Thirteen

Colette, in a borrowed caftan, tiptoed through the sleeping palace. At every turn, she expected a powerful eunuch to catch her. Yet the palace was strangely unguarded and she crept about unimpeded. At last, she came to a lovely garden at the very heart of the palace. A large white moon lit up the fruit trees and lush flowers. Their sweet scents drifted on the warm air.

Enormous carved doors painted in gold stood at all the corners of the garden. She pivoted, unsure what waited behind each one. A secret box, an angry soldier, or the sultan enjoying his concubines?

A tree ruffled, a bird flew away, and out of the shadows appeared the sultan. The moon’s light glinted on his sword. Colette cried out. In a graceful motion, like a leaping panther, his hand was on her mouth and his powerful chest against her back.

“Don’t awaken the palace,” he growled. “Come to find the secret box, have you? Do you truly think it will set you free?”

He released her and spun her around to look at him. The pale moonlight softened his brutish features. His eyes glowed through the darkness.

“How did you know I was coming for the box?”

“My spies told me. I called off my guards and had the tigers caged for the evening. Then I waited.”

He strode to a door framed by lemon trees. From within his sash he produced a key and opened the door to reveal a tiny room holding a red and gold painted table on which rested an unadorned wooden box.

He gestured with his sword. “Open it. You, the lover of secrets. Let me not stop you.”

She hesitated. What game was this?

He laughed, low and rich, as he approached her. “Ah, but you fear the power of secrets now. What waits in this box you will never forget. What good is your free body if your heart and mind are forever enslaved by this secret?”

Colette’s gaze lit on the sultan and then the garden’s entrance.

“What will you find if you run from me?” He caressed her cheek. “Will you go home only to learn that it has been destroyed by another evil man who desires the secret to your Greek Fire? Where will you find safety? Where will you find freedom? Perhaps it is in the box. Open it and see what you find.”

His lips brushed hers. Tender and warm. She cried out in anguish. How could the man she hated most in the world entrance her heart? Colette turned and ran away, tears streaming from her eyes. She refused to see his box even as he called to her. “Open it. Please.”

* * *

Unable to shake her giddiness, Lilith arrived in the hall outside the dining room, all blushing and nervous. Luckily, she fit right in with all the other nervous and blushing young ladies. George and Penelope were concealed behind a cluster of people. The matrons circled Lady Marylewick, her bell-like laugh ringing above the chatter as she basked in the toad-eating.

Beatrice hung about the corner. The bodice of her pale pink gown gaped on her thin frame. She clutched her little notebook, appearing quite distraught. Lilith debated going to her, afraid she would get a cold shoulder. But then Fenmore managed to catch Lilith’s eye for a small moment, which he took as an invitation, and started swaggering toward her. She quickly zipped across the room to Beatrice.

“My dear, you seem upset,” Lilith said, taking her arm.

Her sister was so distraught that she forgot she held a grudge against Lilith. “The ice cream isn’t thickening. I told Cook to add more salt to the ice to lower the freezing point. She only huffed and told me to see to the dining room.”

Lilith jumped at the chance to worm her way into her sister’s affections. “But look at all you’ve done. It’s wonderful. You should feel proud.” She gestured to the dining room table set with china and gleaming silver. The servants were placing the last of the platters in a precise pattern around the candles and flower arrangements. “Don’t allow yourself to be upset by one small detail.”

“Good God, are we all waiting to go in by precedence?” Lord Charles appeared at Lilith’s side with several other gentlemen in tow. “I hope Marylewick, old boy, has consulted his handbook. I can never remember if I’m to enter before or after the Bishop of London.”

“You have precedence over the Bishop of London,” said Beatrice, taking him seriously. “But he is not here, of course.”

Lilith stepped in to shield Beatrice from one of Charles’s satirical remarks. “My sister has a brilliant mind. I’m quite envious. While I would wrack my poor brain trying to determine the precedence of a cousin of the queen’s lady-in-waiting, who happens to be the widow of a Scottish lord, Beatrice remembers all. Her mind is like a camera.”

