Author's Notes: The Duchess of Inverness and Earl of Ravensworth are accurate Victorian peerage titles, though obviously not for our two characters. Hope you like English Victorian history as much as you like Malora!
Don't forget to drop a review and let me know how you like the story so far. It's early days yet, but I'd really like to know if I am translating characters well into this Age. While I love the Victorian era, writing it is something entirely different.
Chapter Soundtrack:
"Nocturne," and
"Once Upon a Dream," as played by Emile Pandolfi
in the year of our Lord, eighteen hundred and ninety three
It wasn't half past seven o'clock in the morning, but lithe fingers glided over the ivory keys of the music room's piano. A solemn score stretched them awake as the morning light crept around closed velvet curtains. It was always the first composition played, no matter what followed afterward.
As a scullery maid lit the fire for the day and drew open the drapes, delicate hands began to race from one scale to the other. The tune they played now was vastly more jolly than the servants both upstairs and downstairs had heard in quite some time. Her Ladyship must have seen the calling card waiting in the pewter dish just near the main doors of Inverness House prior to making her way through the parlor and to her only other friend, save the man who had left the card.
The First housemaid knocked gently on the wood moulding just at the entrance to the music room and bobbed a curtsy before entering. She knew better than to wait for acknowledgment from the Duchess – if she had, she might have been waiting for hours. Setting a tray of toast and tea onto the scallop edged table near the Lady's favorite chair, she bobbed another curtsy and murmured, "Your Grace."
Still, there was no slowing of the melodious noise that filled every nook and cranny of the vast, old estate. It was as good as any dismissal she was expecting, and the maid exited the room and back downstairs.
If there was anything the servants of the house would describe their employer as, it was reclusive. Eccentric, possibly. Beauteous, to be sure. But Her Grace Maleficent Moore, Duchess of Inverness and member to the House of Hanover was certainly and certifiably unsocial. It was a wonder to many that tended to her how she came to be courted, or wed at all.
Her marriage to the Duke of the house had lasted barely two years, and produced no children. That had been ten years ago, and the widowed eighteen-year-old had maintained her title by the mercy of Her Majesty the Queen. There was only one servant left from that period of the Duchess's life here at Inverness House. As all good butlers should, he kept his mouth tightly buttoned about it - except to say that the two years of marriage had been acutely gloomy for all attending the manor.
Now twenty-eight, a Lady of her standing ought to have been long re-married. The vast majority of talk downstairs swirled around the subject until hushed by their well-meaning butler. With no heir in sight, they worried for their own place in life – the stability and security of employment with the residing family. Unfortunately, it had remained a family of one.
A dainty timepiece atop the music room's rose marble mantle chimed eight times, and Maleficent's hands slowed along the keys. It would soon be time for the day to begin in earnest, and life here was nothing if not regimented. Her pinky laid the last note – G sharp, and slid off the piano. She waited until the tone had finished reverberating before she opened her eyes, and sighed deeply.
At fifteen past eight o'clock, the dressing bell would ring. Her green eyes glanced towards the mantle clock, and then to the bell in anticipation.
Once it had sounded, Maleficent rose from the bench to walk back through the parlor and into the foyer. Up the first flight of stairs, her Lady's maid Mary would be waiting.
Indeed she was, and with a curt nod to the short red haired woman, the morning pleasantries had been made. They walked down the first floor's gallery to her room in silence before coming upon the last door to the right.
Mary opened the bedchamber door and stood aside for the Duchess. When she first had started her employ here, it had fairly scandalized the Lady's maid that the woman would venture from this room without being properly dressed for the day. Playing her morning piano in naught but a nightgown and robe was one of Her Grace's peculiarities, and she'd grown used to it - and many more.
When Maleficent had seated herself onto the dressing table's tufted seat and raised an expectant brow, Mary knew that she was being given permission to speak freely.
Reaching inside the chifforobe, she pulled out three of the Duchess's favorite frocks and held them aloft. "What shall it be today, my Lady? Black with grosgrain trim, black with silk pintucks, or black with the beaded neckline?" she mused.
