The Murder of Mary Russell (10 page)

The second Season began much like the first, with the difference that Clarissa no longer required Lady Breiford's close attentions. When she dropped visiting cards at the doors of acquaintances, response came within a day, two at the most. The balls got under way, and she put together a few dinner parties of her own. Clarissa Hudson was now an accepted presence at social events. This year was much less exhausting, since she knew the rules and did not have to spend every moment absorbing the tiny gestures and expressions of those around her. Indeed, her hardest task was keeping herself clothed in the latest fashion.

That, and keeping her father under control.

Hudson was getting reckless. Something about walking around London in a silk hat and embroidered waistcoat filled him with the other kind of confidence, the risky kind. Clarissa tried to tell him that they had to lay low and watch for the big targets, not try and fleece every drunken baronet they came across. Once or twice, she had to stand up to him, always a tricky thing—but she was no longer a child, and since even when drunk he had the sense not to bruise her face, she could usually get him to listen to reason.

They had their first real argument in March.

“London may seem huge,” she insisted, “but Society here is as small as Sydney's. There's just a handful of families, and those that aren't cousins went to school together. One whiff of Clarissa Hudson being a wrong 'un, and we might as well turn back to Australia.”

“So what d'you expect to live off of, hey?” he demanded. “That last frock you bought would feed a family for a year.”

“I know. Well, what about if we take a couple of days away and do some Ch—some Jobs? Just not in London?”

So, the Hudsons spread their field of interest, making full use of the country's magnificent new rail system: two days in Manchester or Liverpool could keep them going for weeks, with little risk of alarming London. They also planned an April trip to Paris, which would help with both the finances and with his boredom. They would have to borrow again from The Bishop, perhaps, but less than they would without these trips.

Clarissa found it delicate work, asserting her will over that of her father. He knew her tricks, her every expression, and his temper would flare at her first sign of revolt. Cajoling and flattery took her just so far, and reasoning worked only when he was both sober and content. Once, she only kept him from playing a Mark dangerously close to home ground by pointing out that without her, he might still be climbing through an unlatched upper window. That threat, it was clear, would only work once.

But as the 1878 Season went on, she became aware that this one was not as sparkling as the first. Perhaps it was that she had mastered the skills, or that she had become jaded by the whirl, but something of the edge, the excitement, was missing. It was not until their April trip to Paris that she realised what the problem was, and how urgent its solution had become.

It was their second morning in the hotel. Hudson would be sleeping in, after the excesses of the night before, but Clarissa had got into the habit of rising early. She'd had her tea, read the papers, had her bath, and finished the morning rituals of lemon juice and buffing leather on her hands and nails. She rubbed in a touch of almond oil, then stretched her hands into the unforgiving sun to check. Delicate bones, perfect oval nails, flawless skin, with none of the roughness and needle-pricks of work: let her seamstresses spoil their fingers from now on! Pleased, she reached for her hair-brush. The sun streaming through the window raised a gleam to her chestnut hair—and then she sat forward in growing horror: a grey hair, curling up among the brown.

Next month, she would be twenty-two. A third Season on her own would cast her as a permanent spinster, a woman who had something wrong with her. A woman to be passed over when the choicest of invitations were issued. An old woman, useful for filling a last-minute cancellation at a dinner party.

Here, now, on a silken bench in Paris, the path of her life dawned on her: to do nothing would lead to permanent insecurity and a continual—and ever-growing—risk of arrest, and scorn, and failure. She had independence and adventure, perhaps, but the game's challenges wore thin.

Clarissa Hudson wanted security. On her own, she might have set out to build the kind of comfortable nest egg—well, call it a small fortune—that could keep a careful woman for life, but her father would never be happy with that. Her father would always be a danger.

What she needed was a fortune that was both permanent and beyond his reach. Respectability, but with a degree of freedom. Something that would challenge her, but would not demand that she watch her every step against that betraying slip of the tongue.

What she needed was a husband.

Back in January, flushed with triumph at the invitations on the mantelpiece, her father had urged her towards the young men and women who were intimates of the Prince of Wales—air so refined as to require a pair of specially-adapted lungs from birth. However, the Marlborough House set demanded more than chameleon skills from its potential mates: like presentation at Court, membership required either a family name or (definitely second best) a huge amount of money, and it protected its interests with all the close scrutiny of a jeweller appraising a ring. Clarissa had even discussed this, in the usual oblique terms, with Lady Breiford, before deciding that too enthusiastic a climb up the social scale simply begged to be exposed and banished forever. So, although she did get invited to some parties where the Prince of Wales trolled for companionship, and she was on a first-name basis with more than one Duke, Clarissa had contented herself with the level of Society a step or two below that, where wit and sparkling eyes might overcome the vagueness of her antecedents.