Several of the gentlemen in the group turned their attention to Lilith’s young sister. “How fascinating,” they uttered, or “What a jolly fine talent.” Beatrice’s blush warmed Lilith’s heart.

Across the room, the sea of men surrounding George parted. Lilith’s breath left her body in a low rush. The rest of the room washed away, like rain on a chalk drawing. Everything was him standing there in his elegant evening clothes. The low chandelier cast shadows on the slight hollows beneath his chiseled cheekbones and along the lines running on either side of his generous mouth. And those lips, so soft against the hard contours of his face. So soft against her skin. Without thinking, she touched the spot he had kissed. He lifted his brow, his gaze finding hers. She thought her knees might stop working, along with her lungs. Meanwhile her heart thundered away.

I’m truly falling in love.

And with the sultan.

This can’t be happening. Make it stop. He’s the villain.

There must be a way to shut it off. A valve somewhere.

George offered his arm to a fashionable, elderly lady and led her into the dining room, followed by his mother and Lord Charles’s father.

“And we are off,” Lord Charles declared as if they were at the races. “Do you think a lowly third son of a duke and a Dahlgren will be seated near each other? Will that cluster too much dazzling conversation in one spot?”

“I believe Dahlgrens are seated in the scullery,” she replied, her mind hardly in the conversation.

He laughed. “If I fall in love with you, it’s your own fault.”

The word “love” jarred her. “I think we’ve touched on the issue of impertinent behavior, Lord Charles.”

“Good heavens, I seem to have forgotten,” he replied. “Will you remind me at dinner while I ignore everyone else and gaze at you like a spoony moonling?”

* * *

Lilith ended up seated near George’s end of the table. Lady Marylewick presided over the other end where Penelope sat beside her husband.

Penelope glanced down at Lilith, a desperate look in her eye akin to a person drowning. Lilith made a discreet nod to her dinner partner, the gentleman formerly in the blue plaid waistcoat, whom Lilith had decided was the most handsome naked one. Penelope stifled a giggle.

Charles, sitting across from Lilith, did not miss the exchange. Amusement gleamed in his eyes.

“Mr. Fitzgerald, may I introduce Miss Dahlgren,” he said. “Mr. Fitzgerald is a Tory MP and fond of cricket. Do you remember our games at Oxford, old boy?”

It soon became apparent that the winner of the naked contest was so fond of cricket that the subject formed the whole of his conversation. Lilith smiled and played along while Lord Charles, delighting in her misery, further goaded the man. “Tell me, Mr. Fitzgerald, do you believe yourself a stronger bowler or batsman?”

At the head of the table, the conversation wasn’t faring much better. George asked how the weather was for everyone’s journey.

Lady Cornelia, who, Lilith noted, was ravishing in blue silk, answered, “It was sunny in Harlow when we left, but when we reached London it started to rain a little.” She blushed as if she had revealed some deep personal secret.

Lord Harrowsby bellowed, “It was damp and miserable in Melworte as always. I say, does this soup have a cream base? I’ll be up all night with indigestion.”

“Ah, it was all drizzle, drizzle, endless drizzle in London,” waxed Lord Charles, displaying his feelings on the trite conversation. “The spirit-dulling type of precipitation that neither lets you bask in the glory of the sun nor wallow in the delight of a miserable drenching.”

Lady Cornelia tilted her head, “I didn’t mind the drizzle. In fact, I hardly noticed it. I bought the new McAllister’s Magazine in the station.”

Lilith’s fingers tightened around her fork that was deep in a pile of peas.

“Ah, I missed it by a day.” George shook his head. “And it is too late to send a footman down to the village.”

George read McAllister’s Magazine! Lilith’s heart thudded like a carriage wheel hitting a pothole.

