Dorchester Terrace Read online

  “Please think nothing of it.” Vespasia rose to her feet, guilty that it had been so long since she had come to see her friend. “I daresay I forget things myself at times.”

  “But this is …” Nerissa started. Then she stopped, smiling at her own mistake. “Of course. I know you understand.” She turned and led the way out across the parqueted hall again and up the handsome staircase. She walked a little stiffly, picking up the dark, plain fabric of her skirt in one hand so she did not trip.

  Vespasia followed her up and across the landing, and—after a brief knock on the door—into the main bedroom. Inside it was warm and bright, even in the middle of this dark winter day. The fire was excellent; the logs must be applewood here also, from the sweet smell. The walls were painted light terra-cotta, and the curtains were patterned with flowers, as if Serafina wanted to carry the summer with her, regardless of the iron rule of time and season.

  Vespasia looked across at the bed and could not keep the shock from her face.

  Serafina was propped almost upright by the pillows at her back. Her hair was white and dressed a little carelessly. Her face was devoid of any artificial color, although with her dark eyes and well-marked brows she did not look as ashen as a fairer woman might have. She had never been beautiful—not as Vespasia had been, and still was—but her features were good, and her courage and intelligence had made her extraordinary. Beside her, other women had seemed leached of life, and predictable. Now all that burning energy was gone, leaving a shell behind, recognizable only with effort.

  Serafina turned slowly and stared at the intruders in her room.

  Vespasia felt her throat tighten until she could barely swallow.

  “Lady Vespasia has come to see you, Aunt Serafina,” Nerissa said with forced cheerfulness. “And brought you some Belgian chocolates.” She held up the box with its beautiful ribbons.

  Slowly Serafina smiled, but it was only out of courtesy. Her eyes were blank.

  “How kind,” she said without expression.

  Vespasia moved forward, smiling back with an effort that she knew marred any attempt at sincerity. This was a woman whose mind had been as sharp as her own, whose wit nearly as quick, and she was no more than ten years older than Vespasia. But she looked empty, as if her fire and soul had already left.

  “I hope you’ll enjoy them,” Vespasia said, the words hollow as they left her lips. For a moment she wished she had not come. Serafina appeared to have no idea who she was, as if the past had been wiped out and they had not shared the kind of friendship that is never forgotten.

  Serafina looked at her with only a slow dawning of light in her eyes, as if shreds of understanding gradually returned to her.

  “I am sure you would like to talk for a little while,” Nerissa said gently. “Don’t tire yourself, Aunt Serafina.” The instruction was aimed obliquely at Vespasia. “I’ll put another log on the fire before I leave. If you need anything, the bell is easy to reach and I’ll come straightaway.”

  Serafina nodded very slightly, her eyes still fixed on Vespasia.

  “Thank you,” Vespasia replied. There was no escape. It would be inexcusable to leave now, however much she wished to.

  Nerissa went over to the fire, poked it a little, which sent up a shower of sparks, then carefully placed another log on top. She straightened her back and smiled at Vespasia.

  “It is so kind of you to come,” she said. “I’ll return in a little while.” She walked over to the door, opened it, and went out.

  Vespasia sat down in the chair next to the bed. What on earth could she say that would make sense? To ask after her friend’s health seemed almost a mockery.

  It was Serafina who spoke first.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said quietly. “I was afraid that no one would tell you. I have bad days sometimes, and I don’t remember things. I talk too much.”

  Vespasia looked at her. Her eyes were not empty anymore, but filled with a deep anxiety. She was desperately searching Vespasia’s face for understanding. It was as if the woman Vespasia knew had returned for a moment.

  “The purpose of visiting is to talk,” Vespasia said gently. “The whole pleasure of seeing people is to be able to share ideas, to laugh a little, to recall all the things we have loved in the past. I shall be very disappointed if you don’t talk to me.”

  Serafina looked as if she was struggling to find words that eluded her.

