The Sweetest Dark

Chapter Nineteen

It did not hurt.

It took me a while to comprehend that. I think mostly what I felt in those first few seconds, beyond astonishment, was an extreme sense of loss: loss of gravity, loss of orientation, loss of Jesse’s touch. Yet, by some means, I could still see. I could hear. I was still myself, with my own thoughts but none of my own body.

I was lighter than the air. I was diaphanous, bobbing and floating and unable to control it, and the dripping-wet stalactites poked down around me, and Jesse was a boy on his feet below me, his face tipped up, gilded hair and eyes glinting like emeralds.

He mouthed my name. It came to me distant and smothered, but, weirdly, it didn’t seem to matter. The boy down there didn’t matter nearly as much as these fascinating rock formations that combed through me now with their solid teeth, because I knew that they were only the lid on a ceiling, and beyond the ceiling was freedom.

And, oh, how I yearned for it. I twined and spiraled and searched for a way out, and the waiting stars sang hallelujahs to me and pulled and pulled—yes, this way—

“Lora. Lora!”

I bubbled against the ceiling. The smoky fragments of me stretched longer and longer; I realized I could become less than smoke. I could flatten myself, sheer as a sheet of molecules, a shimmering whisper of next-to-nothing. Even thinner.

And it felt … good.

That was when I knew that, if I wanted, I could just keep thinning. Let myself unravel. Final freedom. No weight, no pain, no worries. Not ever again.

“Come back to me, Eleanore. Listen to me. You have to come back now.”

The boy spoke sternly, and I paused. A fire burned within him. How peculiar that I could see it now, in this form, when he could do me no harm. It burned inside him without even a flicker, just this strong, steady light that illuminated him in flame and gold, every cell. Every beautiful bit.

“Dragon,” snapped the boy. “I command you to come back.”

I wanted to laugh at that. Command. Indeed.

But … he’d done something to me. I couldn’t maintain my lovely thin stretch. I was changing, thickening, even as I fought it. I was pouring back down to the floor of the cavern in a darker mass, coils of smoke that tightened into the shape of the girl I’d once been, a girl with feet and tucked legs and a body hunched over them, her head hanging and her long hair sweeping the stone.

My fingers curled against damp rock. I sucked in air.

Then Jesse was crouched beside me, an arm tight around my back, his head bent over mine. He might have been breathing harder than I was.

“You—” I gulped some more air. “You can command me?”

“I didn’t want to have to.”

“That is completely unfair!”

“Aye.”

He pulled me to my feet and embraced me fully, something he’d never done before. I allowed myself to sink into the heat of his body for a minute, then lifted my head from his chest, blinking. The cavern seemed more sparkly. Everything looked sparklier and brighter. Colder. On the ground a few feet away lay a familiar pile of clothing in a very familiar layout, and I was wearing none of it.

Perhaps he noticed, too. Perhaps he just read the subtle signals of my body, the sudden rigidity of my spine, because he stepped back and began to shrug out of his peacoat.

“Here.” He draped it over me. “How are you? How do you feel?”

“Naked,” I grumbled. “You can command me?”

His hands tightened upon my shoulders. “Eleanore.” When my eyes lifted to his, Jesse broke into a grin. And right then I glimpsed again the ineffably divine fire that burned within this child of the stars; it was there, right there behind the summer beauty of his gaze. All the brightness around me, all the sparkles, the heat and cold and the rising joy that welled through me so sharply it almost hurt: all reflections of him.

“You did it,” he said. “You went to smoke.”

I touched a hand to his cheek, awed. “Crikey. I did.”

...

Smoke, of course, is not quite a dragon. I reminded myself of that as I lay in my bed that morning, waiting for Gladys’s knock. The sun was rising and the sky flushed a vigorous pink, but I knew there’d be no sleep for me for some while.

I had lost my human body, even if it had been for only a few short minutes. I had Become something less than corporeal. I had defied all logic and all proper sanity, and I’d had a witness.

I wasn’t mad. But I wasn’t quite a dragon yet, either. I felt itchy and odd. Like the twilight, I was now a thing between worlds, and I felt … incomplete.

