The Gilded Cage (2 page)

It's a wonder these people can walk in a straight line with so many rules in their heads—but, of course, there are rules for walking, too.

I practice now, stepping toward the mirror, placing one foot in front of the other, trying to maintain perfect alignment from toe to heel. It's harder than it looks, like crossing the slippery log over the creek toward Miller's Pond. All that was at stake back then was a soaking in muddy water.

It's been three months since Herman DeLaney, the lawyer from the city, did indeed change our fortunes. His firm, Cryer and Thompson, took care of all the details—getting us to New York, finding a berth on the
St. Elizabeth
. George and I were simply swept along. I still blush to think of DeLaney's face when I asked how it was all being paid for. “By
you
, of course, Miss Randolph,” he'd said with a grin.

I don't think either of us really threw much of a backward glance at Miller's Pond or the life we were leaving behind. Edward and Lila saw us off with tears, and there were vain promises that we would see them again. But after that, we let the current carry us away. During the monthlong wait in New York, I was too busy wandering the streets in awe to think properly about how life was changing. I think the reality began to dawn for both of us during the wretched twenty-eight days we were tossed around on the crossing. The only moment of levity on the whole voyage was when we toasted the New Year with a bottle of wine given to us by Herman. He'd scribbled a note on the label—
May you have a prosperous 1821
.

George had to explain to me five or six times what was in fact quite a simple, if improbable, stroke of luck. A grandfather we hadn't even known had died. Thrown from his horse at the age of seventy, he had died instantly of a broken neck. And with our father, his direct descendant, dead, his fortune passed to us. Now, where we were from, wealth was a relative concept. Just about everyone we mixed with, Connor included, had little, though we all had enough. Maybe the McConnells, with eight horses and twenty acres, were doing a lot better than us. Herman DeLaney, with his handsome town house in Manhattan, was definitely
well off.

I didn't know what real wealth was, of course.

“What are you doing here, Katherine Randolph?” I whisper.

At the sound of my voice, Stella looks up from beside the hearth, where a fire is stoked hot against the chill. In our old home, we had a single fireplace. This house has more than two dozen. But then, this bedroom is the size of our entire farmhouse. The bedding and walls are done up in dusty gold with warm red accents, and the carpet is a thick plush that I never tire of digging my toes into.

But will it ever feel like a home? I feel like a plant brought in from a greenhouse, potted in strange soil. It's not right, this place, this air. I feel like I'm withering.

A gentle rapping pulls me from my reverie. I turn and see George framed in the doorway, and force a smile. Our elevation to the gentry looks effortless on him, as everything does. He wears a midnight-colored tailcoat, and a collar that drapes his neck in velvet. He used to wear rugged breeches and boots in all weather, but now he's traded them for silk stockings and pointed leather shoes with shining buckles. He is only twenty, four years my senior, but his clothes give him a dignity befitting an older man.

“My grubby George!” I say. “I didn't truly believe the dirt could come all the way off.”

He pulls a monstrous face at me. “Look who's talking!”

“It's Grace and Elsie's doing,” I say. “Don't come too near or you'll make me a mess again.”

“Mother and Father would be so proud,” he says simply, and holds out his arm. I know he means well by saying such things, but I wish he wouldn't mention our parents like that. It undermines my defenses, and threatens to make me teary. “Of you also,” I reply simply as we clasp arms. My hands look like someone else's—the nails, once kept short by hard work and a hundred little accidents, have grown longer.

“Oh, look,” I say, gripping his wrist, where a splotch of cerulean blue is dried onto his skin. “You're letting us down.”

“Blast,” he says under his breath. “I was doing the vista from the west window.”

“I don't see where the blue came in. These English skies seem to be gray most of the time.”

He tries to tweak my nose, like he used to when we were small, but I duck out of the way as quick as my styled hair will let me. He knows I'm teasing—George's paintings are something to behold, and at last he's getting the recognition he deserves. Tomorrow we go to London to speak with a curator at the Royal Academy. They've seen the landscapes George painted back home, and already they're talking about exhibiting his work.

