Duchess By Night
Page 39

Benjamin was such a passionate man that she had faded into his shadow during their years of marriage. It was only when she wore men’s breeches that she was able to parry and fence with a person like Strange. Normally someone so beautiful would make her tongue-tied. He would look at her with indifference, and she would mumble and walk away.
It was only in breeches and stockings, with her legs exposed for the whole world to see, that she had courage.
A passion…
Beyond a passion for wearing breeches.
The word slid into her mind with the cool sound of steel. If I were allowed to have any passion I wished, Harriet thought, I would have one for the art of the rapier. Jem had started her lessons in order, he said, to give her a weapon, to make her a man.
It worked. She felt powerful with that thin, dangerous blade in hand. She felt like the kind of person who should be listened to. Her blood sang with the beauty of matching her opponent’s swirling movements with her own. It was a complex sort of mathematical thinking that she understood.
She got up and grabbed her rapier again, exhaustion forgotten. Pushing aside the chair so she had a good space, she began to practice the moves he taught her. Attack, parry, feint, thrust. Jem’s voice sounded in her head. The straightest path between two points is with your tip, not the side of your blade. She pretended she had an opponent opposite her, coming in with a swirling keen blade. She practiced her move against him over and over and over again. Watching the silver gleam of his blade, seeing it cut the air, bringing her own up to meet it.
Blocking is a move of last resort. Evade the blade.
She practiced that, over and over, imagining the angle of the blade, the position of the body, jumping to the side so that his invisible rapier slashed through space rather than her body.
By the time she bent over, clutching a stitch in her side, panting, sweat dripping from her brow, the house was deadly quiet. It had to be the middle of the night.
Yet somewhere she could hear—
Could it be a cat calling? It sounded like a cry. Harriet wiped her face and put down her rapier. Her shirt was a bit damp around the collar.
It was extraordinary how different it was to be a man rather than a woman. She never sweated in her woman’s clothes. Now her heart was thumping, and her blood was racing. It made her want to laugh.
Without bothering to pull her boots back on, she opened the door so she could hear the noise more clearly. That was no cat. She started running.
Eugenia, the third floor, the locked door.
Harriet flew up the stairs, came to the huge oak door that barred Eugenia’s wing from the rest of the house.
She could hear her clearly now, little thumps from her fists beating on the door, and calls drowned by sobs.
“Eugenia!” she called. “It’s Harry. What’s the matter?”
There was a rush of words, but she couldn’t understand. So she raised her voice to a shriek. “Is there a fire?”
A little voice said, close to the keyhole. “There’s a fire in my bedchamber.”
“Oh my God,” Harriet said, her head starting to swim. “Where’s the footman? Where is he?”
She heard sobs. “I don’t know where he is. I’ve been hammering for ages and no one came, and it’s cold and dark, and my governess…” She couldn’t hear the rest.
“Is there a lot of smoke?” Harriet asked in her sternest voice.
She only heard sobs and something she couldn’t understand.
“Eugenia, I need you to listen to me. Put your ear to the keyhole. Is there smoke in the corridor?”
Silence. Then: “No.”
“Excellent,” Harriet said, her mind racing. “Now, did you pull the bell cord in your chamber?”
“I forgot,” Eugenia said, her voice catching in a sob. “I was frightened and I ran out of there and I don’t want to go back!”
“I don’t want you to,” Harriet said. “Can you see the fire?”
Eugenia sounded a little puzzled. “Of course not.”
“Then stay right where you are,” Harriet said. “Don’t move. If the fire comes, stay low. I’ll be back in one minute, Eugenia. Will you be all right until then?” She felt the door anxiously. It was chill, without the glow of a fire’s warmth. Surely the blaze wouldn’t swell into the hall immediately. “Eugenia! Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” she said. “But, Harry—”
“Just wait,” Harriet said sharply.
She turned around. She was on the third-floor corridor, and bedchamber doors stretched on either side of her. Without hesitating she pushed open the door closest to her, and felt for the bell cord. She couldn’t find it so she ran to the windows and threw open the drapes.
She heard a confused murmur from the bed but didn’t even glance that way, just ran back to the door. She could see the cord in the light cast by the moon. It was on the opposite side of the door from where she thought. She rang it, rang again, rang a third time, as hard as she could.
“What’s this all about?” came a male voice from the bed.
She looked over to find a man who looked like a walrus with a nightcap on. “Fire in the west wing, sir,” she said, hauled on the rope again and ran out into the corridor and back to the door. “All right, Eugenia?” she said, steadying her voice.
“I don’t like it here,” Eugenia said, and the sob in her voice made Harriet’s heart stop. “It’s dark and I’m all alone.”
“I’ll kill your father,” Harriet said between her teeth.
“I want Papa,” Eugenia said, starting to cry again. “I want Papa!”
There was no key. Of course, there wouldn’t be a key since Jem wanted to make sure that degenerates didn’t find their way into the west wing.
“Isn’t your father’s bedchamber in the west wing as well?” Harriet asked.
“He’s not he-here,” Eugenia hiccupped. “I went to his room and he’s not here.”
Harriet ran to the top of the stairs and looked frantically down the long flight of steps.
“Don’t go!” Eugenia called. “Don’t go anywhere, Harry. Please don’t go.”
“I won’t,” she said, putting her hand on the thick wood as if she could caress Eugenia’s face through it. “I promise I won’t go anywhere.”
“Sing me a song,” Eugenia said.
Harriet thought madly.
“Do you know any songs? My papa doesn’t know a single song. He says it’s because he’s a man.”
“Well, I know some,” Harriet said. But her mind was blank and all she could think of was the smell of smoke. She knew nothing about children’s songs. Finally she thought of one song that her music instructor had drummed into her head, years ago when she was about to make her debut and expected to perform.
“Drink to me only with thine eyes,” she sang, “And I will pledge with mine.”
“What does that mean?” came a sharp little voice. But it sounded less frightened.
“It means that the singer admires the eyes of his beloved, the person he loves.”
“Oh. Do you know any other songs?”
“No.”
“All right, then.”