Before we’d left the grotto, Jesse said that maybe the pain of my transformation wasn’t supposed to be with smoke. That maybe it was going to be when I shifted into a more monstrous shape.

He hadn’t actually said monstrous. I thought it fairly implied.

I squirmed against my sheets, imagining wing bones digging into my back. I held up my hands and spread my fingers before my face. I squinted at them, turning them this way and that in the rosy light, then bent my fingers into claws.

For a second—no more than that—I could have sworn there was an impression of scales along my wrists, ridged and perfect. Then I looked closer, and all I saw were wrists.

A shadow zipped by the window, too swift to follow. Then another, and another. I got up, stuck my head beyond the sill.

The flock of gannets shot like bullets past my tower, flying hard and fast away from me toward the sea, into the rising pink sun.

I heard the hiss of the air sluiced from their wings. I smelled the fish-feather muck of their scent.

The itching inside me crept nearer to the surface of my skin.

...

To the tenth- and eleventh-year girls’ open dismay, the duke’s party was considered a scholastic function. Therefore, we would all wear our formal Iverson uniforms, which looked nearly exactly like our everyday uniforms but for a frothing of lace along the shirtwaists and skirts of satin damask instead of broadcloth.

I wanted to inquire what scholastic function, precisely, attending a birthday party fulfilled but knew better than that. Mrs. Westcliffe had made it clear that I was expected to attend, so whatever punishment she might devise, it wouldn’t include getting to stay behind.

I shall not ask intelligent questions.

x 1,000.

We all waited in the parlor for the duke’s automobiles—how many did he have, anyway?—to show up and ferry us in excellent style to the celebration. Mrs. Westcliffe and Miss Swanston were to be our dutiful shepherds, and they waited with us, standing in the middle of the room with crossed arms and jewelry spangling their persons. Even Miss Swanston, it seemed, had the means for a pearl choker. A gaggle of younger girls clustered about the doorway, shoving at one another for the best spot from which to eye us with envy.

I sat in my horsehair chair, gazing at my knees, thinking about smoke and sacrifices and how Mrs. Westcliffe’s garnet earbobs thrummed to a beat that resembled a Sousa march, which seemed exquisitely appropriate.

I’d never before worn anything made of satin. I was fairly certain I’d never even touched it.

The skirt was aubergine and textured with poppies. The poppies felt nubby against my palms; the rest of the material was smooth smooth smooth. Beneath my outward elegance, my plain cotton chemise and corset chafed at my skin, and it seemed like something of a cheat.

I’d heard of nobs with satin sheets on their beds. I’d heard of street girls who saved up for months for satin petticoats. And now one entire half of me was wrapped in this thick, slippery cloth, and all I could think was, How could anyone sleep in this?

“Good gad, it’s absolutely sweltering in here,” groused Malinda, but softly, because we weren’t allowed to say gad. I’d noticed that when she was particularly peevish, her voice took on a singsong edge. “Must we have all the lamps burning?”

“The better to see ourselves by, my dear,” murmured Sophia, scrutinizing her face in one of the mirrors. Her earbobs were of diamonds. She looked stunning, and she knew it.

Lillian was fanning herself with one hand. “I feel as if I might melt. How is my hair? Is it positively limp? It is, isn’t it? It is. I can tell.”

Caroline shouldered up next to Sophia in the mirror, pouting. “At least your complexion holds up. I’m red as a beet.”

“I’m going to look positively wilted for the party. I am.”

“I do wish they’d bother to get here already. Do you think the duke knows how tardy his servants are? They are in his employ. Should someone inform him?”

“They’re here,” I said, and stood.

“Oh, really,” snarled Malinda. “Now you have the hearing of a dog, is that it, Eleanore?”

“How fitting,” chimed in Chloe from nearby, I suppose because she couldn’t resist.

The duke, as it happened, had at least five automobiles, because that was how many showed up to carry us off the isle. I rode to Tranquility with Mrs. Westcliffe again, Miss Swanston on my other side, and took comfort in the thought of all the other girls crammed into the other autos, sincerely hoping that the wind blew them to rags.