"The grosgrain will do," Maleficent murmured, rising to stand. She stepped to the center of the room as Mary laid the gown onto the bed in preparation, and lifted her nightgown over her head before handing it to the maid. Her unmentionables [1] were clean and had been the first thing she changed this morning straight out of bed. A freshly laundered chemise was pressed into her right hand, and she threw it on quickly.
"Ready, then?" Mary inquired while adjusting the laces to her corset.
Maleficent's answer was to lift her arms up and turn away. Her maid took the hint and wrapped the whalebone device of torture around her already slim frame before snapping the steel busks closed.
When Mary's hands ventured back to tighten the laces, Maleficent's hands stayed their journey. "No," she instructed simply. "It is adequate as is."
"I should think that with a fine gentleman like the Earl of Ravensworth calling for tea this afternoon you would want to look your best?" Mary questioned hesitantly.
Taking a deep breath to stretch her ribs and to compose herself, Maleficent tried not to snap. It wouldn't do well to frighten the staff, especially one as loyal as Mary had proven herself to be. "I'll thank you to leave it, Mary. He has not left his card to court me, I can assure you," she replied drily.
"Yes, madam," Mary blushed before bobbing a curtsey in recognition of the mild rebuke, and fetched the cotton petticoat and silk stockings that would need to be applied to her Lady before the black underskirt and over dress. She knew that Maleficent disliked bustles on a daily basis, though she secretly wished that the Duchess did – it might make her feel slightly more useful.
Having affixed the necessary undergarments to the Duchess, she made short work of the day gown. The woman she dressed knew just when to turn, lift a leg, or duck her head. Even so, the graceful movements were slow and beheld a melancholy that only a Lady's maid might notice.
Mary tried her hardest to bite her tongue about it, but sometimes her curiosity would burst forth. "The visit of a fine Lord must please you so. I only wish that we had a lighter coloured frock for you to wear. Men don't know how to act around ladies who wear black, forever tripping over themselves in worry that you're in mourning still," she reminded Maleficent.
"If Her Majesty can wear mourning clothes for thirty two years as of this date, then I shall not turn heads with wearing it for ten," the Duchess replied shortly, her teeth clacking slightly with bit back curses about impertinent staff.
As Mary did up the last button on her gown, she strode away towards the dressing table to sit once more, and the looking glass reflected the warning in her eyes that she wanted heeded presently.
Her maid's eyes cast downward in apology as she sorted through a collection of earbobs. Quiet now, she held each pair up and waited for Maleficent to nod her approval. It took only three pairs to get there; Mary knew she preferred the silver fringed bobs.
"Is Your Grace's grief so vast?" Mary asked, frowning at the idea that the Lady of the house might be quite that miserable.
Maleficent sniffed delicately and turned away from the maid's pitying expression. "I grieve for no one, save myself; especially for enduring this household's incessant questioning of my ways."
Five o'clock meant the bell for tea, and with it came the announcement that the Earl Ravensworth had come to call.
Leaning back against the curved sofa in her receiving salon, Maleficent stifled an eye roll as the butler made quite the elaborate show of obeisance towards Diaval as he opened the pocket doors with a flair of his wrists and bowed to the visiting Earl. She felt rather like a prize hidden behind the doors, and huffed at that insinuation.
Most likely feeling the same amusement at the gesture, Diaval stood just inside the doors and waited patiently. While the butler's back was turned to him, he waggled his eyebrows up and down at her and wiped a smile off of his face, unable to control it by pursing his lips together. Always the character, Lord Corbeau was.
Maleficent had to pretend a cough to cover her chuckle of delight at his antics – her dear friend and confidante could always be counted on to bring her joy.
The butler gave her a look of concern at the cough before clearing his own throat to announce Diaval properly. "Your Grace, the Earl of Ravenscroft, Lord Diaval Corbeau," he declared impressively.
Diaval bowed deeply as she rose to curtsey from her place across the room. "I've come bearing many interesting things for us to peruse before dinner, Your Grace," he grinned jovially. "Call it an early birthday gift."
He motioned for the butler to gather the many canvasses wrapped and stacked just outside the room. The man moved quickly to follow the direction, and Diaval pointed to different places along the salon to place the paintings as they were unwrapped.
