The Infamous Miss Ilsa Read online

  Like the rest of the Christmas preparations, the plans for him to propose to Emily seemed to continue on without him. He tried to get his mother to listen, to convince her that this simply was not going to come off, but no one seemed to pay him any mind. His opinion was not required or requested.

  He was reading a medical journal when his mother came into the room.

  “Theodore, Mrs. DeCoupe was just by, and she has offered to let you and Emily take your friends to their summer cottage this summer! So generous of her,” she cooed.

  “I’m not marrying Emily,” he said for the hundredth time that week. He didn’t even look up from his journal.

  His mother gave no sign of hearing him. “Perhaps you can invite the Browns and the Millikens. Edwina Milliken was married last summer, and they are such a lovely young couple.”

  “I’m not marrying Emily,” he reiterated, his words dissolving into the air like smoke.

  “I’m going to write to Emily and tell her. I know that when I was expecting, I did so like to have something to look forward to.”

  He set down the journal. “I need you to promise me that you aren’t going to keep on with these plans. I have no intention of marrying that woman.”

  His mother gave a light sigh. “Oh, and Theo, would you be a dear and write to Dr. Greyson to request more bottles of his Restorative Vitality Water? I promised some to Mrs. DeMonte.”

  That was the only other topic of conversation that mattered in this household: Dr. Greyson’s miraculous spring water. Wasn’t it simply delicious? (Theo doubted that). Didn’t it seem to be taking years off her face? (He very much doubted that). She was going to make Dr. Greyson rich, the way she was ordering it for her friends.

  Did he need to shake her? Scream at her? It was Christmas Eve, so if he murdered her, the police probably wouldn’t arrive until Boxing Day. He could be long gone by then.

  As she was about to leave the room, his mother placed a rectangular piece of metal on the little side table by his chair. He picked it up: it was a silver cigar lighter, which had To My Dearest engraved on it.

  Theo didn’t smoke.

  “I already wrote to Emily on your behalf thanking her for the thoughtful gift and telling her that the spark of youth in her eyes would put any lighter to shame. You should make a point to bring it out during dinner.”

  He wanted to use it to light the house on fire. At least that might get him out of this godforsaken Christmas dinner.

  He was toying with the lighter, flicking it on and off, when the butler appeared with a stack of mail addressed to him and a letter opener. The first five envelopes contained Christmas letters: boasts disguised as holiday traditions. Theo skimmed over who had gotten married or promoted, who was getting his next degree, who had received an award for tending to the poor, sick, and dying. The last letter, however, was battered around the edges and bore a stamp he didn’t recognize. He opened it.

  Dear Dr. Whitacre,

  I hope that you are having a festive holiday season and that this letter finds you well. I was supremely disappointed that you were not able to accept a position with us. As I told you previously, your insights into transmission vectors were the most promising of any of our applicants, and you have, of course, the additional gift of being familiar with the French language.

  If you have not yet taken up another offer, I would still very much like to have you work with us here. This past summer has been a brutal one for cholera and typhoid, which has caused the government to take renewed interest in our research. We have received a very generous funding increase, and are now able to sponsor an additional fellowship. I am pleased to offer it to you. You will, of course, receive a monthly stipend for your living expenses. You need only to pay your ticket here.

  Please inform me immediately of your decision, so that we may extend the offer to another physician if necessary. I do very much hope to hear an affirmative response.

  Yours,

  Dr. J. P. DuBois

  Ilsa had once told him that going to Paris would be simpler for him than for other people, and, looking around the room, he realized that she was correct. Pawning Emily Morrison’s lighter would probably pay his fare all on its own.

  What was stopping him? Family honour? Family money? What good did either of those do if the string attached to them was marrying Emily Morrison?

  And there was Ilsa. But he couldn’t very well sulk around Fraser Springs, hoping she would change her mind. She had turned him down. She hadn’t even spoken to him after that night. Besides, soon she’d been off in Vancouver with her store. Fraser Springs held nothing for either of them.

