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“What a perfectly marvelous line. I shall have it for my own! It’s the right of a Lord, you know, to take a percentage of anything good produced on his land. And I’m actually a Baron, so I can take the lot.” Lord Byron laughed, and when he laughed, it sounded to Emily like a song written only for her. Though he was laughing at his own joke, she supposed.
“Is this your land? Your house?” Emily suddenly noticed that many of the other ladies were staring at them and whispering. What did those knowing glances mean? Of course, she knew very well that Lord Byron was meant to be mad and bad and all that rubbish, but this Lord Byron was only her own age. How dangerous to know could he be just yet?
Byron kissed her gloved hand as they stepped lightly round one another. He could dance like rivers could run. No one had ever kissed her hand before. Emily felt like she was going to throw up and like she was flying all at once.
“It is indeed, my clever dove! My house, my land, my drink, my food. I’ve loaned it all out to Douro for his little party,” Byron said, slipping his arm around her waist. They were almost of a height. “You know how it is with elderly money. It can still cut a fine figure at table, but it’s not quite all there.” He tapped the side of his silky head. “I myself am merely old money. Entirely different. But! It is not Douro’s brother and sister in peril, nor mine. Did you say a fellow called Brunty took them? Took them how? Took them where? Anyone named Brunty is trouble, it’s true. Did he have a surname? Any distinguishing marks? Tattoos? And where did they go? Perhaps they’re having a grand adventure and you oughtn’t interrupt it.”
Emily looked stricken. Lord Byron’s shoulders slumped.
“Don’t give me that face, darling Ellis! I only want joyful or cunning or passionate faces, none of this pale grief and sour disappointment! That sort of thing is for poetry, not for living. What can I do to get my merry Ellis back to charm the rocks her brother cannot?”
Emily smiled softly, a smile that any Lord would hear as clearly as words. Perhaps there is something.
I’m really rather good at this, Emily thought. What a pity I’m not really the Lady of Thrushcross Grange!
The song ended abruptly with all the dancers in two neat lines, boys on one side, girls on the other. Everyone applauded madly and laughed like tropical birds crying out for mates in the jungle. Beads of golden sweat stood out on Charlotte’s brow. Arthur looked sorrowfully at her.
“I’m sorry, Miss Bell. The war is ever so much bigger than one brother or one sister. What help can be spared for such a little thing? I need every man by my side.” He looked round to see if anyone was eavesdropping. “We mean to make our final stand against Napoleon at Calabar. I cannot hold the capital with even one soldier missing. My answer is no, my dear, though it breaks my heart to say it to such a clever face as yours.”
Charlotte’s carefully crafted helplessness fell away. Now, the helplessness turned horribly real. She fought back tears. She had just assumed he would say yes. He always said yes when she played Wellington in their games at home. This was her world. Hers and Emily’s and Branwell’s and Anne’s. How could he have said anything other than yes? What now? This had been her plan. Her only plan. And it was finished before it could begin. She was left with nothing but a dress and her loss and a coat of paint that was beginning to flake.
Wellington winced. “No man could call me a coward on the battlefield,” he said reluctantly. “But I’ve always crumbled before a girl who’s disappointed in me. Don’t make such faces, Miss Currer. It is politics. It is war. There is no time for the fates of two little children while the world is falling apart.”
Charlotte tried to wrench her arm from Wellington’s. He would not let her go. His grip was iron—really, actually iron. Fear sizzled all up and down her spine. Charlotte’s eyes glowed as white-hot as Wellington’s. “They are not two little children. They are my family. And you are a paperweight! Let me go!”
“Currer, be still. You are making a scene! Don’t struggle so, like a wild, frantic bird rending its own feathers in desperation.”
Charlotte drew herself up as tall a
s she could. Everyone kept calling her that. Some little, fluttering, weak thing. But she wasn’t! She would never be! Not for Wellington and not for Jane and not for anyone.
“I am no bird,” she said coldly. She was no girl in a novel now. “And no net ensnares me.”
The Duke recoiled and let her arm drop. He coughed uncomfortably, bowed deeply, and retreated unhappily into the green wall of his officers.
Leftenant Gravey settled his wooden hand kindly on Charlotte’s shoulder. “Don’t let them do that to you, you nor your sister.” How had she never noticed that Gravey had such a lovely Northern accent, so like Tabitha’s?
“Let who do what, Leftenant?”
“Men. Dazzle you. They do it for advantage, no different from a field marshal gaining the high ground. You do the dazzling. You climb the hill. Or else you’ll be stuck down in the muddy marsh with the rest of us, and that’s no place to be.”
“But I don’t know how to dazzle. I couldn’t dazzle a house fern.”
Gravey kissed her forehead. He smelled like a warm autumn bonfire sparkling away.
“Learn fast,” he said.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” came the high, bright, singsong voice belonging to the herald made of brandy snifters who had announced Charlotte and Emily to the Wildfell Ball. “If you would kindly gather in the Vivisectionists’ Garden for the evening’s entertainment, Young Soult the Rhymer will regale us with a marvelous display of theatrical puppetry in honor of our host, the Marquis of Douro!”
“Oh, Miss Ellis,” Lord Byron gushed. He daringly put one sleek panther-fur hand on Emily’s gloved fingers. “Shall we go a-roving, deep into the night? We shall! You shall. And you must sit beside me the whole while. Young Soult is an epically awful poet, but he’s brilliant with puppets, you’ll see. You cannot miss it.” The great poet’s eyes danced with mischief and delight and not a little bit of malice. “It’s going to bring the house down.”
NINETEEN
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bran could hear his sister whispering in her narrow red and blue bed. She’d drawn the blankets all the way up over her head and curled her body into a tight ball. And she was whispering. It drove him mad when she did it at home, but in the silence of the Bastille, the sound was like rusted nails dragged up and down his spine.
“Who are you talking to, Annie? If you don’t button your lips to your teeth in a half second I’m going to leap out the window.”
