Wilful Impropriety (6 page)

“I beg your pardon,” said Agatha, “but this is absurd. I don’t wish to be launched into Society. I have no interest in going to dances or to London, and I certainly do not desire a husband. All I want is to stay here and study—just like you, Papa.”

“Just like my brother?” Clarisse let out a tinkling laugh. “My dear, haven’t you yet learned? You are a young lady now, not a child to be so wilful. Your duty to the family is to marry, just as your grandmother, great-aunt, and I all did before you—and I can tell you that
studying
is hardly required for that vocation. Gentlemen are none of them so very difficult to understand.”

“Papa!” Agatha said. “Pray tell my aunt that I do not need to be launched upon London!”

“Jasper,” said Clarisse, “do you really wish me to settle myself here in your hermit hole for the next full month, talking nonstop until you finally agree with me? You know it is my right to chaperone your daughter into matrimony. It was promised to me by our own parents, all those years ago.”

Clearly, the weapons had been drawn. Agatha pulled out her own most ruthless stratagem. “If I leave, Papa, who will take care of all the practicalities? Who will listen to the housekeeper’s complaints and deal with the estate manager? You will have no time to devote to your own studies.”

“Well . . .” Sir Jasper looked pained. “It is true that I shouldn’t like—”

“We will only be in London for a matter of weeks,” Clarisse said. “A few months at the absolute most. That is the longest it could possibly take me to find our dear Agatha a fiancé. I am certain you can allow the practicalities to pile up that long, Jasper—indeed, I am more than certain that you have done so in the past. And our dear old Horwick may see to all the rest.”

“That is true,” Sir Jasper said, with obvious relief. His gaze lowered stealthily toward his book.

“Papa!” Agatha said, and snatched the book from his hands. “Aunt Clarisse means to marry me off. If she succeeds, I will be gone
forever
.”

“Have no fear,” said Clarisse, and smiled kindly. “I shall remain here, Jasper, to look after everything for you. It will be as if nothing had changed—except that you had done your duty to your daughter, and to me, at long last.”

“Oh, well,” said Sir Jasper. “That does make a difference, I suppose.”

Agatha stared at him. “Papa? Haven’t you heard a word I said?”

“Yes, yes, my dear,” Sir Jasper said peevishly. “Indeed, I haven’t been forced to listen to so much tedious debate in a very long time—not since Clarisse left the last time, I suppose.” He sighed. “You do not know how difficult your aunt can make it for a man to study, Agatha. And Clarisse is right—marriage is what young ladies are meant for, particularly in our family. If only you had been born a boy, it would have been different . . . but there are promises, you know, that must be kept, whether we care for them or not.”

“But—”

“You forget, my dear,” said Clarisse softly, “you are entirely in your father’s care until you find a husband. You must abide by his decisions—and I shall stand as your guardian in his absence.” She smiled warmly. “Have no fear. We shall make the decisions that are best for all of us, even if you are too young to understand them now. You will be grateful in later years, when you have a daughter of your own.”

Agatha fisted her hands and did not reply.

It might have been two years since she had finally escaped Miss Blenheim, but she had not forgotten how to fight.

•   •   •

It did not take long to think of a plan. That night, supper was served in the dining room for the first time in years. Agatha allowed her aunt’s stream of scandalous continental gossip to pass over her unheard, while her father sat looking miserable and casting longing glances in the direction of the library.

There was no expecting Sir Jasper to stand against his sister, that much was clear . . . and unfortunately, Clarisse had the right of it: according to law as well as custom, Agatha was her father’s property, little though she might relish the reminder. She might be the heiress to his estate, but at the moment, her only legal possession was her dowry. Sizable though that was, she could not even touch it—that privilege belonged to her future husband.

Should her father and Clarisse desire her to be forced onto the marriage market, Agatha had no legal or financial means of resistance.

Fortunately, she had spent the last two years developing every magical recourse available. It was time to make clear to her fashionable aunt exactly what sort of young lady she really was.

