Five

Lilith didn’t speak to George for the remainder of the walk to Half Moon Street. She turned over all that had occurred, as if by mental force she might make it unhappen. Frances and Edgar, whom she loved and trusted, had deserted her. Her heart hurt as it had when her mother explained that Lilith couldn’t stay with her any longer because Mama had a new family. Lilith had told George that people changed from when they were twelve, because she wanted to mock him. But inside she still felt like a scared child, only now she was better at concealing her fears and hurt.

At home—or what once was her home—the wagon was gone from the door and the neighbors had returned to their houses. All the large pieces of furniture had been restored, but the candlesticks, silver, gewgaws, and Edgar’s own paintings were missing. No laughter or energy infused the house. The rooms were like cold corpses.

“I had told my groom to return in two hours,” George said. “We have but a few minutes left. I shall have your personal items fetched in the morning. Can I assist you in packing anything you need for this evening?”

“No!”

He raised a brow at the violence of her reply.

She couldn’t allow him in her room with all her beloved books and personal possessions, including the portfolio containing the vile words she had scribed about him. She couldn’t let him see her. The real her. “I, um, need to pack for my feminine ailment.”

“Ailment? Are you ill? Shall I take you to a physician?”

Was the man that obtuse?

“My monthly feminine ailment.”

“Oh.” That properly scared him. His face and neck turned scarlet. “Oh,” he said again. He backed toward the door. “I had no idea—I mean, not that I should have known.” His skin tone continued to creep across the red color spectrum. “I’ll…I’ll wait outside.” He hurried away.

She slowly mounted the stairs. In her chamber, her belongings were back in their proper places, neater than she had left them this morning. Soon they would be packed up again. Another hope dashed and another unknown future looming. She had loved living here. She’d had so much hope that she had finally broken from her past.

She sank into her desk chair, hung her head in her hands, and broke into tears. For tonight, she would go to George’s home. She could sort out her life in the morning and make her escape. She just didn’t have the strength at the moment.

She wept until she heard the carriage draw up and George’s rich voice booming her name and carrying on about needing to attend Parliament. She drew her portmanteau from her trunk—the one that had been with her through four different boarding schools, two finishing schools, and across the channel last summer with Frances and Edgar. She nestled her locked portfolio and Keats’s poems inside. With tear-blurred vision, she pulled two gowns, three chemises, fresh pantalets, and stockings from her clothes press. She folded them together and placed them on top of the book. Then she added her toothbrush, paste, hairbrush, and a tin of hairpins. Despite what George thought, she required very little. She could hear him pacing about below, no doubt growing impatient. She had far exceeded her allocated fifteen-minute appointment.

At her door, she turned back and gazed once more at the chamber where she had spent so many beautiful hours lost in the imaginary world of Colette and Sultan Murada. She whispered the final lines of Tennyson’s poem Break, Break, Break. “‘But the tender grace of a day that is dead / Will never come back to me.’”

* * *

Lilith adored walking about the city, rubbing elbows with its inhabitants. The rush of the metropolis exhilarated her. She delighted in mounting the top of the omnibus and gazing up at the buildings as the cumbersome vehicle lumbered through the streets. However, George wheeled about London in a lonely bubble of glass and luxury. Being inside it made her feel even sadder, as if she had been plucked from her colorful life and put in a sealed, hermetic bottle.

As she gazed out the window, her eyes burning and head aching from lack of sleep, her thoughts tangled up. Her own life fused with Colette’s.

The sultan, having finally captured Colette, bound her with silken sashes. She was his slave to do with as he pleased.

“You shall eat proper meals,” he growled in menacing tones. His brows drew down in a hawkish manner. “You’ll receive plenty of sleep each night and do calisthenics each morning.”

A shiver ran down Colette’s back at his unsavory demands. He may be the master of her body now, but her spirit would soar free from its bodily cage.

“Are you even paying attention?” the sultan demanded.

Colette answered in a broken whisper, “Ahhbuhh,” and bowed her head.

“What? You’re not making sense,” the sultan spat. “This illustrates my point. You’ve beaten your wings to exhaustion because you’ve had no proper guidance. Well, that has changed.”

He seized her elbow as the carriage rolled to a stop. She tried to protest his brutal treatment, but his retinue descended upon her, ripping her from the carriage. His enormous tent was ablaze with torches.

“Show her to the parlor.” His powerful voice thundered in her ears.

Colette was taken inside the tent, ordered to wait upon plush cushions for her master’s cruel bidding, and asked if she required “a spot of tea or a biscuit.”

She tried to speak but her lips wouldn’t move. Her eyelids were closing fast. The sultan must have poisoned her. She fought to remain conscious.

