The Chemickal Marriage

without hope of advancement, the odds she would believe the tale were much increased. And besides, you
did
know the story. Even with the necessary embroidery, it did not sound a lie. And if the Queen
did
declare it a lie – always possible, she is as contrary as a mule – it was not
me
who’d done the lying.’
    ‘But Lord Axewith is gone –’
    ‘Axewith left his papers with Bronque. By now Her Majesty has flung those papers in the Colonel’s face and the main goal of our visit is achieved. That Axewith is called to some entirely unrelated crisis only benefits us further. It keeps him from the tragic news at Axewith House, and also from Vandaariff. Now, will you stand?’
    Miss Temple nodded and rose. ‘Colonel Bronque is your lover.’
    ‘Celeste Temple, how did you ever escape strangling?’ The Contessa slipped the paper-knife into her bag and came out with a handkerchief. ‘Yours to destroy.’
    Miss Temple wiped her nose and eyes and then dabbed at her fingers, for the lace was too thin for its task. ‘Why do all the Queen’s ladies dislike you?’
    ‘Why does everyone dislike
you
?’
    ‘But – but I am not –’ Miss Temple flushed. ‘I am not beautiful.’
    The Contessa’s voice was flat. ‘No. Beauty is more a danger than intelligence or wit. One becomes a living mirror for the inadequacies of others. Without the whip hand, which as a foreigner in the court is denied me, oneproceeds in secret. Such constraints are exactly why unexpected encounters, such as Lady Hopton, such as yourself, are so gratifying.’
    ‘But you have not killed me.’
    The Contessa sighed wistfully. ‘O
Celeste
…’
    When she had stepped off the ship into the incomparably more complicated world of the city – a hailstorm of sounds and smells and people – Miss Temple’s reaction, true to her nature, had been to retreat and, from behind a barrier of sceptical politeness, observe. The vectors of her relations were antagonistic, this new home defined by its otherness. When elements of her transplanted life
did
in time penetrate her reserve – a grudging familiarity with her maids, an appreciation for certain tea shops – the result was an expansion of her private enclosure to include these new pleasures, not a shift from her essential detachment. Now that enclosure, her castle’s keep, housed only mortifying betrayal. Even her hate for the Contessa was blunted, first by the indiscriminate desire that ran in her blood like an infection, and, worse to admit, by Miss Temple’s fear that the Contessa alone understood, however contemptuously, the truth of her polluted soul.
    She wondered how many people the Contessa
had
murdered, and why
she
had been so many times spared? Certainly the Contessa had tried once or twice in earnest, but on so many other occasions the woman had refrained. Miss Temple believed that once a person was an enemy – horrible Cynthia Hobart, for example, whose plantation lay across the river – one worked against them without end. Moral sophistication – that one would not merely dissemble, biding time for a master stroke, but actually allow one’s feelings to
change –
laid a chill in the pit of her stomach.
    She shook off her thoughts. They had retraced their steps to the hall of mirrors, where they had first entered with Colonel Bronque.
    ‘At
last
,’ sighed the Contessa. ‘If we can just find a coach –
che cavolo
!’
    Blocking the way stood four soldiers and an unimpressive man with wire spectacles and a little beard, the tip of which he twirled between two grey-gloved fingers.
    ‘Mr Schoepfil.’ The Contessa released Miss Temple’s hand. ‘I had wondered if I would have the pleasure.’
    ‘The pleasure is mine,’ Mr Schoepfil replied. ‘I insist.’
    Miss Temple turned and ran, but another line of soldiers barred her way. She was taken to an empty room and left inside without a word.
    Miss Temple disliked waiting at the best of times, and to do so without knowing where she was only made her feel more powerless, more like a child. She looked out of the window of the little room, wondering if she might simply smash the glass and climb through, but, while she did not remember having climbed so many stairs, the drop was at least thirty feet to an ugly gravelled courtyard.
    She wondered if the Contessa would set the blame for Lady Hopton’s death on her. And who was this Mr Schoepfil –
another
lover, along with Bronque? She thought of the indifference that ringed her