Killing Violets, Tanith Lee [the two towers ebook .TXT] 📗

The bedroom was like a cavern. What else? She did not look at it. The fire was hot; they had run her a bath. Three maids, standing in a row. She sent them out. She was too polite, of course. They had faces like eggs, blank.

She stepped into the bath, crawled out, crawled into the enormous bed under its yellow tester. Was gone.

Someone was saying something incomprehensible to her. “No,” said Anna. “I can’t. No.”

The voice spoke again. It was soft and female. Anna looked under her lids.

A sly, slim fox’s face, with a bonnet of horrible starched linen. A maid. “What is it?”

The maid said something Anna couldn’t properly understand. But it was about getting up, and someone coming – the housekeeper? – or a dress…

“Oh, thank you. Yes. Thank you.”

Anna realised she had slept as usual naked, and the maid was here, waiting for her to get up, or so it seemed. Yes, the maid was waiting. Her slim hands were folded on her apron. Pale reddish hair slid back under the nasty bonnet. Her eyes were tawny under half-lowered lids.

“Thank you. I’m sorry. I’d like you to wait outside.”

The fox maid bobbed. She said, “Missus sayum to lug artor you. Till as missus picks aton other.” This was what it sounded like, anyway.

“Oh, I see. But I’d like you to go out for a moment.”

The maid looked up, at her. Eyes not tawny, yellow as the tester and counterpane. What awful eyes. Like a cat’s – or a goat’s.

“What’s your name?” said Anna, almost in a panic.

“Sister,” said the maid. Perhaps.

“Very well – Sister,” Anna was firm. “Please go out and shut the door.”

“Ysm.”

Anna felt close to trembling. This was all so silly. She did not know what to do here, had never lived in a house with any servants beyond a slovenly cook here and there, or some skivvy who did everything. But the fox maid called sister was going at last. The door shut.

At a scramble Anna left the bed. She ran across the room to the bathroom where she recalled her robe had been left lying.

The bath stood on iron legs, paws. The water was still in it and the room felt steamy though chill. When she let the water out, the bath made evil noises.

There was this housekeeper coming. And then dressing for dinner, one of the glaucous dresses Raoul had bought her.

Anna tied the robe. She wiped the mirror. She cleaned her teeth at the inset basin, white and shell-shaped. The taps were brass, polished like gold, and in the form of gryphons’ heads. Like those things on the roof – gargoyles.

She was smoking a cigarette and brushing her hair with the tortoiseshell brush, when the housekeeper brought the fox maid back into the room.

The housekeeper had no accent at all.

“I regret,” said the housekeeper, “Mr Raoul’s telegram arrived very late. Things aren’t as ready as I’d have wished.” She wore a burgundy red dress and a little watch pinned on her right breast. Her hair was like lacquered ebony, probably dyed. She had the face of a chorus girl playing a housekeeper. She smiled. Her false teeth were very good, but somewhat discoloured. “Sister will do her best for you.”

“Sister? Is that really her name?” Anna blurted. “Sister” merely stood there, goat eyes down.

“Lily Sister,” elaborated the housekeeper.

Anna felt dispirited. “What happens next?”

The housekeeper laughed in a tight small way. “Sister will help you dress. Dinner is normally at eight-thirty.”

“I prefer to dress myself,” said Anna. “I don’t need anything, thank you.”

When they were gone, Anna dressed. She powdered her face and touched her lips with red. Raoul did not like her to use mascara; he had compared her long pale lashes with moths’ wings.

She anticipated all the time that he would come in. But he didn’t.

From the windows of this room in the back of the house, the lawns swept to a beech coppice, and then away up to the sides of the mountain-hills, now patched with mist or fog. Rain dripped, and the light was going.

There were some cows in a pasture over a sort of narrow river. They moved about sullenly. They seemed undecided.

What was she doing here?

Raoul had once or twice referred to his family, and then just as ordinary people did: “My Family.” But they had a title. Then again, it wasn’t used. The family name was Basulte.

Raoul had told her so little. But he had promised to tell her nothing, and to ask nothing. And he never had asked Anna anything fundamental or finite. His questions had been limited to such things as “Where shall we go for breakfast? Do you like this wine? Will you put on that necklace for me? Are you comfortable? Do you enjoy it when I kiss you here?”

She knew nothing about him, or about the house and the Family. Only names like England, and Basulte.

Anna was terribly nervous, and yet, adrift in the unreality, she didn’t care. Did not care what she felt or what anyone felt. Did not mean to impress. Her impulse was only not to cause a dramatic scene. That had always been one of her goals, for a long time. Scenes were dangerous.

She came down three long corridors, and through the gallery with suits of armour and oil paintings of costumed persons, men with swords, women with little dogs. The electricity had been switched on, and the hanging lamps were alight, making the gallery stark and its strip of red carpet jump at her eyes. Beyond the gallery was a sort of annexe with doors opening off, and then the top of a curving stair, marble and wood and gilding, just like a European hotel.

The stair ended below in a glass room. It was called an orangery – oranges had been grown in it once, in the 17th century, apparently. It looked now fabulously cold, and the harsh light made tall plants and wicker tables resemble cut-outs of thin card.

Beyond was the room