The Loves of Leopold Singer (9 page)

The cathedral towers reflected cold sunshine back to the cloudless sky. Along the empty streets, window boxes put out unkempt primroses in dingy primary colors. She went into the bookseller’s dark, small shop and browsed through the offerings, not really seeing the titles her fingers traced.

A week ago, Gabby had come to Vienna, unexpected and without Wolfram. A hug confirmed that a child was on the way, but she was not there with joyful news of a baby. There was typhus at home.
Leopold Singer
. The name and his face and the sound of his voice had appeared in Marta’s mind along with a sick dread. She had not forgotten him, no matter how many eligible young men her aunt and uncle introduced her to. She insisted on going home
.

Was he safe in London? On his way home? She knew from the doctor that his parents were gravely ill and word had been sent to him.

And then just outside the bookseller’s shop she saw him on the street. All the heaviness of her world fell away. After two years, he was as familiar to her as her own breath.

“Hello, Miss Schonreden.” He seemed distracted, but his voice was even more beautiful than her memory of it. “I see you read English?” He indicated the copy of European Magazine she carried, the April 1798 number, long past more than a year old, but something to read in English.

She searched his expression for a sign of teasing, but he seemed genuinely interested so she said, “and French.”

“A scholar as well as a beauty! Your parents must be proud.”

“My mother died yesterday.”

He whispered, “The typhus?” When she nodded, he said, “Both my parents are also gone.”

“Oh.” She looked away from him, suddenly unsteady. “I am sorry.”

“Are the rest of your family well?”

“Gabby has gone to my aunt in Vienna until the baby comes. Wolfram is improving, I think. But my father...”

Vati was alive in his bed when she’d left him, but he wouldn’t last. Marta knew she should feel the loss of Mutti, though she did not. She had seen the lifeless body, the mouth open but silent, the random twitch as
rigor mortis
set in. It was a thing. No spirit, no soul had fled with the last breath. It was horrible. She couldn’t watch that happen to Vati.

“Miss Schonreden, you are unwell yourself.”

“No, I am well.”

“Grief-stricken, then.” It was too much. His kindness hurt more than indifference would have. The low rumble of his voice was so lovely, she could only think of the emptiness she would feel when he was gone again. “Who is with you? Let me get help.”

“I am alone. I just had to put my mind somewhere else for half an hour. I thought reading something of the world would help. I suppose that is very selfish.”

“Not so selfish. Very good idea, I think. It’s what I do anyway at times, so it must be a good idea! There, a smile.”

“You are very kind.”

You are very kind
. She had learned this all-purpose phrase from her aunt.
Especially when you believe someone is
not
being very kind, these few words will give you time to think. You need say nothing more, and it is a far better response than ‘oh,’ my dear niece.

“Let me take you home,” Leopold said. “My carriage is just here.”

She was too upset to refuse, and anyway she didn’t want to refuse. She didn’t care about propriety. She wanted to keep him near, to hear his voice, to feel his touch as he helped her to her seat. Suddenly they were moving and the clip-clop of the horses was clear and musical and his knee was mere inches from hers. He must be near twenty-one now. His chest was broader, and his jaw had lost the soft curve of adolescence. She turned away, sure her throat was flushed.

At her gate, he lifted her from the carriage. He kept his hands on her waist a hairbreadth of a moment longer than necessary. His confidence and his strength seemed to infuse directly into her. Her father was a strong man, and her brother had the makings of a brute; but the elegant muscularity of Leopold Singer was a revelation.

At once she better understood Gabby’s feelings for Wolfram, and even her mother’s crazy jealousy made a new kind of sense. She had always thought of sex in terms of a man’s lust and a woman’s power to incite that lust, but this was the other side of desire. She hadn’t caused it; she was caught up in it, in a giddy powerlessness that was both pleasure and pain.

“Miss Schonreden.” Leopold opened the gate, his voice again working like a magician’s charm. “I hope your father and brother improve.”

She left him, acutely aware that she walked away from life into a house of the dead and the dying. This was wrong. She was supposed to be with Leopold Singer, as surely as she was supposed to breathe and breathe again. Even Vienna was nothing next to him. But convention, duty, and the dull inevitability of mundane expectation all herded her like friendly and familiar dogs back through her father’s door.

At the same moment in another part of the world, snow blanketed Carleson’s Peak. The valley sparkled in the afternoon sunshine and was blue-gray in the shadows. A jam of conveyances waited near Laurelwood Church. The bells rang, and a group of well-dressed people spilled, chattering, out of the chapel.

Lady Delia had just become Her Grace, the Duchess of Gohrum, and the happy duke led her through the onlookers to his carriage. Those invited would caravan to The Branch, where the baroness was to host a wedding feast.

Delia considered this marriage a defeat, and in the weeks after accepting Millie she’d indulged in scattered bouts of self-pity. Yet from the moment of her engagement her every circumstance had improved. Her father, who had forgotten her existence these past five years, was so pleased by the match that he started paying her allowance again. Then Millie paid her debts, cheerfully, as a wedding gift, so when he wanted to be married in the country she felt she could not refuse.

