The Chemickal Marriage

to protect her.’
    Miss Temple did not believe this at all. She blamed herself keenly for almost everything and knew in her heart that, however much she might, like the Duchess, assuage her complicity through effort, such actions would never shift the damage already done, nor, she was fearfully sure, alter the dark trajectory of her future. She gave the Duchess’s arm another squeeze and ceased further argument. She had seen the look now inhabiting the woman’s face on too many occasions to number: someone with her immediate fate in their hands attempting to gauge how much of what she’d said could be believed – which was to say, how much had been an inveterate lie. The Duchess stabbed a finger at the leather tube under Miss Temple’s arm.
    ‘Does
that
belong to Mr Schoepfil?’
    ‘It does
not
,’ replied Miss Temple, and then in a more honeyed tone, ‘I do not mean to be forward, but will I be hanged?’
    ‘Very possibly.’ The Duchess took her hand. ‘And myself along with you …’
    On her father’s plantation privilege arrived with possession, and those organs of advantage – servants of every role and function – were integrated into all the facets of her life with a blunt cruelty. What had been characterized since, by everyone from the staff of the Boniface to the greater Bascombe family circle, as Miss Temple’s intolerant manner was but a natural inheritance. The subtleties that distinguished mere employment from outright property were no part of that landscape, and so escaped both her attention and interest. In a stroke of some irony, once Miss Temple had been catapulted into a life of adventure, which was to say a variety of social stripes and circumstances, her original notions of hierarchy and power had only been reinforced. Whether it was seeing the Prince’s Own 4th Dragoons in service to Minister Crabbé, or Ministry officials doing the bidding of Mrs Marchmoor, or the hired rogues of the Xonck private army, Miss Temple’s youthful assumptions of autocracy had been confirmed again and again as the model of the world’s true working. Great power, like a swollen insect queen, was marked by a population of compliant drones.
    Walking with the Duchess, Miss Temple perceived an entirely different mechanism. The Duchess presented no awesome presence, in beauty or violence or wit, but nonetheless provoked a willing deference from each soul they passed. Miss Temple compared this to her own arrival, trailing Colonel Bronque, and the relative disinterest with which the Colonel himself had been viewed, though the importance of his errand had been clear. The Duchess, despite her personal lack of affect, inspired unfeigned respect. And, while these courtiers, like Mr Nordling, sent off with Kelling and the Doctor, would have instantly done the Duchess’s bidding, they did not seem to be her
minions
.
    Was not the Queen’s inner court the most stiffly hierarchical body in existence?
    Miss Temple listened intently to her guide’s mutters of greeting and her comments on a host of matters that seemed wholly trivial, given the crisis.Why should anyone care about the milk delivery or invitations to next week’s concert? She realized that the more trivial the task, the more agitated the person assigned to manage it had been, and that their entire progress had been one in which the Duchess – herself emotionally wrought, Miss Temple knew – had smoothed the disarray of the court like a tortoiseshell comb smoothed wet, tangled hair … and all without a threat, a slap or a single urgent word.
    Miss Temple drew no conclusion, for when it came to a fight – as it seemed everything in her world, at the finish, must – she did not see how the Duchess could stand against Colonel Bronque’s troopers. But she kept her eyes and ears open.
    The prospect of violence returned Miss Temple’s thoughts, as she supposed would be inevitable in the whole of her remaining life, to the Contessa. Assuming the woman had finally fled, why now? What had changed, or what had she at last achieved? Miss Temple admitted it was possible the Contessa had put her trust in Colonel Bronque and departed only at the news of his betrayal. But Miss Temple was not satisfied, and her dissatisfaction took firmer root as she realized the Duchess was leading her down damp staircases and past peeling walls, back to the level of the baths.
    They stopped at another metal door with an iron wheel in its centre, flanked by two burly