The Duchess

I stood in the waiting room, looking at my pocketwatch. The manor's ceilings were high, but the room felt squeezed for all of the clutter in it. Two separate chandeliers fought for attention, the larger one hanging from the center and the smaller pushed near the corner like an orbiting moon. They were both bright silver, made of swooping, curving lines and reflecting enough candlepower to blind. There were two couches which faced each other sternly, like they were arguing over the monstrously large table between them. The couches were high-backed, mahogany like the walls and floors, but like a cathedral in inspiration, with tall pointed staves and overwrought armrests. Nearly every bit of free space had yet another table in it, small and delicate and holding colorful flowers, vases, little gaudy statuettes, and expensive photographs of grim people. The walls would have been quite nice undecorated, but added to the claustrophobic, almost manic air by being covered with mirrors and portraits and convex glass baubles of indeterminate function. I could not imagine the expense of keeping even this single room clean, and for all that the place did not make the owner seem magisterial or powerful but insecure and desperate. Then again, I knew what she wanted, and that is enough to make anyone seem desperate.

I glanced at my burdens. Thomas was where I left him, propped up in the corner of one of the couches. He was swaddled entirely in thick strips of black cloth, pulled around tight. When he was awake he sometimes wriggled and swayed, like a cocooned wretch. Dull moans would escape from within, low and droning and evocative of helpless animals. He had carried on this way through much of the carriage ride here, causing the muttonchopped cabman to glance back at us the entire trip in what I imagine he believed a surreptitious fashion. When we arrived he made no offer to help me sling Thomas over my shoulder and he paid close attention to his horses when I tipped him generously.

My other burden... the box sat on the floor. It was tarted up with blue silks spread from the tall handle down to the bottom corners, like a box tent for tiny fairies. Thinking about the box made me think of its contents, and I quickly returned my attention to my watch.

A door swished open just enough to permit a man to glide into the room before shutting it behind him. It was the butler, the chief of the servants, whose name I had been told at some point during this mad affair. I believe I was supposed to be honored by his personal ministrations, since Her Grace maintained several sets of servants for the several sets of visitors she received. However I found the man so anodyne as to be repellent, a bespoke butler from a butler factory in the east where these things can be done economically. He wore the perfect suit, fine and expensive but not attention-grabbing. He had the perfect shoes and haircut, the perfect stance and gait, the perfect attitude of disdainful obsequiousness that reminded the served whose house they were in without giving the slightest cause for offense. He glided towards me, stopping at the perfect distance away and giving a small bow before speaking.

"Her Grace is most grateful that you have arrived. She will only be a few moments in preparing herself."

She had probably been ready for hours. I imagined her in the next room over with her own pocketwatch, waiting for a quarter hour to pass before she made her entrance.

"I am honored by her attentions," I said.

"Would sir care for refreshment?"

I had opened my mouth to decline when I changed my mind. I was worn out from carrying Thomas and the box around all day, and worn out from the months-long escapade required by this client. And during all of this time, through several meetings and long instructions written in a tight, close hand, I had been obliged by the reputation of my firm to be entirely professional, a machine with a pleasant face who would not turn up his nose if a client requested referrals for having their mother drowned in sewage.