Benedicta had appeared out of nowhere and was now grasping at her hand, her eyes shining with excitement.
‘He’s found him! We’d nearly given up hope, but he’s found him!’
Lily let herself be dragged into the Almshouse. At first, all she saw inside was what she usually saw – row upon row of people who had nowhere else to go, slumped in pews, talking together, living despite everything.
And then she recognized him. At the back. Being fed a bowl of soup by Theo, who was holding the spoon so very carefully. Ragged, crumpled, but alive.
‘Count Stelli,’ Lily breathed.
Theo looked up and gave her a tired smile. He seemed brighter than he had for months.
As Lily watched, she became aware of another person beside her. Laud had also returned and he looked on with a less sympathetic eye.
‘He doesn’t deserve it,’ he sniffed, ‘not after he disowned him. Not after spending his whole life treating others as if they were worthless.’
‘I know,’ Lily mused, looking back at him. ‘But isn’t that the point?’
Laud considered for a moment. Then, perhaps, the edge of his mouth twisted upwards.
‘True enough.’
After that they just watched as Dr Theophilus lifted another spoonful of soup to his grandfather’s lips.
Chapter Fifteen
THE DAUGHTER
He had no idea how he had let himself be talked into this.
That was a lie, but it made him feel better. He knew exactly how it had happened. It had been Lily’s fault. He hadn’t felt comfortable for days after his ball, no matter how much Snutworth assured him it had been a great success. Those words of hers kept echoing in his head.
Eventually, everyone comes across a fight that they lose.
It had been running through his mind when he met with the jewellery consortium the day before and the results had not been good. It had been echoing in his ears when he read the reports that spoke of a sudden downturn in his profits. And it had kept on at him, until Snutworth, ever observant, suggested that he might not be entirely satisfied.
‘It’s just… I don’t seem to belong,’ Mark grumbled to Snutworth and Laud as they dined with him a few days after the ball. ‘It doesn’t matter how much I do for them, they still keep me out, treat me like some sort of pet, not a real businessman. I’m sure that silversmith yesterday was laughing at me and, if those figures you gave me were correct, it’s starting to have an effect on the business.’
‘Mr Mark, these things take time,’ Snutworth purred. ‘You are still very young. I’m sure that you frighten some of these more experienced people. And then there is the question of recognition…’
‘Everyone recognizes me,’ Mark said, thumping his knife on the table. ‘I’m famous. I’ve been in the news-sheets three times this month alone.’
Snutworth and Laud exchanged glances.
‘What I mean, sir,’ Snutworth began again, ‘is not so much recognition in that sense, but –’
‘You can move into Count Stelli’s tower, you can take his place, but sixty years’ worth of work and reputation might just be a little harder to trade for,’ Laud interrupted bluntly.
‘Stelli never worked for anyone but himself,’ Mark replied fiercely, ‘you know that. Anyway, they hire you and you’re not much older than me.’
‘Quite,’ Laud said with a shrug. ‘But I’m serving them, not competing for their position. And whatever you may think, these merchants have been at the top of their game for years. They don’t appreciate being told what to do by someone who hasn’t started shaving.’
Mark sat back in his chair and crossed his arms.
‘So… we need to make me look older, more respectable – at least as far as the other merchants are concerned,’ Mark mused. ‘Any thoughts?’
‘A false beard?’ Laud suggested, completely dead-pan.
‘Nothing so comical, Mr Laudate,’ Snutworth said, as a light came into his eyes. ‘I have a much more workable idea…’
Which was why he found himself, freshly ironed and smartened by Gloria, waiting to be let into the most unappealing building in the whole of the Aries District. He didn’t have a bouquet of flowers. That had been sent ahead.
The door creaked open and a thin, pale boy looked up.
Mark took a deep breath. ‘Mr Mark, to see Matron Angelina and Miss Cherubina.’