She heard a female voice behind the tent door. “Lilith is staying with us! No, no. What will Mother say?”

Ah, yes, Lady Marylewick, that beautiful, perfect valide sultan—queen of the harem.

“Hush, my dear Penelope, she will hear you,” the sultan barked.

Penelope, Lady Fenmore? Why was the sultan’s sister with him and not with the harem of her husband? Those were Colette’s last thoughts before being carried away in the swift, black undertow of sleep.

* * *

George entered the parlor to inform Lilith of her waiting bedchamber. He found her collapsed on a sofa, sound asleep. Her hat had toppled from her head, freeing her auburn hair. Her lashes cast shadows on her face. A beautiful sleeping tigress. He knelt beside her and studied the lines and planes of her face. Her symmetry.

She hummed and shifted onto her side.

“Miss Dahlgren,” he whispered. He rested a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Lilith.”

She clasped his hand, slid it under her cheek and cuddled around his arm. Warmth flowed from her body into his.

The clock on the mantel chimed five. Parliament had begun. Outside, the long shadows of the afternoon were beacons of the coming gloaming. After Parliament, he had several balls to attend. Today’s adventure had set him behind in his estate work. He had a multitude of reasons to hurry on, but he couldn’t stop gazing at the picture she made and enjoying the tingle of his skin where it touched hers. “What am I going to do with you?”

She drew up her legs and snuggled even closer. “So tired,” she mumbled and rubbed her cheek against his arm, as if settling into a pillow.

He knew it was improper and unwise, but he wanted to feel more of her. He brushed a stray lock, the color of brandy and firelight, from her face. How could he make her mind as delicate as her nose, her manners as pleasing as her lips, and her ways as soft as her silky hair? If only he could find a way to temper her wild, disorderly nature and keep her as gentle as this moment.

He lingered five minutes longer, savoring the soothing rhythm of her breath on his face, until he couldn’t put off his responsibilities any longer.

“Come.” He tenderly gathered her up. “Let’s tuck you in bed.”

* * *

George’s carriage rambled through the streets as he contemplated the Lilith problem. Away from her, cold reason set in again. The truth was she was too great a risk at the house party. Politics was a careful, subtle dance in a house of cards. One jarring move, one misspoken word, and all his good work would fall apart.

He couldn’t let her attend, no matter how this might deflate Lord Charles. In fact, George took secret pleasure in thwarting the man.

He straightened his parliamentary wig and made his decision. On the eve of the house party, Lilith would contract a chill and be temporarily removed to a nest of spinster relations housed in Chester, where she would adhere to a strict regimen of improvement as laid out by George. Then, for the rest of the spring, she would remain under Penelope’s feminine tutelage, with George acting as the firm authoritarian whenever Lilith strained Penelope’s delicate countenance. By late summer, he hoped to have Lilith’s wild tendencies ironed out. Then he would quietly establish her.

Yes, that would be the best plan of action, he thought as he stepped out of the carriage at the Palace of Westminster.

Six hours later, he had different thoughts as he stood by the dance floor at Lord Winterston’s ball. He seethed inside but kept his features composed in a pleasant, nonmurderous expression. The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. And if Lilith Dahlgren is involved in said plans, they go spiraling down into the pit of hell.

He just waited for yet another powerful member of Parliament, whose vote the Tory party had been courting since the winter, to approach him and say, Lord Charles tells me that you have a delightful cousin attending your house party. I will enjoy making her acquaintance, or Lord Charles tells me that Miss Lilith Dahlgren will attend your house party. How wonderful that I shall finally meet her. My sister sang her praises at school, or the oddest one of all, coming from Lord Harrowsby, the oldest member of the House of Lords, I hear from Lord Charles that you’ve kept a charming little dove hidden from us; we are all actually looking forward to your house party this year.

What did that mean? Did no one enjoy his house party?

George thought he was the better man, but he couldn’t help feeling a twinge of jealousy.

He had spent months trying to bring the Stamp Duty Extension Bill to people’s attention. Meanwhile, Lilith showed up at the park one afternoon and suddenly England’s politicians were on fire. But he knew the truth of Lilith. She dazzled people in bright, short bursts, but if they lingered any longer, her charming facade soon began to melt and there would be George, behind the glitter and glow, mopping up her mess again.

On the dance floor, the waltz had ended and partners were beginning to form for a quadrille. George’s temples ached. He wanted to go home and crawl in bed with Colette, but he needed to dance with the Whig host’s daughter, play a rubber with an MP from Sheffield, and then drive five blocks to another ball and dance with more daughters and play more cards. It was no use standing here, silently cursing Lilith and letting her steal any more of his precious time. He turned and headed for the host. He preferred the old-fashioned, courteous method of asking a lady to dance: inquiring of the father.

