Tasha Alexander - A Fatal Waltz

“What news have you from Vienna?” Ivy asked. “It was one of my favorite stops on my wedding trip.” She blushed slightly as she said this and glanced across the room at her husband, who was speaking with Lord Fortescue.

“The city is as beautiful as ever. So far as I am concerned, nothing in Europe can match the Ringstrasse. And you English know nothing about waltzing.”

“Is that so?” I asked. “Then I shall have to visit.”

“You are fond of the waltz?” he asked.

“Immensely,” I said. As if he could hear what I was saying, Colin looked towards me, and I felt bathed in warmth.

“Your fiancé is a lucky man,” the count said.

“Well spoken.” Ivy’s eyes sparkled. “Do you know Mr. Hargreaves?”

“Very well. He’s a frequent visitor when his work brings him to Austria.”

I was about to ask the count how he and his distressingly elegant wife had wound up at Beaumont Towers on a dreary English weekend when I was distracted by Sir Thomas, who, upon awakening rather violently from his nap, managed to knock a towering vase off the table in front of him. His son grimaced, embarrassed on his father’s behalf. I had always liked Gerald Clavell. He was well intentioned, if more than a little too eager, but even I had to admit that the prospect of spending more than two days in a row with him was exhausting. It was as if his father’s lethargy had spurred him to become the polar opposite.

“I’m absolutely depending upon you this weekend, Lady Ashton,” he said, coming to my side in a poorly disguised effort to divert my attention from his father. “Will you help me put together a theatrical entertainment? It will give you ladies something to do while we shoot. I can’t bear the thought of you all sitting around wasting away.”

“I—”

“You simply must. Perhaps something from the Greeks? You can choose whatever you’d like. I’m sure Lord Fortescue’s library is at your disposal.”

“If I may,” the count interrupted, “I would be honored to assist you in finding an appropriate piece.”

“How about something from The Trojan Women? We’ve more ladies than gentlemen who could be persuaded to take part,” I said.

“I beg you, not a tragedy. Not a tragedy!” Gerald was turning beet red. “You must find something that will put us in a festive mood.”

“Aristophanes?” I suggested.

“You know your Greek literature quite well, don’t you, Lady Ashton?” I had not heard Mr. Harrison come up behind me, and started at the sound of his voice. “Not a woman to be underestimated, eh?” He looked at me carefully as he spoke.

“I find Lysistrata vastly diverting,” I said.

“Lysistrata?” Gerald sounded a bit panicked. Rightly so, I suppose. The story of women joining together to withhold physical pleasures from their husbands in an attempt to thwart a war was, perhaps, not appropriate for our current gathering.

“Not to worry, Gerald,” I said. “I’ll find something that will delight us all.”

“Right.” The wrinkles between his eyebrows smoothed. “Please don’t wait too long to get started. We should plan to be ready no later than Saturday, don’t you think? Do you know where the library is? I could bring you there now.” He took my arm and nodded at Ivy. “Mrs. Brandon, why don’t you organize some cards while I’m delivering Lady Ashton. Whist? Yes? We could all meet in the game room in half an hour?”

Ivy stammered a reply as he steered me towards the door. Colin stood up to follow me, but was intercepted by Lord Fortescue. The countess watched all this, a glittering smile on her face, barely nodding at her husband as he rushed to join me.

“She is an enchanting thing, Colin, but so young!”

I had gone to my bedroom after leaving the library and was about to return downstairs when I heard the countess’s voice floating up from the main hall. I ducked behind a pillar.

“I will not discuss this with you,” Colin said.

“Don’t be silly. You can’t expect that I—”

“Kristiana!” He spoke firmly, and I wished I could see them. The hall was an atrium, Gothic arches lining the second-floor balcony. If I were to stand two or three arches from where I was, I would be able to look down on them from behind a pillar. But if I moved, they might notice me.

“So you’re abandoning your lifelong role as confirmed bachelor?” she asked.

“Yes, and I’m looking forward to it more than you can imagine.”

“You underestimate my imagination, Schatz.”

“Kristiana—”

“You had to know I’d be disappointed.”

“I wrote you. This does not come as a surprise,” he said.

“I confess that I did not take you seriously when you threw me over, though you were very stubborn about it.”

“I’ve nothing more to say on the subject.”

