Angelika had to laugh as Will coughed. “Will is my very dear, special friend and guest, for as long as he wishes to stay. I shall fill you in when—”
“When we are alone, and you can explain in detail.”
Lizzie appeared tired from her journey but was still beautiful to Angelika. She was tanned gold, with that famous onyx hair. She had mischievous dark eyes, and the blackest eyebrows, permanently lifted in a questioning arch. Her mother was Spanish, and she enhanced her looks with jewel-tone clothes and stained her lips red. Judging by the trunks labeled COSTUMES and PROPS, ETC., she had interesting plans.
Lizzie noticed Angelika’s perusal, then sniffed at her own armpit. “Well? Will I pass your brother’s inspection? Oh, I stink.”
“He thinks you’re divine. The only star in the sky, and he speaks of no one else. Please ask him to stop leaving apple cores on the stair rail.”
Lizzie’s smile was bright. “Shall do. Oh, look—she enters, stage right: a lovely big pig to greet me. Good day, madam, do you bring word from London?”
They all turned. Belladonna’s beady eyes surveyed the black-haired woman, the luggage, and the girls’ clasped hands. Her head began to lower. A front leg lifted.
“Come now, Lizzie,” Angelika said, grabbing her arm. “Inside, quickly.”
Once safely in the foyer, Lizzie ran her hand on the stair rail like she was introducing herself. “I love this house,” she said.
“I’m sick of it,” Angelika countered. How lovely it must be to move into your marital home. In the midst of such excitement, her anxiety was beginning to build. She was likely never going to pack her trunks to leave for her own house.
Victor was right. She was going to end up hurt.
Will took Angelika’s hand, like he felt the shift in her mood. “Whatever happens tomorrow,” he said, referring to the visit with Clara, “we will deal with it together. I promise, I will help you through. Just as you have helped me so much.” With that, his cold hand released hers, and he went to assist with the luggage.
“What’s that about?” Lizzie asked.
“I’ll tell you everything later. Stay in my room tonight. Goodness, so many trunks,” Angelika said as they linked arms. “It looks like you are moving in permanently.”
“Well, now that you mention it,” Lizzie said on a laugh, and they both fell into squeals of laughter, hugging each other, and in that moment Angelika thought that she probably could bear what the future would bring. There was much fuss and ado in the foyer, and even more when the bell above the door rang again.
“He’s a day early?” Angelika shrieked, and dragged her fingers through Lizzie’s hair to tidy it. “Couldn’t he give her a single minute to bathe, and rest?”
“That’s my bear,” Lizzie replied, panicking, too. “Please, please. I need a bath. A wet flannel would be fine. I can’t let him smell me this way.”
“I bought you some apple-scented soap. A joke a year in the making.”
“Jelly, it’s the strangest thing,” Lizzie said as they ran up the staircase. “I know it can’t be true, and I’m probably imagining things again . . .”
Angelika was startled by her serious tone. “What is it?”
“I believe that pig did not like me.”
Chapter Ten
Angelika’s eyes opened in the darkness, and she lay completely still with her blankets pulled up to her chin. Everything was now silent, except for her own heartbeat and breath.
She had fallen asleep to Victor and Lizzie’s distant mattress rhythm. It was like being lulled by the creaking of a ship that periodically hit stormy seas. Occasionally there were the cries of a woman drowning. Lizzie would certainly be walking unsteady across decks in the morning, and she had been sternly warned not to venture outside alone. She had taken the news of Belladonna as expected: she’d laughed her incredible husky laugh until tears had streamed down her face. Am I the other woman? Oh, what a play this would be.
Victor saw no point in waiting for matrimony. I’ll be damned if that spotty old corpse they call Father Porter influences what happens in my own bedchamber. We are human beings, doing what humans do. It is natural science! I plan on fucking Lizzie senseless tonight, should she be amenable. After such a monologue—delivered at dinnertime, as Lizzie choked on her drink, then nodded—it was confirmed that a bedroom shuffle was not required. Victor’s door slammed so hard that it would have been heard in the village.