  Vespasia thought immediately that, without meaning to, she had placed further pressure on Serafina, acting as if she was hoping to be entertained. That was not what she had meant at all. But how could she retrace her steps now without sounding ridiculous?

  “Is there something you would particularly care to talk about?” she invited.

  “I forget things,” Serafina said very softly. “Sometimes lots of things.”

  “So do I,” Vespasia assured her gently. “Most of them don’t matter.”

  “Sometimes I muddle the past and the present,” Serafina went on. Now she was watching Vespasia as if from the edge of an abyss in which some horror waited to consume her.

  Vespasia tried to think of a reply, but nothing seemed appropriate for what was clearly, at least to Serafina, a matter of intense importance. This was no mere apology for being a little incoherent. She seemed frightened. Perhaps the terror of losing one’s grip on one’s mind was deeper and far more real than most people took time or care to appreciate.

  Vespasia put her hand on Serafina’s and felt the thin bones, the flesh far softer than it ever used to be. This was a woman who had ridden horses at a gallop few men dared equal; who had held a sword and fought with it, light flashing on steel as she moved quickly, lethally, and with beautiful grace. It was a hand that so swiftly coordinated with her eye that she was a superb shot with both pistol and rifle.

  Now it was slack in Vespasia’s grip.

  “We all forget,” Vespasia said softly. “The young, less so, perhaps. They have so much less to remember, some of them barely anything at all.” She smiled fleetingly. “You and I have seen incredible things: butchers, bakers, and housewives manning the barricades; sunset flaming across the Alps till the snow looked like blood. We’ve danced with emperors and been kissed by princes. I, at least, have been sworn at by a cardinal …”

  She saw Serafina smile and move her head in a slight nod of agreement.

  “We have fought for what we believed in,” Vespasia went on. “We have both won and lost more than the young today have dreamed of. But I daresay their turn will come.”

  Serafina’s eyes were clear for a moment. “We have, haven’t we? That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “What frightens you, my dear?”

  “I forget who is real and who is just memory,” Serafina replied. “Sometimes the past seems so vivid that I mistake the trivia of today for the great issues that used to be—and the people we knew.”

  “Does that matter?” Vespasia asked her. “Perhaps the past is more interesting?”

  The smile touched Serafina’s eyes again. “Infinitely—at least to me.” Then the fear returned, huge and engulfing. Her voice shook. “But I’m so afraid I might mistake some person now for someone else I knew and trusted, and let slip what I shouldn’t! I know terrible things, dangerous things about murder and betrayal. Do you understand?”

  Frankly, Vespasia did not. She was aware that Serafina had been an adventurer all her life. She had never let her causes die from her mind. She had married twice, but neither time had been particularly happy, and she had no children. But then she could outride and out-shoot so many men, she was not an easy woman to be comfortable with. She had never learned to keep her own counsel about her political opinions, nor to temper the exercise of her more dangerous skills.

  But this was the first time Vespasia had seen fear in her, and that was a shock. It touched her with a pity she could not have imagined feeling for such a proud and fierce woman.

  “Are any of those secrets still dangerous now?�
�� she asked doubtfully. It was hard to sound reassuring without also sounding as though she was patronizing Serafina, implying that her knowledge was outdated and no one would still be interested. It was a judgment so easy to mishandle. Vespasia herself would hate to be relegated to the past, as if currently not worth bothering about, even though one day that would assuredly be true. She refused to think of it.

  “Of course they are!” Serafina told her, her voice husky with urgency. “Why on earth do you ask? Have you lost all interest in politics? What’s happened to you?” It was almost an accusation. Serafina’s dark eyes were alive now with anger.

  Vespasia felt a flash of her own temper, and crushed it immediately. This was not about her vanity.

  “Not at all,” she replied. “But I cannot think of anything current that might be affected by most of my knowledge of the past.”

  “You never used to be a liar,” Serafina said softly, her mouth a little twisted with unhappiness. “Or at least if you were, you were good enough at it that I did not know.”

