Dear Miss Hermione,
What is a mother to do?
Every minute of every day, I am consumed by worry. I am sleepless, filled with panic. I am desperate for help, and as you will understand when you are apprised of my problem, I cannot turn to anyone to provide it but you.
It pains me even to write these terrible words, but if you are to assist me, you must know the truth, and the whole of it.
My dear Miss Hermione, my daughter has run off.
You will notice, yes, you will surely notice for you are both wise and worldly, that I did not say my darling girl has disappeared, for you see, it is no mystery where she has gone. I have received a letter and I know where she now dwells.
Miss Hermione, my sweet and innocent daughter has gone off to join the Hermetic Order of the Children of Aed.
Surely you have heard of these self-styled Children, for the group and its leader travel the country preaching their blasphemous doctrine, promoting (how is it even possible they should want to speak of it in public?) their unsavory way of life. Even if you have not seen the notice of their gatherings in the newspapers, you have surely read—for who has not?—the lurid accounts of their activities in Count Orlando’s stories. Yes, yes, in the tales, he calls them the Children of Ud, but that is obviously a thinly disguised ruse. A man of great talent, not to mention courage, Count Orlando has gleaned intimate knowledge of the Children. He knows how wanton they are.
Human sacrifices. Devil worship. Orgies! If I was not obliged to put on a brave face for the sake of my family’s reputation, I would swoon.
My daughter has made a terrible mistake, and for her and the sake of our family’s honor, I am keeping her absence a secret, but I do not know how much longer I can continue the subterfuge. Even her father does not know where she is, thinking she has gone off to visit relatives. Oh, how the lie torments me!
Miss Hermione, you must help. For the sake of this mother’s wounded heart. For the cause of our family’s good name. For my dear daughter’s innocence.
Please, offer me some guidance. Counsel me. Oh, Miss Hermione, what am I to do?
A Brokenhearted Mother
London
November 4, 1885
It is a sad day, indeed, when even an orgy does not interest me.
Shrouded by an ennui the likes of which had not enveloped me since that wretched but memorable occasion when the newest of the autumn bonnets were not put up for sale at Madame Dupont’s Millinery due to a sunken ship and its lost cargo of ostrich feathers, I cast aside the penny dreadful I’d been reading. Count Orlando’s tales of darkness and depravity had always captivated me and made my heart flutter. In a very ladylike way, of course. Yet this one, the latest in a series of shocking stories about the Children of Ud, could neither hold my interest nor lighten my dismal mood.
I rested my head against the back of the chair where I languished. I laid one arm across my forehead. I sighed.
I confess, I am somewhat of an expert when it comes to this particular form of expression. As a proper lady, I was schooled by my late mama in the well-timed sigh. After long years of practice, I know how to employ the sound to convey longing and express yearning. I appreciate how, used efficiently and with just a modicum of emotion, it might hasten the end of a boring conversation or prolong a favored suitor’s goodbyes. I had never, though, felt it communicate so thoroughly the fact that I was totally, completely, and utterly bored.
My exhalation of despair should certainly have plucked at the heartstrings of all who heard it. Which of course explained why Violet, in the chair opposite mine, a book open in her hands, never flinched. But then, I am convinced Violet doesn’t have a heart.
Being more charitable than she, I gave her another chance to display some sign of sisterly devotion. I sighed yet again.
“Really, Sephora.” She glanced up from her reading only long enough to shoot a look at me that spoke both her impatience and her disinterest. “If you’re going to distract me with your dramatics, perhaps you should go into another room.”
“And do what?” I sat up and flung out both my arms, the better to demonstrate the desolation that was my life. “How you can sit all day with your nose pressed in a book is beyond me, Violet, especially when you’re reading…” I leaned nearer for a better look at the book in her hands. “The Ideals of the Art of India. It is no wonder you never get bored. You live and breathe tedium.”
She closed the book and set it on her lap, and I knew from the way she pressed her lips together and lifted her chin that a lecture was forthcoming. “It is actually quite fascinating. It takes a special look at the paintings inside the caves at Sittanavasal. Surely you remember the place? I have always considered visiting it one of the highlights of our time in India.”
Yes, I remembered the journey we’d made while Papa served with the Foreign Office, and doing so, I was forced to amend the thought that I’d never been as bored as I was that very day. There was, after all, Sittanavasal.
