A Curious Beginning

“And who is responsible for engaging the governess? No doubt Lady Cordelia. Who runs the household? Manages the servants? Supervises the children’s education? Settles the accounts? Lady Cordelia. I think his lordship takes wretched advantage of her generosity.”


Stoker threw his head back and laughed. “If you believe that, you don’t know Lady Cordelia. Believe me, if she wanted things to be different, they would be. Yes, she is responsible for everything of significance that happens here at the Folly as well as at their Cornish estate. As you say, she supervises the children, the households, the accounts, and I daresay even Lord Rosemorran himself. But it suits her.”

I gave a snort of derision. “Believe it if it consoles you. I still say she is thwarted in her true ambitions.”

“And what are they?”

“I don’t know yet. I only know she doesn’t bore me as much as other ladies of my acquaintance.”

He gave me a thoughtful look. “You are making a friend there.”

“Perhaps. It is something of a relief to find another woman of intelligence and sound common sense. I have not met many, I can assure you.”

“For which you blame my gender,” he finished.

“Who else? It is men who have kept women downtrodden and poorly educated, so burdened by domesticity and babies they can scarcely raise their heads. You put us on pedestals and wrap us in cotton wool, cluck over us as being too precious and too fragile for any real labor of the mind, yet where is the concern for the Yorkshire woman working herself into an early grave in a coal mine? The factory girl who chokes herself to an untimely death on bad air? The wife so worn by repeated childbearing that she is dead at thirty? No, my dear Stoker, your sex has held the reins of power for too long. And I daresay you will not turn them loose without a fight.”

He raised his hands. “Not from me. I say liberate the women and let them go out and earn wages and write laws and have the vote. They cannot do worse than their lords and masters.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You are not joking.”

“No, I am not. I have known enough of women to understand they are as duplicitous and vicious as men. If they are capable of being our equals in malice, why not in our better qualities as well? There are no masculine virtues, Veronica. And none sacred to women either. We are all of us just people, and most badly flawed ones at that.”

“Yes, some of us are suspiciously lacking in virtue,” I said with a significant look. “For example, I believe the maid, Sidonie, would like very much to misbehave with you.”

He mumbled a reply to the effect that I was daft, and I raised a brow at him. “Surely you are not so unaware of your effect upon the girl. She stares like a moonstruck calf whenever you are near. Even Lady Cordelia made mention of it.”

“I might have noticed,” he said grudgingly.

It occurred to me then that Stoker’s raffish appearance—the pierced lobe, the unruly locks, the glowering expressions—were not merely expressions of his own tastes and values; they might well be a sort of protective coloration, taken on to shield himself from the predation of voracious ladies. Of course, they would also serve to attract an entirely different sort of woman, the kind not easily put off by a little handsome savagery. For those of us who liked our men well roughened, his appearance was the fulfillment of a lifetime’s dreaming of pirates and ne’er-do- well rogues. I might have enlightened him on the devastating effect of going about looking like a highwayman, but the risk he might scrub himself up to look like a parson was too horrifying to contemplate.

“Lucky for you that Lady Cordelia seems to have the girl firmly in hand. She is a good friend to you. I am rather surprised she doesn’t harbor a tendresse for you herself.”

“Our relationship is not like that,” he said firmly. “Lady Cordelia is only, has ever only been, a friend.”

“She is very attractive,” I mused. “And you have your own charms. I am surprised the two of you have never even had a passing dalliance, a moment of . . . something.”

He hesitated, then sat forward, glancing about again to make certain we were not overheard. “Lady Cordelia is everything I admire in a lady. She is kind and patient and endlessly selfless. But while I admire her virtues, I cannot help that they leave me cold. Give me a flawed woman with warm blood in her veins instead of ice water any day.”

For a moment his gaze lingered upon me, intense and full of unspoken meaning. But he turned quickly away to examine a bit of Egyptian enamelware someone had left lying around. “But why has she never pursued you? I mean, you are entirely disreputable in appearance, but you are from a good family. You are an Honourable. That is not too far down for an earl’s daughter to lower herself if she has a mind.”

“We are friends, and that is all we shall ever be,” he repeated firmly.

He fell silent again, and I might have returned to my book, but I did not.