  Vespasia felt the heat burn up her face. The accusation was just. Of course some of the events she knew, the acutely personal ones, would still be dangerous, if she were to speak of them in the wrong places. She would never do so. But then she always knew exactly where she was, and to whom she was speaking.

  “Those sorts of secrets you would keep,” she told Serafina. “You would not mention them, even to the people involved. It would be such awfully bad taste.”

  Suddenly Serafina laughed, a rich, throaty sound, taking Vespasia back forty years in the time of a single heartbeat. Vespasia found herself smiling too. She saw them both on the terrace of a villa in Capri. The summer night was heavy with the scent of jasmine. Across the water Vesuvius lifted its double peaks against the skyline. The wine was sweet. Someone had made a joke and laughter was swift and easy.

  Then a log burned through and fell in the fireplace with a shower of sparks. Vespasia returned to the present: the warm bright room with its flowered curtains, and the old, frightened woman in the bed so close to her.

  “You had better ask Miss Freemarsh to be sure that certain people do not call on you,” Vespasia said with absolute seriousness. “There cannot be so many of them left now. Give her a list, tell her you do not wish to see them. You must have a lady’s maid who would help you?”

  “Oh, yes. I still have Tucker,” Serafina said with warmth. “God bless her. She’s almost as old as I am! But what reason shall I give?” She searched Vespasia’s eyes for help.

  “No reason at all,” Vespasia told her. “It is not her concern who you will see, or not see. Tell her so if she presses you. Invent something.”

  “I shall forget what I said!”

  “Then ask her. Say, ‘What did I tell you?’ If she replies by repeating it, then you have your answer. If she says she can’t recall, then you may start again too.”

  Serafina lay back on her pillows, smiling, the look in her eyes far away. “That is more like the Vespasia I remember. They were great days, weren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Vespasia answered her, firmly and honestly. “They were marvelous. More of life than most people ever see.”

  “But dangerous,” Serafina added.

  “Oh, yes. And we survived them. You’re here. I’m here.” She smiled at the old woman lying so still in the bed. “We lived, and we can share the memories with each other.”

  Serafina’s hand slowly clenched the sheets, and her face became bleak with anxiety again. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she whispered. “What if I think it’s you, but it’s really someone else? What if my mind takes me back to the days in Vienna, Budapest, or Italy, and I say something dangerous, something from which secrets could be unraveled and understood at last?”

  Her frown deepened, her face now intensely troubled. “I know terrible things, Vespasia, things that would have brought down some of the greatest families. I dare not name them, even here in my own bedroom. You see …” She bit her lip. “I know who you are now, but in thirty minutes I might forget. I might think it is the past, and you are someone else entirely, who doesn’t understand as you do. I might …” She swallowed. “I might think I am back in one of the old plots, an old fight with everything to win or lose … and tell you something dangerous … a secret. Do you see?”

  Vespasia put her hand on Serafina’s very gently, and felt the bones and the thin, knotted tendons under her fingers. “But, my dear, right now you are here in London, in late February of 1896, and you know exactly who I am. Those old secrets are past. Italy is united, except for the small part in the east still under Austrian rule. Hungary is still lesser in the empire, and getting more so with each year, and the whole Balkan peninsula is still ruled from Vienna. Most of the people we knew are dead. The battle has passed on from us. We don’t even know who is involved anymore.”

  “You don’t,” Serafina whispered. “I still know secrets that matter—loves and hates from the past that count even now. It wasn’t really so long ago. In politics, perhaps, but not in the memories of those who were betrayed.”

  Vespasia struggled for something to say that would comfort this frightened woman.

  “Perhaps Miss Freemarsh will see that you are not left alone with anyone, if you ask her?” she suggested. “That would not be unnatural, in the circumstances.”

