Chapter One
Danby Hall, Yorkshire
Autumn 1912
Just be still for . . . one . . . more . . . second," Lady Cecilia Bates muttered. She bit her lip as her pencil glided across the page of her sketchbook, trying to capture the intricate whorls of a lace-edged cap. Surely, the art lessons she had in London over the summer were going to pay off!
"But, my lady, my nose itches something terrible!" her lady's maid, Jane Hughes, protested.
Cecilia laughed and glanced up again to see that Jane did indeed have a most contorted look on her face. It wouldn't suit the sketch at all. "I am sorry, Jane. By all means, scratch your nose."
Jane rubbed fiercely at the itching appendage and gave a deep sigh. "Oh, that's better."
"Forgive me for keeping you in one place for so long, Jane. I just can never seem to make my pencil match the vision in my head. I fear Monsieur LeClerc's hard work on my lessons was quite in vain."
"I'm sure that's not true," Jane protested. She took off her white cap and smoothed the flyaway strands of her fine, pale blond hair. Her apron and shoes were discarded beside her chair, near the open windows. In Cecilia's own chamber, tucked away in the East Wing and far from the main rooms of the house, their friendship was much easier and more casual than seen by the rest of Danby Hall. "How are your other drawings progressing, then?"
Cecilia flipped through the pages of her sketchbook. Most of her friends and family, as well as the staff belowstairs, had been patient enough to sit for her. Ultimately, she would like to put them all together in a large group portrait, like Queen Victoria's family by Tuxen she had seen at Windsor. But she was a long way from that, she thought with a sigh, as she examined the off-kilter noses and out-of-proportion arms. Her beautiful mother would certainly protest against looking like a hedgehog.
"Not quite where I would like them to be," Cecilia said. "But what else do I have to do except practice? And at least no one can hear me drawing, so I don't torment them like when I practice the piano."
After the excitement at Danby last spring, investigating a terrible murder in her own dining room, she had felt so-adrift. Longing for something important, interesting, to do. Choosing gowns, helping with the church fete, and listening to her mother muse about possible suitors had always held limited interest. After being a detective of sorts, it made her want to scream with boredom.
The Season in London had held a few distractions, such as lectures at the Royal Society, visits to museums, art lessons with the (admittedly) rather handsome monsieur, and even a visit to Girton College with her friend Maud Rainsley, who was lucky enough to be a student there. But there had also been endless visits to modistes, the endless parties where other matrons like her mother always asked (subtly) when she would marry, and endless balls where young men with damp palms-even through their gloves-stepped on her toes in waltzes and polkas, and only talked about cricket and shooting.
It was nice to be home again at Danby, but now she was even more at loose ends. She only had her sketches to occupy her, and she was beginning to fear her meager talent would never progress any further. Those cricket-playing boys had so many choices; why did she have none?
"Let me see, my lady," Jane said. Cecilia handed her the sketchbook and sat back in her chair with a sigh. Jack, the large marmalade cat who was a wonderful friend and great distraction to her and Jane-as long as Lady Avebury didn't see him abovestairs-leaped up into Cecilia's lap. She scratched his ears, and he purred loudly and butted his head against her demandingly.
Jane turned the book sideways, studying a drawing of Redvers, Danby's venerable butler. He had bushy, dark brows, very distinctive, but Cecilia had to admit she had made them even too caterpillar-like.
"This isn't so bad," Jane said. "He certainly looks stern enough."
"I had hoped my drawing skills might come in handy if we ever-well, if our detecting assistance is ever called on again," Cecilia admitted. "They would have been useful last spring. But seeing a dastardly murder in one's own house is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence."
Jane laughed. "You sound disappointed about the lack of blood and gore at Danby, my lady!"
Cecilia laughed, too, and Jack blinked up at her with a flash of his bright green eyes. He had rather enjoyed playing detective, too. "I'm not really disappointed about that, Jane, nor about not having our lives in danger again. That was not terribly fun. I just feel so-so useless now. I don't have anything meaningful to do. Even my mother doesn't need my help so much since she has Annabel. Not that I especially miss passing the sandwiches at the tennis club teas or anything."