With a delighted smile, Maleficent gazed along the many different types of portraiture. She had a keen eye for art, and he knew it. They'd often visited painting and sculpture galleries together before she was married. "What is this-"
"If you'll allow me to elaborate, my Lady," Diaval cheeked, ignoring the butler's shocked inhalation at his casual usage of Maleficent's title. She outranked him in peerage by two levels, and she certainly wasn't his anything. He puffed his chest out proudly at the manservant when she did not scold him for the slight.
Sensing the battle for propriety rising in her resolute head of staff, Maleficent tilted her head at him. "Good man, be at ease..." she soothed. "I am in excellent company with Lord Corbeau. See to the tea downstairs?"
If his purpling face and tightening collar was any clue, her butler did not agree. He still bowed to her dismissal, glaring all the while at Diaval before backing out of the room and shutting the doors.
Now alone with her, the black-haired nobleman clapped his hands together excitedly. "Go on, then! Have a look!"
Scoffing a laugh before shaking her head, Maleficent did so. "I still don't understand – you could not possibly be gifting me all of these works for my birthday. Why on Earth would I want pictures of other people?"
"Come now, Millie!" Diaval chided, slipping easily into his pet nickname for her. "I daren't call you daft, but my word! They're sample portraits; I mean to commission one of your own. Without..."
His voice trailed off as a hard anger filled his inky brown-black eyes. 'Without him,' he wanted to say, but didn't. Maleficent deserved many things, according to Diaval. Happiness was one, and that he could give her fleetingly. Her majestic beauty, both of the mind and body, merited a portrait of her own. Besides, her stature befitted having a solo painting. It was odd that she'd never sat for one past childhood, other than for her wedding.
Maleficent's icy teal eyes seemed to warm over at the prospect of it, and she walked the length of the salon twice over while running her fingertips gently over the paintings.
"Mmm, no..." she dismissed one after the other, only pausing for a few moments at each. "Certainly not," she tsked at a canvas depicting a Princess of the blood looking down fondly at her children and spaniel. "Dare I inquire if you brought any artist with you that wouldn't pair me with these foul creatures, or at a stand of embroidery?" she mocked.
Diaval chortled loudly, bending at the waist with appreciation at her joking. "F-Foul creatures? The spaniel, or the children?"
"Take your pick," she bit back under her breath.
Rubbing his hands together, Diaval's eyes took on a shine of mischievousness. "You see, I knew that you would say that. I've saved the best for last, naturally."
"Naturally," Maleficent smirked, gesturing airily with her hand in a circular motion for her friend to get to the point, and soon.
He scampered to the corner of the room and brought out a wrapped canvas that the butler hadn't been directed to place. Removing the linen with great care, Diaval held the portrait of a girl most wondrous fair.
The sitter had a cap of hydrangeas woven into her golden hair, and peered directly at the artist. Wide aquamarine eyes that had seen much and conveyed it well drew Maleficent in like a moth to a flame. Modeling the simpler clothing of a middle class lady, the model's dress was neither bedraggled, nor ostentatious. It allowed her radiant countenance to be the focus, and the painting seemed to breathe with the glowing promise of so much more than the hum-drum, stiff 'art' that scattered the room.
"Who-" she gulped, unaware that she'd been holding her breath. "I mean to say... I've not seen this model before. She is not gentry," Maleficent simultaneously described what she was seeing, and nudged Diaval for more information.
Well aware that the Duchess had been smitten with the artist's work, Diaval cracked a smile. "Millie, allow me to introduce you to Miss Aurora Rose – she is both the woman portrayed, and the painter. Quite the ingenue, no?"
Maleficent's pale hand extended slowly towards the canvas, and a single fingertip traced the curve of the woman's jaw. How appropriate was the fact that the young woman's name meant the dawn? The sun itself might blush in jealousy at her somehow innocent allure.
"She will do. Yes, she will do brilliantly."
[1] 'unmentionables' - Victorian era slang for drawers or undergarments. The ideal Victorian woman was pure, chaste, refined, and modest. This ideal was supported by etiquette and manners. The etiquette extended to the pretension of never acknowledging the use of undergarments (in fact, they were sometimes generically referred to as "unmentionables"). The discussion of such a topic, it was feared, would gravitate towards unhealthy attention on anatomical details.