The Vauquelin Parlor
hey’re really quite mild,” Eleanor was saying. “Mannered, that is. I don’t know very much about the flavor p-profile. I have heard that in some towns the locals raise them as livestock, as we do with garmon in Anaxas, but the pr...p-practice isn’t as popular as the racing…”
“The racing, my dear?”
Diana was not altogether sure why, in his absence, she did not simply remove the thing. She stood looking up at it, her hands on her hips, her lips pressed together in thought. It was rather high up on the mantle; she would need to fetch Mr. Morris, or one of the other footmen – she might have cursed, Circle forgive her, that this of all weeks was when Mr. Douglas was visiting family in Fen Kierden, before the rains – and even then, if they did manage to get the blasted thing down without breaking it, she hadn’t a clue with what they might replace it.
A mirror, perhaps. No; she did not much like that idea. A mirror in a gilt frame was no substitute for a well-made painting in even a plain one. Even the portrait of Constance, rest her, was preferable to a mirror, and certainly preferable to this monstrosity; but if Anatole had hid it somewhere, Diana had not yet found it.
Knowing Anatole as he was now, she reflected grimly, she likely would not find it. She wondered if it was still even in the house. Perhaps it was floating in the bay, to use that expression of which he was so fond.
She had some fine Tivian pieces in the dining room – impressions of the mountains around Caroult. She had known the painter before he had reached renown; in fact, one of them had been a gift from him.
But it was less about the painting itself, she thought, and more about who had painted it, when it came to situations like these. A Tivian impression would hardly do as the centerpiece for a parlor, unless it was, say, one of Mr. Nuncio Adelardi’s, who had gained renown across all six kingdoms, admired even in Hox. She supposed that a fine historical painting, like one of the ones Anatole had in his study, might do – regardless of notoriety – but only if the painter had been dead for at least a decade.
“... oh, Mother, you didn’t tell me you were starting to see these in Vienda! They’re migrating down from the north, you know; I’ve heard they come from Roannah originally…”
“From Roannah?” Diana’s brow furrowed. She tapped her bottom lip, staring up.
She chid herself. This was a problem she should have taken care of before now. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t moved the dreadful thing the second she had waved good-bye to Anatole and the servants had moved the last of his luggage to a carriage.
Eleanor had, of course, found it fascinating, the first time she had seen it. Wretchedly, she had just begun to consider letting the girls see him again – in little doses, perhaps, so as not to overwhelm any of them – before he brought the thing home from one of his trips to the Rose. Now, Eleanor scarce gave it a glance, as if she had forgotten the portrait of her paternal grandfather had ever hung over the mantle; sometimes, Diana thought, suppressing a shudder, not even she paid it mind.
The delicate-legged buck perched above the mantle, its head raised, its lacquered black eyes looking down not over the room but out toward some middle distance. Its lacquered black antlers stretched up, twisted and branched; at night, they cast the most dreadful shadows up on the wall, and so she supposed she was grateful Chrysanthe and Amaryllis had at least been able to spare a noon.
It wouldn’t have been so dreadful if it weren’t painted all black, Diana thought. She herself wore a dress in deep green, the skirt glittering as she moved like light flickering over foliage. It was still long-sleeved against the Bethas chill, but she thought it was a breath of spring; she wore her hair braided up, a few ornaments shaped like yellow and white lilies tucked into the gleaming swoops and curls.
She had ensured that Eleanor had worn green, too; there had been similar ornaments in her hair, if she had cared to keep them there. “I cannot abide these f-fake… fake flowers,” she had said, putting her hands on her hips. “They are not good for pollination. They are not good for anything!”
Eleanor was droning on even now, behind her, in that unusually deep voice she must have inherited from her father. “Eleanor, my darling, will you go up and fetch Cerise?” Another little agitation. “She has been in her room with Sish since she arrived. It’s as if she doesn’t even want to – Eleanor?”
“A moment, Mother.”
When Diana turned, her jaw dropped. “Get away from that filthy thing,” she said.
Eleanor was crouched beside a spiderweb in the corner, her little notebook in one hand, a small stubby pencil in the other. She looked back at Diana, gawping. “It’s not filthy,” she protested. “It’s a greater Wakesho silk-walker’s web! Do you know how important –”
Diana had already rung the bell for Margaret. “I don’t know, Eleanor, and I don’t care,” she said, glancing down at the shadowed corner, watching a few errant strands glisten in the light that slanted through the atrium doors. Eleanor had already stood up, her head bowed, and was dusting off her dress. “Cobwebs and spiders in our parlor? What will your cousins think? That the maids simply overlooked an entire corner?”
Margaret was through the door, then. “Ma’am?” She glanced to Eleanor, and then to the object of Eleanor’s affections. “Circle!”
“Please,” began Diana, and at that moment, she heard the distant tinkle of the foyer doors, and a muffle of voices and footsteps. One of them was Morris’. “Quickly, please – and Eleanor, please fetch your sister.”
“Yes, Mother.” Eleanor, laying her notepad on a side table, was already moving toward the hall to the stairs.
Margaret had fetched another maid to dispose of the thing posthaste by the time Diana heard her cousins’ voices; she drew herself up, smiled her loveliest smile, and waited in the midst of the parlor. Behind her, she could hear Eleanor returning – she hoped to the gods with Cerise in tow, and without that ridiculous miraan.