And that level was where she would hunt a husband.

The Hudsons returned to London. By the first of May, she had narrowed her possibilities down to three: one baronet, one viscount, and the untitled eldest son of a wealthy manufacturer of porcelain goods. All three were polite, pleasing to the eye, wealthy as Croesus, and amiable even when in their cups. Best of all, they walked the fine line of intelligence: all were stupid enough to deceive, but not so dull that living with them would drive her to murder.

It all looked very hopeful. For the first time, Clarissa dared to consider a real future, one that permitted her a small corner of permanence and happiness. One that, as a side benefit, enforced a degree of separation from her father. It would have to be soon: the younger girls looked fresher and lovelier with every passing month. She began to play the three young men off on each other, claiming a previous engagement with one before being seen riding on Rotten Row with another, letting them spot their rivals' names on her dance cards. She learned as much as she could about their mothers, and shaped her polite conversation with those sharp-eyed ladies around that knowledge. By June, faint overtures had been ventured by two of the three, and she thought that perhaps, by September…

Then the roof fell in. Utter catastrophe, when she least expected it—and from a direction she had never suspected. All her plans, a lifetime of preparation, a decade spent wearing the skins of other women, piecing together a heart as cynical as any white-bearded politician's, and the unthinkable happened.

Miss Clarissa Hudson fell in love.

I
t happened at a ball like any other, at a Berkshire country house. Clarissa always took considerable pains at these affairs to befriend the other young women, or at least to disarm them. The most enjoyable part of these evenings lay in charming her rivals while surreptitiously enticing her targets out from under their noses. It was all in the subtle shifts of voice, body, and face: a group of girls would be left complacent, knowing that Clarissa was a touch stupid and clearly no threat to their own ambitions. And yet, with tiny adjustments to the tone of her voice and the droop of her eyelids, the young man she was dancing with would be convinced that he had his arms around the most fascinating girl in the room.

Yes, there was a goal to this, and soon, but in fact, the act of turning others to her will was what Clarissa relished most. Of course, the only person in any position to appreciate her true skills was her father—and even he persisted in believing that he was her superior. It would have been nice, just occasionally, to talk openly to another person, to have an equal, if not in wit, at least in ruthlessness.

But on that path lay madness. What she required was one big Cheat, single and permanent, to set her up for life. The rest of it, the entertainment and the exercise of intelligence, would simply have to fit in where it could.

Such was woman's lot.

Clarissa Hudson gave herself over to the Act of finding a husband—although as the weather warmed and the Season began to ebb, her enthusiasm for conversation with eighteen-year-old girls flagged, just a bit. Every so often she felt the urge to do something outrageous—which she instantly squelched. Time enough when she was married.

This Berkshire house party to celebrate Midsummer's Night had started off promising: a special train from Town, a queue of carriages waiting at the rural station, a torch-lit drive, the ballroom decorated like a fairyland forest. The dinner was sensibly light, the music not too bad, and Clarissa dipped and whirled and flirted through the sea of glowing skin and twinkling gemstones, her ears filled with laughter and music, the rustle of gowns and the clop of a hundred heels meeting wood. As the air grew heavy with the odours of perspiration and heated silk and bees-wax, she could not help feeling that the Season had gone on too long, and the weather had grown a little too warm. In any event, Clarissa's least-favoured beau was the only one of her chosen trio in attendance, and it was time to suggest that she might be irritated with him, that he might press his case all the more.

So when his name came up on her card, she ducked through the French doors away from the dancing. The terrace air was deliciously cool, the night clear, with a moon that was nearly full. Clarissa strolled along the stones, luxuriating in a moment of solitude. Then she noticed people in one of the other rooms opening off the terrace. A billiards room.

Had it been men alone, she would naturally have passed by, but it was a safely mixed group, half a dozen young men and three of the less empty-headed young women—one was all but officially engaged; another more interested in horses than in men (she intended to let her mother assign her a husband); and a third the eldest daughter of a good family around whom swirled a persistent and scandalous rumour, of being secretly married to the estate manager. Precisely the sorts of girls it was dangerous to be seen with, but at the same time, the only ones who had any appeal just now.

The horse-lover spotted her in the doorway and waved her in. A sweet young baronet with a penchant for boys handed her a glass of champagne. The second son of a wealthy railway man offered her a billiards cue, and with only a moment's hesitation, she stripped off her long gloves and gave herself over to the game.

Twenty minutes passed, a blissfully irresponsible period where, being among people who did not matter in the larger scheme of things, she did not have to Act anything for anyone—until, eventually, the nagging voice of responsibility became too loud to ignore. She sighed.

