She moved forward silently in the flicker of the gilt lanterns, the luxurious sofas beckoning with their rich crimson cushions, the cavernous ceiling soaring overhead. Two women sat on the farthest couch with their heads bent together, clearly in conversation, but in such a vast room, she couldn’t even hear their voices. Silent as the grave, she thought, unbidden. For years, she hadn’t felt right in open spaces, either outdoors or in, and she fought back the urge to flee.
Behind the desk sat an attendant in a shirt as white and smooth as fresh snowfall, his eyebrow rising at her approach.
“May I help you, miss?”
“I’m Virginia,” she said, and when the hush around her swallowed her voice, she spoke louder the second time. “Virginia Reeve. I’m expected.”
The attendant’s head went down, possibly checking some kind of list. She saw no signal, but as if by magic, a tall man dressed entirely in black appeared just behind her. In the glimpse she caught over her shoulder, he looked like a crow, and she started, a high gasp in her throat.
Her escort, well trained enough not to call attention to her mistake, merely nodded, clicking his heels together.
“Miss Reeve, it would be my pleasure to show you to Mrs. Griffin’s suite,” he said.
She trailed him up the stairs and down another hallway of that plush, rich carpet, soft and silencing. The miles she’d traveled to be here exhausted her. The rough wool of her traveling dress made the side of her neck itch, and she longed to scratch the spot. She’d been through far worse, of course, but this always amazed her: how the worst pain, no matter how terrible, could recede into the past. At some point, it no longer breathed into one’s ear like a hungry wolf. The minor irritations of daily existence became irritating again. Suffering stayed suffering in all its myriad forms, all its degrees.
She knew not to speak of what she’d been through. No one wanted to hear. What did the mysterious Mrs. Griffin want to hear instead? Virginia had crossed the entire continent to find out.
Her escort rapped lightly on the door of Room 17, bent his ear to the door to wait for an answer, and appeared to hear one. He gripped the doorknob and swung the door open wide, gesturing for Virginia to enter.
“That’ll be all, William,” said a woman’s voice, accented, low, and husky.
“Very good, Madam,” answered the escort, stepping back into the hallway and closing the door with practiced care, making no sound.
The entire room seemed gilded. The bright light of day peeked through the gossamer curtains, lighting the white and gold of the room until it glowed. It felt like Virginia imagined a Greek temple might have felt, far back in ancient days.
Virginia turned her attention to the only other person in the room. Mrs. Griffin could well have been an alabaster statue, as still and pale as she sat. Her plush chair curved gracefully around her seated body like a throne.
Though a close observer could see the signs of age on the backs of her hands, Mrs. Griffin had been maintained with great care. Her cheeks were soft with cream, her faded hair still sculpted and pinned as carefully as a bride’s. The extravagant folds of her watered silk gown would have offered a litter of collie pups shelter for the night. In age, she might have been Virginia’s mother or even her grandmother, but in appearance, it would be obvious to anyone the two never could have sprung from the same family tree.
The older woman spoke without rising. Her accent was clearly British, crisp as a starched sheet. “I must apologize, Miss Reed. I’ve begun our acquaintance with subterfuge.”
Dumbfounded, Virginia did not know how to respond. She latched onto what she could. “Sorry, ma’am. Miss Reeve, you mean.”
As soft as the woman’s face looked, her eyes were hard and sharp.
“I know what I mean.”
“And yet,” Virginia said, “my name, begging your pardon, is Virginia Reeve. You wrote to me under that name, did you not?”
“I did,” the older woman said, “and yet names can be deceiving. That is the subterfuge I speak of. I am not—and here I beg your pardon, a fair trade—a Mrs. Delafield Griffin.”
“Well then, what’s your name?”
“Goodness. The Americans of my acquaintance are direct, as one expects, but you—how do they put it? Take the proverbial cake.” This in a dry voice, cool and collected, but not without a hint of humor. “The proper way to address me is Lady Franklin.”
In wonder, Virginia blurted, “Lady Jane Franklin?”
The woman gave a controlled, careful smile. Virginia had the distinct feeling that Lady Jane Franklin rehearsed her smiles in the mirror to choose the most flattering. “It seems that my fame precedes me even to the Western frontier of your wild country.”
“A Canadian friend of mine was quite fond of your song,” Virginia said. She didn’t even really mean to begin singing it, but she opened her lips, and out came the memory:
In Baffin’s Bay where the whale fish blow,
The fate of Franklin no man may know.
The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell,
Lord Franklin alone with his sailors do dwell.
A warm feeling was gathering in her veins—the song reminded her so strongly of Ames—but when Lady Franklin held up her hand for silence, Virginia swallowed down the words.
“I have heard of your many talents,” Lady Franklin said. “Singing does not rank among them.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t upset me in the least,” said the woman, though it sounded to Virginia like a lie. “You are simply a very bad singer. And it is not my song, as you style it. It is simply a popular song that purports to speak with my voice, though I gave no permission for it to do so. But let’s have done with that. Please, tell me, how was your journey?”
As rusty as her social skills might be, Virginia recognized a change of subject when she heard it, and she took the cue. “Long, to be sure. But far more comfortable than it would have been without your generosity. Thank you for that. If one has a first-class cabin on both the Pacific ship and the Atlantic, the portage in Panama is the worst of it.”
She tried to make the journey sound like nothing, when in fact, it might have broken a less experienced traveler. The journeymen who carried her belongings in Panama made off with one of her two precious trunks. A drunken sot on the Atlantic journey mistook her cabin for another’s and pounded on her door, shouting and then sobbing, the better part of a night. But she wasn’t one to complain. Her neck itched again. She pictured the rash she would find—an inch-thick strip like a priest’s collar, all the way around—when she finally peeled the infernal wool dress away. She missed the buckskin trousers and tunic she’d worn as a guide or even the plain cotton hand-me-down dresses she’d worn before that. As dangerous as they were, the wilds beyond the eastern edge of America did offer some advantages over civilization. On the frontier, a young woman in her twenties might do almost anything, as long as she was capable and smart, and if she chose, she could do it dressed in comfort.