  Serafina smiled bleakly. “Nerissa? She thinks I am fantasizing. She has no idea of the past. To her I am an old woman who enlarges her memories and paints them in brighter colors than they were, in order to draw attention to herself, and to make up for the grayness of today. She is far too polite to say so, but I see it in her eyes.” Serafina looked down at the coverlet. “And she has other things on her mind. I believe she might be in love. I remember what that was like: the excitement, the wondering if he was coming that day or the next, the torment if I thought he favored someone else.” She looked up at Vespasia again, laughter and sadness in her eyes, and questioning.

  “Of course,” Vespasia agreed. “One does not forget. Perhaps one only pretends to now and then, because the sweetness of it comes so seldom as one gets older. We remember the pleasure and tend to forget the pain.” She drew her mind back to the present issue. “Does Nerissa have any idea who you are, and what you have accomplished?”

  Serafina shook her head. “No. How could she? The world was different then. I knew everybody who mattered in one empire, and you did in the other. We knew too many secrets, and I wonder if perhaps you still do?”

  Vespasia was momentarily discomfited. She did know far more of the present world and its political and personal secrets than she would tell anyone, even Thomas Pitt. How had Serafina seen through her so easily, and in a mere quarter of an hour?

  The answer was simple: because at heart they were alike, believers who cared too much, women who used their courage and charm to influence men who held power and could change nations.

  “A few,” Vespasia admitted. “But old ones, embarrassing possibly, but not dangerous.”

  Serafina laughed. “Liar!” she said cheerfully. “If that were true there would be sadness in your voice, and there isn’t. I hear no regret.”

  “I apologize,” Vespasia said sincerely. “I underestimated you, and that was rude of me.”

  “I forgive you. I expected it. One has to lie to survive. My fear is that as I get worse, I shall lose the judgment, and possibly even the ability to lie anymore.”

  Vespasia felt another, even more painful, wave of pity for her. Serafina had been magnificent, a tigress of a woman, and now she lay wounded and alone, afraid of shadows from the past.

  “I shall speak to Miss Freemarsh,” she said firmly. “What about your Tucker? Is she still able to hold her authority with the other servants?”

  “Oh, yes, God bless her. I wouldn’t have anyone else. But she is seventy if she is a day, and I cannot expect her to be here all the time. Sometimes I see how tired she is.” She stopped; no more explanation was necessary.

>   “Perhaps it would be possible to get you a nurse who would be by your side all the time, at least all day, when people might call,” Vespasia suggested. “Someone who understands sufficiently to interrupt any conversation that might veer toward the confidential.”

  “Do such people exist?” Serafina asked dubiously.

  “They must,” Vespasia said, although she had only just thought of it. “What happens to people who have been in high positions in the government or the diplomatic service, or even the judiciary, and know things that would be disastrous if spoken of to the wrong person? They too can become old and ill—or, for that matter, drink too much!”

  Again Serafina laughed. It was a light, happy sound, an echo of who she used to be.

  “You make me feel so much better,” she said sincerely. “I am growing old disgracefully, shabbily in a way, and becoming a liability to those I loved and who trusted me. But at least I am not alone. If you are not too busy doing great things, please come and see me again.”

  “I shall come with pleasure,” Vespasia replied. “Even if I should be fortunate enough to have some great thing to do—which I doubt.” She rose to her feet. “Now I must see Miss Freemarsh, and Tucker, if I can. Then I will look for a nurse with intelligence and discretion.”

  “Thank you,” Serafina replied, her voice for an instant husky with gratitude, and perhaps relief.

  Vespasia left the room and went farther along the corridor, hoping to find Tucker. She could remember her as a young woman, just starting out in Serafina’s service when they were all in Italy, when Vespasia herself was not yet twenty. She had seen her again briefly, maybe a dozen times over the years, but would she recognize her now? She must be greatly changed.

  There was a young laundry maid with a pile of freshly ironed sheets coming toward her.

  “Excuse me, will you tell me where I might find Miss Tucker?” Vespasia asked.

  The maid dropped a half-curtsy. “Yes, m’lady. She’ll be downstairs. Can I fetch ’er for yer?”

  “Yes, please. Tell her that Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould would like to speak to her.”