On the day after Christmas, Arabella Strange woke very suddenly in the early hours of the morning. Her first feeling was relief that the sick headache which had plagued her throughout the previous day had subsided with sleep, as such things often do; her second feeling was that she must get out of bed.
Once she had risen, leaving Jonathan still slumbering under the counterpane, it seemed very obvious that she must dress. Arabella was not accustomed to doing so without the assistance of either her maid or her husband, but she did not suffer even a moment of misgiving - the cord slipped unerringly through each eyelet of her long stay, though it laced behind her, and the hooks of her wool gown almost fastened themselves. Of course she must get dressed, for she had an appointment. That it was not quite in the normal way of things to be engaged to meet anyone at three in the morning did not occur to her.
After tying her half-boots, she sat down at her dressing-table in order to release her curling-papers and arrange her hair. Despite her care, when she lifted her bone-handled brush it knocked against two glass scent bottles, and the sound caused Jonathan to stir.
'Is anything amiss, my dear?' he asked, blinking a little in the moonlight.
'I am only stepping out for a moment,' she said; 'remember, I have an engagement.'
Jonathan made a sound that might have been agreement, and then returned to sleep. Smiling fondly, Arabella wound her hair into a simple knot, then slipped out of the bedroom and down the stairs, and put on her wadded silk pelisse and a velvet bonnet. It was not exactly clear to her what her destination was, but she knew that it was far, and the air was crisp and cold — when she opened the front door, she was delighted to see that the Gentleman whose guest she was to be had sent a fine silver and white landaulet drawn by a set of grey horses. With an eager smile, she rushed forward as the footman (a thin young man in frosted blue livery) opened the door and bowed. He handed her inside and bowed again, deeply, as though she were a princess, and then shut the door and returned to his post. The coachman silently touched the greys with his whip and the carriage began to move. It was quite the best-sprung vehicle she had ever been in, as far as she could remember, and was so plushly upholstered! It was more clear than ever that the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair must indeed be a European prince, one that had escaped from Bonaparte with his fortune somehow intact. How lucky she was to see his home at last.
And that was how Arabella Strange was taken from Ashfair.
When Arabella arrived at Lost Hope, she took in the crumbling walls and the many small, dark windows from her seat in the landaulet and marveled. It seemed to her that she had never beheld such a magnificent sight: could any English lord have a seat so fine? Spires, there certainly were spires in the dusky gloom — and of course the windows were not small, they gleamed in the moonlight — and the wall around it was so stout, so solid!
The windows were small , a voice at the back of her mind pointed out, and the stars above were nothing like the ones that shone over Britain's fields.
At the door, she was met by more handsome and liveried footmen and led through corridor after dim corridor that left her breathless with delight, although she was not altogether sure what about the corridors made her feel so. After what might have been a few minutes and might have been several hours, the footmen opened a set of wooden doors — beautifully carved with a collection of twisted and tormented forms — to reveal a glorious ballroom, with an assembly in full cry. At least a dozen sets were engaged in an intricate country dance as elegant as any danced in London, Arabella knew, but the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair (resplendent in a leaf-green velvet coat studded with diamond stars) held up one hand and brought the orchestra and all of the dancers to an immediate halt.
'Our new guest has arrived!' he called out, and drew an enthusiastic round of applause from the entire company. 'My dear, I hope you did not find the journey too fatiguing.'
'Oh no!' she cried as the Gentleman bore down on her, still holding the hand of the lady who had been his partner — a dark-haired beauty in a gown of spider-spun gauze over a white satin slip. 'The carriage was so well-sprung, and so comfortable. I must express my gratitude to you, sir, for inviting me to your ball on such a slight acquaintance.' The gratitude suffused every fibre of her being, only to be quickly replaced by embarrassment at her appearance in contrast to the fine company, who must have been Continental nobility themselves. 'I must humbly apologize, though, for my dress — I did not realize what to expect.'
'Nonsense,' he said smoothly, 'you are dressed exactly as you should be for our little gathering.' And indeed, when she glanced down at her body she was clad in a gown of velvet the colour of flame, with a high Medici collar of silver lace; from the lack of weight on her head, her bonnet had clearly disappeared, and she could feel that her hair had been dressed in a more elaborate fashion. Filled with intense gratitude once again, she curtseyed very low. 'That will not do, either,' the Gentleman said, lifting her up with his free hand; 'the honour is all on my side.' Turning to the rest of the company, he stood between the two ladies with the air of an artist presenting two new canvases that he expected the world to approve of greatly — and indeed, the company applauded once more with every appearance of enthusiasm.