Rather than remind Violet of what she should have already known, I sprang from my chair and paced to the fireplace, empty and cold on so mild an afternoon. From there, I made my way to the windows that overlooked the brown and tattered remnants of our summer garden. All the roses trimmed. All the hollyhocks bent by wind. Little left but a smattering of baby’s breath, but the tiny white flowers, too delicate to last much longer into the month, only served to remind me of the very long, very tedious days ahead until the social Season started again. It was all too cruel, and I spun and made my way back to the fireplace. There, I turned to face my older half sister.
“Reading hardly takes the place of living,” I told her. “I mean, really living. You should know as much. There was, after all, the matter of the murder we dealt with last summer. Admit it, you felt truly alive then. You felt energized. Interviewing suspects. Searching for clues. Finally bringing the perpetrator to ground.” Here, I was forced to swallow the sudden tight knot of emotion in my throat. But then, I had my reasons, for I’d been involved in the matter in the most heartbreaking way. I did not
need to point this out to Violet, so instead, I said, “During the excitement, I know you felt your blood coursing through your veins in much the same way I did.”
“Let me remind you, that excitement included you getting kidnapped. Who knows what might have happened had you not been rescued.” I thought she might elaborate, and that surely what she added would have to do with my bad choices, my poor judgment, or my questionable taste in men. But whatever she was about to say, she sloughed it away with a twitch of her shoulders. “The incidents you speak of are over and done.” As if to emphasize the point, she tapped the cover of her book with one finger. “As pleased as I am that justice was served, we need to get on with our lives. Our real lives. Those do not include…” Here she cast a glance at the thin publication that lay on the floor between us. “Really, Sephora, reading romantic novels is one thing, and I’ve always wondered how you can stomach such balderdash. But when you start into the likes of Count Orlando…” She did not need to comment further; her shiver took care of that.
As bored as I’d been with the Children of Ud just a short time before, I felt the need to defend my reading matter now. I scooped the eight-page dreadful from the floor and held it in front of me, a shield against her criticisms.
“It is heady stuff,” I told her. “As you would know if only you’d read a number or two. This is number six of the series.” I poked the periodical closer to her so that she was sure to notice the spine-tingling illustration on its cover, printed in lurid, luscious color. Dark-cloaked figures circling a leaping orange bonfire. A tall, commanding presence dressed all in black, lurking in the shadows, his skeletal fingers clutching the arms of a fair maiden. Her ruby lips were parted with terror, her sapphire eyes were wide, her white gown was diaphanous.
“There is such fear in her expression,” I pointed out. “Just looking at the illustration, can’t you feel the excitement of the scene? Aren’t you eager to read every last word so that you, too, can become part of the story?”
“I’d much rather read about Sittanavasal, thank you very much.” As if to prove this beyond any doubt, she opened her book again. “Why don’t you…” Already reading, she waved a dismissive hand toward the parlor door. “Aren’t there things you can do with Margaret? You and Margaret Thuringer, you go out every day together. Only—” Her gaze snapped from the book and met mine. “You haven’t been out with Margaret. Not in ages. Have you two had a falling-out?”
I plunked onto the couch. “At least a falling-out would be interesting. I mean, if it was over a beau we both had our eyes on. Or the last of the Honiton lace at the dressmaker’s.” I know a pucker is not attractive, but I couldn’t help myself. This was a subject worth puckering over. “Margaret is visiting relatives and has been gone for weeks, and without her, life is dreadfully dull.”
“You have other friends, surely.”
“None as amusing as Margaret.” This time I didn’t even try to control the depths of despair contained in my sigh. “Oh Violet, I am so bored!”
The wretched state of my being did not move her in the least. But then, Violet’s character is so different from my own passionate nature. Just as her looks are so much
a contrast of mine, strangers never guess we are sisters. Violet takes after our father’s side of the family. She’s tall and gangly, not petite and delicate like I am, and her brown hair isn’t nearly as striking as my golden tresses. I do believe she might look far more fashionable if only she paid attention to the colors that are au courant and the styles that best enhance a woman’s figure. Instead, as exemplified by that very morning where she was dressed in a gown the color of the autumn-brown leaves on the oak tree outside the window, she insisted on earthy colors and she never—it was hard to even imagine!—wore layers of petticoats or even a bustle.
