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“We’ve only heard the stories, like everyone else in Glass Town who mourns the loss of her most precious jewel,” Charlotte said without the slightest hesitation, in a voice like cool water. She even lifted the Duke’s hand from Emily’s elbow, which was frightfully familiar.
“Oh,” sighed the Duke and Duchess. They sagged together, their fine clothes wrinkling. “We can’t thank you enough for your kind words. Carry on, sally forth . . . whatever the young folk say nowadays.”
Emily stared. She’d only ever seen Charlotte lie to Tabitha about stars falling to earth and spilled salt and the occasional tear in her stockings. But now Charlotte’s lies spooled out like perfect, silken thread, and whatever they touched stuck together fast.
The Sergeant swept them away, rolling his eyes once the royals couldn’t see him do it. “There you have it!” he laughed, shaking his head. “Does what it says on the tin. Just the most dreadppalling people! I don’t care what rank they’ve pasted on. You’d think it might be different if they hadn’t lost their girl? Nope! Goes with the Duchy and the ring and the rest. They can’t do a bloody thing. Well, I can’t imagine them trying to order supper. Now! This here is Dr. Home, physician to the Crown and damnably fine vivisectionist. You know what that meanifies?”
“An anatomist. Someone who studies the human body by examining the dead,” Charlotte said eagerly.
“And a smashing chemist, and naturalist, and cricketer. As well as a personal friend to yours trulyself. See? You wouldn’t think a lowly Sergeant in the lowly old army would know such fine people, but I do. So what else don’t you know, hm?”
Charlotte and Emily laughed a little and admitted that their old toy soldier could be the Sultan of the Moon and they wouldn’t have the foggiest idea. Only wouldn’t we know? thought Emily. We never played Sultans on the Moon, so he oughtn’t be one. Then again, we never played Wildfell Ball, either.
A tall, thin man folded out of the sort of black leather that doctor’s satchels are made of straightened up and looked them over. He had been feeling the forehead of a lovely young lady whose skin was patterned over with a thousand bronze coins. A fountain of penny-curls crowned her head and tumbled down her slender back.
“I hope you’re both very well?” the doctor said in a voice like stitches sliding neatly through a needle. But somehow, when he said it, Dr. Home sounded more excited at the prospect of what might happen if they were not well, rather than anxious that they should be in good health.
“And here we have Miss Mary Percy.” Crashey kissed the penny-girl’s hand. “Heiress of Angria and paramour of the Marquis of Douro.”
“That’s not a very nice word,” Emily said, embarrassed for the beautiful Mary. “You shouldn’t call people things in French without their permission.” Her heart beat faster. Ginevra Bud was lady’s maid to this gleaming copper woman. Emily and Charlotte were wearing her gowns. She felt terribly exposed. Mary Percy raked her gaze up and down the pair of them. She narrowed her eyes and started to say one thing, but ended on another.
“Oh, don’t be silly, dearheart, I don’t mind a bit.” Mary Percy laughed and patted Emily’s gloved hand. When the heiress touched her, Em felt the weight of real metal on her painted silver arm, and shivered. “Truth in advertising! I prefer everyone to know everything. That way, no one has to suffer any nasty whispers in the powder room. Don’t you agree?”
Crashey shrugged and took Mary at her word. He plowed on within earshot of everyone. “They say Douro explained it all patientsweet to his wife Marian. How he loved Miss Mary and couldn’t live without her, how if she held him back he’d only grow to hate her, that sort of rubbishnrot. And after he’d
said his piece, being the obliging sort Marian always was, the Marchioness up and killed herself dead so as not to be a bother.”
“Marian always was such a lamb.” Mary smiled humbly. Everything she said sounded careless and free, yet taut as a violin string, all at once. “A true Lady always knows when to make her exit. Though I prefer to focus on the entrance.” She turned her pretty bronze head to one side like a bird. She lifted one coppery eyebrow half an inch. “What utterly charming dresses you both have! You must give me the name of your girl.”
Emily coughed.
Charlotte did not miss her cue. “Geraldine Branch,” she said distractedly, as though a mere dressmaker was far beneath her notice. “Out of Smokeshire.”
“My stars! I don’t know her,” said Mary in that same careless-but-careful tone. “I do believe I know the name of every seamstress in Angria and I have never heard those syllables together in all my days!”
Emily dove in with both feet. She would not be shown up. “I daresay you don’t adventure out to our part of the world very often! Poor Geraldine is well and good for us, but she’d lose her wits trying to make anything fit for you, my lady.” Her voice wobbled a little and Charlotte’s never did—yes, but not much, not much at all.