  Before he lost his nerve, he wrote out a response. He would go to Paris. Well, first he would have to get through this miserable Christmas. And he would have to go back to Fraser Springs to retrieve his equipment and the rest of his belongings. But then it was off to Paris. He was going, and he didn’t care if he had to smuggle himself out of this mausoleum in a rug to do so.

  • • •

  The parcel arrived for Ilsa on Christmas Eve, half hidden among all the other Christmas presents and cards. The girls were off with their families, and Jo and Owen’s sleep deprivation meant they wouldn’t have noticed if Jolly Old Saint Nick himself appeared in their parlour.

  Her ticket on the SS Minto was booked. She had arranged a reservation at a modest traveller’s inn, one that was supposedly safe. And now, the final piece had arrived: a Christmas gift to herself.

  Ilsa hustled up to her room and closed the door behind her. She carefully untied the twine and peeled away the crisp, brown paper. The garment box smelled of lavender even before she opened it. Ilsa took a breath, then undid the ribbon that held the box closed. There, nestled among tissue paper, was the first brand-new dress she had ever owned. She’d made her own dresses and she’d altered hand-me-downs, but this dress had been created for her and no one else. It was pale green with darker green piping along the bodice and cuffs. Brass buttons marched in shining rows down the sleeves.

  She lifted it up to admire the perfect stitching. She buried her face in the skirt: the supple fabric smelled of lavender and laundry starch.

  She had dozens of chores to do, but she took her time trying it on. She re-twisted her hair into a tidy chignon, then turned at last to the mirror. The falling snow outside filled the room with a diffused, gauzy light, and she hardly recognized the woman who stood in front of her. She looked savvier, richer. Her posture was straighter. Even her figure—which she had been told over and over was immodest by its very nature—seemed elegant. She stood before the mirror refined and poised and utterly like someone who could handle herself in the world. She felt as if she had bought a new skin, not just a new dress.

  This was why she wanted to open her shop: to give other women this feeling. She twirled a little, and then she gave the mirror her most severe expression. She was ready. The only thing left was to tell Jo.

  After Christmas. She hung the dress beside her work costumes. They would all have a Christmas worth remembering, and then she would worry about goodbyes.

  • • •

  On Christmas Day, even his father was forced to the table to share in the expensive, high-stakes merriment. The old man had the posture of a baby who could not support its own neck; he sat hunched in a wicker wheelchair, shrouded in blankets and glaring at everyone. His brain was addled by dementia—and maybe a touch of syphilis—so he would repeatedly nod off and then wake with some inappropriate story.

  Theo was dressed in white tie and tails, newly tailored. At precisely a quarter to six, the fabled Emily Morrison and her family arrived. Emily turned out to be a thin woman with brown hair, elaborately curled and piled atop her head in the latest fashion. It must have taken some poor hairdresser hours to accomplish. She wore the promised green dress and prominently displayed on her wrist a monstrous corsage, which was presumably the nosegay that had required so much of his personal attention.

  She greeted Theo with a smile that did
not extend to her eyes: a sign she wanted to marry him even less than he wanted to marry her. Too bad for dear Emily. He doubted that she had any more say in the matter than he did.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Morrison,” Theo said, bowing stiffly.

  Emily’s eyes never left his cane. “Yes. A pleasure,” she responded.

  Their mothers fussed around them, making too-loud comments about the decor, the food, what a very merry Christmas they were all having, how very handsome the two young people looked together. They reminded Theo of a pair of seagulls squabbling over scraps on a beach. For half an hour, he sat beside Emily in the parlour in silence while the rest of the guests arrived and their mothers prattled on about what a perfect couple they made.

  At the supper table, Emily was once again seated beside him. Theo sat across the table from mother, who shot him sharp looks.

  “So. Emily. I hear you play the flute,” he tried.