“I'll finish losing this game and then I must get back to the dance. The boys on my card will be wondering if I've fallen into the lake.”

As she positioned herself over the table for a final shot, the protests of her friends…she supposed they were, merged with the greeting of a newcomer. She did not look up, although she did become more conscious of the graceful line of her pale arms, the stretch of bare shoulder alongside her gleaming curls, the profile of her waist and backside against the baize: men did find it so titillating when a woman was performing an act they considered their own.

She made a couple of trial strikes over her propped fingers, then let the cue jab forward—and to her amazement, the ball dropped neatly into its intended pocket. Flushed with pleasure, she straightened, looked across the table at the newcomer—and for a moment, forgot to breathe.

It was not that he was beautiful, really, or that he wore his evening suit as if the style had been invented for precisely this pair of shoulders, that breadth of chest: Clarissa met beautiful young men every week, all of whom spent a lot of money on tailors. Nor was it the slightly too-long hair that looked about to escape control, or the dashing upturn at the ends of his moustaches. If anything, it was the eyes: a blue so light as to be without colour, with humour at their corners and an attentive focus that told their target that
she
was all he was seeing.

Intelligent eyes, Clarissa thought in confusion, were one thing a man could not buy on Jermyn Street.

Everyone in the billiards room saw her reaction, and half of them laughed. The baronet made the introductions. “Clarissa, this is my reprobate cousin, home from the wars, the Right Honourable Hugh Viscount Edmunds. Hugh, this is Clarissa Hudson, who has laid claim to half this Season's men.”

As he came forward, she saw that he was using a cane to support his left leg. One of the others exclaimed, “Hugh, whatever have you done to yourself?”

“Zulu blighter took a pot-shot at me with his granddaddy's musket, if you can believe that. Sheer bad luck, he'd have been more accurate with his spear. How d'you do, Miss Hudson.”

She took herself firmly in hand with the order,
Do not simper
. His fingers met hers, and in the brief moment of clasping he ran his thumb along her naked knuckles in a manner that shivered down to her knees. His hand dropped, his gaze turned away, and she was left, still a bit breathless, aware of the danger of this man, yet also somewhat affronted by his willingness to drop her hand.

Go back to the ballroom,
she ordered herself.
He's nothing to do with you.

Her face composed, she took her leave of the billiards refugees and resumed her gloves, making her way back to the hot, crowded, noisy room. Her promised dance partners reclaimed her, accepted her pretty apologies, swung her out onto the floor with sweating enthusiasm. She kept up a stream of witty talk, flirted as sweetly as ever she did, permitted just enough proximity to tantalise but not enough to constitute a promise, and all the while, she seemed to feel the touch of a pair of ice-coloured eyes against the warm skin at the nape of her neck.

At the very end of the night, when the dancing was over and those heading to their homes were queuing to thank their hostess, he was there again, with a pair of laden champagne glasses expertly threaded into the fingers of his free hand. He leant the cane against his knee to hold a glass out to her. She accepted it. He lifted, and said, “To happy accidents.”

Amused, she raised her glass to his toast, and took a sip. He, on the other hand, drained his own glass in four deep swallows, the smooth skin of his throat working across the muscles in a fashion that was oddly disconcerting. He set his empty glass on the balustrade, then took hers and set it next to his without asking if she was finished.

“If you would care for another happy accident,” he said, “the doctors have commanded that I spend an hour walking, every day. I find that circuits through Hyde Park in the mornings are a pleasant way to carry out the orders.”

“How nice for you, Lord Edmunds, although I do not know why you are telling me this.”

“Merely to let you know that my inability to claim a lady for dances is a temporary state. And to mention that, were a lady to wish to serve her King by lightening the burdens of an out-of-action soldier, this would be one means of so doing.”

She laughed aloud at the wicked twinkle in his eyes, and watched him collect coat and hat, saying something to the butler on his way out that brought a quick involuntary smile to the older man's face. When she turned away, she found the pretty baronet at her side. He, too, had been watching Hugh Edmunds leave.

“Ambitious sort of a chap, my cousin,” he mused aloud. “Wouldn't think it, looking at him, but it's true. And has a knack for being in the right place when it matters. Wouldn't surprise me if he planned that Zulu bullet, to give him an edge when he runs for office.”

He turned a vague twinkle on Clarissa and moved towards the door. She frowned, wondering at the oddly weighty tone of his remark. Warning, or promise?

Both, she decided. Because a young man like the baronet could little imagine that a woman might be ambitious, too.

That night, she dreamed of pale blue eyes.

And Tuesday morning, she rested her parasol on her shoulder and went for a stroll in Hyde Park.