In defiance of the war and the airships and any sort of two-candles-a-month rule, Tranquility was lit to blazes when we pulled up. It appeared that every window in every room shone with light, and it turned out that the party wasn’t even to be held indoors.

We followed the butler through a ballroom to the formal gardens in back, and even the headmistress couldn’t contain her gasp of wonder.

Beneath the rising moon, the grounds opened up in a spread of rolling grasses and marble stairways and gazebos and trees, finely garbed people swirling through it all like flower petals loosed to the wind. Torches burned along the farther paths, bright dots of orange against the blackening sky; Chinese lanterns glowing red and green and turquoise swayed more placidly from the trees. A string orchestra played a waltz from a corner of the courtyard just below us. No one danced to it; the rest of the courtyard was taken up by elaborately dressed tables of food and champagne.

This was a far more momentous event than a tea party, clearly.

“Well,” said Mrs. Westcliffe at last, remembering to close her mouth.

“Quite so,” agreed Miss Swanston, with a sideways, smiling look at me. “Miss Jones. Would you care to lead the way?”

I descended the steps from the ballroom to the courtyard with satin clenched in both hands, making my way to the duke’s receiving line, stationed right by the first champagne table. Armand stood beside him, both of them in black tails and pomade so sleekly perfect they looked cut from a fashion journal.

Without making eye contact, I curtsied, mumbled my greeting, then moved quickly aside to allow Mrs. Westcliffe room to fawn.

“Your Grace.”

“Irene. Welcome. Miss Swanston. And, er—you, as well, Miss Eleanore. I trust the journey here wasn’t too taxing?”

“Not in the least. You are, as always, the most gracious host… .”

Because I’d moved, Armand was now directly in front of me. Our eyes locked. He did not speak. I did not speak.

“… you have certainly outdone yourself this year! What a truly handsome transformation to the gardens, truly inspired …”

I sighed, giving in first. “Happy birthday. I don’t have a gift.”

His brows drew together. “Excuse me?”

“I said, I didn’t bring a gift. Sorry.”

He stared down at me. “Why would you—wait. Did you think … all this was for me?”

“Isn’t it?”

And he started to laugh. Really laugh, genuinely laugh; it snared his father’s attention and that of Mrs. Westcliffe. Miss Swanston, angling behind me, placed a gloved hand on my elbow.

“How heartwarming to see young people getting along so well! Miss Jones, we mustn’t keep His Grace and Lord Armand. There are far too many guests eager to speak with them.”

“Have a grand time,” Armand managed, still chortling, as we moved off.

Mrs. Westcliffe found a lost flock of her little lambs milling about; apparently the other motorcars from Iverson had arrived. With a word to Miss Swanston, she left to tend to them.

Miss Swanston remained with me. By unspoken accord, we headed to the nearest table of food.

A maid bobbed at us and handed us plates. As the waltz shifted into a polonaise, we only stood there, taking it all in. Oysters on platters of chipped ice, haunches of beef waiting to be carved, fat lobster tails, strawberries, glazed duck, roasted artichokes, sturgeon in lemon sauce, salads, brandied fruits. Breads and breads and breads, a thousand kinds of cheeses and grapes—it was without question the most food I’d ever seen assembled in one place.

As if the war did not exist. As if rationing did not exist; as if hungry children stuck in foundling homes did not exist.

I might have remained as I was for hours, stunned and starving, but Miss Swanston took the tongs for the strawberries, which were nearest, and placed a few on my plate.

“How are things, Eleanore?”

I woke up fast. In my experience, when adults asked this question, it never led anywhere pleasant.

“Very fine, ma’am.”

“Good. I’m pleased to hear it.” She moved on to the roast beef, nodding to the footman behind the table for a slice. “I imagine it’s been something of a transition for you. Coming all the way out here from the city, I mean.”

“Yes,” I agreed, straight-faced.

“But, I must say, I think you’ve adapted nicely. You seem a resilient girl.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“You’re quiet but smart. Modest, I suspect. Watchful.” She sent me that sideways look again. “Watchful is good. Learning by observation is a most useful skill, especially for someone in your position.”

