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“No, of course not. It’s a hundred feet down and I had other things to think about!”
Anne, who always heard everything, the little spy without rules, shrugged. “I did. They moan and complain so, and when they march, their knees creak. Don’t listen to Marie. They’re losing the war.”
EIGHTEEN
The High Ground
Might I trouble you for a dance, Miss . . . ?”
Emily coughed, glanced round, and found herself standing far, far too close to the boy Crashey had said quite confidently was Lord Byron. All his wild animal pelts didn’t frighten her. He looked rather like a calico cat—sleek panther fur along his jaw, snow leopard on his high cheekbones, bear on his throat, fox on his forehead, peacock feathers glinting among the long curly hair of a Newfoundland dog that tumbled round his beautiful face. He winked one green-gold wolfish eye at her. He smelled like long summer days on the green and fresh ink.
Emily choked. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you!” She stood on tiptoe, scanning the crowd for her sister. She saw Charlotte’s golden hair and waved. “Char . . . Currer? Erm. Mr. Byron wants to dance with you.”
The poet demurred. “Not at all, my silver siren. Begging the pardon of your sister, but I was asking you.”
The harpsichord clanged to life and before she could think, before she could tell him she didn’t know how, before her heart could even beat, Emily was swept away to the dance floor in the arms of Lord Byron. The stars glittered on her silver hair, her silver forehead, her silver fingers, and her dog’s-ear white gown.
“I am going to ask the Duke to dance,” Charlotte said firmly and quietly. Why not, after all? She needed political help. Military help. She would not ask a poet for that, nor a physician, nor grieving parents.
“Darling, he
’s just a touch above your station, don’t you think?” purred Miss Austen, hiding a face built from shattered teacups behind a huge lace fan. “We Misses and Ladies had best stick with our boys in uniform. Unless Thrushcross is having a much better year than I’ve heard, hm?”
The young gossip already knew all about her. This was why Charlotte didn’t like her books. It was just exactly like listening to her aunt whisper and nag about this or that village scandal, only with a very excellent vocabulary. The best thing that could ever happen to anyone in those stories was to get married and then get on with only feeling things through a lace curtain. Charlotte hoped Jane wouldn’t ask anything too pointed about the northern counties. She had nearly run out of her carefully planned and double-checked lies. She would have to start making new things up off the top of her head soon, and that seemed unlikely to go well with the great gossip of Glass Town.
“The train will never come if the station’s closed,” Zenobia Elrington said in a soft, deep, velveteen voice. She was woven out of fresh, green sugar stalks. Here and there, the leaves fell away to reveal moist, dark, golden cane. But her eyes! Where Charlotte had irises and pupils, Zenobia had black coals. Where Emily had clear whites, Zenobia had round pale flames burning in her lovely face. Charlotte glanced at the Lady’s hands: Her fingertips were scorched where she had wiped away tears of sadness or laughter in her life.
“Every soul in Glass Town asks the Genii for blessings,” Zenobia said, lowering her fiery gaze. “To ask a Duke for a dance is much less imposition.”
Jane fluttered her fan in consternation. “Oh, but you mustn’t do the asking! That’s preposterous! What do they teach you out there in the boonies? It’s all very well to ask the potatoes to grow or the cows to milk, but a mere Lady asking a Duke to the floor? Zenobia! Tell her it is not done!”
Lady Elrington turned her burning gaze to Josephine in her great birdcage, high above the ball. Three throbbingly red petals fell from her hair and drifted down to the jeweled floor.
“Do you think little Victoria gets taken to balls in Gondal?” Zenobia said softly. “Do you think they ever let her out at all?”
Miss Austen saw she would get no help. “A Lady may not do the asking and remain a Lady! It’s not to be borne! You poor naive lamb! From the moment I saw you, I knew you were the gentlest and fragilest and most unfortunate of souls. Your very footsteps whispered to me: Take me under your wing! I cannot fly without your help.”
Charlotte snorted. But Jane would not let up.
“No, no. I simply will not let you embarrass yourself, my poor darling sparrow! Let me—or indeed, Lady Elrington—put out our little butterfly feelers and test the lilies for your sake! He may come to you, when we have done our subtle work. Then there’s nothing improper!”
“I can’t wait for that,” Charlotte answered curtly. She felt wonderfully free as she made a golden arrow across the Wildfell Ball. She could not be bothered with teacup-women. She was already arranging her words to the Duke in her head. Behind her, Lady Zenobia smiled satisfactorily to herself. Jane looked as though she might sob or break her fan in half or perhaps simply explode like a stick of old dynamite at any moment. Charlotte did not look back.
The Iron Duke was smoking with several of his limeskin guard in a little circle of violet sofas near a vast liquor cabinet that soared up into the evening like the front face of a bank vault. A limey naval Captain with a lean, unripe face cried out:
“And I said to him, I said: That’s how a good Glass Town bulldog buries his Boney!”
The men roared with citrusy laughter. The smoke was so thick Charlotte could only see a vague glow where the Duke sat, his molten wings banked and glowing peacefully, his white-hot eyes full of merriment.
“Sir,” she said, curtsying as best she knew how, from books and one night when Aunt Elizabeth had been at the sherry and they all pretended to meet the Queen, who was a hat rack. “I wondered if, perhaps, you might consider granting an unworthy young Lady the honor of a dance. I have only just arrived from the country with my sister, you see, and I have heard tales of your adventures—”
The limeskin Captain cut her off. “The Duke does not dance, Miss Hayseed of Fieldmouse Manor. Run along back to knitting cow dung or spinning beer or whatever it is you stranded gentry do out there in County Nothing.”
The men laughed uproariously again, slapping their green knees and dragging on round lemon-leaf cigars. This navy man was clearly the jester to the little court of smirking wallflowers.
“Well,” Charlotte continued, deepening her curtsy till her calves ached. “The dance itself is rather beside the point, I’m told.”
The Duke of Wellington spoke for the first time.