Now that they were nearer together, Arabella could make out the features of the woman in the spiderweb gauze. 'Oh, Lady Pole!' she said with great pleasure. 'How lovely it is to see you here. Did you arrive much before me?'
Lady Pole inclined her head with a surprising heaviness, then addressed the Gentleman rather than Arabella. 'Sir, might Mrs Strange and I have a moment to ourselves?'
'You must not be selfish, sweet Lady Pole,' he told her, his eyes not leaving Arabella's face. 'Mrs Strange will dance with me for a while.' He then released Lady Pole's hand, whisked Arabella into line, and gestured to the orchestra, which struck up a cheery waltz.
Arabella was fortunate enough to be partnered with the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair for three sets in a row, but after the quadrille his eye began to wander across the floor, and he abandoned her in favor of another lady. Bereft, she could only watch the back of his velvet coat as he walked away from her; when a small hand suddenly clasped hers, she turned in surprise to see that Lady Pole had returned to her side. Without speaking a word, she drew Arabella out of the way of the dancers to a delicate sopha placed against the wall and sat on it, pulling her friend down beside her.
'I see that he has captivated you with an enchantment,' she said, peering into Arabella's face, though Arabella swayed to and fro in order to keep the Gentleman in sight. 'He did the same to me when I first came here. I thought this a magnificent palace, and that man a genteel prince.'
'But surely it is a palace?'
Lady Pole gave Arabella a look that was as much sympathetic as it was exasperated. 'You will learn the truth of this place very soon. Though I allow that it might be kinder were you not to, for now you will be just as unhappy as I. You must come and visit me tomorrow — perhaps now that you have been here, we shall be able to speak freely together, as Stephen and I do,' she added as a gentleman in a silver taffeta coat came to lead Arabella back into the dance. He did not have the striking good looks of the Gentleman, or his elegant grace, but as the music was bright and gay she was happy to acquiesce.
Not too many dances went by before the Gentleman came back to claim her again. 'Have you been enjoying yourself, Mrs Strange?' he enquired, smiling down at her.
'Very much,' she assured him. 'I shall be very sorry to go home again, but I hope I may be privileged to return.' In response, he clapped his hands with delight.
'But that is my great surprise! I had been waiting to tell you all night. There is a room here set aside for you, and you shall stay for a time.'
A warm feeling of happiness stole through her from the top of her head to her toes, but there was a tiny misgiving in the corner of her mind. 'How excessively pleasant! I am very honoured by your offer, sir, and of course I will stay for a week, or perhaps two, though it would be lovely to stay for longer. But Lady Pole has asked me to come and see her tomorrow, so perhaps I ought not —''
The Gentleman's brows drew together, giving him an expression that was most alarming. 'No, no!' he cried, and all thought of returning home left her head. Why would she want to go back to Ashfair, when Henry was behaving in such a dismissive and disagreeable manner? Indeed, there was nothing at all there compared to the delights of this house. 'That is,' he added, calming himself once more, 'Lady Pole has gone home now, as the sun will soon rise, but she will be back when night falls again, never fear.'
The day passed first in sleep, and then in a series of events — social gatherings, meals, quiet walks in some sort of orchard of bare trees — which passed by her pleasantly but bewilderingly. While she had been almost ecstatically happy the night before, she spent the day in an eternally agreeable mood. As the sun sank below the horizon, she was moderately pleased to find herself dressed in a gown of deep emerald green, decorated with leaves that seemed to be growing out of the silk above the hem and on the bodice, and to take the arm of the Gentleman with Thistledown Hair at the head of a procession that traveled through the corridors of the house. Once they reached the ballroom, which seemed somehow smaller and dimmer than it had the night before, most of the members of the procession formed the lines for the dance; Arabella opened it with the Gentleman, and after they had gone through the steps a number of times and moved down the line, she was relieved to be standing next to Lady Pole.
'You did not come,' Lady Pole said flatly as they took hands and turned. 'Are you also held in enchantments during the day?'
