The Midnight Bargain

by C. L. Polk

  CHAPTER IX

  Udo Maasten was so tall he towered over everyone even when he was sitting down. It was as if someone had taken a man made of rubber sap and stretched him. He swiveled his long head this way and that to regard anyone who spoke at the table, and when he swallowed a bite of braised lamb, his throat bobbed up and down above the napkin tucked into the neck of his shirt.

  :He’s old.:

  :Maybe not so old as you think.: But Udo was a pink-faced, fair-haired son of the Protectorate of Vicny, and rather than don a wig, as most men would, he allowed his baldness to show, his thin hair gathered in a queue at the back of his neck.

  “I am most fortunate to be in the presence of so many lovely young ladies, most fortunate indeed,” he declared in his surprisingly deep voice, smiling at Mother. “You must be very proud of your daughters. They look so much like you.”

  He stole another glance at Beatrice.

  :I don’t like how he looks at you when you can’t see,: Nadi said. :You can’t marry him.:

  :I won’t have to,: Beatrice reassured. :We’re going to the ball tonight. Ysbeta will let me copy the book soon, I’m sure of it. I won’t have to marry Udo Maasten.:

  Father set down his meat fork and drank ale. “Beatrice is a lovely young woman,” he agreed. “Any man would be lucky to have her as a wife.”

  “Overeducated, you said?” Udo licked grease off his lips and glanced at her again. Beatrice did her best to smile.

  “I taught her how to analyze finances,” Father said. “She knows how to spot the usual deceptions people attempt when swindling money from the household. She understands inventory ledgers and can detect thefts and embezzling from reviewing the books. She could probably manage a farm’s finances or a small business without help.”

  Mr. Maasten raised his eyebrows. “Really.”

  “She has learned a great deal about geography and the politics of trade. You could talk to her about your difficulties with getting a fair bargain for your inventions.”

  Now he looked at her with curiosity, as if she were a long-tailed monkey someone had taught to count to ten. Ianthe had never looked at her like that. Ianthe would slap any man who would. “Miss Clayborn. I have made a modest fortune on my inventions, while my investors have made great ones. How would you suggest I maximize the sale of my next innovation?”

  :I don’t like him,: Nadi said. :Don’t marry him.:

  :I don’t want to, believe me. But it’s not that easy.:

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what your next innovation is,” Beatrice said.

  He smiled at her as if she were dissembling. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. What did you invent?”

  He leaned back, weighing his words. “I have told no one about it.”

  Ser Maasten sold his inventions, and those who purchased them made the money—just as Lavan International profited the most off the innovations of their employees. Beatrice understood—he was loosening his grip on his inventions too soon. It didn’t matter what he had built, not really. Beatrice set down her fork and dabbed at her mouth before speaking.

  “Then I cannot ask you to confide in me,” Beatrice said. “But generally, you want to improve your relations with legislators and justices when you have invented something new, rather than sell it to someone with the money to maximize it.”

  Maasten blinked. “I cannot sell my inventions to a legislator.”

  “True,” Beatrice said. “But a legislator can introduce specific protections allowing you—or I should say, your corporation—to hold the right to duplicate and distribute your inventions.”

  “By what means?”

  She furrowed her brow trying to find the right way to explain what she meant. “Don’t sell your inventions, Mr. Maasten. Sell a license granting permission to produce replicas of your invention. Someone will inevitably improve on your original design, reducing the sales on your licenses, but you will invent something else, and then sell licenses to that.”

  He gazed at her with wonder. “If I had done that earlier, I’d be a very wealthy man today.”

  He couldn’t have that modest a fortune, if Father had invited him to dinner. But she had just bungled it with her showing off. She had impressed him with her knowledge, instead of repelling him with her unwomanly demeanor. She reached for her claret, and Nadi forced her hand forward too fast. The glass fell over, spilling red all over the linen tablecloth and splashing onto Mr. Maasten’s shirt.

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry!” Beatrice cried. :Nadi! What—:

  :Trust Nadi,: Nadi said, and her hand groped for another napkin and closed on a fork, which clattered to the floor.