I had nothing to say to that, so only took up the cheese tongs.

“I lived in London for a few years after my own schooling. Islington. Do you know it?”

“No.”

“No, perhaps not.” She smiled, but it seemed wistful. “London is a colossal place, after all. A splendid, stinking jewel of humanity. I read that somewhere, and I don’t believe I’ve ever come across a description more apt.”

We had reached the end of the table, and my plate was full. I looked around for a space to sit, but the duke’s truly inspired décor apparently didn’t include tables and chairs. We strolled toward the only vacant spot left on the patio, leaning together against the marble railing. One of the Chinese lanterns hung directly above us; it colored us and all the food candy-red.

“Why did you leave, ma’am?”

“Ah.” Miss Swanston was rolling a cube of cheddar around on her plate with her fork. “Well, my parents died one winter, both of them. And the house had to be sold.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes. I am, as well.” She abandoned the cheddar. “As I said before, Eleanore, I know you’re smart. I also have a reasonably clear understanding of how very … difficult your life has been up until now. Please don’t look so distressed. Mrs. Westcliffe shared your records with me under circumstances of strictest confidentiality. Your past is your own, and, as far as I’m concerned, no one’s business but your own.”

The roll I’d just bitten into had gone dry as sand in my mouth.

“Yet I find I cannot help but offer you some unsolicited advice. Stay focused on your studies. Iverson will open doors for you that you might never have conceived. Your future could be as happy as your past was not. Don’t allow yourself to waste that chance. Don’t succumb to any … distractions.”

I could only imagine my expression. Miss Swanston lowered her candy-red lashes and glanced back at Armand.

“Oh,” I said, swallowing. “No. Definitely not.”

“Forgive me. He seems quite taken with you.”

The bite of roll lodged in my throat; I coughed. “He isn’t, I assure you.”

“Eleanore, it grieves me to correct you, but he is staring at you even now. He hasn’t been able to tear his eyes from you since we arrived.”

I couldn’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t say anything like, Armand doesn’t count. Armand’s not even in the game. I’m in love with a boy made of stars, and we’re going to live together ever after on gold and smoke and moonlight, and that’s my happy future, no matter what any of you think.

I scowled down at my plate. “He’s simply …”

“Yes?” she prompted, very mild.

I searched for the right word. “I don’t know what he is,” I admitted finally, frustrated. “Bored, I suppose.”

“Yes,” she said again, just as mild. “I’m glad you’ve realized it, too.”

“But I’m not dense. He’s nobility. I know—I know what I am. I know what to avoid.”

“Good,” Miss Swanston said once more, and gave me her wistful smile.

...

Eventually, I ate my fill. Eventually, Miss Swanston became convinced that I wasn’t about to go fling myself at Lord Armand and left me at the railing, saying that no doubt the headmistress would be missing her.

Twenty wily girls roaming free in the night and three unguarded tables of French champagne. I suspected Mrs. Westcliffe was rather outmatched.

The receiving line had dissolved, and the duke and his son were nowhere in view. Adults of all sizes and shapes stood elbow-to-elbow around me, admiring the gardens and one another. Chloe and her group were making their way through the food tables; Sophia and hers loitered at the foot of the stairs below me. So I left my plate with a maid and slipped back inside Tranquility.

I’d return for the champagne later.

It was easier to breathe away from the crowded courtyard. As I entered the ballroom, the music from the orchestra dimmed from strident to agreeable, and the peculiar aroma of banquet mixed with ladies’ perfume gradually faded in my wake. But the ballroom was as empty as the gardens were full; obviously the guests were supposed to remain out there. The only other people in the chamber besides me were a pair of footmen stationed by the main doors, perhaps to ensure no one got inside.

The best way to publicly succeed at anything forbidden is to seem as if you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Especially if you don’t. Don’t stop, don’t hesitate, and don’t look back. I glided past the footmen into the main hallway with my chin up and my expression bored, an air I’d seen nearly every girl at the school assume whenever someone of a lower station was near.