Annabel Clarke was an American heiress who was maybe-probably-almost engaged to Cecilia's brother, Patrick. She was meant to save Danby from its financial problems, as well as drag the studious Patrick out of his botany laboratory and into doing his duty as Danby's heir. She was actually Jane's employer, and only loaned her to Cecilia once in a while, since Cecilia hadn't had her own maid for some time. Annabel was tiny, doll-like, pretty, with clouds of golden curls and exquisite, lacy pastel gowns-and she had the organizational skills and determination of Attila the Hun.
"Speaking of useful," Jane said, "I saw this in the village." She took a folded paper from her apron pocket and passed it to Cecilia. "It's an important cause, isn't it?"
Cecilia read over the smudged black ink of the announcement. "It is indeed," she cried in rising excitement. Mrs. Amelia Price will be speaking at Danby Village Guildhall, it said, with a date and a sketch of a tall lady in a fur coat and large, stylish feathered hat behind a lectern, her hand raised imploringly.
"Amelia Price." Cecilia sighed. "In person! I hoped to see her in London, but she had gone to France on a lecture tour for the summer."
"She's famous, isn't she?" Jane said.
"She is indeed. The president of the Women's Suffrage Union. My friend Miss Rainsley is a member. I met her daughter Anne Price briefly at the theater one evening just before we came back to Danby. I think the Prices had just returned from their tour. And now Mrs. Price is coming here!"
"Do you really think the women will get the vote one day, my lady?"
"Oh, we must, Jane! We simply must. Or our lives will go on being considered second-rate." She smiled down at the flyer. "We should go to this rally. Her Union might need our help."
"I'm not sure I could get away from Miss Clarke long enough," Jane said doubtfully.
"I'll talk to Annabel. She might like to attend, as well."
Jane gave a little snort. "She says women don't want to vote, we'll all lose our femininity and no man will want to protect us. We're too weak to do without men organizing us. Especially after all those windows got smashed last spring."
"That was only because that horrid Mr. Asquith went back on his promise to support the Conciliation Bill," Cecilia said. "And Annabel sounds like my father." She laughed when she thought of how Annabel "organized" Patrick so adroitly. "But she'll have to let you attend."
The little porcelain French clock on the mantel chimed the hour, and she looked up, startled. "Is that the time already? Grandmama is coming to tea! I can't be late." An independent, voting lady Cecilia might want to be, but that didn't make the dowager countess any less fearsome.
"I'll help you, my lady," Jane said, jumping up and opening the carved doors of the armoire to sort through the gowns with her usual efficiency. "The blue tea gown? With the white lace shawl?"
"Perfect." Cecilia tucked the flyer into the back of her sketchbook. Suffrage might have to wait until she did her granddaughterly duty, but she felt a tiny spark of hope for the first time in months.
She sat down at her dressing table, Jack lounging at her feet to bat at his favorite ribbon toy. She moved a small, red-haired china shepherdess, a precious gift from Mr. Talbot's antique shop, to the back of the table so it wouldn't fall and break. Cecilia loved her room, tucked away in the quieter, older East Wing. It was far from her parents' suites and the grander guestchambers, but it had the best views of the rolling lawns, the rose gardens with their fading summer blooms, the woods beyond, and the medieval stones of the ancient tower that was the oldest part of the estate. She had chosen the pale, carved furniture, the sky-blue and pale-yellow draperies, herself. A cozy grouping of satin chairs clustered around the white marble fireplace, surrounded by piles of books and sketchbooks.
It all looked just the same as it always had, pretty and cozy, her own private sanctuary where she could read and think, and now draw. Since Annabel had arrived, all of Danby seemed subtly changed. Annabel and Patrick weren't even officially betrothed yet, and it still felt different, in ways Cecilia couldn't even really explain. She was starting to feel like a guest in her own home.
It also increased the pressure to find her own establishment-to marry and settle in her own life, to not be a responsibility to her family. She had nothing against marrying, in itself. It might be rather nice to have a partner in life, if it was the right person. And there lay the rub. The right person. Someone who understood and shared her interests, who supported her and who she could support. Who needed her.