Dear Lord! Just look down at the peas. Think about peas. So green and—what if he read the story!

“I can lend you my copy,” Lady Cornelia continued. “I have read what I wanted from it.”

“And what was that?” George leaned closer to her.

Lilith wanted to leap up and cry Let’s stop this conversation right now. Back to the weather. It was rather cloudy here today. Isn’t that fascinating?

Lady Cornelia blushed even more prettily. “Colette and the Sultan.”

A slow smile curled George’s handsome mouth. “My favorite as well.”

God of all that’s good on this earth! A huge, invisible foot swung down and slammed Lilith in the chest. Keep smiling. Appear as if nothing is amiss.

Lady Cornelia gushed as though she had found her soulmate. She said something, all breathy and flustered, but Lilith couldn’t hear it for the roar in her ears. It was something about “Colette sees into my heart and says the words I would say, thinks what I would think.”

“I agree,” replied George. “Most female characters lapse into boring, moralistic prose. They are far too good to exist. But Colette,” he paused to think, “you feel her. Her emotions are palpable as she struggles for…I suppose humanity, compassion in a merciless, meaningless world?”

Lilith took a large, impolite gulp of her wine. The villain of her existence, the sultan himself, had cut open her heart with a few brief words.

“What is your opinion, Miss Dahlgren?” asked Charles. “Surely you have read the outstanding work. Is Colette seeking humanity in a merciless, meaningless world?”

How not to look guilty?

“I’ve read a few pages,” she said in a breezy manner, setting down her glass. “I found it sensational claptrap. Hardly literature.” She gave a false laugh that sounded very much like George’s mother’s. “So, Mr. Fitzgerald, when did you first start playing crick—”

“Sensational claptrap?” cried Charles. “Hardly literature? Sorry if I must rudely reference my university degree in the classics to differ with Miss Dahlgren.”

“How odd that you feel that way, Miss Dahlgren,” commented George. “I thought you would have enjoyed it. Especially the villain.”

“The villain!” Lilith almost choked on her wine. “Why?”

“He is such a fascinating character. Obsessed and driven like Macbeth. She is all that he fears, all that he isn’t, but he can only destroy her. As long as she exists, she gives voice to his own demons. A fine study of evil.”

Lilith had no words to say to the man looking right at her, unguarded and happy, no idea that he was the fine study of evil. All she knew was how much she despised herself.

“Good God, Lord Marylewick,” exclaimed Charles. “I never knew you possessed such profundity in that pragmatic, plodding mind of yours.”

George’s brow hiked a fraction, registering the subtle insult. Lilith could see the muscles of his jaw work, but he remained silent as Lord Charles gloated, so amused with himself. In that flash, Lilith saw the torment George had suffered as a boy at Lord Charles’s hand. She had seen it at every school, the child who delighted in the misery of others, singling out the most vulnerable and sensitive.

How in her blindness and anger had she made a villain out of a boy bullied by his father and peers?

Dear God, get me through dessert without falling apart.

“I just find the sultan very scary,” said Lady Cornelia. “Whenever he is on the page, ooh”—she shivered—“my skin crawls. But I can’t stop reading.”

“You are all so young,” Lord Harrowsby bellowed. “Colette desired the sultan from the very beginning. He’s not evil but represents her repressed yearning. She doesn’t fear him but her own amoral longings. Women are chock full of amoral longings. If he kills her, which she also secretly desires, she will finally find relief from her darker nature. Good heavens, my lamb is stuffed with garlic. I must pick it all out.”

Of course Lord Harrowsby’s voice had boomed across the long table. Guests turned their heads, no doubt wondering about a conversation that included the words “desires,” “repressed yearning,” and “amoral longings.”

Lord Charles explained, “We are discussing the literary masterpiece Colette and the Sultan.”

The words blew up like fire on a haystack. Soon the entire table was ablaze with conversation about Lilith’s work. The next two hours were akin to having her skin carved off, inch by inch, as she smiled.