  “I don’t know what—” Beatrice stood up too fast and knocked her chair into a server, who fumbled the platter of tarts in his hands. Delicate pastries slid off the tray and cascaded onto Harriet, who shrieked and jumped to her feet.

  “Harriet!” Beatrice moved to assist her, but her fallen chair was in the way. She shoved it aside, only to learn that the tablecloth had tangled itself in the legs. The whole dinner slid precipitously sideways. Her plate landed on the floor in a clatter of silverware, and her mother’s glass of wine teetered and fell the opposite way, the contents splashing over Mr. Maasten’s jacket.

  “Stand still!” Mr. Maasten cried. “Don’t move. Every time you move—just stay there.”

  Carefully, cautiously, Mr. Maasten rose from the table, wine-stained and terrified. “I must go.”

  Father wiped his mouth on his napkin, looking alarmed. “But Mr. Maasten, we still must speak of the corporation we touched on earlier—”

  “I really must go,” Maasten said. His final glance at Beatrice was etched deep with anxiety. Beatrice could see him imagining what havoc a clumsy wife could wreak on delicate inventions, precious notebooks, and valuables in general. “Good evening, Miss Clayborn.”

  “Good evening—”

  She tried to bend her knee, but she stepped on a tart. Her foot shot out from under her, and she grabbed the table to break her fall, dragging Harriet’s plate to the floor.

  Udo Maasten all but ran from the room.

  Beatrice clapped her hands on her cheeks, surveying the ruin of dinner, her food-stained dress, her shocked, gasping sister, and her father’s horrified disbelief. Mother studied the place where Mr. Maasten had sat, her lips pressed tight and her cheeks pinched. She glanced at Beatrice and quickly looked away, covering her mouth as her shoulders shook. She shut her eyes and great gasping breaths hissed through her hands.

  “Oh, my dear,” Father said. “Don’t cry.”

  Beatrice looked away hastily. If she kept looking at Mother, Beatrice was going to laugh until her sides hurt. She had ruined two dresses, a shirt, a tablecloth, and perhaps even the rug on the floor. It was the worst luck she’d ever had.

  :Thank you, Nadi.:

  Nadi giggled. :That was fun.:

  She had to get out of here. She turned and nodded to her white-faced, appalled father.

  “I think I should rest before the party,” Beatrice said. “May I please be excused?”

  CHAPTER X

  Merwood Hall spread intimidating wings before the Clayborn women, who stood in the courtyard at the foot of two curving ramps that flanked the stairs leading to the front door. Their carriage had to wait out on the street with dozens more, the number of them promising a crowded party inside. Beatrice gazed at the statues holding up the carved face fronting a peaked roof, at the lights glowing from the glass dome in the center, at the image of wealth on full display, and gulped.

  Her feet wouldn’t move just yet. So she stood and counted the windows and doors, calculated the property tax fees on each one, and plumped each bow rising up the front of her stomacher. Cascades of hand-hooked lace shivered from her elbows. Her head ached from the weight of all the pins holding up her coiffure. She was as richly dressed as anyone could ask for outside of a royal court.

  “Beatrice,” Harriet said. “Have you taken a fright?”
r />   “No,” Beatrice said. “But look how lovely the house is.”

  “It will be beautiful inside,” Harriet said. “What are you worried about?”

  “Nothing,” Beatrice said, and still her feet wouldn’t move.

  The house stood before her and she felt it again, the sensation that it knew that she was a debt-ridden banker’s daughter. That those doors would not open to admit her. That she dared too much by coming here.

  “Beatrice,” Harriet said.

  “I know.”

  :Go ahead, Beatrice,: Nadi said. :I’ll help.:

  :What will you do?:

  :I’ll see when we get there. Walk up to the door, now. You were invited.:

  Beatrice’s left foot lifted as Nadi took the reins. Together they strode up the stairs, her head high, the invitation in her hand. Nadi nodded to the man who opened the door for her. It tugged on the fingers of her embroidered kid gloves the moment her invitation left her grasp.

  A servant carried trays of the soft pink punch she knew from the Assembly Dance and Bard Sheldon’s card party, and Nadi plucked up a cup.

