Oh, yes. One more thing: Imagine that you, the designer, are insane.
And that war comes before it’s finished.
And all the men who used to be working on it are gone, dying in trenches in countries far away, so what there is of your dream sits half done and rotting through the seasons.
Tranquility at Idylling. My happy home for the next three months.
When I called it a monstrosity before, I wasn’t exaggerating.
I climbed slowly out of the motorcar Armand had sent to Iverson for me, my suitcase clutched in both hands.
“No, I’ll keep it,” I said to the chauffeur when he tried to take it from me. He tugged at his cap and backed away to the front of the car again.
My feet seemed heavier than usual, dragging their way along the crushed-shell drive that left a pinkish residue on my boots. It was close to twilight, with a brisk evening wind that plastered my skirt to my legs and skittered through the grit. Tranquility was an elaborate sandcastle silhouette against the deepening blue.
Tranquility’s butler, who always held his mouth in a flat, folded way that suggested he had something scandalous to say but never would, awaited me on the steps leading to the front doors.
“Miss,” he greeted me, with a bow. “Lord Armand is in the west drawing room. Shall I take your case? … Are you certain? Very well, miss. This way, please.”
The atrium was an elegant oval of space, with slick checkerboard tiles and smooth plastered walls and a curving, serpentine grand staircase that led to nowhere, because there was no top-story landing built for it yet. Leaping from that uppermost stair could possibly land you on the giant glass-and-wrought-iron chandelier suspended from a chain (it resembled a series of connected lanterns, or perhaps a bat), but then you’d still have a long drop back to the floor.
I’d seen it all before, but couldn’t help gazing up and around until I felt a little dizzy. I wondered, briefly, if the maids had to dust and mop all the way to the top of the staircase, even though it could never be used. (They did.)
The butler led me to a door on the right, opened it, and indicated I should walk past him into the chamber.
“Miss Eleanore Jones, my lord.”
“Thank you, Matthews.”
Three people were seated before a low table, each holding a drink. One of them was Armand, but I didn’t know the other two: a sandy-haired bloke about his age in a khaki officer’s uniform, and an elderly woman in a beaded frock and long gloves and a colossal diamond-and-topaz brooch. Light from the sconces danced along the brooch, gold and white and yellow. I marveled that it didn’t blind her.
Armand and the officer put down their glasses and stood. The woman didn’t bother to move other than to aim at me a scowling look.
“Who is this person?” she demanded, querulous.
“Miss Jones, Aunt Lottie,” replied the officer, speaking very loudly. “The girl we’ve been expecting.”
“She is holding up dinner,” the woman grumbled, sipping from her glass.
“I—”
I had been about to recite my standard apology to people of power, then cut myself short. I reckoned I’d done enough begging of pardons to last me some while, and anyway, I hadn’t even known about the bloody dinner.
“I hope I am only fashionably late,” I said instead, which still seemed a bit too groveling, considering, but the words were out and there was no calling them back.
Armand smiled. “Not even that. Please, join us.”
I looked around, set my suitcase on the floor by a chaise longue covered in salmon chintz, and forced myself forward once again.
This room was one of the finished ones, apparently, because I didn’t see any of the odd scaffolding or pallets of tools that littered the rest of the manor. In fact, it almost looked normal, with bronze-colored drapery and slender teakwood stands supporting ferns and busts of carved stone. Handsomely framed watercolors hung between the windows. The rugs were cream and rust and saffron, a flawless match to the striped wallpaper.
The undercurrent of madness was subtle here, seeping through in small, sneaky ways: how the rugs had been laid in a random patchwork, unaligned; how the woven patterns in the curtains didn’t actually match from panel to panel; how all the watercolors were of gruesome hunting scenes, of wild animals being ripped apart by grinning men and dogs.
Armand was performing the introductions. I wrenched my attention away from the walls.
“ … Lady Clayworth, Miss Jones. And you remember my friend from Eton, Laurence Clayworth? Lieutenant Clayworth now, of course.”
The other fellow moved around the table to take my hand. I was gazing up at him, trying to place him—it wasn’t as if I knew very many boys, after all—when he spoke.
“Good lord, is this that little beggar girl from the station? I would not have recognized you, I fear. How very grown-up you look, Miss Jones.”
Then I remembered him. We’d met only once before, and that had been enough. It had been at the train station the night I’d first arrived in Bournemouth, and Laurence Clayworth, now Lieutenant, had been lounging about with Armand and Lady Chloe on the platform, waiting for their ride. He had regarded me then with the same interest as he might a bug on the bottom of his shoe. Less, really, because at least he would have bothered to scrape off the bug.
Although I recalled that it had been the charming Chloe who’d taken me for a beggar.
“Delightful to see you again,” I said, smiling, and squeezed my fingers around his just hard enough to hurt.
His eyes widened; he dropped my hand.
“Laurence is here on leave for the next two days, helping to settle his aunt. Since the army nurses and staff have yet to arrive, Lady Clayworth has graciously offered to stay on at Tranquility until they do.”
“Mind yourself, Miss Jones,” said Laurence, with a smirking, sideways glance at me. “Aunt Lottie watched over each of my sisters during their debuts. She is a most vigilant chaperone.”
“The light in here is far too bright,” complained Aunt Lottie. “And I expect there will be trifle for dessert? You know it is my favorite. Foster, ensure that Cook knows about the trifle at once.”
Laurence’s smirk broadened; Armand wouldn’t meet my eyes. As far as I knew, there was no one in the room named Foster.
“How reassuring,” I said, “to know that all the rules of propriety are going be so rigorously followed.”
“Drink?” Armand didn’t wait for my answer, going the sideboard to pour an amber liquid into one of the heavy tumblers. Our fingers brushed as I accepted it, and then he did glance at me—a brief, hard look—before releasing the glass and turning away.
It was whisky. I took a drop upon my tongue and let it sting a path to the back of my throat.
“How was your journey from the school, Miss Jones?” Lieutenant Clayworth inquired.
“Uneventful. Swift.”
So swift that I hadn’t managed more than a short goodbye to the only person who’d been in sight, a maid busy mopping the tiles around the front doors.
Mrs. Westcliffe had been pointedly absent for my scheduled departure.
Aunt Lottie held out her own tumbler to Armand, who quickly refilled it. “Where did she come from?”
“From Iverson, Lady Clayworth.”
She brought up a pair of spectacles that had been dangling from a silver chain down her bosom and inspected me from head to toe.
“Gracious! Are we dining with the servants now?”
“She is a student, Lady Clayworth.”
“She is not dressed for dinner!”