Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [96]
And indeed there was a tear trickling down the cheek of the dark beauty. I wiped it away.
‘Because my father will never see me and I’ll probably be old before my brother comes home.’
She put a hand on my shoulder.
‘Oh, my dear.’
We stayed silent for a while, looking at our faces in the mirror. I said I must go and reached up to unclasp the necklace.
‘Keep it as your bridesmaid present,’ she said.
‘Bridesmaid?’
‘The nearest I’ll have to one.’
She took the pins out of the dress and said I’d have to get Betty to help me alter it. While I was changing behind the screen, trying not to disarrange my hair, I remembered something.
‘Miss Mandeville …’
‘Please, call me Celia. After all, I call you Elizabeth.’
‘But my name’s … Celia, do you know if Mr Brighton and Lord Kilkeel brought a maid with them?’
‘Maid? Why would they do that? I know there’s a French valet. Here, I’ve found the rose-tinted silk stockings. You must have them.’
She kissed me on the cheek when I left, my arms weighed down with her finery.
Back in the schoolroom, Betty handled the rose damask with reverence. She took me to her room and made me try it on again so that she could pin and tack the alterations, then left me stitching while she took the children downstairs to make their public appearance. When they came back, the two boys looked stiff and solemn but Henrietta was spinning around like a clockwork toy.
‘I curtsied to him. I curtsied to him and he patted me on the head and said I was a pretty dear.’
Betty’s eyes caught mine over the child’s whirling ringlets. They were worried.
‘Miss Lock, what is all this about?’ she whispered.
I shook my head, from the impossibility of explaining, ran up the rickety stairs to my own room and changed into the damask dress and the pumps. I had to go down to the mirror in the schoolroom to put the mother-of-pearl comb in my hair and fasten the necklace. Betty gasped when she saw me.
‘Oh, Miss Lock, you look quite the lady.’
She grabbed a brush and set about my hair.
‘That’s my brush,’ Henrietta wailed. ‘And what’s she doing in Celia’s dress?’
For once Betty ignored her.
‘You’ll do. And oh, be careful of the dress, my dear Miss Lock.’
She bent suddenly and kissed me on the cheek. I kissed her back then ran along the corridor and down the main stairs. Along the bedroom floor, doors were standing open, giving glimpses of ladies’ maids gathering up scattered clothes or just standing there with the numbed look of battle survivors. I went down the next flight, the thin leather soles of the pumps sliding on the carpet, damask skirts making every step feel like wading through water. There was a noise coming from below, a small orchestra playing and a great buzz of talk, like a theatre just before the curtain rises. When I paused at the door to the first-floor landing and put a hand to my chest to steady my breathing, I felt the unfamiliar curve of my own pushed-up breasts, and the smoothness of Celia’s opals.
‘I’m still who I am,’ I told myself. ‘I’m still Liberty.’
But I didn’t feel it as I pushed open the door and stepped through.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The chandelier blazed with dozens of candles, each flame reflected hundreds of time over in droplets, like a volcano eruption of diamonds. More lights flashed up to meet them from the grand hall below: the jewels in the hair of the women, the decorations on the chests of the men, the champagne glasses. From here, the noise their talk made was something between a purr and a low roar. On a dais by the bottom of the staircase a small group of musicians were playing Mozart, with Daniel directing from the violin, but nobody seemed to be taking any notice. A fire blazed in the enormous gothic fireplace. Alongside, Mr Brighton outblazed the fire, gorgeous in a purple coat, a black-and-gold striped waistcoat, a high white stock, and a whole jeweller’s window of gold chains and rings. Beside him, Sir Herbert Mandeville looked stiff and statesmanlike in black and white. Lady Mandeville stood next to her husband in dark blue silk and