As he walked along the dingy corridors, Mark kept repeating a mantra. He had to remind himself why he was doing this, that Matron Angelina was one of the best-established figures in the city, that her orphanages were highly profitable, that her good word would cement him in position for years. That with the ball not having been the success he had expected it to be, and Lord Ruthven not treating him so favourably since Lily’s outburst there, he needed every ally he could get to prevent his businesses from collapsing.
But that came with conditions.
‘You must understand, Mr Mark,’ the matron said as she poured the tea, ‘that Cherubina is my only daughter and you are a very young man. I know that in some circles it is usual to arrange these matters immediately after both young people have passed their title days, but I should want to wait at least a year before the marriage.’
Mark swallowed his tea so fast that it burned his throat. Snutworth had implied that he could put it off for a few years at least! He looked up weakly through eyes still watering from the pain. The matron stared back at him appraisingly. From her tightly buttoned work dress to her scraped-back hair, everything about her seemed to be restrained. It made Mark, conservatively dressed in his most respectable blue jacket and sombre waistcoat, feel uncomfortably gaudy, and he found himself surreptitiously tucking his lacy cuffs inside his sleeves.
The matron pored over the bound copies of Mark’s business receipts that she had requested from the Directory. To show willing, Mark glanced at the records of the orphanage that lay open before him. They looked good, but he really wasn’t that interested. He was far too conscious of the person waiting in the next room.
He had still not met the girl he was in the process of becoming engaged to.
Matron Angelina closed the book with a snap and peered at Mark hawkishly.
‘All seems to be in order, Mr Mark. I am prepared to seal the relevant documents if you will. Naturally when it comes to the marriage further contracts will have to be made.’
‘Uh… naturally,’ Mark floundered.
The matron rose.
‘Now, I shall go and have the contracts drawn up. If you wish, Cherubina is in the next room. We shall be agreeing to two visits a week and I do not object if you wish to make the first one now.’
Mark rose in a daze, wanting to ask something else, anything to delay the moment. But Matron Angelina had already gone, as thrifty with her time as she was with everything else.
Mark looked towards the door to the adjoining room. His throat went dry. He should have been thinking of all sorts of things. He remembered Gloria teaching him how to compose himself and Snutworth advising him to stick to small talk. But, at this moment, all he could really think of was Laud’s advice, direct and to the point.
‘Remember, she’ll probably find this as awkward as you will.’
With that ringing in his mind, he knocked.
‘Come in, do!’
The voice that came from behind the door was young. Mark breathed his first sigh of relief. Looking at Matron Angelina, he wouldn’t have been surprised if her daughter had passed thirty summers.
He turned the handle.
‘Mr Mark! Do come and have some tea. We’ve room for one more, haven’t we?’
Mark had no objection to pink. Pink, in moderation, was a perfectly good colour. Cherubina did not have her mother’s sense of moderation.
He could have coped with the doll’s house and the frilly curtains. It didn’t bother him that he had to move aside a perpetually surprised-looking stuffed animal from his chair before he could sit down. He even didn’t mind having to kiss a hand so
covered in girlish glass jewellery that his teeth clacked when he touched it. What did disturb him, though, was the fact that the girl sitting across from him was surely seventeen or eighteen and yet, in her behaviour, she reminded him of his younger sister when she was six.
‘There you go,’ Cherubina said, coyly looking down at the table. ‘This is the best tea we have, Mr Mark.’
‘I’m… I’m sure you can just call me Mark, Miss Cherubina, since we’re about to be… um…’
‘Well, yes, I suppose so,’ Cherubina replied, fiddling with her bracelets.
Silence.
Mark become aware that Cherubina, despite her apparent ease, had not looked at him once since he had entered. She seemed as confused by all this as he was, as though he was nothing like what she had expected.
Be charming, that was what Snutworth had said. Charm her, just as he had won over the businessmen. How did he do that?
‘Charming –’ he cast around, looking for a clue – ‘charming… dolls, Cherubina.’
It was the right thing to say. Cherubina looked up at him and beamed a genuine smile of delight. ‘Aren’t they just? Why don’t you meet them all?’