'I was so sorry that I was not able to visit,' Arabella replied with great sincerity. Their partners came forth and turned single around them, then went back to their places. 'However, I am paying a visit here …' At that point, the Gentleman took her by the hand to cast down and begin the figures again, and she was prevented from saying anything else despite Lady Pole's shocked expression. Once the dance was finished and she had made her curtsey to the Gentleman, she politely turned down another gentleman who offered to stand up with her and went to look for her friend.
That lady had not gone very far: she was sitting on a sopha against the wall, the same on which she had sat the night before, although now it seemed somehow less elegant. 'Lady Pole, I must apologise again for not visiting you,' Arabella began, but Lady Pole seized her hands and interrupted her.
'You have nothing to apologise for,' she said. 'My poor Arabella - then he has brought you here fully, in body and in spirit!'
'You need not feel sorry for me.' She was a little puzzled, but at the same time was pleased that Lady Pole now felt able to Christian-name her. 'I am most comfortable here, and our host has been so kind.'
'Has he truly?' Lady Pole leaned closer to her. 'Do you call it kind to fetch human women here against their wills, night after night? To steal a sweet woman who never did any harm to anyone?'
Arabella found herself unable to respond to these accusations against her host, and so broke away and inspected the sopha. How dusty it was! she suddenly realized, and rubbed her thumb against her now-dirtied fingertips. Lady Pole noticed this and seized her hands again.
'His enchantment over you is breaking!' she cried. 'Your eyes are so much clearer than last night. You must come to your senses. Don't you see that there is nothing grand about this room? There are only ugly tallow candles, and a few sticks of dirty furniture, and a piper and fiddler. Lost Hope is a dull, dark place when he has not clouded your eyes, and just as he tired of doing it to me, he will not bother to keep clouding yours. You must see, Arabella!'
It was most alarming to see Lady Pole in such a state, but at least she was not speaking in the kind of tales that she had previously — while Arabella was not sure if she understood her fully, her friend certainly seemed more lucid, and showed none of her usual frustration at being unable to say what she meant. Presumably, then, this was what she meant to say. It was true that the candles were tallow, and the furniture was not in good repair, and the orchestra was much smaller than she had supposed it to be the night before; but this was all perfectly charming to her, not a matter for any concern.
'I suppose there is nothing to do but wait, then,' said Lady Pole, letting go of her hands with a bitter look. 'It is to be hoped, at any rate.' And she did not protest when more gentlemen came to beg them for a dance.
When Arabella went to sleep that morning, she did not rest well: her dreams were unsettled, and woke her twice. In one, she was being chased by something terrible — or perhaps she was running after someone; she could not remember which when she awoke. But once the fog of sleep was out of her eyes, it was apparent that her mind was clearer than it had been in days, and it did not take very long at all for her to put all of the pieces together. Lost Hope — fairies — the balls — Emma Pole.
During the day, she kept to herself as much as possible. It was as though the guests who had seemed pleasant enough before now were unmasked before her: unnatural, alien creatures despite their human faces, placing wagers on one another's lives and fortunes and speaking of vicious cruelties as though they were ordinary accomplishments. In walking about on her own, she found that the door in the high wall surrounding the house always appeared to be in the distance so that she could never reach it, even when she had completed two circles of the grounds. It was clear that there was to be no escape simply by walking. In any case, she did not think that she would have been able to walk back to England even if she could get out.
Her next thought was for magic. Arabella had never wanted to become a magician at all, but there seemed to be good sense in learning how to perform a spell that would transport her back to Ashfair. While it was more than likely that Jonathan was already hard at work devising or seeking such a spell, perhaps it would be simpler for her to move herself than for him to perform it from afar — and Lost Hope must have a library full of books of the most dazzling and incredible magic.
She could not ask for directions, of course, for the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair would have been clever enough to realize what she was about, so she simply wandered the corridors as the sun began to set. They were dim and very dirty, and it seemed unlikely that she should happen upon the right room — but after what seemed to be about half an hour, she did come to a room that was full of books.