Her personality, I am sorry to say, was as dull as her wardrobe. Violet is logical and thoughtful in all things. She is careful, her thoughts measured, her actions deliberate. Over the last months, I had often found myself wondering how she’d mustered the cleverness she must surely have needed to solve the mystery in which we’d found ourselves entangled over the summer. Were there depths to my half sister I had yet to discover? It seemed unlikely given we had known each other for the entire sixteen years of my existence. And yet, in the aforementioned affair, she had saved my honor as well as my life. For that alone, I must admit, I found myself thinking occasionally and much to my own surprise that I might actually admire Violet.
This was not one of those instances. Not when she showed me no sympathy at all, but simply turned back to her book.
“You’ll think of something to do,” she said. “Why don’t you go see if Bunty needs help in the kitchen.”
“The kitchen? Me?” It was all I needed to convince me Violet has no sense at all, not when it comes to an understanding of the proper use of a lady’s time. I dragged myself from the couch and shuffled to the door. “I believe I will go to the shops on my own. Bunty will come along if I insist.” Even as I said the words, I realized they contained none of the excitement they usually did for me. I gave her one last chance to prove she had a shred of compassion. “Perhaps you would like to accompany me instead?”
Violet didn’t bother to look up from her reading. It was all the answer I needed.
Violet
I waited until Sephora shut the door behind her before I put down my book. Then I waited a full minute more. After all, I had my reputation to consider as well as my pride. I had to be certain she was well and truly gone before I let down my guard, threw back my head, and groaned.
Bored? Sephora was bored? She had no idea of the meaning of the word!
Bored had nothing to do with not having a friend to go out with to fritter away the day. Bored was all about the exhilaration of investigating a murder, uncovering a scheme that was both devious and heartless, using one’s wits
and tenacity to solve a crime and capture a fiend—and then after assuring the triumph of Justice, spending the next months trying to find a way back to the satisfaction of ordinary life.
Trying, and failing miserably.
The thought settled deep, and before I even realized it, I found myself echoing one of Sephora’s mournful sighs. It was ridiculous, of course, to be so morose. All I needed to do was embrace the day with enthusiasm and curiosity as I had always done. A trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum to view the Chinese ceramics, perhaps. A visit to the library at the British Museum. A dive into the fascinating The Ideals of the Art of India.
I gave the book in question a dubious look and wondered if, when Sephora glanced at it, she’d even noticed that for as long as I’d sat there supposedly reading, I’d never made my way beyond page four.
This was not a salubrious way to live, so mired in dark thoughts, and I shook them off and reminded myself I had work to do. Thus impelled, if not encouraged, I pulled myself to my feet, exited the parlor, and crossed the hall to the library.
The house in St. John’s Wood where Sephora and I were fortunate enough to reside belonged to our dear Aunt Adelia, our father’s sister, who on the event of Papa’s death in the Far East invited us to return to England to live with her. We had spent a year settling into our new life. Sephora with her friends, her fashion magazines, her questionable reading matter, and her frivolous spending. But then, Sephora’s mother was an heiress and Sephora was an only child. She had an income that far outpaced mine and would come into a more-than-adequate fortune once she turned eighteen.
I did not hold this against her. I was the only child of Papa’s first marriage to the daughter of missionaries, and having been raised by a sensible woman and doted on by a father who believed women should use their intellects, I cared little for the fripperies that occupied Sephora’s hours. Since arriving in the country, I’d spent my time exploring the great metropolis, and I’d found museums and art galleries, libraries and lecture halls where I immersed myself in the heady culture of London.
That is, until five months earlier when Adelia suddenly and quite unexpectedly announced she was leaving for the Continent with her current paramour. I hardly begrudged her either the trip or the romantic liaison, but at her leaving, I did find myself in something of (as the great diarist Samuel Pepys put it) a pickle. Before Adelia set off, she confided a secret that left me not simply astonished but positively flabbergasted.
Adelia was Miss Hermione, the agony aunt who doled out advice in A Woman’s Place magazine and was extolled from one end of the Empire to the other! As if that wasn’t enough of a surprise, she proclaimed she had chosen me to take her place.
