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Chapter Eighteen

I’m sitting at the dressing table while Ruby styles my hair.

Constance has good hair. It’s thick and lustrous, and Ruby pins it up with skill.

Edwardian women don’t wash their hair very often, but they brush it a great deal, with boar-bristle brushes.

She’s pleased to have borrowed some meshing from Alice’s lady’s maid to beef up the style, and the effect is impressive.

It looks like I have much more hair than I do.

She’s also borrowed a kind of pomade that gives it shine.

I’m fascinated to discover that Edwardians put as much product in their hair as we do.

I hope to see Cavill this evening. The thought fills me with excitement so that I can barely think of anything else.

My heart expands and my whole being is flooded with a delicious warmth as if my veins are being pumped with treacle.

But it doesn’t last for long. The reality of the slide dampens my exuberance.

I will lose him again. It’s only a matter of time.

I would laugh at my delusion if it wasn’t so tragic.

How can I lose something that I don’t have?

Cavill has never been mine. He loved Hermione.

For a short and blissful time, I slipped in behind her eyes and soaked up his love as if he was giving it to me, Pixie.

As if he was recognising something special beyond Hermione’s face and personality, as if he was seeing me .

Now I’m Constance Fleet and it’s happening all over again.

He’s falling in love with her and I’m hoping that he’s really recognising me , shining through her.

But how can he when he doesn’t know there’s any difference to be seen – that there is any separation between the physical and the non-physical.

Even if I explained it to him, he wouldn’t understand it. He’d think I’d lost my mind.

I’ll see him tonight and I’ll just have to be grateful for that. For these brief and fleeting moments together. They’re all I’m being given. I have no choice but to love him from afar. I suppose that’s better than not loving him at all.

I tear my thoughts away from Cavill. ‘How is everything downstairs?’ I ask Ruby.

She slips a spray of blue feathers into my hair and fastens it with pins. ‘It’s mayhem,’ she answers, grinning at me in the mirror. ‘Miss O’Donnell has lost her Japanese golden thread and is turning the place upside down in search of it.’

‘What’s Japanese golden thread?’

‘She says it’s the finest gold thread in the world, for embroidery. It was in her sewing box, but now it’s gone. It’s real gold, you know.’

I shouldn’t be surprised that Mrs Aldershoff’s dresses are woven with real gold! ‘Oh dear.’

‘And Monsieur Barbier is a tyrant in the kitchen,’ she continues. ‘He’s never happy. His mouth goes down like a bulldog’s, and he grunts and groans and shouts at the kitchen maids.’

‘It sounds very lively down there.’

She laughs. ‘It’s mayhem. Everyone’s jittery. I don’t know why.’

‘And Glover?’

She sighs and pulls a face. ‘Oh, I don’t know what’s going on with him, ma’am,’ she says, coming round to pin onto the collar of my indigo dress a glittering diamond-and-sapphire brooch borrowed from Alice.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask, my interest piqued.

‘He’s nervous and bad-tempered. I don’t know what’s got into him. Ever since we were rescued by the Carpathia he’s been on edge, like he’s afraid of something.’

I wonder whether Lester has told him he’ll have to seek employment elsewhere.

‘Perhaps he feels guilty for having survived when so many died,’ I suggest. ‘The men who were saved in lifeboats are being given a hard time. Take Bruce Ismay, for example. He’s being savaged by the press for having taken a place on a lifeboat while women and children were still on board, hoping to be rescued.

Although, to be fair, I don’t know why one life is worth more than another, simply because of a person’s gender.

People should be treated equally whatever their sex and status. ’

She smiles at me through the mirror. I must seem crazily idealistic to her.

‘The world is never going to change, ma’am,’ she says simply.

‘There is always going to be a difference between men and women, and rich and poor, isn’t there?

It’s the way it is.’ She shrugs. ‘Everyone below stairs wants to hear Glover’s story, but he won’t talk about it and I say nothing. It’s not my place to tell his story.’

‘Very wise. He’ll get over it.’

