SHE PASSED quietly through the Lady of Harschmort's private parlor, attiring room, bedchamber, and finally to her astonishingly spacious closet. The walls were lined with hanging garments and tight-stuffed shelving—enough clothing for a regiment of ladies. Satisfied no one was there—she had feared a lingering maid—Miss Temple lifted the chair from the heiress' writing desk, and, recalling Chang's precautions at the Boniface, wedged it fast under the doorknob.
She returned to the closet, plucking at her dress—not intending any commentary on the late Mrs. Jorgens but more than sick of it, the smell of her own sweat having permeated the fabric. Miss Temple dislodged the final buttons with impatience and pulled it over her head and then balled the thing up to throw across the room.
She stopped. As she wadded the fabric… on the side of the bodice, along the seam… she stepped closer to the light and removed a scrap of parchment paper torn to a neat square and folded over. She wondered if it was from Mrs. Jorgens—a shopping list or love note— for the writing first struck her as an unschooled scrawl. But that was wrong… not so much a scrawl as its author was utterly careless of how it appeared. As she thought back to the littered ruin of the suite at the St. Royale, such an intemperate script for the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza made perfect sense.
My Dear Celeste,
Forgive my Departure. Were I to stay I must eat you to the Bones.
Islands are Precious Domains. This is my way of saying Do Not Follow. That is your Choice now, as it was mine before you. There is no Shame in Retreat.
If you Ignore good Advice, I will see you Again. Our Business is not Finished.
RLS
Miss Temple folded the note, then unfolded it and read it again, sucking her lip at each overly dramatic capital, sensing that even in this disturbing little note (and how long had it taken the woman to find that pocket, she wondered, imagining those nimble fingers searching across her body) the Contessa's foremost goal had been to find some measure of delight. It was as if, in a mist of woodland air that anyone else would find refreshing, the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza would locate some extra thread of scent (a flower or a rotting stag—or flowers growing from a stag's carcass) so the tips of her black hair might twist another curl.
Miss Temple did not consider herself an object of change—she had always been the same bundle of impulses and moods, however unpredictable these might appear to others—but now she found herself surprised, in the very midst of her anger, by the sudden memory of the Contessa's gashed shoulder, and an urge to draw her own tongue along its ragged, coppery length. The problem was not the impulse itself, but the necessary connection to another person.
Miss Temple had become very accustomed to the fact that, in her life, almost no one liked her. She was served, flattered, distrusted, disapproved of, coveted, envied, despised, but she had never, with the illusory exceptions of certain servants when she was a girl, enjoyed any particular friendship. The closest she had come was her fiancé, Roger Bascombe, but that had been a mere three months sparked by physical hunger (and had turned out horribly). She thought of Chang and Svenson, even Elöise… but friendship was hardly the same thing as loyalty or duty. Would the two men die for her? She had no doubt. Did they like her? A nut-hard part of Miss Temple's heart would not believe it—and she could have easily convinced herself the question did not matter, save for the Contessa's disorienting attentions in the freight car, no matter how mercenary those attentions undoubtedly had been.
But then, for she could not help it, Miss Temple read through the note again, this time fixing on the word “choice,” and the very intriguing phrase that followed it, “as it was mine before you”… she had never heard even one reference to the Contessa's life before, nor entertained the notion that there was a before for such a creature. Miss Temple's throat went dry to imagine what the Contessa could have possibly been like as a girl. And what choice could any girl have made to become that woman?
And how dare she suggest that Miss Temple herself faced anything resembling the same crossroads?
Suitably affronted to set the paper back down, Miss Temple turned her attentions elsewhere. Lydia Vandaariff's closet had a metal hip-bath and a very large Chinese jug of water. To either side of a tall mirror stood elegant tables, three-tiered like cakes and entirely cluttered with pins, ribbons, bottles, powders, paints, and perfumes. She tore off the corset and ill-fitting shift she had worn since her bath in Lina's kitchen and then, quite determined to be clean once more, sat naked on the carpet to unlace her boots.
THOUGH THE water was unheated, there was still a splendid array of sponges and soaps, and Miss Temple took the opportunity to scrub the whole of her body without any impediment of time. She must leave Harschmort eventually, but did it not make sense to wait until nightfall—a decision which, once made, allowed her hours? Washed and toweled at some leisure, she entered into a scrupulous investigation of Lydia's wide array of scents. While Miss Temple could not but view so many choices as emblematic of Lydia's essential lack of character, she was nevertheless curious whether her own sensible routine might be improved. Out of deliberately minded perversity, she settled upon a concoction of frangipani flowers, the Contessa's signature scent, placing a drop behind each ear, on each wrist, and then dragging one wet fingertip from the join of her collarbones down between her breasts.
Though Lydia had been taller than she, Miss Temple found several dresses that fit and one in particular that would allow her to run. This was a murky shade of violet that went quite well with both her boots (she was committed to her boots) and with her hair. That the fabric was dark meant it would not so eagerly show the dirt her actions must acquire, that it was sensible wool meant she would not be cold—practical insights that pleased Miss Temple very much.
Yet before the dress came an exacting selection of undergarments, and here, more than anywhere, the late Miss Vandaariff had not skimped. The possibilities presented to Miss Temple became quite literally overwhelming, as each new garment opened lurid implications— a veritable advent calendar of wickedness—in her mind. She was forced to pause, eyes open, cheeks flushed, and thighs tight together, until the fluttering tide had passed. With trembling fingers she selected silk replacements for her long-lost little pants and bodice, then petticoats, and a corset she put on backwards, tightened as well as she could, and then inched around until the laces were behind her. This done, Miss Temple sat at Lydia's mirror and did her steady best, availing herself freely of pins, ribbon, and a tortoiseshell comb, to strip the knots from her hair and restore the sausage curls she associated with her own accustomed presentation. She was not her maid Marthe— and had she been asked, she might well have admitted it—but she possessed some skill with her own hair (and since it had before been such a fright, the merest measure of success was welcome). Another half an hour slipped past before Miss Temple was at last presentable, the canvas sack exchanged for an elegant leather travel case, the glass book inside doubly wrapped within two silk pillowcases.