“Douro was supposed to be here tonight, the cad,” Crashey said loudly, veering the conversation off its cliff. “I don’t see his deviliandsome face anywhere—no! There he is, over by the dice tables, wouldn’t you know it? He’s a dash hand at just about everything, but I could swear the dice are all in love with him, the way they carry on when he turns up. S’not fair, if you ask me. I always say you can be rich or talented or handsome but all three’s just obnoxious.” Crashey pointed out a boy of fourteen or fifteen, made all of blackened wood and ash. Ancient flame glinted under his cheekbones. Mary beckoned lovingly to him with one long bronze arm. Her bicep and elbow were stamped with a victorious griffin rampant and rather a lot of roman numerals. The Marquis of Douro swept across the hall, straight through the line of dance, ignored Mary entirely, caught up Charlotte’s hand, and kissed it all in one smooth motion, without breaking stride.
“Madam,” he said in the deepest and most charming voice Charlotte had ever heard.
“The Marquis of Douro,” Crashey announced with a flourish of his hand that told both sisters he really didn’t think too terribly much of the man he was about to praise. “Conqueror of the Realm, Father of Glass Town, King of the Pioneers! Ladies Currer and Ellis Bell, of Thurshcross Whereverandever.”
“Don’t be a cow, Sergeant,” purred Douro without taking his burning eyes from Charlotte’s. “All that was my grandfather, eons ago and good riddance, and you know it. I must insist you call me Adrian, young lady. The glory’s all gone, but the money’s left, as they say. Which emboldens lesser men to try to pull at my tails, but in the end forces them to be satisfied with holding my coat. What a world we live in, wouldn’t you say, Miss Bell?”
Charlotte did not like the way the Marquis—the way Adrian—was looking at her. It felt as though he were watching her through a window, like the raven in the tree outside the room at the top of the stairs. Only she had never fed this bird a single crumb, and didn’t think she’d dare. The way he said her false name made her think he knew quite well that it was false. She tried to imagine him talking his wife into killing herself to set him free, and found she could, quite easily. Charlotte shuddered, but she did not let it show. She smiled instead. It seemed a good trade. Shuddering rarely got you anywhere. But behind her smile she was thinking furiously: I invented you. It was autumn and it was sunny when I had the idea of you. I know every little thing you are because I thought every little one of them up. Except the parts Bran did. Which rather makes me your mother, and you really oughtn’t look at your mother that way.
Charlotte’s imaginary Douro always respected a little defiance, so she did not hold back her annoyance. “I think everyone ought to stop asking me if I agree and isn’t it just and wouldn’t I say. Isn’t it enough that you’ve said it? Or don’t you believe much in yourself, Adrian?”
Emily dug her nails into Charlotte’s wrist. Too far, too far! But Douro just chuckled in that infuriating way that grown-ups did whenever they thought Charlotte was being precocious. It was the same way she chuckled when one of their birds did something particularly sweet. I am not a bird, she thought angrily. I am Charlotte. No one here has any right to talk to me like an amusing child up past bedtime. We’re all the same age, for God’s sake!
She opened her mouth to say so. But Crashey felt the storm coming and quickly dragged Emily and Charlotte out of the shadow of Douro’s stare toward merrier folk. He steered them right into a crowd milling round a card-table. A pair of boisterous young men were calling bets. The one made of crushed green peppercorns choked on his brandy and hurried to shake their hands. Then he seemed to remember that one ought not to shake young ladies’ hands as if they were friends at a pub, even if they were from the middle of nowhere. He blushed, wiped his hands on his suit jacket, and bowed properly, though not half so prettily as Sergeant Crashey. The other kept chatting to a girl all of bluebells.
The Sergeant took in the crowd at a little velvet-covered table with a grand arm. “This jumpedupstart boy is Young Soult the Rhymer, who fancies himself the greatest poet of the age, though he’s more than a bit rubbish. He’ll be performing tonight, the Genii save us all. And this is my preferfavorite soul in the Glasser, excepting Captain B, of courseviously, Georgie Gordon, Lord Byron, who actually is the greatest poet of the age.”
Charlotte and Emily startled, nearly jumped out of their skins, for they knew that name. They loved that name. The most famous poet in England! Though surely the one whose poems they read so eagerly back in Haworth was much older than this Lord Byron, and much more, well, dead, not to put too fine a point on it. Time and history as they knew them seemed to have never so much as nodded to Glass Town as they passed on the street. This Byron was very much alive, and smiling, and pretending to laugh at Young Soult’s joke. And surely the poet they knew wasn’t made of a hundred different animal pelts flowing smoothly and beautifully together into one glossy coat.
“Aw, Crash, you might let them think well of me for a minute,” Young Soult pouted.
