Page 52 of The Scarlet Ball

“First, survive. Then we can speak about winning.”

She ended up sewing me into the shot silk dress. Either it hadn’t been made precisely to measure in the first place, or something had expanded in its long sleep in the chest. Mielle stood me on a bench and sewed all the way up the seams under my arms and, for good measure, part of the way up the seam starting at the small of my back. She had the same look as she did when she sewed on my face, the stitches just as small and secure. When I moved, the bones of my corset creaked at how tight it was, and when I laughed at how trim I looked in the mirror, there was an airless, breathless quality to the sound.

“How does it feel?”

“Like you’ll have to cut me out of it tonight. Will you do that for me?”

“If you come back, yes. I will.”

“You think I might not.”

“I think every time you have done so is an unexpected occurrence not to be repeated. And that was before you decided to give him a taste for you.”

She shook her head, running her hand distractedly over the flyaway strands of her hair. Even with her lack of expression, I could see she was put out, and I wondered if there was some jealousy in her words.

“If you come back, I’ll cut you out of all of it,” she said flatly.

WHEN I CAME downstairs the night of the Rose Ball, Mr. Howard gave me a distracted kiss and told me how lovely I looked, but his eyes kept shifting to the top of the stairs. He tapped a quick tattoo on the banister, and from time to time, steam came up from his fingertips.

“She said she would not miss this evening,” I hazarded, and he glanced at me as if he had forgotten I was there.

“Of course she won’t. It is only that she has been tired of late. I worry that this season is proving too much for her.”

“Foolishness,” Mrs. Howard said from the top of the stairs. “One would think you hardly knew me at all, Henry.”

She was dressed in night-sky black, the velvet so soft your fingers would sink into it if you touched her, her gloves so tight it was as if her hands had been dipped in tar. Her tiara, one I’d never seen on her before, was a low band, almost modest until she turned her head and you saw that it was filled in entirely with diamonds. They were set in a row of concentric circular motifs, the largest with a magnificent round yellow stone at the center. Otherwise, she wore only a large brooch pinned to her breast, a splendid amber cabochon set in a thin gold rim, a large spider with its forelegs clasped in prayer trapped eternally inside.

Mrs. Howard descended the staircase like a spill of ink, and though I watched her closely for any sign of illness or infirmity, there was no faltering step, no tightness around her eyes. I wondered if she’d sent for some cocaine from the pharmacist, but she seemed steady as she took her husband’s arm.

“Well, aren’t we a handsome trio,” she said with something like pleasure. “All right. It’s time we were on our way.”

This time when the door opened, it only led to the blustery night outside, and the light from Howard House spilled onto the street like alms. Mrs. Howard looked up and down the street, nodded, and took something that looked a great deal like a spear from the umbrella stand by the door. I blinked, and it resolved into a thin staff with a large piece of soft white chalk affixed to the end, which was no less confusing.

“If we’re to ride to the ball on that little hobby horse, I think we might have to make two trips.”

Mrs. Howard gave me a withering look. “If you must mock, come here. Perhaps you can learn something.”

I followed her into the street where the space in front of the house had been swept clean.

“Now, watch me.”

She set the chalk point to the pavement, and she drew a curving line there, white against the dimness. Then she did it again. Two more, and I recognized them as hoofprints, spaced as evenly as the wheels of a carriage.

“Here. Now you.”

I took the stick uncertainly as if it were some new trick that I had to puzzle out.

“Aren’t there some magic words, bat’s wool or frogs’ toes or something?”

“If there are, you will be told.”

I shrugged and copied her scrawlings on the stone, four hooves beside the ones she’d drawn. The chalk crumbled when I hit a crack in the road, and my fourth hoof, the right fore, turned out smaller than the others and crooked at the last. Mrs. Howard made a displeased face, and she took the stick from me to draw four lines behind where the horses stood.

“The carriage wheels?” I guessed, and she nodded distractedly, making two marks up on the pavement and then two very long marks to either side of the wheels and the horseshoes. When she was satisfied, she leaned the staff against the railing of the fence in front of the house and clapped her gloved hands to rid them of the chalk dust.

“All right,” she said, “tell me what you see, and without insolence, if you would be so good.”

“Chalk and pavement,” I said promptly. “Drawings. The shape of a thing without the thing itself there to give it meaning.”