Trying to allow a magical instinct to drive her, Arabella stepped over the threshold and chose a tome at random, a heavy one with a blue leather binding and gilding on the edges of the pages. Upon opening, it proved to be written in some foreign script — and not only was it not legible to her, the text seemed to change after her eyes passed over it, as best she could tell. Desperately, she tried a smaller book on another shelf, but it was also illegible. Book after book was opened and checked, but the room was full of books — they might have been perfectly ordinary novels, but they might also have been filled with exactly the sort of magic that she needed — which were to her unreadable.
Not very long after her fruitless search for a spell, she found herself again in a procession through Lost Hope, treading the same stones she had just trod, but this time dressed magnificently in a gown of silver tissue embroidered with black silk spiderwebs, carrying a fan with a black silk leaf, from which tiny stars in unfamiliar constellations shone. There was no more charm left in it for her, and if she had not been quite so well brought up she would certainly have sighed or sulked to indicate her displeasure; however, she kept up a gay pretense all the way through the first dance to her curtsey at the end, at which point she sought out Lady Pole.
'Lady Pole,' she said, holding out her hands, 'thank God my sense is restored! I cannot apologise enough for how stupid you must have found me.'
Lady Pole darted forward with a most hungry look on her face and grasped the offered hands. 'You are back to yourself, then, fully?'
'I believe so. How dull this house seems now.' Arabella could scarcely recall how the ballroom had looked on her first night there: now it was dimly lit with cheap tallow candles and what had once been an orchestra was only a grizzled man with a fiddle and a boy with a flute, neither playing very well. 'How have you stood it for so long? If I felt for you before, how much sorrier I am now for your sad situation.'
Lady Pole looked as if she would like to say something, but instead collapsed in her friend's arms. This was a surprise, but after the briefest of pauses Arabella embraced her as the sister that she had never had.
'It is so good,' Lady Pole said once she had pulled back, ' so good, to see you properly again, and to know that my friend is still with me.'
'I am glad that we may now converse freely. Although,' Arabella continued ruefully, 'there have been times that one or another of the anecdotes you have — unwillingly, I see now — told me of fairy magic comes to mind, and I realize that they did reveal more than I thought, then. How frustrated you must have been!'
'You must not blame yourself. There was no way for you to know, and I do not hold any grudge over it.'
'But at least your trials will soon be over.'
Lady Pole looked at her curiously. 'Why on earth should you think so?'
'Jonathan, of course! It may take him a day or two to notice my absence, if he is working on a new piece of magic and if the servants are managing themselves, but he will stop at nothing to rescue me, and that will of course result in your own bonds being broken, I am sure of it.'
The music stopped, and two fairy gentlemen approached them to ask for a dance; Lady Pole still appeared to be covered in confusion, so Arabella declined graciously for them both. When she turned back to her friend, she was still smiling.
'What is it? What's amiss?'
'You are believed to be dead,' Lady Pole said in a heavy, blunt manner. 'I do not know what magicks have been used, but from what I have heard, there is a body with your face that is lying dead.'
For a moment, Arabella's breath was taken away — was she truly dead, and it was only her soul that was trapped here? If she were to leave, would she find herself in heaven with her mother rather than in Ashfair with Jonathan? But then she breathed again, shook her head, and smiled. 'As you can see, however, I am not dead, and so I have hope.'
'How can you?' Lady Pole asked bitterly. Oh, how sorry Arabella truly was! For Emma to have been alone every night in a crowd of strangers — and then alone with people that she knew, who ought to have been protecting her, every day, unable to tell anyone what she was going through! Little wonder that she had lost all hope in such an aptly-named prison.
'We know so little of magic, the two of us,' Arabella said. 'Who can say how we shall break this curse? Perhaps we must only leave the grounds at night. Perhaps we shall persuade a fairy who does not like the Gentleman to give us the proper charms. Perhaps Jonathan will come through after all, or some new magician who has only begun to study.' Her friend did not look much convinced, and Arabella reached out and took her hands again, squeezing them softly. 'Perhaps we might discover the weakness in our curses on our own, and so be saved together.'
'Do you really think so?' Emma peered into her face, apparently searching for any hint of deception. 'Do you really think it possible?'
'Anything is possible,' Arabella told her firmly, 'if we are both resolved together.' In truth, she did not quite feel as brave as she let on, but it seemed clear that she must at least put on a good show for Emma. She did not deserve to be left as she had been, sad and alone — Arabella would be a prop for her, to reinforce her like a buttress on a church wall, for as long as she had the strength.