  She nodded. “I do enjoy it.” She had a thin, reedy voice. She didn’t look at him.

  “I would enjoy a chance to hear you play.”

  She smiled coolly. “I’m sure it can be arranged.” Of course it could. Everything about their lives could be arranged.

  The dinner lapsed into silence as Emily picked at her jellied eel.

  Emily’s father cleared his throat and tried to chivy the conversation along. “It must have been terribly lonely for you up North, with no civilized company.”

  Oh, to hell with it. No one was going to listen to what he said anyway. No one cared a whit about what Theo Whitacre wanted to do with his life. If he didn’t want to go through with this farce of an engagement, he would have to set off a few fireworks.

  “It was, at first,” he said. “But as luck would have it, one of our former housemaids had moved to Fraser Springs, which was a very pleasant surprise.” He made eye contact with his mother as he said it.

  “You didn’t tell me that,” she said, an edge of steel undercutting her cheerful voice.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, still staring at his mother. “You remember Ilsa Pedersen. Blond girl, Swedish. Used to play checkers with me when I was bedridden.”

  His mother reddened under her makeup. “We had so many maids over the years, darling. You can’t expect me to remember every one.”

  “I’m surprised you allowed him to fraternize with the help,” sniffed Mr. Morrison.

  “We certainly realized the folly of our inattentiveness.” In lieu of the traditional serving bell, his mother had acquired jingle bells to give summoning the servants a festive touch. Martha arrived silently with the first plates of the next course.

  His father, who had nodded off into his third tumbler of scotch, perked up. “Wait! That was that little tart you dragged out of his bedroom! The one with the nice tits.”

  “Harold!” his mother hissed.

  Theo kept the same bland expression he would have worn had his father remarked on the unseasonably rainy weather. “That’s the one, Father. It’s a funny story, really. You see, we were both sixteen at the time, and—”

  His mother stood abruptly. “No one wants to hear that story, Theodore.” She swayed a little. Had she had too much to drink? That wasn’t like his mother. Perhaps she had picked up bad habits to fill her time during his absence.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Her eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance, above their heads, and then she dashed headlong out of the room. The sound of vomiting followed immediately after. The dinner guests glanced uneasily at one another.

  “I’ll, uh, go check on her,” Theo said. “Please help yourselves to the”—he glanced down at the plate Martha had just set in front of him—“the something suspended in aspic.”

  His mother had retreated upstairs to her bedroom. The servants looked extremely reluctant to follow. “Can someone go help her into bed?” Theo asked the hallway at large. Martha and another servant, whose name he’d never learned because his mother had never shouted it, sighed and disappeared upstairs. No one wanted to deal with his mother at the best of times, but most would rather fight a bear than tend to her when she was ill.

  After taking a moment to steel himself, Theo climbed the stairs and tapped at his mother’s door. Even from the other side, a horrible odour assaulted him. A familiar horrible odour, that he’d last encountered at . . .

  He rushed into the kitchen and barged his way towards the cold storage. Only five bottles of Dr. Greyson’s elixir remained out of an original forty. But he’d been home for a fortnight, and the incubation period of cholera was usually two or three days. Five at the most. Besides, he’d tested one of the bottles and it had been clean—practically sterile, in fact. So what was he missing?

  He had the chef make the oral rehydration draught, then went upstairs to check on his mother. When he entered the bedroom, he was greeted once again by the same foul smell he’d grown so used to at the St. Alice Hotel.

  “I’m sorry you’ve taken ill, Mother.”

  “You’re not sorry,” she moaned from under her duvet. “You probably poisoned me to avoid having to marry Emily. And after I worked so hard to give you a happy Christmas.”

  He ignored the accusation of attempted murder and felt his mother’s forehead. “You don’t have a fever. But dehydration will already be setting in and—”

  “You’re so ungrateful,” his mother continued and then sat up suddenly to retch into the pail the servants had left next to her nightstand. “It’s bad enough having a son who’s an invalid and can’t even give me a grandchild, but an ungrateful invalid? Sharper than a serpent’s teeth are thankless children!” she misquoted dramatically. And then promptly vomited again into the pail that her ungrateful, serpent-toothed child held out for her.