Adelia is not a woman to be argued with. Her formidable personality (not to mention
that she never takes no for an answer) mingled with my desire to show my gratitude for all she’d done for Sephora and me. Since that day, I had dutifully answered the letters sent to Miss Hermione via the magazine. I had offered advice on everything from manners to marital spats, decorum to household decoration, and I knew there was a stack of just such letters waiting for me to attend.
I pulled the key from the chatelaine that hung from the belt at my waist and unlocked the door to the library where I worked. Though our indomitable housekeeper, Bunty, knew the truth of the letters and the face behind Miss Hermione’s persona, according to Adelia’s wishes, Sephora had been told nothing of the matter. Sephora was a devotee of both the column and the woman. And she was not one to keep a secret. No, Miss Hermione’s true identity must remain hidden.
To that end, I closed the library door behind me and proceeded to my desk where earlier, I’d deposited a cache of letters. Adelia had devised an elaborate delivery route that assured the utmost secrecy and like clockwork, the letters arrived with each post. Some were pleading, some hopeful; some, like the one that had sent me on the trail of a killer just months before, predicted doom. Not so the ones I opened that morning.
A woman who signed herself Concerned about Crinolines wondered how she might stiffen a petticoat.
Another, whose atrocious spelling, watery ink, and the inexpensive foolscap she used told me she was young and in service, asked Miss Hermione to advise her on the best scent to wear to catch the attention of the fishmonger’s boy who called at the kitchen door on Tuesdays. I did not wish to insult the fishmongers of our great nation, yet I was tempted to tell her he’d surely never catch her scent over what was his redolent own.
A third—a man by the look of his thick handwriting—wondered how he might clean up “just enough” to be presentable at the next lecture of the church mission society social given that he was not fond of bathing.
It was at this point I tossed the letters in the air and shrieked.
I might have known Bunty would not miss hearing so pitiful a sound. When I answered the knock on the library door that came just minutes later, her lips were pinched, and she had a tea tray in her hands.
“Thought you might need a little bolstering.” She stepped inside and I closed the door behind her. “Even before I heard you wailing like a banshee.”
I bristled. “It was hardly a banshee wail. It was more—”
“Pathetic,” she ventured.
“Pathetic,” I concurred, and my shoulders drooped.
“Come over here.” She led the way to the settee near the window and put the tray on a nearby table. “Tell me all about it.”
“If only there was something to tell.” I sank onto the settee. During my time as Miss Hermione, we’d established a comfortable routine, Bunty and I. She advised on household matters so that when Miss Hermione recommended recipes or offered guidance on the best way to clean stains and spills, there was some authority behind the advice. Bunty also handled correspondence to and from Adelia. I was grateful to have Bunty’s assistance and her counsel. As she had been in Adelia’s service for years and s
he was also intelligent and experienced, Bunty was the perfect confidante. Now, like always when we put our heads together, she handed me a cup of tea and poured one for herself.
My cup poised in my hand, the steam tickling my nose, I told her, “The letters Miss Hermione receives are trite and they are hackneyed. Reading the same sorts of things day after day makes me feel as if my intellect is stifled and my instincts are growing duller by the hour.”
Examining me closely over the rim of her cup, she sipped. Her expression was as passionless as was expected of a silver-haired housekeeper. There was, however, a knowing gleam in her eyes. “You’re not looking for another murder, are you?”
Almost against my will, my gaze traveled across the room to the filing cabinets lined against the wall. Adelia had established a rather slipshod system for cataloguing and storing her letters, one I’d refined and perfected over the last months, and each cabinet was marked according to subject matter: Mothers-in-Law, Unfaithful Spouses, Manners, Morals. At the end of the summer, I had added a new label to an empty cabinet: Murder.
“Of course, I don’t wish anyone harm,” I confessed. “But Bunty, just a hint of the excitement and exhilaration I felt as I investigated might help me feel alive again.”
Her lips pinched just the slightest bit. “And here I thought Mr. Eli had taken care of that.”
It was a cheeky thing for her to say, and so true, it struck at my heart. Eli Marsh was an American I’d encountered while investigating, a fine-looking and secretive fellow who was evasive when it came to answering questions about either his occupation or himself. He carried handcuffs and a pistol, both of which had proved useful in our endeavor to bring a murderer to ground. He was quick on his feet and courageous while at the same time being infernal, maddening, and the most attractive man I’d ever met.
It would do me no good to remember Eli or his kiss, the one that had thrilled me to my bones. And I, as I reminded myself, was hardly the type to pine.