  :Sip!:

  :I know,: Nadi said, amused. :Look, more sculptures.:

  :No,: Beatrice replied. :They can move.:

  And so they did, turning their heads to track someone walking past. A young man waved at one of the figures, and it waved back.

  :Are they alive?:

  :No,: Beatrice answered. :They’re automata from the Eastern Protectorate. They can move, and do complex things, like write whatever they’re told.:

  :Are they magic?:

  :They are machines.:

  She and Nadi watched their uncanny movements a little longer, surveying the octagonal hall where people paused in conversation and passed through from every room. Music fought to be heard above the conversation that echoed off the glass dome. Beatrice looked up, but all the light made the dome a faceted reflection of the scene below, and she couldn’t see the stars.

  “Oh,” Harriet said. “That’s Julia Robicheaux.”

  Beatrice found her surrounded by a phalanx of girls in richly decorated gowns, their hair dressed high, maquillage on their faces. They watched Harriet like a pack of sleek hunting cats, and the one in the middle, the one who had the same angled gull-wing eyebrows as her brother, beckoned to Harriet.

  Harriet strode forward without a shred of hesitation. Beatrice watched as they formally greeted each other with bows, and Harriet laughed at something Julia said. Then the girls all gathered around, questioning Harriet. Her answers made them laugh, and as a pack, they stalked away into one of the side rooms out of Beatrice’s sight.

  Harriet hadn’t even looked back. Beatrice cast about for her mother, but she was already drawn into a conversation with a woman and her husband. Beatrice was alone.

  She could find Ysbeta. She had to be in one of these rooms. Perhaps she was dancing? Beatrice moved toward the music, crossing the octagon to a ballroom. A long line of dancers flourished small squares of silk as they traced out complicated footwork. That was the breakwater, named because the movement of the couples dancing was like the breath of the sea.

  “Miss Clayborn?”

  Beatrice smiled at a pink-cheeked man without the flickering crown of sorcery in his aura. “I am.”

  “Sir Charles Cross,” the young man said, and his smile was pleased. “Have you only just arrived?”

  “We were late,” Beatrice said, and Charles shook his head.

  “Only three dances. Nothing unforgivable. Do you dance the basketweave chase? It’s next on the list.”

  “I know the steps,” Beatrice said. “I’m looking for my friend. Ysbeta Lavan?”

  “She’s probably with Bard,” Charles said, and offered his hand. “I’ll help you find her after we dance.”

  “Miss Clayborn!”

  Beatrice smiled at another man, trailed by Danton Maisonette. Danton curled his lips in a passable effort, but his companion turned a dazzling smile on Beatrice, shiny and dimpled. “I’ve been waiting to meet you. You disappeared at the Assembly Ball, where I meant to ask you to partner me. Please accept my invitation to dance.”

  What was happening? “I’ve accepted Mr. Cross’s invitation already, Mr.—”

  “Poli,” the gentleman said, and Beatrice did her best not to stare. “Elon Poli.”

  “The actor?”

  “Indeed,” Mr. Poli said. “I saw your painting in the ingenue’s gallery and knew I must meet you. You will tire after too much dancing. May I walk you around the garden?”

  “You are too bold,” Danton said, “to ask such a thing of a woman alone. I would like to talk to you, Miss Clayborn, in the company of my sister—”

  “Miss Clayborn.”

  Another gentleman pushed his way into the arc of men trying for her attention. Beatrice wanted to pretend to faint and remain in the ladies’ lounge for the rest of the evening. She smiled at the newcomer, who had a ruby pinning down his cravat that would pay Father’s mortgage.

  “I am Peter Fowles, Lord Tiercy. Is your father in attendance?”

  Lord Tiercy’s father was the minister of finance. He was an initiate of the rose, from the ring on his hand and the dagger at his hip. He wished to speak to her father? “He remained at home,” Beatrice said.

  “I should like to invite both of you to luncheon at the tearoom in the Bendleton chapterhouse—”

  “The dance is about to begin, gentlemen,” Charles said. “Don’t crowd the lady so.”

