The girl didn’t answer. Only stared down at the carpet with her arms crossed, hands covering the exposed skin between her long white gloves and capped sleeves.
“Our Priscilla’s quite the sight, isn’t she?” Lila Jamesson leaned close, pressing a shoulder against mine as she whispered. “You know, I’ve often wondered why her mother bothers sending all those marvelous clothes, when they shall only become stained with blood.” Raising her voice, Lila called out, “Evening, Priscilla, lovely gown. New, is it?”
Priscilla didn’t speak and gave no indication that she’d heard Lila’s snide tone.
I felt my smile fading, but forced it back into place as the girl looked at me.
Priscilla Rittenhouse’s cheeks, forehead, even her exposed chest, were pitted with deep acne scars. One side of her mouth sneered up, tugged by a dreadful scar that zagged from her upper lip across her cheek and into her hairline. Another scar sliced down the opposite side from her temple to just below her cheekbone.
The girl’s hands dropped to her sides as she fidgeted with her gown, and I bit back a moan.
In the few inches of visible skin, dozens of sets of parallel scars ranged up both arms. I tried to count, but there were so many. Priscilla noticed my regard and her close-set eyes narrowed. Whipping about, she snatched a matching wrap from the maid’s arm and stomped past to the dining room.
“Did that to her face when she was fourteen.” Lila didn’t bother to whisper this time. “You see, her parents come from two of the great Philadelphia families. Her mother was—?and still is, actually—?a celebrated beauty who married the handsomest boy in Pennsylvania. Everyone claimed that any child they produced was bound to be the most beautiful creature imaginable.” Lila pivoted toward where Priscilla waited near the long dining table, picking at her arms. “You can imagine their disappointment.”
“I’m here, I’m here,” called a woman dressed in mossy green and dripping with diamonds as she rushed from the short hallway that led to the private bedrooms. I stood, but before I could blink, she was reaching for my hands, squeezing them between her own. “A new girl!” She smiled and nodded so effusively, a few strands of mousy hair escaped from the pearl-covered snood. “Oh, how marvelous! It is so wonderful to see a new face, and you have not even met them yet, have you? Oh, what jolly fun.”
Lila Jamesson groaned.
Releasing me from her clammy grip, the woman reached into a beaded handbag and brought out a photograph. She thrust the thick paper at me, leaving me no choice but to take it.
“Aren’t they beautiful? I simply cannot wait to finish up my holiday so that I may be with them again. I do hope they haven’t been troubling the new nanny.” She giggled, the sound manic and eerie. “Especially my Lionel. He is such a scamp.” Her fingernail tap, tap, tapped the photo in my hands. “Look. Look. Doesn’t he have his father’s eyes?”
I refocused on the sepia tones. Her children ranged from a boy of about ten to an infant in a frilly white gown, cradled in the seated father’s arms. It looked much like every other Victorian photo I’d seen. A girl in a huge hair bow and a toddler in short pants. Then I looked closer, and a chill started creeping up my legs.
“Quite so, quite so,” the mother was saying. “Nan acts the little mother to the younger ones. And Billy . . . well, he looks so much like my side of the family. The baby is teething, which can be such a trial, but . . .”
As she babbled on about how the new nanny had been a bit difficult, the back of my throat began to ache. I swallowed, forcing myself to take a closer look at the picture.
The woman’s face was slightly blurred. Only hers. The rest of her family—?every last one of them—?was absolutely, perfectly clear.
Victorian photographs took a long time. Each exposure was nearly a minute long. There was nearly always some blurring, caused by even the tiniest of movements. Children especially had a difficult time holding still. These children had not moved a muscle. They hadn’t moved, because they couldn’t. Every one in this photo, except for the woman standing before me now, was dead.
“It was the new nanny.” Lila’s whisper brushed across the back of my neck, making me shiver. “Amelia’s husband got the girl in trouble. A fairly common occurrence, of course, and generally handled with a letter of reference and a tidy sum. But the girl got angry. When Mortimer Langdon refused to acknowledge the child, the girl took a jar of arsenic and poisoned the lot of them. Even the servants. She then stabbed herself in the stomach and bled out right there at the dinner table, seated in Amelia’s place and wearing one of her gowns. When poor Amelia came home the next morning from visiting her sister, she found them there.”
I nodded, but it was all I could do to keep from curling up in a tight ball right then and there. I wanted to lie down and cry myself to sleep.
“Immediately after the photographer left,” said Lila—?and I heard actual emotion in her husky voice—?“Amelia locked up the house. She refused to let anyone inside. She stayed there for days, with her family rotting around her, until her sister had the authorities break in. When they found her, she . . .” Lila’s breath hitched. “She was trying to nurse the baby. By the time her sister had her brought here, her mind had snapped.”
Amelia Langdon hugged the photo to her chest, eyes closed as she whispered, “I must remember to buy Lionel a new pair of shoes. He grows out of them so quickly.”
She wandered off, muttering to herself, and I turned to Lila. “I—?I don’t even . . .”
“Yes,” she said, all flippancy gone from her voice. “I know.”
The nurse clapped her hands, startling me. “Maggie, you slattern. Take Miss Randolph to her room at once, and help her dress. We don’t want to delay dinner, now do we ladies?”
Over at the mirror, Priscilla was mumbling to herself. “Ugly, ugly, ugly.”
“Oh Lord.” Lila rolled her eyes. “She’s doing it again, Nurse.”
The nurse shot Lila a look and led Pricilla away from the looking glass.
“She’ll be next to go under the knife. Unless . . .” Lila peered deep into my eyes, her gaze keen as she asked, “What did you do?”
Chapter 27
AFTER THE MAID STRIPPED AND STUFFED ME, unceremoniously, into an ocher gown that smelled of its former owner’s rose perfume, I sat to a formal dinner with the rest of my little group.
Seven courses, served on bone-thin china by two uniformed footmen, as if we were visiting some great estate. Consommé, followed by cold lobster salad with bitter greens. A roasted game bird called a plover. Roast beef in mushroom sauce. Potatoes and carrots and buttered peas. Two kinds of pillowy rolls. All of it interspersed with tart sherbet served in tiny frosted bowls.