The first shock of the evening came when she slipped out of her bedroom and down the corridor to her private study, which she’d left unlocked in the confusion of her aunt’s arrival.

The handle refused to budge . . . and her key, as she remembered only too clearly, sat inside upon the desk, beside a stack of unused candles and all of her notes.

“Blast,” Agatha muttered.

It was the imp at work, of course, causing trouble as she’d expected. She turned with a swish of her dressing gown and strode into the next room—a guest bedroom, never used—to give the bell pull an imperious tug.

For once, Horwick did not make her wait. Indeed, he slipped through the servants’ door hidden in the tapestry as swiftly as if he had been waiting nearby for the summons.

“Yes, miss?” His normally doleful tones sounded suspiciously self-satisfied. To Agatha’s shock, she saw the corners of his narrow lips twitching as if he were repressing a grin, the first she’d seen on his face in years.

She had poor memories of his grins. They had generally coincided with some new witticism Miss Blenheim had made at her expense, or a particularly humiliating punishment the two of them had devised for her.

Now Agatha scowled at him and reminded herself that she was a mature eighteen years of age. She was no longer a child to cringe before her old tormentor. “I require your assistance, Horwick,” she said.

“Indeed, miss.” Horwick’s jaw moved convulsively. Under Agatha’s disbelieving stare, he even rubbed his hands together in delight. “Always happy to be of assistance in any way I can, miss.”

“I am glad to hear it,” she said. “If you would simply unlock my study using your copy of the key—”

“It can’t be done!” Horwick caroled the words with open glee. “No, I can’t do that, miss.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because I don’t have that key anymore. No, miss, I don’t. Your aunt, Miss Clarisse as was, had it off me this evening.”

“But—”

“Every copy to be in her keeping,” he said happily. “That’s what she said, and that’s what she did. The key from the desk and the key from my ring, and I saw her lock the door herself. ‘Much better for all of us this way, eh, Horwick?’ she said. Oh, that Miss Clarisse. The memories she brings back . . .”

Chortling happily to himself, he backed away and closed the hidden door behind him while Agatha stood numb with shock.

Every note, every grimoire, every carefully prepared brazier and specially ordered candle she possessed sat behind that closed office door. Without them, she was as helpless as . . .

No.
Agatha set her jaw. She might not have magic at her command anymore, but she was no longer a helpless child. Miss Blenheim and Horwick might have found a young, mother less girl an easy target, but Clarisse would not find the same.

She stalked down the corridor to her aunt’s room and threw open the door without a knock.

“My goodness.” Clarisse looked up, eyebrows raised, from the dressing table where she sat. A maid stood with her back to Agatha, brushing Clarisse’s rippling, waist-length golden hair. Even dressed for bed, Agatha’s aunt was still draped in lush furs—this time, a lavishly fur-trimmed satin dressing gown in royal blue, with skirts that spread in draping folds around her chair.

A fire blazed in the hearth, raising the temperature in the room near boiling point. Clarisse’s maid stepped back, turning away discreetly as Clarisse shook her head in amused disdain.

“We really must work upon your manners, mustn’t we, dear? In polite society, you know, it is customary to knock before entering a lady’s bedroom. Or a man’s, for that matter, although perhaps we’ll wait until your wedding night to discuss such delicate questions.”

“In polite society,” said Agatha, with icy control, “it is customary not to steal other people’s keys.
Or
their homes, for that matter. I don’t know what may have brought you back now after all these years abroad, but if you think you can bundle me off like an unwelcome parcel just so that you can take my place—! Well, you do not know who you are tangling with.”

“Oh, don’t I?” Clarisse raised perfectly arched eyebrows. “What do you think, Blennie?”

The maid’s shining dark head tilted up. She turned to meet Agatha’s gaze.

Agatha’s breath stopped in her throat.

The maid was smiling with open amusement. The same expression was mirrored on her aunt’s face, but Agatha barely noticed it. All her attention was fixed on the maid’s glittering green eyes and her perfectly straight nose.