“I believed you when you said you’d fallen in love. It’s an easy enough thing to do. But I never thought you’d marry her.”

“She is everything to me.”

“For the moment, perhaps. But I think we both know… Well, best not to consider that now.”

“You’re terrible,” he said, and I could hear a smile creeping into his voice.

“That’s why you’ve always adored me.”

Stunned? Horrified? Frozen? If there were a word that might have captured my emotion at that moment, it was one I did not know. I realized I had been holding my breath, and when at last I drew air, it felt like icy knives in my throat.

“I may have held you in the highest esteem, Kristiana, but I never loved you, nor did you love me.”

“We both know that’s not true. But it was never your love that I wanted, mein Schatz. Wasn’t that always our problem?” She was moving away from him, her heels clicking on the marble floor as she stepped into the hall under the balcony. Once her footsteps had faded, I tentatively peeked over the railing and saw Colin leaning against a pillar, arms crossed, countenance imperturbable. I counted to one hundred in Greek before speaking.

“There is a deplorable lack of fires in this house, don’t you think?” I asked, calling down from above. “I’ve not been warm since I arrived.”

“Don’t move,” he said, and crossed the hall to the Elizabethan staircase. When he reached the top, he took me by the arms and in one swift motion pressed me to the wall and kissed me with an urgent passion. Delicious though the moment should have been, I found myself distracted. Was he, in his usual charming manner, doing his best to keep me warm? Or was this display fueled by his encounter with Kristiana? Kristiana. Already I hated the name.

He pulled back and straightened his jacket, turning his head towards the stairs.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Wait,” he said. An instant later, I heard heavy, slow footsteps coming from the direction of the bedrooms.

“Hargreaves, let’s go.” Lord Fortescue, clutching a thick stack of papers to his chest, nodded sharply at him but ignored me. “I want to speak with you privately before Harrison and the rest descend upon us.”

“I’m not quite done here,” Colin said. Fortescue grunted and gave me a disparaging look before going back downstairs.

“You’re not afraid of him?” I asked. “Everyone else in England is.”

“I’m not afraid of anyone. And there’s no one in Britain or elsewhere who is going to keep me away when I want to be with you.” He kissed me again, and this time I did not think of the countess at all.

27 November 1891

Somerville Hall, Oxford

Dear Emily,

I’m timing the sending of this letter so that it will arrive during your stay at Beaumont Towers, hoping that it may provide a fleeting bright spot in what will no doubt be an otherwise dull weekend. How I wish you were here at Oxford with me instead!

Do you remember the don we heard lecture when you visited at the beginning of term? Mr. Michaels? Who wouldn’t deign to so much as acknowledge our presence afterwards? Who pointedly refused to answer my questions? After three weeks of hounding him, he agreed to speak to me about my work on Ovid. Imagine his astonishment when he found our views on the Metamorphosis perfectly complementary.

Now that another fortnight has passed, he’s decided to take me under his wing. I’ll begin formally reading with him during Hilary Term, but in the meantime he’s doing all he can to advance my studies, even though, in theory, he doesn’t believe women should be full members of the university. He will reconsider that position before I’m through with him.

I saw Jeremy last week. He’s been cavorting with Lady Templeton, but insists that he’s more bored than ever. I told him where you were spending the weekend and his face brightened—said he was going to wangle an invitation to a neighboring house (the Langstons’, I think) so that he could descend upon you. If your darling fiancé continues to postpone wedding plans, he may find himself in the midst of a fierce competition.

Have you ever met Gertrude Bell? She’s planning a trip to Persia, and it sounds absolutely marvelous. I think, Emily, that you and I should embark on an exploration of the world before you succumb once again to the bonds of marriage.

I am, as always, your most devoted and corrupt friend,

Margaret Seward

I was delighted to find that Margaret had sent me a note. The reading and writing of correspondence were some of the few activities available to ladies at a shooting party, and as we were only to be at Beaumont Towers for a short time, I had not expected to receive any letters. In the year we had known each other, Margaret and I had become closer than most friends after a lifetime. A mutual interest in the study of classics brought us together initially, but we soon discovered that our common ground was not limited to the intellectual. Her parents preferred to keep her at their home in New York—so far as I could tell, her father owned nearly every railroad in America—but she had convinced them to let her go to Oxford after finishing a degree at Bryn Mawr.