Chapter Three
SEBASTIAN had gone down to pick up the post in the village; no one else wanted to venture out into the October rain and leave the warmth of the cottage. Marina was supposed to be reading Shakespeare—her uncle was making good his threat to paint her as Kate the Shrew and wanted her to become familiar with the part—but she sat at the window of the parlor and stared out at the rain instead. Winter had definitely arrived, with Halloween a good three weeks away. A steady, chilling rain dripped down through leafless branches onto grass gone sere and brown-edged. Even the evergreens and the few plants that kept their leaves throughout the winter looked dark and dismal. The air outside smelled of wet leaves; inside the foyer where the coats hung, the odor of wet wool hung in a miasma of perpetual damp. Only in the foyer, however. Scented candles burned throughout the house, adding the perfume of honey and cinnamon to counteract the faint chemical smell of the oil lamps, and someone was always baking something in the kitchen that formed a pleasant counter to the wet wool.
And yet, for Marina at least, the weather wasn’t entirely depressing. Water, life-giving, life-bearing water was all around her.
If the air smelled only dank to the others, for her there was an undercurrent of potential. She sensed the currents of faint power that followed each drop of rain, she tasted it, like green tea in the back of her throat, and stirred restlessly, feeling as if there ought to be something she should do with that power.
She heard the door open and shut in the entranceway, and Uncle Sebastian shake out his raincape before hanging it up. He went straight to the kitchen, though, so there must not have been any mail for her.
She didn’t expect any; her mother didn’t write as often in winter. It was probably a great deal more difficult to get letters out from Italy than it was to send them from Oakhurst in England.
Italy. She wondered what it would be like to spend a winter somewhere that wasn’t cold, wet, and gray. Was Tuscany by the sea?
I’d love to visit the sea.
“I don’t suppose you remember Elizabeth Hastings, do you?” asked Margherita from the door behind her. She turned; her aunt had a letter in her hand, her dark hair bound up on the top of her head in a loose knot, a smudge of flour on her nose.
“Vaguely. She’s that Water magician with the title, isn’t she?” Marina closed the volume in her lap with another stirring of interest. “The one with the terribly—terribly correct husband?”
Margherita laughed, her eyes merry. “The only one with a ‘terribly—terribly correct husband’ that has ever visited us, yes. She’s coming to spend several weeks with us—to teach you.”
Now she had Marina’s complete interest. “Me? What—oh! Water magic?” Interest turned to excitement, and a thrill of anticipation.
Margherita laughed. “She certainly isn’t going to teach you etiquette! You’re more than ready for a teacher of your own Element, and it’s time you got one.”
The exercises that Uncle Thomas had been setting her had been nothing but repetitions of the same old things for some time now. Marina hadn’t wanted to say anything, but she had been feeling frustrated, bored, and stale. Frustrated, because she had the feeling that there was so much that was just beyond her grasp—bored and stale because she was so tired of repeating the same old things. “But—what about Mrs. Hasting’s family?” she asked, not entirely willing to believe that someone with a “terribly—terribly correct husband” would be able to get away for more than a day or two at most, and certainly not alone.
“Elizabeth’s sons are at Oxford, her daughter is married, and her husband wants to take up some invitations for the hunting and fishing seasons in Scotland this year,” Margherita said, with a smile at Marina’s growing excitement. “And when the hunting season is over, he intends to go straight on to London for his Parliament duties. Elizabeth hates hunting and detests London; she’ll be staying with us up until Christmas.”
“That’s wonderful!” Marina could not contain herself any more; she leapt to her feet, catching the book of Shakespeare at the last moment before it tumbled to the floor out of her lap. “When is she coming?”
“By the train on Wednesday, and I’ll need your help in getting the guest room ready for her—”
But Marina was running as soon as she realized the guest would arrive the next day. She was already halfway up the stairs, her aunt’s laughter following her, by the time Margherita had reached the words “guest room.”
Once, all the rooms in this old farm house had led one into the other, like the ones on the first floor. But at some point, perhaps around the time that Jane Austen was writing Emma, the walls had been knocked down in the second story and replaced with an arrangement of a hall with smaller bedrooms along it. And about when Victoria first took the throne, one of the smallest bedrooms had been made into a bathroom. True, hot water still had to be carted laboriously up the stairs for a bath, but at least they weren’t bathing in hip baths in front of the fire, and there was a water-closet. So their guest wouldn’t be totally horrified by the amenities, or lack of them.
It would be horrible if she left after a week because she couldn’t have a decent wash-up.
She opened the linen-closet at the end of the hall and took a deep breath of the lavender-scented air before taking out sheets for the bed in the warmest of the guest rooms. This was the one directly across from her own, and like hers, right over the kitchen. The view wasn’t as fine, but in winter there wasn’t a great deal of view anyway, and the cozy warmth coming up from the kitchen, faintly scented with whatever Margherita was baking, made up for the lack of view. Where her room was a Pre-Raphaelite fantasy, this room was altogether conventional, with rose-vine wallpaper, chintz curtains and cushions, and a brass-framed bed. The rest of the furniture, however, was made by Thomas, and looked just a little odd within the confines of such a conventional room. Woolen blankets woven by Margherita in times when she hadn’t any grand commissions to fulfill were in an asymmetrical chest at the foot of the bed, and the visitor would probably need them.
She left the folded sheets on the bed and flung the single window open just long enough to air the room out. It didn’t take long, since Margherita never really let the guest rooms get stale and stuffy. It also didn’t take long for the room to get nasty and cold, so she closed it again pretty quickly.
Fire. I need a fire. There was no point in trying to kindle one herself the way that Uncle Sebastian did. She was eager, almost embarrassingly eager, for their visitor to feel welcome. When Elizabeth Hastings arrived, it should be to find a room warmed and waiting, as if this house was her home.
Marina solved the problem of the fire with a shovelful of coals from her own little fire, laid onto the waiting kindling in the fireplace of the guest room. She might not be able to kindle a fire, but she was rather proud of her ability to lay one. Once the fire was going and the chill was off the air, she made the bed up with the lavender-scented sheets and warm blankets, dusted everything thoroughly, and set out towels and everything else a guest might want. She made sure that the lamp on the bedside table was full of oil and the wick trimmed, and that there was a box of lucifer matches there as well.
She looked around the room, and sighed. No flowers. It was just too late for them—and too late to gather a few branches with fiery autumn leaves on them. The bouquet of dried straw flowers and fragrant herbs on the mantel would just have to do.