Shades of Milk and Honey (24 page)

The image of herself lay in the corner of a margin, scribbled as a doodle. He had caught her exactly in a moment of
intense concentration. The text around her image dealt with the similarities between the textures of cloth and of blossoms, but she could see no link from them to her image save that she had stood near that apple tree on the day he had drawn it. She lingered there for minutes longer than such a tiny drawing warranted, but her attention was all aroused by curiosity—what had possessed him to draw her?

Had he been drawing her during their conversation on the nature of perfection in art? When had he left off the apple tree and turned to her, even for the brief span it took to draw the tiny image?

Jane turned the page, and her breath left her body.

In unskimping detail, the lines of Mr. Vincent’s pen rendered Jane, faithfully following the path of her overlong nose, not shying from the sharpness of her features, and yet—and yet, through the grace of his lines, the drawing attained a level of beauty, not by altering Jane’s features, but through the caress of the pen itself. Jane trembled in her chair as if his pen traced across her skin.

And then she saw the single word he had written below the portrait:
Muse.

With a cry, Jane threw the book from her and jumped to her feet. Muse? He could not mean that except in irony. She paced the confines of her room, agitated beyond expression. Beth’s words came back to Jane unbidden: “
 . . . he had no room in his life for anyone other than his muse.”

No. Impossible. He must not mean that
Jane
was his muse. In those pages, there must be an explanation of his meaning.
Jane dropped to her knees where she had flung the book and turned it over, flipping the pages forward to the drawing of her. Beyond it must lie the key to his thoughts, and so Jane turned the page.

Only words met her gaze. She sighed with relief to see that the text dealt with the nature of light and shadow. Surely the caption had meant nothing, or he would have expounded on it. Jane turned the page again.

Her portrait lay in the margin again, small, without connection to the surrounding text. And again, on the next page. Jane flipped through the pages faster now, finding small illustrations of herself in the margins in more frequent intervals, as though his thoughts had turned to her whenever idle.

Then came the illustration for the nymph in the dining room.

On the verso page, the illustration was of Jane, not of Melody, as the final figure appeared. On the recto, the illustration had Melody’s face. Between them, Mr. Vincent had written, “
I shall employ a slipknot, such as I saw Miss Ellsworth use, so the figure can blend from one to the next as I wish. Others can only see the one nymph, but I know my muse is trapped in the tree. Would that I could release her so easily! The wishing almost makes me chuse to drop my masquerade.”

This, then, was what drove Melody’s anger tonight: that her worth was compared in illustration, and Jane deemed higher. But, oh! That Mr. Vincent saw her as a muse! And how then to account for his words to her at Lady FitzCameron’s when he said that her art was without life?
How could he find someone a muse whose work he found less than inspiring, whose work he found lifeless?

Thoughts and emotions fought within the confines of Jane’s skull. She wanted at once to run to Lady FitzCameron’s to confront Mr. Vincent before his departure at dawn, and also to go to Melody and confide in her. Though much trust was lost between them, there was no one else to whom Jane could turn without betraying the trust Mr. Vincent had placed in her by giving her his book.

She must also consider the fact that he had given the book to her knowing what lay at the end, knowing—yes, knowing—that his affections were laid bare in its pages. She could not think. The room pressed in on her. She should go to him and confront him. But that was not possible, and so she must wait in this tiny room, confined and pinched, until morning.

If Jane could only sleep, then her senses might be more ordered and she would know how to respond; but slumber seemed as impossible as the idea that Mr. Vincent thought of her as his muse. Jane stifled a cry and snagged a fold of glamour out of the ether.

Perhaps if she exhausted herself, she might find sleep. She pushed her agitation into the lines of a birch tree, finding structure in its straight trunk and letting her trembling nerves express themselves in the delicate vibrations of the leaves. Her breath quickened, and Jane turned to giving the birch tree a sister. Reaching for the edges of exhaustion, Jane sketched a grove of trees in the corner. Her blood pounded in
her veins, shaking her knees with its pulsing. She wanted to fly from the room, so a flock of doves soared above her birch trees, making her head spin with their flight.

Jane heard a door open in the hall, coming from what could only be Melody’s room.

Footfalls passed her room. What could her sister be doing up when dawn and her departure were yet hours away? Jane thought for a moment of following her sister and confessing her unease, but the fatigue she had so longed for tugged at her bones. Sleep was not far away. Jane reached for another fold of glamour and heard the front door open and shut.

That sound in the dead of night disquieted her and tore the veil from her grasp. She looked out the window and beheld Melody, with a shielded lantern, creeping into the maze; the thin beam of light from the lantern cut through the dark in front of her sister. Of course, with her departure to Bath she must take her leave from her secret lover. Jane stood irresolute for only a moment before she, too, crept out the door, intent on following her sister.

If she could let Melody know that her nighttime excursion was noticed, perhaps she would forgo it, and then Jane would have no qualms about either her own or Melody’s behaviour. In truth, though, she knew that Melody would merely slip out another way and make her appointment in a yet more furtive manner. It was perhaps better to preserve secrecy until the revelation of her presence might truly accomplish something.

Jane slipped down to the ground floor and then out the kitchen door to the garden. Eschewing the Long Walk, Jane made for the side of the hedge. Her breath sounded unnaturally loud in her own ears.

Her memories of fleeing her governess led her to a place where the yew boughs gave every appearance of thick, verdant growth, but had been trained past a missing shrub. It was easy to push them aside and slip through the wall of the maze, entering it at a deeper point than Melody. In this way, using a very different map of the maze than its designer had intended, Jane reached the center of the maze before her sister. She paused before walking to the entrance of the center, listening for any noises within. Footsteps, pacing on the gravel, betrayed an anxious gentleman. Jane could not enter the heart of the maze without his awareness.

