She was either dozing, or more awake than she’d ever been. The house hummed with a new energy. A quick succession of memories began: every time she thoughtlessly paid a lot of money for something unnecessary. Over and over in a loop, her hand dipped into her purse to buy figs, chestnuts, soap, tapestries, gloves, and garnets, and grapes, and geraniums, and garters, and grosgrain, and gold rings, and—
“Enough,” she told herself out loud. “I will be mindful from this moment on.”
The air had a peculiar tightness, and when she propped herself up on her elbows, she thought she heard a sound, perhaps downstairs. In the dark, she whispered, “Something’s happening in the house.”
After donning her robe and slippers (and noticing the fine quality of each item), she went downstairs and saw Victor standing in the open doorway to their father’s study. He was shirtless and holding a candelabra, and there was an iron fire poker leaning on the wall beside him.
Victor had a tattoo on his shoulder, a letter L, almost certainly for Lizzie. When had he gotten it? Didn’t they tell each other everything? Angelika thought of her brother as reedy and slim, but she could see now that he was an adult man, his body the result of roughly ten thousand chin-ups in the laboratory.
Disgusting to admit it, but Lizzie must have been very impressed.
Angelika refocused on the iron poker. “Vic, don’t be rash.”
In a hushed voice, Victor replied, “Shhh. Look, it’s Will.”
He held up the candelabra and they could see Will at the shelves behind their father’s desk. The already-cluttered room looked as if it had been messily searched. There were drawers pulled out of the bureau, and a crate overspilling papers on the floor.
Victor indicated the fire poker. “I came downstairs ready to dash a thief’s brains in. I found him like this. I have been watching for ten minutes, at least.”
Angelika’s heart was beating uncomfortably. It looked very much like her beloved was a nighttime thief. “What is he doing? Why isn’t he turning around?”