Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(110)
Author: Anne Rice

A little card explained its special features, that it was so very large, that it wore its original garments, that it was perfect, that it had been the first doll ever purchased by Ash Templeton. And no further identification for Ash Templeton was given or apparently required.

The first doll. And he had told her briefly, when he explained about the museum, that he had seen it when it was new in the window of a Paris shop.

No wonder it had caught his eye and his heart. No wonder he had lugged it with him for a century; no wonder he’d founded his enormous company as some sort of tribute to it, to bring, as he had said, “its grace and beauty to everyone in new form.”

There was nothing trivial about it, and something sweetly mysterious. Puzzled, yes, quizzical, reflective, a doll with things on her mind.

In seeing this, I understand all of it, she thought.

She moved on, through the other displays. She saw other French treasures, the work of Jumeau and Steiner and others whose names she’d never remember, and hundreds upon hundreds of little French girlies with round moonlike faces and tiny red mouths and the same almond eyes. “Oh, what innocents you are,” she whispered. And here came the fashion dolls, in their bustles and exquisite hats.

She could have spent hours wandering here. There was infinitely more to see than she had imagined. And the quiet was so enticing, the vision outside the windows of the unceasing snow.

But she was not alone.

Through several banks of glass, she saw that Ash had joined her, and had been watching her, perhaps for some time. The glass faintly distorted his expression. When he moved, she was glad.

He came towards her, making no sound at all on the marble, and she saw that he held the beautiful Bru in his hands.

“Here, you may hold it,” he said.

“It’s fragile,” she whispered.

“It’s a doll,” he said.

It evoked the strongest feeling, just cupping its head in the palm of her left hand. There came a little delicate sound from its earrings, tinkling against the porcelain neck. Its hair was soft, yet brittle, and the stitching of the wig was visible in many spots.

Ah, but she loved its tiny fingers. She loved its lace stockings and its silk petticoats, very old, very faded, apt to tear at her touch.

Ash stood very still, looking down at her, face rested, almost annoyingly handsome, streaked hair brushed to a luster, hands a little steeple beneath his lips. His suit was white silk today, very baggy, fashionable, probably Italian, she honestly didn’t know. The shirt was black silk, and the tie white. Rather like a decorative rendition of a gangster, a tall, willowy man of mystery, with enormous gold cuff links, and preposterously beautiful black-and-white wing-tip shoes.

“What does the doll make you feel?” he asked innocently, as if he really wanted to know.

“It has virtue to it,” she whispered, frightened of her voice being louder than his. She placed it in his hands.

“Virtue,” he repeated. He turned the doll and looked at her, and made a few very quick and natural gestures of grooming her, moving her hair, adjusting the ruffles of her dress. And then he lifted her and tenderly kissed her and lowered her slowly, gazing down at her again. “Virtue,” he said. He looked at Rowan. “But what does it make you feel?”

“Sad,” she said, and turned away, placing her hand on the case beside her, looking at the German doll, infinitely more natural, sitting inside in a small wooden chair. MEIN LEIBLING, said the card. She was far less decorative and overdone. She was not the coquette of anyone’s imagination, yet she was radiant, and as perfect as the Bru in her own way.

“Sad?” he asked.

“Sad for a kind of femininity that I’ve lost or never had. I don’t regret it, but the feeling is sadness, sadness for something perhaps I dreamed about when I was young. I don’t know.”

And then, looking at him again, she said, “I can have no more children. And my children were monsters to me. And my children are buried together beneath a tree.”

He nodded. His face was very eloquent of sympathy, so he said not a word.

There were other things she wanted to say—that she had not guessed there was such craft or beauty in the realm of dolls, that she had not guessed they could be so interesting to look at, or that they were so different, one from the other, that they had such a frank and simple charm.

But beneath these thoughts, running deep in the coldest place in her heart, she was thinking, Their beauty is sad beauty, and I don’t know why, and so is yours.

She felt suddenly that if he were to kiss her now, if he were so inclined, she would yield very easily, that her love for Michael wouldn’t stop her from yielding, and she hoped and prayed that there was no such thought in his mind.

Indeed, she wasn’t going to allow time for it. She folded her arms and walked past him into a new and unexplored area, where the German dolls ruled. Here were laughing and pouting children, homely little girls in cotton frocks. But she didn’t see the exhibits now. She couldn’t stop thinking that he was just behind her, watching her. She could feel his observation, hear the faint sound of his breath.

Finally, she looked back. His eyes surprised her. They were too charged with emotion, too full of obvious conflict, and very little if any struggle to hide it from her.

If you do this, Rowan, she thought, you will lose Michael forever. And slowly she lowered her gaze and walked softly, slowly away.

“It’s a magical place,” she said over her shoulder. “But I’m so eager to talk to you, to hear your story, I could savor it more truly at another time.”

“Yes, of course, and Michael’s awake now, and Michael should be almost finished with breakfast. Why don’t we go up? I am ready for the agony. I am ready for the strange pleasure of recounting it all.”

She watched as he set the big French doll back in her glass cabinet. And once again his thin fingers made quick, busy gestures to groom her hair and her skirts. Then he pressed a kiss to his fingers and gave this to the doll. And he shut the glass and turned the small golden key, which he then put away.

“You are my friends,” he said, turning to face Rowan. He reached past her and pressed the button for the tower. “I think I am coming to love you. A dangerous thing.”

“I don’t want it to be dangerous,” she said. “I’m too deep under your spell to want our knowledge of each other to wound or disappoint. But tell me, as to the present state of things, do you love us both?”

“Oh yes,” he said, “or I would beg you on bended knee to let me make love to you.” His voice fell to a whisper. “I would follow you to the ends of the earth.”