Cecilia let down the loose knot of her wavy, reddish-gold hair and reached for her silver-backed brush to run it through the tangled strands as she thought of her suitors, such as they were. There was Mr. Brown, the vicar at Danby Village's St. Swithin's Church. Her mother quite approved of him; he was the nephew of a viscount, and Lady Avebury thought he would be a bishop one day. He was rather handsome, with his brown, curling hair and chocolate-brown eyes, from a prominent family, and well-liked by all the neighborhood for his good works and short sermons. Cecilia liked him, too, what she knew of him. But she feared she would make a terrible vicar's wife.
Then there were the young men she met in London, sons of her mother's friends. Lord Battingly-Gore and Mr. Henderson. The dreadfully boring cricket players. Cecilia shuddered.
Against her will, a pair of Viking-blue laughing eyes popped into her mind, an insolent smile, a gentle hand on hers. Jesse Fellows. He was one of the newest footmen at Danby, and had only arrived last spring just before the fatal dinner party. Though he was the nephew of Mrs. Mabry at the greengrocer in the village, no one really knew much about him. He had been quick to help at the terrible events of the dinner, coolheaded and kind. And he was much too bold to be a really good footman. Footmen were supposed to be invisible, after all.
Cecilia laughed. A rather motley, and poor, selection of romantic prospects. And she had no desire to marry yet, to tie herself down to one fate. But she did so very much want to be useful.
She thought about the flyer for Mrs. Price's rally. If women had the vote, had their own choices to make-how much her world would open up. The world for all women.
Jane finished laying out the tea dress, along with matching blue silk shoes and the lace shawl. "Will you be having tea on the terrace, my lady? I saw the footmen carrying out chairs earlier."
"I'm not sure. It is rather a warm day for autumn. I should probably take a parasol just in case."
Jane found a white, ruffled lace parasol hidden under the bed, perhaps dragged there by Jack, who did tend to purloin anything not tied down. Jane brushed the dust off its ribbon edging before she came to twist Cecilia's hair into a braided upsweep. The daughter of a grocer in New Jersey, Jane had started off as a chambermaid in an American hotel, but had learned all the arts of being a lady's maid very quickly. Not to mention sleuthing, and also being a good friend.
But Cecilia had begun to wonder if Jane had some romantic notions of her own in life. She did seem to spend quite a bit of her free time in the garage with Collins, the handsome chauffeur. Not that she had much free time, between Annabel's demands and helping Cecilia.
Cecilia gazed thoughtfully out at the garden as Jane deftly fastened pearl combs into the braids she had just created. It was indeed a warm and sunny day, making Danby look even more beautiful than usual, and marital duties seemed so far away. Yet the thought of them followed her everywhere.
"Have you seen the Blue Lady run across the lawn lately, my lady?" Jane asked.
Cecilia laughed. The Blue Lady was the family ghost, the specter of a Bates who was said to have died in the Civil Wars hundreds of years ago, and who came to visit Danby whenever disaster was near. "Not recently, luckily. She's only supposed to appear when something terrible is about to happen, you know. I think we had enough of that in the spring."
Jane shivered. "We did, at that."
Once Cecilia's hair was tidied to Jane's exacting standards, she helped Cecilia out of her plain skirt and shirtwaist and into the fashionable tea gown. She fastened the tiny pearl buttons up the back and smoothed the intricate pleats and lace inserts.
"Do I look like a proper young lady now, Jane?" she asked, twirling her bell sleeves back and forth until Jack leaped up to beat at them.
"Jack, no!" Jane cried, trying to keep his needle-sharp claws away from the delicate lace ruffles. "I do think even the dowager countess might approve, my lady."
Cecilia sighed. Her grandmama had spent a lifetime learning Society's rules, and she was always the first to apply them-to everyone except herself. The whole family was quite terrified of her. "I do hope so. I don't know what I would do without your help now, Jane." She caught up her shawl and parasol and hurried out of the room, closing the door firmly before Jack could follow. He could help Jane tidy up. Her grandmother, and especially her grandmother's terrier-terror Sebastian, didn't much care for Jack, and the feeling was mutual. No one wanted the tea table overturned.
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