Part 7 (1/2)

”Something to delight you!” she said, her face glowing with antic.i.p.ation. ”Tyndall's workshop is so fine, I have been able to construct something that will amaze you when you see it.” She laughed. ”I think I will gift him with it when we leave. He has said so many times how clever he thinks my machines.”

”And they are clever,” I said. I touched the tips of the curls surrounding her face, stiff and unbending with pomade.

She pulled away. ”My maid spends too much time dressing my hair for you to set it in disarray!” she said, but laughed to take the sting from the words.

I had found a staircase leading up from the main hall which had a landing well designed for reading. Always conscious of the necessity of keeping up, I had brought edifying and current works with me. One was The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill, a package of inflammatory claptrap.

Sitting in my refuge, I was about to put it down when I came to a sentence that made me realize that even the falsest text might hold some grain of truth. The sentence read, ”To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.”

I put the book aside but took that sentence with me, considering whether or not it was true. Certainly, every woman's personality was different, but there were commonalities at the heart of them all: a love of gossip, for instance. Concern with trivialities. An attraction to beauty.

Voices from below caught my attention. The stairway's acoustics were such that sounds carried clearly up to this level. It might have been designed for such a thing; I have encountered whispering galleries that bring words across the room as if the speaker stood right there.

It was Desiree and Tyndall.

”I think a more durable metal, laid along the edge, will prevent warpage,” she was saying.

”Your little fairies intrigue me,” he said. ”Where did you find the model?”

”In my head,” she admitted. ”I was reading a newspaper account and it made me wonder what such a creature would look like.”

”You have never glimpsed a fairy in the wild?”

She laughed. ”Or a dragon in the coal cellar? No, I have never been p.r.o.ne to flights of fancy.”

”You think fairies only a romantic notion.”

”I think people would like to believe in them, would like to believe in magic,” she said. ”Even I feel that temptation. But it is at heart a foolish idea.”

”What if I told you I could take you to a place where you could really see them, Desiree?” he purred. ”Told you that true magic is wild beyond your imagining, that it will seize you, take you as though by storm?”

I was shocked that he would address her so familiarly. My gasp was loud enough to betray me.

”Who's there?” Tyndall exclaimed, and came up the stairs swiftly enough that it was as if he feared some intruder. He scowled at the sight of me.

I, on the other hand, was stiff with indignation. He meant to lure my fiancee to some deserted spot under the pretext of seeing fairies. Perhaps the scoundrel meant to compromise her to the point where she would be forced to marry him. Or perhaps he just meant to seduce her. I would have said these things, but Desiree's presence behind him made me keep my tongue.

”Come to lunch, Stone,” he said. ”There is the usual cold pheasant. You have not lost your taste for it yet, I trust?”

”I find myself thinking that we should return to London soon,” I said to Desiree. Let him realize I had overheard his plotted seduction.

”Leave?” Desiree exclaimed. ”But we are in the middle of a project!”

How could she be so foolish? Could she not see what Tyndall was up to? Was it possible she harbored romantic feelings for him? But the expression on her face was not thwarted l.u.s.t. She liked speaking with him, I realized. It was nothing more than that.

Surely it was nothing more than that.

A day later, I overheard another conversation, this time between Desiree and her father. I will not trouble myself to reproduce it here, for much of what Lord Southland said was misguided and wrong. He restated his claim that I was too dull for Desiree and said, absurdly, that she should find a man capable of providing her with intelligent conversation.

I would have interjected, but I had learned my lesson the previous day. Instead, I kept quiet and listened, knowing that Desiree would defend me as she had before.

But her protestations seemed half-hearted. Worse, she seemed to be starting to believe that her father's words held some truth.

”You valued looks yourself,” she said. ”Was it not my mother's beauty that drew you to her?”

”At first, perhaps, but then I was taken by her manners, her bravery,” Lord Southland said.

”Claude may not be brilliant,” she said. ”But he is respectable and well rounded, in the manner of English education. And he has thought a great deal about spiritual matters.”

”Spiritual matters!” her father exclaimed. ”I thought I had brought you up better than to believe in a crutch that supports feeble minds in their mediocrity!”

Had he raised her as an atheist? I was appalled, but I knew I would be able to teach her otherwise, patiently and carefully, as a man must do with his wife.

”I want to believe in something other than science,” she said, and I thrilled at the earnestness in her voice. ”I want to believe in something free and fierce, something that stands outside society.”

Her theology was muddled, but she could learn. Her father's sound of disgust and frustration made me smile.

That evening we stood on the terrace overlooking the sea. I could not resist pressing the issue. ”Desiree, do you think we are well matched in mind?”

She hesitated, taking a breath.

I did not care. I knew I outstripped her, but I could reach down, lift her to new heights of thought, of philosophy. Some hold that the Negro brain is structurally inferior to ours, but Desiree had already proved that she could get her mind around such things as mathematics and mechanics. I would show her theology's wonders, the careful construction of a pa.s.sage explicating G.o.d's glory. We would read Milton together, and other poetry that would elevate her soul.

I decided to search for proof of Tyndall's intentions, for evidence that he was not a man of science, only pretending to be one in order to seduce my gullible bride-to-be. Desiree always thought the best of people. It was up to my more rigorous mind to make sure she was not being too trusting.

A ma.s.sive book lay on the table in Tyndall's study, its pages well thumbed. I turned it to study the spine.

A chill ran through me and I pulled my hand away, as though from a coiled serpent. It was King James's Daemonologie.

Using a handkerchief, I turned it to me and opened it. The words burned up at me: ”This word of Sorcerie is a Latine worde, which is taken from casting of the lot, & therefore he that vseth it, is called Sortiarius a sorte.”

Was Tyndall a sorcerer, then? What unholy designs did he have on Desiree? This was far, far worse than I had imagined.

A cough sounded behind me. I dropped the book and spun round.

Tyndall.

He had the gall to stand there, polite enquiry on his face. ”Some light reading, Stone?” he said.

I pointed at the book. My hand shook with emotion. ”No honest man has such a book in his library! What foul magics do you practice?”

”I have never claimed to be an honest man,” he said dryly.

”Demon!” I hissed.

He shook his head. His tone was still polite, as though we spoke about the proper slicing of a breast of pheasant or the correct garnish for a trout. ”I have been called that before, on my visits to this land,” he said. ”But elf is more accurate.”