This proved no sacrifice as the process had been pleasant in every respect. The local families admired her without artifice. And though none were at all grand, it was gratifying to be celebrated anywhere, especially not having worked to deserve it. Even in this winter weather, those charming people gathered outside the church to cheer the happy couple on.

“Let me make you snug, my dear,” Millie spread a blanket over her lap and tucked her hands inside a fur muff. “We’ll be at Philly’s in no time.”

This was entirely satisfying. She had lost the man she wanted. So be it; she was a duchess. How could she have thought that an undesirable thing? She was suddenly so pleased with herself, she purred, “I wonder what a bride must do to receive a kiss from her husband?”

Millie looked as pleased as a puppy.

Cold gruel
. His kiss was soft and grateful, and all the goodwill in her trickled away. Regret clamped down like an iron maiden. When she could breathe again, she couldn’t breathe free. The rest of her life rolled out before her in a vision, like a narrow carpet running to an uninteresting vanishing point. She would be ordinary. She would be cruel. She would not respect her husband. Not all the fortune and deference bundled with Gohrum could disguise the utter lack of power in that kiss.

Gohrum wasn’t Leopold Singer, and her chest hosted a jagged, ravaged wound where a heart could have been. Leopold could have made her happy, and she had lost him not through any mistake on her part. That whore servant of Gohrum’s had somehow bewitched him. Well, the wretch would pay. It was a shame to have to wait until May, but when Delia returned to London after her wedding trip, she would have that slut housekeeper thrown out.

-oOo-

Philomela Asher, Lady Branch sat between Gohrum and the sad new rector, one Reverend Doctor Jordan Devilliers, the new duchess’s youngest brother. As a rule, Philomela did not like men, her ward and Gohrum being exceptions. However, she was pleased with this one beside her.

The scarring on his face was from a childhood pox, but it had healed well enough so that his skin merely looked rather weathered. More startling were his eyes, one blue and one green. If he would just show his good straight teeth more, she could forget the rest of the face altogether.

“Lady Branch,” he said. “I was astonished by your generous gift.”

“You had a pleasant ride from the church, then?” She had sent over a one-horse curricle and a young cob Carey himself had chosen.

“Pleasant indeed, my lady. I am grateful.”

“We can’t have you riding about in a curate cart. That ‘doctor’ should account for something is what I say.” In all, he was an intelligent, practical man. Not a fool. Not cruel. One could hardly believe he and the bride were brother and sister. “Here is Sir Carey,” she said. “I see he’s got Mrs. Carleson with him.”

“That’s an interesting fashion,” Devilliers said. “Her hair.”

“Yes, she’s an oddity. A bit serious for one so young, but I suppose she has her reasons for that as much as any woman.”

Philomela thought Mrs. Carleson was handsome mostly because she was in such robust health, quite recovered from the cholera. She kept her hair cut to the nape of her neck. Shocking, but the baroness liked her for it. She would speak to Mrs. Carleson later and try to figure her out a little better. Carey seemed to find her worth the trouble.

-oOo-

“The duke’s family name is Millam.” Sir Carey took Carleson’s wife in to table. The lady had been at the Peak nearly four years, but he’d only spoken to her once while out riding. She never left Laurelwood, and he never went there. Once Carleson had his son, there was no point. He had seen her walking sometimes when he went riding, and he wondered what she was like as he wondered what any woman was like. “He was born the Marquess of Millam, so his friends always called him Millie.” He told her how the duke’s father had been killed.

“People should not fear the progress of things.”

“I agree, Mrs. Carleson.” She was a strange woman. Her eyes barely widened at the mention of murder. She seemed more interested in the canal-works. “But fear it they do. On that day carefree Millie became Gohrum, and along with the name the weight of the land settled upon him. He took on the project like a spiritual undertaking. Miraculously—no, I cannot say that. Due to his good governance, no other man was killed or injured, not seriously.”

“You make me admire him.”

“And he deserves admiration, madam.” Now those might be the deepest blue eyes Sir Carey had ever seen. “At Laurelwood, Carleson has enjoyed the cheap transport for his wool and corn. The baron then living had already adapted Wedgwood’s methods to the Asher pottery works. Shipping by canal, breakage decreased and profits soared. The county economy has been well-served by the duke’s canal.”

She seemed interested, but said nothing. There was a hardness to her he’d like to crack.

“Now I’ll tell you a bit of family gossip: The old baron was a fool who would have ruined his good luck soon into the success of it. So everyone agreed it was fortunate when, one night on a drunken ride home, he fell from his horse and broke his neck.”

Mrs. Carleson smiled slightly, and a faraway look came over her jewel-like eyes. Why do you smile like that, Mrs. Carleson, a little sad, and a little wicked too? And why so taciturn?

“The management of the property fell to his middle daughter Philomela, the lady you see there. She was so competent and good, she kept all the men working. The duke prevailed upon the Crown to make her baroness in her own right.”

“No inheriting sons, then.”

Her observations were certainly to the point. “Thank you, Norwood.” He handed his man his cloak and the walking stick topped by a silver dragon’s head with garnets for the eyes. The ash it was made from had come from the woods beside Laurelwood Chapel, a grove long known to be haunted by fairies and worse. He had been about to tell that story, but now he was put off. “No inheriting sons. Madam.” He took leave of the odd Mrs. Carleson.