  They all stepped back, and Charles led her out of the scrimmage and onto the dance floor, joining the end of a very long line. “I am sorry. You must feel positively hunted, after all that.”

  What in Heaven was happening? They parted, and Beatrice turned to greet the woman on her right with a courteously bended knee, then she rose on her toes and kicked one foot forward, stepping to the center to circle her partner.

  “I admit I have never been the focus of so much attention.”

  “Bargaining season is said to be the grandest time of a woman’s life,” Charles said as they linked arms and smiled at one another. “That nothing matches these weeks of gaiety and friendship.”

  “I have heard that as well,” Beatrice said, and skipped across the line to greet the lady on her other side. She smiled, but it was Danielle Maisonette, pretty, blond, and in an overdone dress. Well! So much for friendship from that corner. Beatrice let her arms float from her shoulders as she met Charles Cross again.

  “I wonder what it’s like after,” her partner continued, “for the poor woman who marries a country lord, or a man who prefers his wife snugged up away from society. I have need of a wife who can manage my many social affairs.”

  As if a wife were a position like one’s man of business. “Do you host many social occasions, Mr. Cross?”

  He looked at her with an amused twinkle. “You don’t know who I am.”

  “I confess I recognize your name, but I don’t know if you’re a musical Cross or a political one.”

  “My uncle is Philip Cross, the minister of foreign affairs,” he said, and Beatrice spun away to dance a figure eight with the friendlier woman on her right. The nephew of the minister—who meant to become minister himself. An established, connected, influential man, who needed an astute and clever wife as a partner in pushing forward this agenda or that.

  “I am embarrassed,” Beatrice said, as they joined in the center once more. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Cross. Are you enjoying the party?”

  Father would be overjoyed at the possibility of international connections. Mr. Cross would make someone a wonderful match.

  “I have met some very promising ladies,” Mr. Cross said. “Have you ever hosted a party before?”

  The Clayborns weren’t popular enough for that. Father preferred climbing the ladder in Gravesford when he traveled there twice a year, disdaining at-home country company. Did he even know how important it was that a young woman demonstrate her skill at organizin
g social events? Harriet had to become a hostess, and swiftly.

  But for Mr. Cross, all she had was a smile. “Not outside of birthdays for my sister.”

  Stalwartly, he tried again. “Do you speak many languages?”

  “Only Llanandari, I’m afraid. Enough Valserran to read.”

  He picked his smile up off the floor. “Do you know what has Eliza Robicheaux looking so amused?”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t met Miss Robicheaux, and I haven’t had much opportunity to hear the gossip.”

  The quality of his smile diminished. “Well, are you interested in these things?”

  Mrs. Lavan had been correct. She didn’t have what a powerful husband needed in a wife. Her lack of education, connections, and skill in social organization would be a disappointment to every connected man she met. Mr. Cross would finish this dance and never speak to her again. She had to try harder. “I think it would be a very great undertaking to manage a busy social life,” Beatrice said, “but an interesting one.”

  “Given the correct assistance, I think you’d do wonderfully. Is it true that you only have one sister?”

  Beatrice skipped to her left, but the blond woman beside her refused to smile, her thin mouth pursed up tight. They danced apart and Beatrice took Mr. Cross’s hands as they wove back and forth.

  “It’s true. I have one sister. She’s three years younger than me.” And no brothers, which was what he really wanted to know.

  “That’s a very small family. Do you have a great many cousins to make up for it?”

  “I have six aunts and three uncles,” Beatrice said. “One of my uncles is not much older than I.”

  “And are they mostly on your mother’s side?”

  Beatrice tilted her head. “Three of the aunts and one of the uncles,” she said. “Do you also have an abundance of cousins?”

  “Too many,” Mr. Cross replied. “What quality do you most want your children to have?”

  Beatrice sucked in a breath. It didn’t matter if she had none of the skills he wished for in a politician’s wife. Udo Maasten at least was interested in her skill at business. For Mr. Cross, only her ability to give him magical offspring mattered. If she told him about her father’s debts, he’d probably pay for them without a murmur.