. . . Just as she remembered them.

“Oh, you are just as my dear Blennie had described to me,” Clarisse said. “I cannot begin to express how helpful it was, all those years, to have a faithful friend in my old home, keeping me apprised of everything that mattered. And of course she knew just where to come when you staged your childish little rebellion.”

“
Blennie
?” Agatha mouthed. But she couldn’t say the name out loud, not with Miss Blenheim grinning at her over her aunt’s fur-trimmed shoulder.

Agatha knew that grin, even after two years of freedom.

“Oh, you might be surprised at how well I know you already, my darling niece,” Clarisse said. “But never fear. Once we leave for London next week, you shall grow to understand me as well . . . and you may be surprised by just how much we have in common.”

Agatha couldn’t answer. All she could do was stagger out of the room before the strength in her legs deserted her.

The helping spirit who assisted her in lieu of a proper lady’s maid never made its appearance in her room that evening, but Agatha took no note of its absence. All that her senses could encompass was the sound of her aunt and Miss Blenheim’s mingled laughter, ringing in her ears all night long.

•   •   •

Many new visitors to London notice first the miasma in the air, a thick, dark substance pumped out from the thousands of chimneys and coal stoves that fill the capital. The unsavory pollution can stagger noses still accustomed to the more innocent countryside, especially in addition to the overwhelming and inescapable aroma of horse dung.

Other newcomers gasp first at the sheer size and variety of the crowds pressing about their carriage, from the pedestrian throng that chokes the streets to the peddlers who sell everything from eels to china, and the thin children who sweep the dung away and dart through the crowd in rags more fit for the Dark Ages than a supposed Age of Progress.

Clarisse, needless to say, ignored it all. She maintained a steady stream of chatter about the Great Exhibition that was taking place in the Crystal Palace, to show off the technological advancements of the age . . . and Agatha, with Miss Blenheim’s sardonic gaze resting upon her, sat silent and icy cold on her side of the carriage, numb to the press of humanity and the sights outside.

Over the past four days, she had come to understand the full extent of her aunt’s new dominion. The helping spirits Agatha had summoned so carefully over the years were all dismissed like smoke blown through the air. The grimoires she could have used to summon reinforcements were locked out of her reach, and, worst of all, when she had stepped into her father’s library the day after Clarisse’s arrival, Sir Jasper had reacted with an embarrassed cough.

“I say . . . should you really be here, Agatha?”

Agatha stared at him. Her armchair still sat beside his in its regular position, her footstool stood prepared before it. “Why would I not be?”

He looked pained. “Well, as a young lady . . . that is, if any of those gossips got wind . . . I mean to say . . . well, it’s not quite the done thing, is it?”

Agatha folded her hands together to keep them from curving into claws. “Has my aunt Clarisse instructed you not to allow me in here anymore?”

“I wouldn’t say
instructed
,” said Sir Jasper. “But you know, if anyone in London did ever find out that you’d been practicing magic out here, as an unmarried female—well, if Clarisse hasn’t managed to snag you a husband first, that is—oh, blast it, Agatha, you simply can’t be here anymore! I cannot have Clarisse breathing down my collar for allowing it despite all the promises our parents made her. You have no notion of how she can discompose a fellow!”

“No?” Agatha asked, her spine rigidly straight. “You think not?”

But Sir Jasper had already turned back to his books . . . and Clarisse’s carriage took both ladies to London four days later.

When the carriage finally drew up in front of a row of red-brick terraced houses in a relatively quiet London square, after eight full hours of travel, Agatha lunged for the door like a sailor reaching dry land after a year at sea.

“My, such undignified haste.” Clarisse clucked disapprovingly and pulled her furs tighter around herself. “You may wait for a footman to hand you down, dear. And don’t take too long about making your toilette—we must sally out once more as soon as possible, to visit the modistes at Cranbourne Street before the end of the day. Our first engagement is tomorrow evening, you know, and we cannot have you still looking like such a country yokel. Not when so many gentlemen are waiting to meet you there.”