And the most heart-wrenching part was how happy George looked, how enthusiastically he jumped into the conversation. A few weeks ago, this would have been a divine joke to share with Frances and Edgar. Ha ha, my darlings, Georgie adores Colette and the Sultan and the starchy fool doesn’t even realize he is the villain.

Now the malicious joke was on her.

He wasn’t the villain. She was. A deceiving, cold-hearted villainess.

“You are quiet, Miss Dahlgren,” Lord Charles said. “Are you well?”

“Perfectly,” she lied through her smile.

* * *

After the ladies left for the drawing room, George motioned to the footmen to pour the port. During the dinner, his spirits had been lightened by the conversation, but now, with the ladies gone, dull despondency sank in. His gaze kept drifting to the seat Lilith had vacated.

He needed to stop thinking about her.

The ravishing Lady Cornelia adored Colette and the Sultan. She would make an excellent marchioness. He needed to transfer his thoughts and, if possible, his desires from Lilith to her. But even now when he should subtly guide the masculine conversation to politics, all he could think of was meeting Lilith in the attic. What magic did some childish, rubbish paintings possess to transform unruly Lilith into a docile, gracious, lovely, and—well—perfect lady?

Lord Harrowsby had begun a boorish diatribe on the dangers of port to the body, and George gently tried to steer the conversation away from liver ailments. “Now that we can’t impose on the ladies with our dull conversation, I should like to hear your impressions of Lord Freddie’s speech in Parliament.”

“George, my dear boy,” said Lord Charles, easing back in his chair. “For a moment at dinner I thought you could be saved, that underneath that stoic, implacable facade beat a lustful heart. But alas, no more talk of Colette, villains, and love but dull tariffs, taxes, and budgetary items.”

“We are in debt from war after war,” George replied. “This country cannot run its empire on fiction and your wit.”

“Ah, but we cannot know, for I’ve never tried to run Britain on my wit. Shall I give it a go for the sake of experimentation?”

“We have only just arrived, let us relax,” the Duke of Cliven said. “I haven’t read this Colette and Sultan story. It sounds like a fine tale and Colette a jolly girl.”

“Father, I must disagree. She is hardly a jolly girl but rather my ideal of womanhood. I shall endeavor to marry her.”

“You may have an issue with her fictionality,” quipped George.

“Ah, I do, I do,” cried Charles. “But I shall come as close to the ideal as possible. Come, gentlemen, is not Colette the ideal woman? Are we not all sultans trying to capture a version of her for ourselves?”

The men rumbled in consent.

“Then let us play a little game called Who is Colette, or the Ideal of Womanhood.” Charles rose and began to amble around the table. “Here are the rules: When we join the ladies, let’s beg the fair and kind Lady Cornelia to lend us her copy of McAllister’s Magazine. Each young lady shall read aloud from the story, and based upon her poise, elocution, and grace, each of us bachelors shall secretly decide which young lady embodies our Colette.”

“A fine game, indeed,” slurred Fenmore, already inebriated.

“I believe we are playing whist this evening,” George said, keeping his rage tamped down. The young ladies in his house were not there to be judged and compared like Drury Lane tarts.

“Whist?” Lord Charles echoed. “Oh dear, I didn’t bring my spare pennies.” He leaned against the chimney-piece. “Lord Marylewick, you adore Colette. Would you not be curious to hear her read from the mouths of your fair guests? Would you not want to choose the closest to your ideal?”

“If Colette is your idea of an ideal woman,” George said, “it is because she was written by a man. Ellis Belfort is catering to a man’s desires because he knows them so well.”

“My foot Ellis Belfort is a man,” said Lord Harrowsby. “A man couldn’t write Colette. A man can only write about emotions for three sentences before distracting himself with a Grendel or one-eyed Cyclops.”