She nods. ‘He’ll have to.’ She puts her soft hands on my shoulders. ‘You look lovely, ma’am.’

‘Thank you, Ruby,’ I reply, and get up off the chair. ‘I feel much better in this dress.’

I stand at the top of the flight of stairs with the blue box in my hand.

The stair is the pièce de résistance of the house and is sublime with its elaborate gilded balustrade and crimson runner.

There’s something about the way it sweeps down in a curve that’s very harmonious and pleasing to the eye.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a staircase to better it.

Mr Stirling was wise not to alter it when he designed the Aldershoff Hotel.

It’s the only part of the building that has remained exactly the same.

I run my eyes over the panelled walls and into the grand hall below, and feel privileged to be witnessing the place as a private house.

There are few as splendid as this that have survived into the twenty-first century.

These magnificent private homes were either converted into museums and public buildings, or demolished.

It’s fascinating to see how the Gilded Age millionaires lived.

It’s a world away from my own experience.

I doubt I will be here for much longer. I’m eager to see Cavill, and yet the anticipation of saying goodbye is already causing me pain in my heart.

A part of me just wants to leave and get it over with.

I put my hand on the balustrade and walk carefully down the steps, holding the blue box in the other hand.

I’m aware of tripping on my long skirt and kick it out as I descend.

I wouldn’t want to stumble and fall. It’s a long way to the hall.

I can hear voices. Guests have already arrived for the seance.

I can smell cigarette smoke wafting out of the drawing room and hear the low murmur of voices.

I hover a moment in the doorway to the drawing room and my eyes immediately find Cavill.

He rises above the others, even Lester who is tall.

I’m relieved he’s come. The room feels full now that he’s in it, and charged with a heightened energy.

He’s talking to Walter-Wyatt. I watch the two of them, aware that time is running out and that soon this scene will be nothing but a memory replayed in the Aldershoff Hotel when I’ve slid back.

When once again I nurse my aching heart and struggle to bear an unbearable sorrow.

Cavill lifts his eyes, and they settle on me with an intimate and familiar warmth.

His face softens into a colluding smile.

I smile back discreetly and allow myself to be sucked into his gaze so that everyone around us fades into a blur.

It’s a brief moment but it has an eternal quality about it that makes it feel so much longer.

I’m transported back to St Sidwell Manor, to the window seat in my bedroom, Cavill and me, gazing at the stars, and at each other, and not a sliver of light between us.

He turns his attention back to his host and the connection is dropped, but not lost. We have declared ourselves now and I know it is what Constance would wish. When she wakes up, she will be exactly where she wants to be. There’s a certain satisfaction in that.

I join the group of women who stand together like a flock of hens in their fine dresses and jewellery, and try not to allow my gaze to stray.

Alice is quivering with nervous excitement.

Her energy is intense, her eyes bright and alert.

She seems not to be listening to the conversation, but feigning interest, nodding and smiling distractedly.

Her attention slides to the big double doors every few seconds, as if anticipating the arrival of someone very important. I wonder who that might be.

There are only nine of us in the room. Esme is demure in an ivory-coloured lace dress and stands talking to Lester, who seems quite taken with her.

If he’s faking affection, he’s doing a very good job of it.

I wonder whether the sight of the Potemkin Diamond has focused his mind and he now knows what he must do.

Perhaps that is why Glover is in such a bad mood.

Emma Livingstone has brought Mrs Gilsden, whose eyes are raw and swollen.

Her distraught face is very white against the high collar of her black dress, and my heart goes out to her for her loss.

Children should not die before their parents.

Parents should not have to endure that pain.

Josephine is lovely in pink and pale green, and looks as fresh as a tulip beside her.

Mrs Gilsden is intrigued when I show her the case that carries what they call the spirit board.

Alice tells us that Walter-Wyatt doesn’t like seances but that he’s staying on account of his mother.

‘She’s squeezing us in between engagements,’ Alice informs us keenly, and now I know why she’s nervous.

Her mother-in-law, the celebrated Didi Aldershoff, is about to arrive.