In the hallway we meet John, the under-footman, coming from the servants' stairs with an armful of pressed linen. He moves aside and offers a shallow bow as we pass; for a moment, before I lower my gaze, his eyes catch on mine. I find it hard, sometimes, to meet his looks. His sun-paled hair is so like Connor's, and from the back, with their broad shoulders and height, they could be mistaken for each other. But John does not share Connor's easy smile. He often looks sad, I think, when he doesn't know he's being watched.

John's was the first face I saw on English soil, waiting with my cousins the day we docked in Bristol. He'd carried my ancient blue trunk, weathered almost to whiteness, to the waiting carriage.

Now I feel his eyes on my exposed throat, and I am sure I'm blushing. “My lord, my lady,” he murmurs. George nods a response. He's adjusting better than I am, learning to treat the servants, as Grace instructed, like part of the furniture.

George's hand is tight on my arm as we reach the stairs—he's more nervous than he's letting on.

“I may need to use that arm again after tonight,” I say.

“I'm sorry,” he replies. “It's just—are you actually looking forward to this?”

“This is our introduction to society,” I say. “Think of it like branding cattle. A sharp pain, then we belong.”

“And then to the slaughterhouse?” says George.

From below come the silvery sounds of the hired strings, and the low swell of voices. “They can't scare us, George,” I say.

“Can't they?”

“We may not be as fine,” I say. “But we're far richer.”

We stifle our laughter as we walk down the stairs, and I try my best not to tangle my feet in my dress. The butler, Carrick, is waiting at the doors to the ballroom. Cousin Henry Campion, Grace's older brother, limps from the drawing room to the bottom of the stairs, smartly dressed in his dragoon's uniform. Until we were identified as Randolphs by Crowne & Crowne, the family's lawyers, he was custodian to Walthingham, and since our arrival he's welcomed us with great kindness. I haven't dared ask about his wound, but Elsie tells me he got it fighting in France, and that he nearly lost the leg to infection.

“The young lord and lady are ready for their audience, I see,” he says. “Katherine, you look beautiful tonight! Mr. Carrick, if you wouldn't mind.”

George's grip tightens on my arm again as the butler swings open the doors. His voice rings across the room beyond. “Ladies and gentlemen! Lord George and Lady Katherine Randolph!”

 

CHAPTER 2

“Y
OU WERE RAISED
on a farm, they say. Was it dreadfully messy?” The woman in yellow lace grimaces.

“There was a fair amount of dirt,” I reply.

“But surely you knew all the time that your place was elsewhere. You must have felt it. The blood will out, as they say.”

“I was too busy, perhaps, to notice it.”

“But it's all very romantic, is it not?”

I think the romance would have worn off for Lady Flint after a single winter on our tiny farmstead, but I laugh politely all the same.

The conversation bubbles on, and I look for George across the expanse of the ballroom. I wonder if he has told the story as many times as I have. Of our parents' deaths five years before, our simple life under the kindness of our guardians, Edward and Lila, and the lawyer's visit that changed everything.

I've met so many people; their faces and titles are a blur. Several are men from Cousin Henry's regiment; others are local landowners and their wives and children. Everyone seems to know each other, which makes sense: George and I are the strangers here.

“It must have been such a shock,” says Lord Flint, “living in some dusty shack one moment, and now this.” He throws a meaty hand around to indicate our present surroundings.

It wasn't quite a shack
, I almost say, but then I suppose, to these people, it probably would be. Over our heads, candles reflect off glittering chandeliers, and the guests move below in a crush of richly clothed elegance and breeding. The evening is going better than I expected. Though I have made a few slips, none have been, in my cousin's parlance, fatal. True, the cords of Grace's neck tightened when I took a glass of champagne
before
George, but she quickly recovered her composure. From time to time she taps me on the arm, with a murmured “Well done,” so perhaps I am learning the way of things slightly more quickly than Stella.