“Let the ladies read,” said the duke in that resolute tone that brooked no dissent. “Let them display their talents and beauty while they are still young. We can speak of politics another night. Tell us more of this game, my son.”

* * *

After the dinner torture mercifully ended, Lilith followed the ladies to the drawing room. At this point, she just had to live long enough to show George his paintings in the attic, then she could crawl into a dark corner like a wounded animal and die of a lethal combination of guilt, mortification, and regret.

Several of the young ladies tried to continue the Colette and the Sultan discussion, but bless the selfish Lady Marylewick. She would have no subject that wasn’t about her. Holding court on a sofa, she lectured as to how ladies in her day were more gracious and better bred than today’s ladies. The toad-eating matrons all murmured their disapproval of precocious modern ladies and their shameful divorcing and demanding-the-right-to-vote ways. The young ladies all assured her ladyship that they were of the simpering, submissive, old-fashioned variety of lady.

Across the room, on a matching sofa, Lilith sat in between Penelope and Beatrice. Lilith could feel Penelope stiffen, as if her mother’s words were little knives thrown at her. Old-fashioned and simpering be damned, Lilith thought, and flagged a footman to ask for a glass of sherry. Someone had to be an example of the evil modern woman. Penelope added a quiet “one for me also, please” to Lilith’s request.

Lady Marylewick was deep in her lecture when her son opened the door and strode in with the other gentlemen guests behind him. Lilith didn’t notice the others because George took over her entire mind. How had he managed to become even more handsome in the last forty-five minutes or so?

Stop thinking about George after you’ve made him the villain! After you’ve seen the beautiful art he made before it was beaten and bullied out of him. The throbbing stopped in her privates only to re-emerge in her heart.

George cleared his throat, and even that made Lilith’s skin tingle with pleasure. Every tiny aspect of him now excited her. “Given our discussion of Colette and the Sultan, we have made a change to this evening’s entertainment.”

Lilith’s belly tightened with dread.

“Lady Cornelia, may we trouble you for your copy of McAllister’s Magazine?” Lord Charles asked.

“Of course.” Lady Cornelia blushed prettily. Did she blush every time she spoke? “I left it on the writing desk.”

“Thank you.” George did no more than nod his head at a footman and the man shot off to retrieve the journal. “It has been suggested that each of the young ladies should read a page of the story.”

Dear God!

If Lilith died at that moment and her soul descended into the fiery flames of hell, at least she could take comfort that she was no longer at Tyburn.

“What a wonderful suggestion,” cried Lady Marylewick. “I was just saying how elocution and poise were so important when I was a young lady.”

“Then let us make a little stage beside the fireplace.” Lord Charles waved to another footman. “Push together the columns holding potted plants to arrange a backdrop of greenery.”

“I believe the ladies may be more comfortable sitting,” said George.

“But this is more theatrical,” said Lord Charles, overriding the marquess in his own home. He shifted candlesticks on the mantel. “It is like a sultan’s palace, you see.”

“And now we can best view the elocution and poise,” slurred Fenmore.

Lilith felt Penelope tense. She wished she could come up with something to say that would offer solace, but Lilith’s head was a rush of dizzy panic. The most she could discreetly do was hold Penelope’s hand beneath the folds of their gowns, as if they were two women comforting each other on a sinking ship.

A servant came running with the journal.

“Lady Cornelia, if you will be so kind as to read a page.” Lord Charles gestured to the stage.

With a shy, blushing smile, Lady Cornelia crossed to the ferns and accepted the magazine. Lilith peeked at George, who rubbed his chin, enraptured, as he watched Lady Cornelia read. Lilith wanted to yank the pages away from Lady Cornelia’s pretty hands. Stop. Those aren’t your words. You have no idea what you are reading.

Why didn’t Lilith just cut out her guilty heart for the evening’s entertainment and have each young lady grind it under the heel of her dainty slipper?

One by one the ladies read. Lady Marylewick gave each a vivacious undercut in the guise of a gracious compliment.

