The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

revels. She has no head for them at all.”
    Miss Vandaariff groaned again, perhaps in protest to this unfair assessment, and Miss Temple watched with annoyance and curiosity as the pair disappeared into the next room—as if she had no revolver and they were no sort of prisoner or hostage! She stood where she was, utterly affronted, listening to the clanging lid of a chamber pot and the determined rustling of petticoats, and then decided it was an excellent opportunity to investigate the other rooms without being watched. There were three doors off of the main parlor she was in—one to the chamber pot, which seemed a maid’s room, and two others. Through one open archway she could see a second parlor. In it was set a small card table bearing the half-eaten remains of an uncleared meal, and against the far wall a high sideboard quite crowded with bottles. As she stared in, trying to piece together some sense of the display—how many people had been at the table, how much had they been drinking—as she presumed a real investigating adventurer ought to do, Miss Temple worried she’d had at least one complete mouthful of the port—had it been enough to inflict the insidious purpose of their horrid
philtre
onto her body? What fate was Miss Vandaariff being prepared
for
? Marriage? But it could hardly be that—or not in any normal sense of the word. Miss Temple was reminded of livestock being readied for slaughter and felt a terrible chill.
    With a hand against her brow she stepped back into the main room and quickly to the third door, which was ajar, the sounds of groans and scuffling feet still insistent behind her. This was the Contessa’s bedroom. Before her was an enormous four-poster bed shrouded in purple curtains, and across the floor was strewn more clothing—but these objects, large and small, seemed to float in a room where the walls were far away and, like the floor, dark with shadow like the surface of a black, dead-placid pool, the discarded garments floating like clumps of leaves. She pulled aside the bed curtains. With a primitive immediacy Miss Temple’s nostrils flared … a delicate scent the Contessa’s body had left in the bedclothes.Part of it was frangipani perfume, but underneath that flowered sweetness lay something else, steeped gently between the sheets, close to the odor of freshly baked bread, of rosemary, of salted meat, even of lime. The scent rose to Miss Temple and brought to her mind the human quality of the woman, that however fearsome or composed, she was a creature of appetite and frailties after all … and Miss Temple had penetrated her lair.
    She breathed in again and licked her lips.
    Miss Temple quickly wondered if, in such ruinous disorder, the Contessa might have hidden anything of value, some journal or plan or artifact that might explain the Cabal’s secret aims. Behind, the complaining groans of Miss Vandaariff persisted. What
had
been done to the woman—it was practically as if she was giving birth! Anxiety gnawed at Miss Temple anew, and she felt a glow of perspiration rise upon her brow and between her shoulder blades. Her truest adversaries—the Contessa and the Comte d’Orkancz—must eventually arrive at these rooms. Was she prepared to meet them? She had brazened out her tea with the Comte well enough, but was much less satisfied by her extended interaction with the two ladies, by any estimation less formidable opponents (if opponent was even the proper word for the distressingly unmoored Miss Vandaariff). Somehow a confrontation that ought to have been taut, antagonistic, and thrilling had become mysterious, distracted, sensual, and lax. Miss Temple resolved to find what she could and leave as quickly as possible.
    She first swept her hand beneath the voluminous feather pillows at the head of the bed. Nothing. This was to be expected—a quick lift of the mattress and a look under the bed frame revealed the same result—and it was only with the smallest increase of hope that Miss Temple marched to the Contessa’s armoire in search of the drawer containing her intimates. A foolish sort of woman might hide things there, with an idea that somehow the personal nature of the drawer’s contents would ward off inquiry. Ever anenemy to the inquisitive, Miss Temple knew the opposite was true—that such silks and stays and hose and whalebone inspired a feral curiosity in almost anyone—who
wouldn’t
want to paw through them?—and so the idea of stashing,