The Gates of Sleep

since she was mastering them more quickly than the dancing lessons. And for once, the wretched girl was actually being helpful instead of superior. It didn’t seem as though one ought to need lessons in how to move and walk once one was past babyhood, but as Marina was discovering, it wasn’t so much “how to walk” as it was “how to walk gracefully.”

The first mistake in her carriage that Mary Anne had corrected had been that Marina always swung her right foot out and back when she moved—she wasn’t sure why, or how she had gotten into the habit, but now she understood why it was that she was always stubbing the toes of her right foot on things she should have passed right by. Then Mary Anne had made her shorten her stride and slow down by tying a string between her ankles, so that she couldn’t take a long stride and was constantly reminded by the string not to.

Yesterday, at the end of the lesson, the string had come off so that Mary Anne could view her unimpeded progress.

Today, Mary Anne ordered her to walk the long gallery with a proper stride without the string. She began, taking steps half the size of the ones she was used to, and feeling as if she was taking an age to traverse the distance.

“Now, mind, if you’re in a great hurry, and there’s no one about to see you,” Mary Anne said, as she reached the other end of the Gallery, “then go ahead and tear about with that gallop of yours. But if there’s anyone who catches you at it, they’ll know in an instant that you’re a country cousin.”

Eh? “What on earth do you mean by that?” she replied—pitching her voice so that it carried without shouting, which had been Madam’s personal lesson for the afternoons when she wasn’t at the vicarage.

“You can’t race about a townhouse like that without tripping over or running into something,” the maid replied smugly. “Nor on a city sidewalk. You have to take short strides in a city; dwellings are smaller, there’s much less space and more people and things to share it. Why do you think people talk about going to the country to ‘stretch their legs’?”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” she admitted.

“I’m not going to put a book on your head, though Madam said I should,” the maid said thoughtfully, watching her as she approached. “That’s only to keep your chin up and your shoulders back. I must say, for someone tossed about in a den of artists, you have excellent posture.”

“My uncles used to have me pose for ladies’ portrait bodies and busts, so that the ladies themselves only had to sit for the faces,” she said, giving a quarter of the truth. “And I posed for saints, sometimes—Saint Jeanne d’Arc, for one. You can’t slouch when you’re posing for something like that. They have to look—” she pitched her voice a little differently now, making it gluey and unctuous, like the utterly wet individual who had commissioned a Madonna and Child once, when she was very small and posing as Jesus as a young child, with Margherita standing duty as Mary.

“—drrrrawn up, my child, drrrawn up to Heaven by their faith and their hair—”

For the first time in all the weeks that she had been afflicted with the maid’s presence, Mary Anne stared at her—then burst out laughing. Real laughter, not a superior little cough, or a snicker.

“By their hair?” she gasped. “By their hair?” Tears rolled down her face to the point where she had to dry her eyes on her apron, and she was actually panting between whoops, trying to get in air. Marina couldn’t help it; she started giggling herself, and made things worse by continuing the impression. “As if, my child, they are suspended above the mortal clay, by means of a strrrrring attached to the tops of their heads—”

“A string?” howled Mary Anne, doubling over. “A string?”

When she finally got control of herself, it seemed that something had changed forever, some barrier between them had cracked and fallen. “Oh,” the maid said, finally getting a full breath, the red of her face fading at last. “Thank you for that. I haven’t had such a good laugh in a long, long time.” She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her apron. “Imagine. A string. Like a puppet—” she shook her head. “Or suspended by their hair! What fool said that?”

“A fool of a bishop who got his position because he was related to someone important,” she replied, with amusement and just a touch of disgust at the memory. “Who knew less about real faith than our little vicar down in the village, but a very great deal about whom and how to flatter. But my u—guardian Sebastian Tarrant needed his money, and he did a lovely painting for the man, and since it was for a parlor, that is how he painted it. To be ornamental, just as if it was to illustrate something out of King Arthur rather than the Bible. Sebastian said he just tried to tell himself that it was just an Italian bucolic scene he was doing, and it came out all right.”

She smiled at the memory. She could still remember him fuming at first over the sketches that the Bishop rejected. “Damn it all, Margherita! That pompous ass rejected my angels! Angels are supposed to be powerful, not simpering ninnys with goose-wings! The first thing they say to mortals is ‘Fear not!’ for heaven’s sake! Don’t you think they must be saying it because their very appearance is so tremendous it should inspire fear? The angels he wants don’t look like they’re saying ‘Fear not!’, they look like they’re saying, ‘There there’.…”

“Mary Anne,” she said, sitting down—insinuating herself into the chair, as the maid had just taught her—”I know that you aren’t comfortable going to church with me. I don’t see why you should still have to, honestly—in the beginning, yes, when I might have done something foolish like crying to the vicar about how horrid my guardian was and how she was mistreating me, but not now. Why don’t you ask Madam to be excused?”

The maid gave her a measuring look. “I believe that I will, miss. And you are correct in thinking that Madam assumed you might do something foolish. There was, after all, no telling how you’d been brought up out there—nor what you’d been told about Madam.”

Oh yes; something has fallen that was between us. She is never going to be a friend, but she’s not my enemy anymore.

“Well—” she shrugged. “What child likes a strict tutor? But the child has to be readied for business or university, and I have to be readied for society. I know a great deal from books, and nothing at all about society.”

There. That’s noncommittal enough.

Mary Anne unbent just a little more. “A wise observation, miss. And may I say that thus far you have been a good pupil, if rebellious at first.”

Marina smiled and held out her hand to the maid. “I promise to be completely cooperative from now on, even if I think what you’re trying to teach me is daft.” She lowered her voice to a whisper as the astonished maid first stared at, then took her hand in a tentative handshake. “Just promise to keep the fact that I posed for saints a secret. Reggie and Madam already think I’m too pious as it is.”

“It’s a promise, miss.” The handshake was firmer. “Everyone has a secret or two. Yours is harmless enough.”

“And I’d better practice walking if I’m not to look like a country-cousin Monday in Exeter.” She got to her feet—ascending, rather than heaving herself up—and resumed her walk up and down the Gallery.

But she couldn’t help but wonder just what that last remark of the maid’s had implied.

Everyone has a secret or two. Yours is harmless enough.

Chapter Eighteen

To Marina’s immense relief, all she had to do was act naturally on the trip to Exeter to keep Reggie amused. It was, after all, her first train ride, and she found it absolutely enthralling—they had their own little first-class compartment to themselves, so she didn’t have to concern herself about embarrassing rather than amusing him. The speed with which they flew through the countryside thrilled her, and she kept her nose practically pressed against the glass of the compartment door for the first half of the journey. By the time she had just begun to tire—a little, only a little—of the passing countryside, it was time to take breakfast, and for that, they moved to the dining car.