Mark smiled weakly as she began to place them on the table in front of him. One of them caught his eye. Dark skin and hair, wrapped in white. Only a baby doll, but something about its little bead eyes made him uncomfortable. He turned it over to face the table. Then he felt something on his head. He looked up. Cherubina, triumphantly brandishing a small silver pair of scissors, held up a piece of his hair.
‘You don’t mind if I keep this, do you?’ she said earnestly. ‘I want to make a doll of you as well.’
‘Um…’ Mark couldn’t decide whether this was scary or flattering.
Cherubina played with the little lock of blond hair, holding it up to her own brighter ringlets.
‘Yes, you’ll look just right next to the doll of me.’
Happily, she opened the front of the immense, elaborate doll’s house and pulled a blue-coated male doll from the sitting room, which even had a miniature fire burning in the grate. She skilfully snipped off the doll’s brown curls, and tucked the piece of Mark’s blond hair into the doll’s collar, whispering something about gluing it on later. Then, with utmost care, she placed it next to another doll in an upstairs room. A doll with golden ringlets that was sitting at a tea table with even smaller dolls. In the corner, there was even a little doll’s house.
Scary, Mark decided. Definitely scary.
‘Can’t you just see the future laid out before us,’ Cherubina said dreamily.
Mark tried to speak, but nothing came out. His throat seemed to be constricting with horror.
She looked over at him quizzically.
‘You’re younger than I expected, but I don’t mind that. In fact, if you want the truth –’ she came closer – ‘I’m really glad. Some of the others Mummy invited round… Ugh!’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Old enough to be my daddy.’ She twisted a strand of hair round her finger and an oddly sad note crept into her voice. ‘I can’t help with the business, you see. I sold myself back to Mummy on my title day, but I’m no real use to her. So I knew she would have to sell me eventually.’
For a moment, her face seemed older, more like her real age, and despite himself Mark reached across to her. He could certainly sympathize with that. Then she giggled, instantly returning to her childishness, as if a door had snapped shut.
‘Let me see your seal,’ she said, peering at his outstretched hand. ‘Oooo, you wear your signet ring. Mummy told me only very ordinary businessmen don’t have a servant to bring it when they need it.’
Mark coloured, pulling it off his finger and handing it to her. Cherubina examined it thoughtfully.
‘Still, Mummy can’t be right about everything. You must be awfully rich.’ She giggled. ‘What is that, anyway?’
‘It’s a starfish…’ Mark mumbled. ‘My family… um… dealt in fish… and I started off an apprentice astrologer so…’
Mark trailed off. Cherubina was not even pretending to listen. She was too busy hunting for something.
‘Then your doll needs a golden starfish on his coat,’ she exclaimed, triumphantly pulling a spool of golden thread out of a drawer. ‘He needs to be just right,’ she added, frowning as she threaded a needle. ‘Nothing but the best for my Mark…’
Mark found himself concentrating on Cherubina’s fingers as they moved over the cloth. Anything to stop him from looking around the room and meeting the stares of the thousands of glass eyes that peered out from every corner. He could cope with the animals, but something about the dolls’ smiles made him shiver. Looking at Cherubina only made her turn away or coyly walk her fingers over the table to meet his. That made him jump, but when he tried to speak, she seemed completely absorbed in her work again. Only occasionally did their eyes meet, but when they did Mark felt more confused than ever. Because beneath the girlish simpering, he saw something else there – a look of utter relief. Almost unconsciously, Mark found himself wondering what the other suitors had been like.
Matron Angelina left them alone for an hour. When she entered, Mark got up a little too hastily, but before he could make his excuses, the matron laid out the betrothal contract on the table in front of him. Mark felt his throat go dry – in Cherubina’s dreamy company he had nearly forgotten how much of his future was being determined. Maybe he could defer things for a while, try to find another way out of his business problems. Nervously, he reached to twist his signet ring. It wasn’t on his finger – Cherubina still had it.
