a party four years ago. In that gentler age on the eve of the war her eyes had been drawn not to the furnishings but to the people. During their two-day buggy ride Emily had already heard from her sister a list of the great and the good who had attended, with especial attention to the eligible young men in their new coats of red.
‘Really you must marry soon, Emily, while I am still in the flush of youth,’ the girl fretted.
‘And whom do you suggest I marry?’
‘Oh, what do I care? After all, Mary married a tradesman, and you could hardly do worse than that.’
‘I apologize for spoiling your chances, sister, but I’ve no mind to marry any time soon,’ Emily said.
‘I know what it is,’ Alice said slyly. ‘It’s because the Ghyer called you a man. You needn’t worry. In a good gown like that you’re practically presentable. And even if you don’t possess my gifts, your birth should stand you in good stead.’
‘Why thank you, sister, for your educated opinions,’ Emily replied somewhat tartly. ‘Do note that our parentage is not going to open many doors for us here at Deerlings. We will be counted amongst the lowly.’
Alice sniffed disdainfully as though to indicate that her personal charm and beauty would make up for any deficit in pedigree.
Their little two-horse buggy was a shabby affair compared to most of the opulent carriages already drawn up outside the stables of Deerlings. Alice was too busy to make that comparison, though, intent on ticking off coats of arms and looking for the intertwined herons that were the King’s. Grant helped Emily step down, and she paused and took a good look at Deerlings House.
She had expected the giant edifice of her memory to be diminished now, no longer seen through the eyes of a child, but Deerlings remained the grandest building she had ever seen: a vast winged front of regimented windows flanking a colonnade, which framed great front doors that alone seemed as grand as all of Grammaine. A pair of statues faced each other across the doorway: a near-naked spearman with arched eagle’s wings menacing a coiled and barbed serpent in whose mouth glowed real fire.
‘Will you be all right, Grant?’
‘I’ll find my way, ma’am. I’ll put the horses to rest first, and then I’m sure the kitchen will have a bite for me.’ He chuckled roughly. ‘I shouldn’t say it to you, ma’am, but I’ll wager the kitchen girls’ll have time for a word even for an old’un like me.’
Emily found herself smiling, where only a season before she would have been shocked beyond all reckoning – or at least feigned it – to hear the old man talk like that. Nor, she guessed, would he have risked the words back then. Their escapade against the brigands had brought them closer through mutual peril. Now he was less formal with her, and she fonder of him.
‘I wish you well of them,’ she replied. ‘Come, Alice, we must go and present ourselves.’
*
‘Miss Emily Marshwic and Miss Alice Marshwic.’ It was announced in a piercing voice by a woman in footman’s garb, but neither of them really noticed. After a year and a half of war, deprivation and worry, this was like coming home.
The great ballroom of Deerlings had a gleaming floor that scattered light and colour in mother-of-pearl reflections from wall to wall. The walls themselves began with gilded skirting wrought into the form of waves, and rose up through spiralled pillars to merge into the ceiling’s spreading golden vistas of marine life. The first Lord Deerling had been a coastal man, and subsequent generations had elaborated on his original theme, so that here could be seen fishing ships hauling in their nets, while there a kraken, many-armed and twisting, broke the water to do battle with trident-wielding sailors. There were mermaids with their lyres, and schooling fish of silver and red and blue, and here the ancient sea king in his armour of shells, and each vignette was separated by coiling gilded plaster moulded into the shape of sea wrack.
Beneath, and multiplied back and forth by the mirrors hanging on two walls, were the great and the good, the young and the beautiful, the wealthy and the powerful of all Lascanne. Two score ladies of quality, from the stately Lady Deerling herself in pearls and white lace and satin, to pretty aristocratic girls a year younger even than Alice, each the centre of her own world.