The walls in this portion of the maze were too tightly woven for her to slide through without noise. If only there were a way to see what was happening inside without entering the center of the maze.

The cool night breeze carried with it the sound of lighter footsteps approaching from the true entrance, which could only be Melody. By their sound, Jane judged that Melody had entered the Spider’s Colonnade. Jane had perhaps two minutes before her sister gained the center.

She wished for nothing more than to be able to see through the wall. It struck her, then, that Mr. Vincent had offered her a solution with his explanation of
lointaine vision
. She need only work the light folds with care, bending them
over the hedge to carry the scene within to her. Jane sank to the ground, knowing that this would take more energy in her exhausted state than she could maintain while standing. She reached out for the folds and began to weave them together.

Throwing the skein of glamour over the hedge, she saw the image of rose blossoms at her end of the folds. Carefully, she cast about like a fisherman until the end of the skeins found a man whom Jane had no expectation of seeing. Waiting in the center of the maze stood Captain Livingston.

A sweat stood out on Jane’s brow that even the night air could not cool.

Livingston paced across the garden such that Jane had to push the folds of the
lontaine vision
after him to keep him in her sight. Her breath came yet more rapidly. Jane wiped her brow with the back of her hand.

Then Melody entered the image.

“Henry!”

Captain Livingston embraced her—embraced her!—as if he did not have an engagement with Beth. “Dearest, forgive me for not coming sooner.” He bent to kiss her.

Melody pushed away from him. “You might have at least sent a note.”

“Please, you must forgive me. Banbree Manor is full of servants who want nothing more than to carry word of my actions back to my aunt. She holds the keys to any inheritance I am to receive.”

“My father will settle us with a handsome sum.”

“So you have said, but is it not more prudent to delay but a little while longer, so that we might live in a lifestyle more suited to your beauty?”

“Oh, stop. What do I care for such things?”

He laughed and drew her close. “You might care very little now, but I would not want to see you in a cottage without a maid to do the work for you. I have a plan, my love, and it will only take but a little while longer. I beg you not to betray me with your looks or your actions in the next days. In Bath, my aunt will expect me to flirt with every pretty bonnet that walks past, and so I shall, but I love only you.”

Melody sighed. “Henry, I do not like the deception.”

“These are only words, love, and words shall never harm thee. Words mean nothing. Are we not engaged?”

Jane could hardly hear Melody’s response for the buzzing in her ears. She realized that the fatigue she had so sought was close to overwhelming her, so she tied off the skein and lost sight of them.

“I sometimes wonder if your proposal was nothing more than pretty words.”

“Then let me shew you that I love only you.”

Jane could not let this stand. If there were a time to reveal herself, it was now, before her sister’s honour was completely lost. She clambered to her feet, and the maze reeled about her. Clinging to the shrubs for support, Jane fought to stay conscious.

At the first rustle of branches, the voices in the maze stopped. “Who’s there?” Captain Livingston cried.

Melody gasped. “Mama said there were wolves in the forest. What if they’ve found their way into the maze?”

“There are no wolves in Engl—”

Jane stumbled against the hedge and dropped to her knees in the path.

“Henry! Draw your pistol!”

Jane opened her mouth to call out, but the world tipped sideways, and the ground slammed against her.

Jane heard the sounds of wolves around her and Melody’s voice crying for help in the distance. Trapped in the branches between hedges, Jane struggled to reach her sister, but the branches dug deeper into her, weaving through her flesh like folds of glamour.

Cracking her eyes, Jane left the dream maze and woke with her face pressed against the gravel of the path. She had not left the maze at all. Her mouth felt stuffed with cotton batting, and her temples throbbed with the lingering effects of her overexertion.

She stiffened. How long had she lain in the path? Her nerves tied themselves into tangled skeins as she realized that gentle light suffused
the maze. Beyond the maze, no sounds disturbed the morning, save for the gentle chirp of birds and the rustle of the wind through the shrubbery.

The damp and chill, combined with her own exhaustion, would certainly lead to a fever, and yet Jane wanted nothing more than to lie in the path rather than confront Melody.

The situation was far worse than she had expected. Melody was not merely in a secret engagement, she was engaged to a man who had already engaged himself to another. How was Jane to tell her father? And once he knew, what action could he take? To forbid their engagement, surely. To deny Captain Livingston admittance to their company, of a certainty. But how to do so in such a manner that it would not bring dishonour on their family, or the Dunkirk’s or Lady FitzCameron’s? The Viscountess would certainly not take kindly to the insinuation that her favourite nephew had been making advances that went so far past improper as these. Jane’s stomach twisted.

And what of her promise to Mr. Dunkirk? If ever there were a condition which placed Beth at risk, then her engagement to Captain Livingston was surely it. And yet Jane felt a cutting certainty that Mr. Dunkirk would feel compelled to seek satisfaction from Captain Livingston if he knew.

That, Jane could not condone. No matter the captain’s offense, taking his life would not set things right. Nor could Mr. Dunkirk be so easily assured to win, if a duel were in the offing. To face a glamourist such as Mr. Gaffney was a
far different thing than facing a captain in His Majesty’s service.

She must try her level best to dissuade him, if he seemed set on pursuing that course.

Slowly, so as not to risk another faint, Jane pulled herself to her feet. She followed the curving paths of the maze back out by the regular route, one hand always upon the yew to aid in her balance. As she walked, she felt somewhat steadier, but nausea still gripped her middle.