Of course you must let me pass; clearly I’m a lady; I belong in satin and mansions and I know where I’m going and I definitely, definitely, won’t be filching the silverware.

Like the ballroom, the hallway seemed deserted. It stretched long and mysterious in either direction, far darker than the rest of the house; all the electric lights had been set to low. When I passed directly beneath one of their dangling glass domes, a humming drone swarmed through my head so nastily that, after that, I sidled around them.

A runner of blue and mottled olive, rich and plush, absorbed my steps. Paintings, huge and framed in filigreed wood. Discarded scaffolding, bare frames of lumber and metal holding up nothing but air. Splintery pinewood crates, most unopened but a few showing their stuffings of straw and what might have been antique firearms.

And—voices behind me. Adult voices, male, subdued, discussing something about Americans and naval blockades.

I had my hand at once on the knob of the nearest door. By the time the duke and his companion passed by, I was well hidden in the shadows of what looked to be a study—a very masculine study, with panels of mahogany and massive leather furniture and a portrait above the fireplace of Himself with a family, so it was pure blind luck that they didn’t follow me in.

But they walked on down the hallway.

I released the breath I’d been holding, suddenly fatigued, the itch inside me beginning another crawl along my nerves. I wandered over to one of the chairs and tested it for softness. It was far more comfortable than it appeared, a reading chair, clearly, with a newspaper neatly ironed and folded atop the stand by its arm.

A London paper. Yesterday’s date.

HUN DIRIGIBLES FLYING FARTHER INLAND, warned the headline. I touched my fingers to it, spinning it about to scan the rest.

Germany’s cowardly use of naval airships upon the civilian population is expanding. Bloated and slow, the zeppelins cruise far above any altitude ground artillery may reach, and often even above the firing altitude of our valiant boys in the sky.

The Minister of War has recommended that all eastern and southern coastal towns implement immediately our own very effective nighttime blackout rules… .

Well. Perchance His Grace hadn’t read this particular article yet.

I sat back in the chair and crossed my feet at the ankles. Then I glanced up at the portrait.

Definitely the duke in his younger days, and a fair-haired, gray-eyed woman who must have been his duchess. They were both gazing straight at me—at the artist who had painted them—Reginald with a trace of a confident smile, but the woman with a delicate, pensive sort of gravity, as if she felt that smiling wouldn’t be appropriate. He was standing, but she was seated on what looked to be a garden bench, her hands resting on the shoulders of not one boy but two: the first a toddler with an unmistakable blue stare; the second an older child, probably around five, and fair like his mother.

She didn’t really resemble me the least bit. I couldn’t imagine what the duke had been going on about.

I studied it through half-lidded eyes, picking out the details, how roses bloomed pink and cream in the foreground. How the clouds above their heads looked stormy, and the wedge of sea in the far back was more of a suggestion of color and shape than anything literal.

Toddler Armand held something in his hand. A key, it looked like …

I’d stay for just a moment. I’d close my eyes for only one minute. Then I’d return to the party.

...

He found her in the study. He hadn’t even known he’d been searching for her until he opened the door and there she was, relaxed in one of the chairs, her head tipped back and her hands in her lap, very much asleep.

The bracket clock on Reginald’s desk ticked away the seconds, six, seven, eight, as Armand remained at the doorway, taking her in. Then he stole inside his father’s sanctum, closing the door carefully behind him. Making as little noise as possible, he settled into the chair closest to Eleanore’s.

What was it about her, he wondered, that made her so impossible to ignore? Little orphan girl, proud skinny waif, with secrets and music inside her that filled him with a crazed combination of exhilaration and fear. Like morphine pumping through him, but sharper than that. Not muddy. She’d made it as clear as could be that she didn’t even like him, but still Mandy found himself thinking of her and fantasizing about her so often it was stupid. He was stupid.

Yet here he was yet again. Because she was here and, for whatever the hell reason, he couldn’t stop wanting to be near her.

Her eyes opened. She registered his presence without an ounce of surprise.

“It’s not your birthday, is it?” she said, straightening. “It’s his.”