He had not gone two steps when he heard, “Lord Marylewick, dear boy.”

Lord Charles sauntered over, his blond-red hair shiny under the huge chandelier. In an easy motion, he grabbed two champagne glasses from a passing servant, handed one to Marylewick, and then took a sip from the other. “How is it that Miss Dahlgren was in your possession all this time? You could have been a regular fellow and mentioned it earlier. I’m quite cut up at your shabby treatment of me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve made no secret of Miss Dahlgren.”

Charles’s azure eyes glittered as they had when he had cheered on his schoolmates to toss George’s shoes and coat up in the trees. “Don’t tell me you have your own plans for her—down on one knee in an orangery, babbling of undying sentiments and devotion.”

“Don’t be daft! I’m her guardian,” he said, simplifying the complex relationship. “I oversee all aspects of her life.”

“Ah, I see. Then I must romance you, if I’m to romance her.”

“You seem quite taken by a lady you met just this afternoon.” George didn’t hide his incredulity. He knew Charles cut a wide swath with London’s more willing ladies. Now the man seemed to be waging a campaign for a woman he hardly knew.

Charles pressed his fist to his chest. “But in my heart, I’ve known her an eternity. I’m rather romantic.”

“I’m sure that in a week’s time you will have forgotten about Miss Dahlgren and found another quarry.”

“There is no other woman but Miss Dahlgren. All is Miss Lilith Dahlgren, I assure you. Come now, consider my suit: I’m the third son of a duke and that makes me a lord with all the usual paraphernalia—estate, funds, and so forth, but without the stringent matrimonial requirements of my elder brothers. I stand in Parliament, so I’m not a completely useless fribble. I vote on issues of national importance, such as stamp duties. You know about those. I believe you and your Tory kind in the House of Commons are trying to shove one down this nation’s throat.”

His true meaning flowed beneath his drollness. You have something I want romantically, and I have something you want politically.

George drew a long sip of bubbling spirits. “My cousin is not a political pawn.”

“I’m not sure what prompted you to say that. How could I sully pure, innocent affection with filthy politics? I merely tell you that my intentions are honorable, and I ask that I be allowed to pursue them at your house party.”

Charles’s gaze met George’s—a challenge more than an entreaty. George felt that gut-churning sensation of having been bested by Charles again. Except this time the victory was more subtle than young George sniveling in his dormitory bed, his backside aching from a paddling, and all the candies Penelope had sent him stolen.

“I warn you, you have much worthy competition.” George couldn’t deny Charles, but he would be damned if he’d let the man roll over him.

“As I understand. All the eligible politicians are sharpening their jousting sticks, ready to win the fair maiden’s hand. Which gallant knight shall succeed, Lord Marylewick?” He gestured to the room. George found the eyes of young men watching their conversation with great interest.

Damn Lilith Dahlgren, he thought. Damn her to her own special frigid hell of white empty walls, books without words, poems without meter, and Schumann on a harpsichord. He was backed into a political corner. Lilith must attend the house party.

“We shall see,” George replied coolly and bowed. “Good evening, Lord Charles.”

George wanted to stomp to the cloakroom, retrieve his hat and other accoutrements, and go home to Colette. But as Admiral Nelson said, “England expects that every man will do his duty.” And George unflinchingly performed his. So he approached the host, complimented his daughter, Lady Cornelia, and asked her for the next dance.

* * *

Four hours later, George stalked into his library. He had learned several enlightening things that evening. First, no one really enjoyed the Marylewick annual house party, and second, if Lilith didn’t attend this year’s painfully boring party, the earth might stop going around the sun.

He poured a glass of brandy, sank into a wing chair, and rubbed his temple. He had only a few days to turn Lilith into some semblance of a proper lady. It was impossible. He sipped and stared at the glowing coals. How to create a meek lady out of that termagant?

His father’s voice echoed in his head. I’m going to turn you into a man, Goddammit! What was George supposed to do? Obviously his father’s solutions wouldn’t work. He couldn’t force her into the boxing ring to be pummeled while he shouted Fight back, damn you, or give her a rifle and order her to shoot the orphaned fawn, or pour brandy down her throat until she vomited. He wasn’t making a man, but the ideal female.

What was the ideal female, anyway?

His eyes lit on McAllister’s Magazine resting on the table beside his chair where he had left it the previous evening.

Colette.

She was the perfect woman. Most likely because she was created by a man.

He carried the journal to his desk, picked up a pen and tapped the page. How could he create a modern Colette in a matter of days? And out of Lilith?

He rubbed his tired, burning eyes, dipped the pen and scrawled on a piece of his stationery: The Education of Lilith Dahlgren.