‘That’s all right,’ she said eagerly. ‘I’ll do it for you. I never get the chance. Don’t even know where my signet is.’
And she pushed his ring down, sealing beside her mother’s rising sun surrounded by six hands. The contract was signed and sealed, and Mark hadn’t even had to lift a finger.
He kissed Cherubina’s hand again as he left and bowed to the matron in a daze.
Once he had left the room, he jammed the signet ring back on to his finger so hard that it hurt. So, that was that, then. He’d been dreaming about his future for years and now officially his future was that.
Matron Angelina’s business had better keep on being the best.
He stalked down the corridors, a hot frustration growing inside him. When the door opened and his carriage was nowhere in sight, his blood began to boil.
He swept through the streets, dimly aware that his fine breeches were being splattered with mud from passers-by. The late-afternoon sun baked down on him. His coat was hot and uncomfortable, and every other thought was of that doll’s house, looming up before him, shrinking his life to fit inside.
He tried to avoid the crowds in the Central Plaza by pushing through the Taurus District, but the streets here wound around each other, matching his meandering, twisting mind. By the time the welcoming towers of the Gemini District appeared before him, clean and grand as they rose into the heavens, the sun was dipping below the horizon. The evening seemed even hotter than the day.
The tower door slammed.
Hurriedly, a crowd of servants rushed forward to take his hat and coat. Mark had never understood how the Count could live with only one servant, but now he was not pleased to see them and shrugged off his coat without a word. He stormed up the stairs, throwing himself down on a seat in the Observatory, which was now more of an office. He jangled the bell.
The worst thing about it was that the day had gone as planned. By rights he should be pleased.
He stared down at his signet ring. A little piece of the fatal wax was still clinging to him. Warm and slightly sticky, like the touch of Cherubina’s fingers.
He rang the bell again.
‘Snutworth! Laud! Where are you?’ he called out.
He heard an approaching step on the stairs, and then a nervous tap at the lower door.
‘Come,’ he shouted.
The door rasped open and a hurried step ascended the iron stair. Mark hissed in irr
itation.
‘Gloria, what are you doing here?’
Gloria twisted one finger in her curls. If anything, she seemed even more agitated than usual, as though something had disturbed her.
‘Laud asked me to stay until you got back,’ she said, her eyes flicking around the room. ‘He needed to go and see some other clients.’
‘Really?’ Mark felt another surge of irritation. ‘Important clients?’
‘I think so…’ Gloria ventured, her eyes coming to rest on a wooden box on the table beside Mark.
‘Oh, good,’ Mark snapped. ‘I’d hate to think I was being abandoned for anyone unimportant.’
‘Mr Mark, Laud isn’t your servant,’ Gloria began gently, but Mark wouldn’t let her speak.
‘Of course not. Just as loyal as his payment. Everything on the wording of a contract, isn’t it?’ Mark felt the heat rise up into his head. ‘My life, everyone’s life, just bought and sold on the market, isn’t it?’ He sat back, already tired of her. ‘Well, no need to hang around here when your services are not needed, Gloria. You know your way out.’
Gloria nodded, but stood still, her attention still pointedly on the box. Mark stared back, waiting.
‘Mr Mark,’ she said at last, ‘I wonder, just before I go, if I could have…’
‘I don’t remember any mention of your little treats in the contract, Gloria,’ Mark said darkly.
He knew exactly what she wanted. That was where he kept his regular order from Miss Devine.
‘Well, no, sir. We agreed it wouldn’t be in the contract, as Laud might not have liked it if he’d seen it, but… we agreed…’
‘Can you prove that, Miss Gloria?’
Mark knew what they had said. But as far as he was concerned, he gave those ‘treats’ to Gloria out of friendship. He was not feeling friendly tonight.
Gloria bit her lip, her hands fidgeting.
‘No, Mr Mark. I… I wouldn’t ask, but… it’s been days and I just need a little…’
She looked up at him then, her eyes imploring. But he met her gaze with a stony glare. When Gloria looked at him, all he saw were those dolls.
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