  Heaven alone knew what was happening downstairs in the dining room. Between his own admissions and his father’s colourful details, he should be well and truly implicated in a shocking sex scandal by now. Or perhaps he would somehow manage to be both impotent and a sex fiend. And a poisoner to boot. He’d certainly picked up a lot of interesting habits in Fraser Springs.

  “You need to rest,” he told his groaning mother. “I’m having the kitchen bring you up a restorative I’ve been using very successfully to rehydrate patients. You should drink as much of it as possible.”

  His mother glared at him. She was so pale that the complexion powder looked orange. Her eye makeup smudged down her cheeks in sooty trails. “My only child, a poisoner. Poisoned his very own mother. You wanted a chance to play doctor in front of all my friends, was that it?”

  Theo had mastered pushing down his anger, saying “Yes, Mother,” speaking in a calm and respectful tone of voice. Not today. “I am a doctor, Mother,” he said. “And even rich people get the flu. You’re not special.” He walked towards the door. “Besides, if I were going to poison you, I would use arsenic. It hurts more.”

  Downstairs, his father snored alone at the table. The Morrisons and the rest of the guests were nowhere to be found, leaving behind their untouched plates of braised ox hearts in aspic. Thank God for small blessings. Suddenly, Theo was famished. Martha appeared to clear the plates.

  “Could you bring out the rest of my courses all at once? Since the chef has gone to so much trouble. The staff can tuck in to whatever’s left in the kitchen.”

  “Is it fit to eat?” Martha asked.

  “Yes. I’m fairly certain my mother got sick from too much of that Restorative Vitality Water.”

  “We’ll throw it all out, then. Nasty smelling stuff.”

  “No, I’d like to test the bottles later. But please, enjoy the meal. You all deserve it. Oh, and Father’s asleep, so perhaps you can send someone out to pop him back into bed.”

  And so, for two hours, Theo sat in silent solitude at a grand table that blazed with wreaths and candles. Salmon in a delicate pastry. Roast quail. Lamb and goose. Coffee and almond blancmange for dessert. All washed down with excellent wine and champagne. He could hear th
e sound from the kitchen of the servants laughing and chattering, and the occasional pop of a champagne cork. Well, at least someone was having a good time.

  Outside, snow splattered against the window. Was it snowing in Fraser Springs? How was Ilsa celebrating? He imagined her in a setting like the dance: laughing and golden, surrounded by friends and admirers. Enjoying honest, hearty food and passing around cups of rum punch. She would be wearing that lovely green dress, with her hair up in a crown of braids. Maybe there would be dancing. Maybe there would be mistletoe.

  Well, at least the dinner party was over. And the marriage to Emily Morrison was almost certainly off. He’d count those as Christmas miracles. He toasted himself in the mirror, finished his wine, and headed up to bed.

  • • •

  Christmas had been subdued this year, but Ilsa was glad to share it with Owen, Jo, Doc Stryker, and the handful of girls who had not gone home to their families. Still, a pall hung over the festivities. The Sterlings were drawn and exhausted, worn-out ghosts of their usual affectionate selves. Nils was still nowhere to be found. Although he often vanished for weeks at a time, he’d never missed a Christmas before. His absence made Owen—who was the closest thing Nils had to a best friend—especially jittery.

  Ilsa had tried her best to bring a little merriment to the evening. That had to count for something. She’d embroidered Sarah’s name on a tiny stocking and stuffed it with a small lace cap she had sewn out of some scraps. She’d decorated the table with pine boughs and candles, and Doc Stryker brought his accordion and played a few Christmas carols. She’d even rustled up enough eggs to make eggnog. Still, no one was in a very celebratory mood, and the party broke up early.