“Now I believe it is Miss Dahlgren’s turn,” declared Lord Charles.

The room swam in Lilith’s vision as if she were drunk. Did she look guilty? Could everyone tell she had written the story? Could she make toppling a candle and setting the curtains on fire appear accidental? She struggled to sound casual. “I said at dinner that I think the story is mere sensational claptrap. It would be disingenuous of me to read.”

“Ah, but every young lady is reading,” Lord Charles replied.

Lilith feared she would be pressing her luck if she declined again. If it was guessed that she was the author, George would be humiliated at his own house party.

It took all her strength to walk to the makeshift stage instead of running away. Lord Charles gave her the magazine and she glanced at the page. Colette had stabbed the sultan and now hid in a small cave formed by a fallen tree. This was the chapter she had written the night she and George had kissed. Lilith’s throat burned. She glanced at the audience. Their faces seemed to fade into the furniture and walls; all she could see was George, his face, his eyes alight with anticipation. She had never felt more ashamed in her life.

“Miss Dahlgren,” Lord Charles prompted.

Lilith wasn’t sure if a sound would come out when she opened her mouth. But despite the breaking apart inside, the words flowed like silk from her lips. She readily knew their shape and tempo.

“Colette submitted to his kiss as her fingers patted about the ground until she found what she desired: the ivory handle of his sword. ‘You heartless, vicious hobgoblin of a man. You are all that is evil and cruel. I will never give my secret to such a m-malicious t-tormenter.’” Lilith couldn’t continue. Not with George’s gaze heating her skin, unaware that each hateful word was about him.

“I’m afraid this is still sensational claptrap in my mind.” She affected a breezy laugh. “What serious author writes ‘you heartless, vicious hobgoblin of a man. You are all that is evil and cruel’?” What detestable, ignorant, horrible author writes that?

“But you must read an entire page,” insisted Lord Charles.

Lilith could feel the tears coming. Her game was over. She had to prepare herself for the ramifications. She would plead on her knees to George for forgiveness. She would—

“No, she mustn’t,” said George in a low, grinding voice that dared anyone to refute him. “If she doesn’t want to read, it is her decision. Thank you, Miss Dahlgren.”

Her villain had saved her. Could she feel any lower?

Lilith returned the magazine to Lord Charles. By some miracle she made the short distance back to her seat without her quaking legs giving out.

“Lady Cornelia, would you be so kind as to finish?” Lord Charles said. “We have run out of young ladies and I am on tenterhooks to know what happens.”

“You have not asked my ward, Miss Maryle,” pointed out George.

Beatrice jerked her head from where she was studying the crystals hanging from a wall sconce, refracting the light. “Pardon?”

“I humbly beseech your forgiveness, my fair lady.” Lord Charles performed a dramatic, hair-flinging bow before Beatrice.“Please do us the great honor of hearing you read from Colette and the Sultan.”

Lilith’s sister hurried onto the stage, her thin neck bright red. Clutching the pages, she began to read in a fast monotone while swaying on her feet. Then she abruptly stopped. “Wait. Is Colette running away with the formula to Greek Fire?”

“Yes,” Lord Charles replied. “Her father rediscovered its vile components and Colette, because she assisted her father, knows the dark secret. She doesn’t want the secret of Greek Fire to be released into the world.”

“Everyone knows it’s resin and sulfur.” Beatrice shook her head. “Is the sultan an idiot?”

“It’s a work of fiction,” Charles explained. “You must allow yourself the luxury of pretending.”

Beatrice’s brows furrowed. “But why is Colette running if she knows how to make Greek Fire and the sultan doesn’t? What a puddinghead!” She thrust the journal at Lord Charles, her sensibilities clearly offended. “Here, you read it, since you adore it so much.”

Lord Harrowsby said in a loud whisper, “If I were a young whippersnapper, Miss Maryle would be my ideal.”