My brother is surrounded, as he has been for the last hour, by a group of young ladies and their mothers. It's been dawning on me slowly, what this evening means for him. Walthingham is his; at a stroke he has become one of the most eligible bachelors in the country. He's on display, like one of his own paintings on the wall, and these finely dressed guests are lining up to assess his worth. George and I are in this together for the moment, but soon enough he will be taken from me as well.

“… and you've encountered
snakes
, I've heard…” Lady Flint is saying.

Grace sidles up alongside us. “Forgive me,” she says to my companions, “but I must steal my cousin from you for a moment.” She takes me by the arm and leads me away. “Lady Flint is but two generations removed from a fortune-hunting lady's maid,” she says out of the side of her mouth. “I think we can do better than that.” As she steers me between the other guests, I wonder what she would have to say about me and George, if she could see where
we'd
come from. I decide it's best not to think so much, as we reach a plump older man with a rough and ruddy face, standing beside a young, fair-haired woman.

“Mr. Dowling,” says Grace. “May I introduce your hostess?”

I hold out my hand, as Grace has taught me, and Mr. Dowling stoops to kiss it. “What a pleasure it is to meet you,” he says.

“Mr. Dowling is our local magistrate,” says Grace. “And this is his daughter, Jane.”

The blond girl offers a curtsy and a smile, her gray-green eyes snapping with intelligence. Her dress is deep blue satin, with frothing underskirts of ivory lace and scalloped black ribbon below the bodice. I like her at once.

“I trust Miss Campion has been taking good care of you,” says Mr. Dowling. “Showing you the ropes, as they say.”

“Grace has been extremely patient,” I reply. “Life here is very different from what I'm used to.”

“She'll soon have you singing and embroidering with the best of them, I dare say.” Mr. Dowling nods with certainty. “I sometimes wonder whether my Jane would have benefited from a bit more guidance. Her singing is quite abominable.”

But he's smiling as he speaks, and Jane bats his arm playfully. “Father!”

“Though I should add that she is possessed of other accomplishments,” continues her father. “Her harpsichord is tolerable.”

Jane raises her eyebrows. “My singing voice I inherited from you, Father.” She addresses herself to me. “Though my musicianship is beyond repair, perhaps we can join forces to save my embroidery. All my little flowers turn out looking like mud pies.”

“I'm afraid my accomplishments only stretch so far as shooting crows and shoeing horses.”

I dare not look at Grace's expression, but Jane is grinning. “Let's us two take a turn about the room,” she says.

And before I know it, she's sweeping me away from her father and Grace. I try to match her delicate step as we thread between clusters of guests.

“Do you and your father live nearby?” I ask.

“On the Crescent,” she says. “It's in the center of Bath. But come, the night's too short to talk about our houses. It's smaller than yours, suffice to say.” She nods discreetly toward a tall, slender brunette wearing a delicate pink gown and a sour expression. “That is Miss Livia Collins, normally a rather humorous girl, but just now she's being jilted by that fellow with the unconvincing mustache.” She inclines her chin toward a pompous-looking young man wearing brightly buckled shoes and a spray of sparse hair on his upper lip.

I giggle, and forget for a moment to wonder whether I ought to.

“And that is Thomas Evans,” she says, pointing to a stocky, square-jawed man in long black tails. “He's heir to a small fortune but best avoided, as his mother is insufferable.”

We make our way about the party, and Jane feeds me tidbits of gossip on the guests. I feel almost as though I'm back in Virginia, elbowing George and laughing at a church supper.

As we circle the party, we pass an open door leading to a small morning room, where Grace occasionally visits with her more intimate friends. By the half-light within, I see a tall man. He looks to be made of two colors only, black and white. A dark suit against a pale collar. Long black hair and almost porcelain skin. He's staring at the wall.

“And what about him?” I ask.

Jane frowns. “I've never seen him before. He looks rather serious, though, don't you think?”

A maid bearing a tray of small pastries passes us, and Jane takes one. “Get one now, or the men will eat them all,” she advises.