“I haven’t heard from him,” I told Bunty. “Not since he appeared here after we’d wrapped up last summer’s mystery then disappeared again just as quickly.”
“Busy, no doubt,” Bunty offered. “As men so often are.”
If Eli was busy, then he was not as bored as I.
I frowned and shook away all thoughts of Eli as so unproductive and discouraging they would only sink me further into the mopes. “How did Adelia do it?” I wondered. “She is so mercurial, so intelligent. Yet she’d been writing as Miss Hermione for years and no doubt seeing the same sorts of letters I see. How did she manage?”
“Miss Adelia is not one to take life too seriously,” Bunty told me. “Whereas you…” Another sip of tea gave her time to form her words. “Murder is a serious business. Adelia would not have been able to handle an investigation such as you did or to deal with the darkness you encountered. You were the perfect person to take on the task.”
“And now I am left with nothing but empty hours and endless letters that make me feel as if I’m drowning in dullness.”
She set down her cup and her gaze wandered to the letters that had fluttered to the floor when my patience snapped. “You have yet to examine all of the morning’s post.”
She was right, and though I had little hope any of the remaining letters would bring the intellectual stimulation I so badly needed, I plucked them from the floor, then sat back down so I might go through them.
“How much jewelry can a woman wear without looking gaudy?” I tossed the letter down on the settee next to me. “Is it fitting to serve the fish before the fowl?” This letter, too, I discarded. “‘Dear Miss Hermione, What is a mother to do?’” I grumbled. “Oh dear, Bunty, I’m afraid I am in for a question about engagement announcements. Wasn’t it just a fortnight ago I answered a question about the proper way to announce a daughter’s engagement?”
“And yet there may be something further to the letter,” Bunty offered.
More to appease her than for any other reason, I kept reading.
“‘Every minute of every day, I am consumed by worry. I am sleepless, filled with panic. I am desperate for help, and as you will understand when you are apprised of my problem, I cannot turn to anyone but you to provide it.
“‘It pains me even to write these terrible words, but if you are to assist me, you must know the truth, and the whole of it.’”
I could not contain the groan that escaped me. “It might still be about an engagement,” I groaned. “You know how fretful mothers can be when it comes to engagements. And yet…” My fingers played over the paper and suddenly and quite unexpectedly, a frisson of electricity tingled through my bloodstream.
“Thick paper. Expensive. This is from a woman who would not need to inquire about trifles. She’s been brought up to know how to deal with every contingency. She’s neat and intelligent. There are no misspellings, no ink smudges. She may be consumed with panic, as she says, but still, she is as steady as Gibraltar. She’s surely been schooled in how to be a lady. She would know exactly what to do if her daughter was recently engaged. Plus, Bunty, did you catch the subtle reference?” I quickly reread the line where I’d left off. “‘… you must know the truth, and the whole of it.’ To me, that indicates there are others who have not been apprised of the whole of the situation. Ah, secrets! We may be on to something here, Bunty!” I settled back and kept reading.
“‘My dear Miss Hermione, my daughter has run off.’” When Bunty sucked in a breath, I refused to be distracted, but kept on reading all the way to the line where a familiar name caught my attention, The Hermetic Order of the Children of Aed.
My head came up. “Bunty, isn’t that the ridiculous cult Sephora reads about? Those sordid stories about human sacrifice and such? You mean there really is such a thing? It isn’t a fiction?”
Bunty’s shoulders quivered and spots of color rose in her cheeks. “Real, indeed! Count Orlando is not so much a writer of fiction as he is a journalist, and he’s risked his own life to investigate these heathens. This poor mother! It is no wonder she’s beside herself. The count’s stories, they leave you breathless!”
“You, too, Bunty?” I might have been tempted to laugh but could not in the face of this new problem we’d been presented. Besides, Bunty didn’t allow me the chance. She scooted to the edge of her seat and poked a finger toward the letter in my hand. “Keep reading. We must learn what’s happened.”
I did as instructed.
At least until I could stand it no longer. “‘Human sacrifices. Devil worship. Orgies!’” I plonked the letter onto my lap. “This is beyond the pale! Really, Bunty, this cannot be more than bunkum. Human sacrifices? Here in England?”
Bunty nodded and leaned nearer, her voice low with the weight of her words. ...
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