The Mortality of Queens

4 Dare you lay a Queen

Stanton

≡

Umbra of note

Twoshrews and his human ally Isabella Stanton

Capu and his human ally Lady Rochester

≡

Stanton stared.

The woman's full skirted dress-come-gown was the most handsome he had come upon. It was a midnight-purple, which Cook would name aubergine – after the fashionable Spanish vegetable – and extensively embroidered with crimson. It had ruched and puffed three-quarter length sleeves and a generous hood that had been thrown back.

Stanton's knowledge of garments extended only to 'it being very fine,' but his gaze snagged on the tumble of red-black hair flowing in impossible waves into and out of the open hood of her gown, before coiling and surging down the woman's plumbline-straight back beyond her waist. Each convoluted curl ended with such body and vigour that he imagined it capable of disarming a Stepney footpad.

The lady spun at his interruption and the sight of Stanton gawping before her like a trout new-landed at Teddington seemed to surprise and then delight her. She stepped towards him, her hand rising graciously to his unready lips and her steely grey eyes meandering over him.

'Ah you must be the new minister that Pitt was so anxious to seat on his council. Did he not invent a new ministry just for you, Master Stanton, so noteworthy is your advice?'

'My ministry is somewhat new, madam...?' he paused expectantly.

'I had not thought to have to introduce myself to you, sir.'

'No, I know I know you, but all names, and even words, have fled my mind.' He found himself uncertain how to breathe – a be-tailed tadpole emerged too soon from the pond it knew as its entire world, unequipped for this new element it now floundered in. Stanton was unglued by the infinite horizons and unknowable threats arrayed before him.

'Ah, of course,' he tapped his nose, 'you mean that our meeting is utterly clandestine and no word of it can ever emerge.'

Stanton was subconsciously aware that a door had opened somewhere but quite incapable of imagining what might exist beyond it or what being could have entered.

'Even from your wife, sir...'

Stanton was unsure whether this was a question. He chuckled, 'Especially from Lady Stanton, I should say.'

'I'm intrigued of course,' her laugh swirled with a whisper of wickedness, 'but you are already undone.'

'I am?'

'Lady Rochester.' She said it with a flourish of exoticism that entirely beguiled him.

'Of course, Lady Rochester. I had not expected you to be a woman.'

'No really!' her laugh ended abruptly, and she added with a note of utter seriousness. 'What manner of creature do you suspect me of being?'

There was something of a precocious teenage girl about her, coquettishly flirting to discover the boundaries of her power over men, yet threaded with the assurance of an experienced paramour who knew she could unpick any man and reshape him. You have cards in your hand, Minister Stanton, her eyes suggested, and, if you but pick the right one, you might play me. Dare you lay a queen?