Neither of them glanced up at the portrait. Certainly Mandy didn’t need to look at it; he’d memorized it years ago.

“Aubrey Emerson Hugo, the Most Honourable Marquess of Sherborne. He’s a glorious twenty-one years old today, wherever he is.”

“No one told me you had a brother.”

“Didn’t they?” he said lightly. “I’m flabbergasted. It seems to me I can hardly go anywhere without people singing his praises.”

“Is he dead?” she asked, with that open candor no one else ever offered him.

“I hope not,” Mandy replied. “Because I don’t want to be a sodding duke.”

She nodded at that, unoffended. Another rare quality. Nothing he seemed to say or do ever amazed her.

“He’s a pilot,” he heard himself explaining. “Royal Flying Corps. Somehow even Reginald’s bluster couldn’t keep him from enlisting, although God knows Reggie tried. He bribed everyone he could think of to keep his golden boy here at home, but in the end, Aubrey just left. Just got up and went. And since he was of age, there was nothing Reggie could do about it.”

“You’re almost of age,” Eleanore said quietly, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees.

“Yes.” He smiled at her and wondered how it looked, if it was as bitter and twisted as he felt inside. “But Reginald learned his lesson, you see. He learned that when bluster and money don’t work, class does. Associations do. Family links. Insinuations. I went to the recruiting station at Eton with Laurence. I did everything he did, exactly the same. And now Laurence is part of the University and Public Schools Brigade, and I’m stuck here. I was told, officially, that as I’m still months short of the legal age, I should try again later. And then I was told, unofficially, not to bother.”

She held him in that frank, luminous gaze. “Why?”

“Oh, because I’m touched. Just like my mother.”

He stood up. He walked to his father’s desk, then to the window. The rage in him felt like a clenched fist in his chest.

“Such is the power of words, waif.” He fixed his focus beyond the panes, beyond the splash of light that was his father’s party to the very blackest part of the night. “Such is the power of having the ears of mighty men. Lost your heir to the cause? Don’t lose the spare. Whisper to all the right people about how your second son isn’t right. That his mother’s blood flows too freely in his veins. No one’s going to give a regiment to a madman.”

He heard her moving. He heard the rustle of her clothing as she stood, the footsteps that took her up to the fireplace and the portrait above it. He turned about to see her.

“She died of consumption. That’s what we say. I’ve repeated it so often now that I half-believe it myself. Consumption. As if anyone dies of that any longer.”

Eleanore kept her silence, but her eyes went back to his.

“She leapt from the roof of the castle,” Mandy said. “She killed herself, and Reggie moved us here. Not one mad parent but two. Bodes well for me, don’t you think?”

God, there, at last: He’d reached her. Her face drained of color, and she swayed and braced a hand against the mantelpiece for support. It wasn’t much, but he’d done it, he’d penetrated that stone-cold façade, he’d broken through to some deeper heart of her, he knew it. It was as gratifying as a fresh rush of morphine, and now the words spilled free and he couldn’t stop them if he tried.

“She heard voices, she said. Odd songs no one else could hear. Told my father there was something inside her, another person or something, and it kept telling her to jump. She’d tried it twice before, but Reggie had managed to stop her, so this time she waited until dark. Her body wasn’t found until the next afternoon, when finally they thought to search the grotto.” The bitter smile stretched across his face again. “So. At least I know I won’t lose my cunning in the end.”

“Armand,” Eleanore said, making his name a terrible sound, a sound so lovely and sweet and awful it pierced him to the core.

He sealed his lips together. He stood in place without moving, glaring at her, unwilling to surrender more of himself to any part of her.

“Armand,” she repeated, and lowered her arm. “Do you hear songs?”

“No,” he answered instantly, because he was cunning and he always knew the right thing to say, but this time it didn’t work. His glancing blow to her heart had opened her to him, or him to her, and he realized right then that not only had he broken her enough to see into her, but that she could see into him.

And she didn’t believe him.

Lies, rumors, masks; he was composed of little else. She saw it now.

He did the only thing he could. Mandy walked away, out of the study, back into the celebration of his blessed brother’s life.

He did not seek out Eleanore again.