by Rosalyn Eves
I did not see Gábor at once and wasted a few precious minutes hunting around the flower beds. Then he stepped out of the shadows beneath a tree.
He wore a fine lawn shirt beneath a silver-embroidered dolman, and my heart lifted, a balloon buoyed by warmth and joy. I raced toward him as fast as my dainty high-heeled shoes would allow.
“I have missed you,” Gábor said, by way of greeting.
“And I, you,” I said, taking the hands he held out to me and drawing him back into the shadows. No sense in making it easy to be seen.
For a long moment we said nothing, only looked at one another. His eyes traced over my face as though memorizing it. My gaze dropped from his dark eyes to his lips, then back up again. Though his face was nearly as well-known to me as my own, I never tired of seeing it. I wanted him to kiss me, but we hadn’t much time, and Gábor would not rush this.
So I leaned in, and Gábor, releasing a tiny sigh, bent to meet me.
His lips were warm and familiar, but there was nothing particularly safe about this kiss. Heat burst through me with mingled excitement and a painful sweetness. The kiss deepened, his tongue brushing lightly against the tip of mine, his hands tightening against my back. I ran my fingers up the embroidery on his sleeves before tangling them in his hair, feeling his warmth even through my gloves.
I could have stayed there forever, in a cocoon of kissing and murmured endearments, but I did not know how much time we had. Catherine would surely send a servant for me as soon as the archduke showed up.
I pulled away, conscious of a throbbing in my lips, and asked, “Were you able to see the processional?” As though this were an ordinary moment, a conversation between mere acquaintances and not two people who had been intimately wrapped up in one another only moments before.
“Some,” he said, curling his fingers around mine. “Those of us who were not in the processional were crammed into a servant’s room with only a single window and an angled view on the street.”
I thought of the well-appointed salon I had sat in, attended by servants, and felt a pang of guilt and frustration. Why was society so intent on maintaining its social hierarchies?
Gábor continued. “The others were not happy about the praetherian presence—they believe Russia is building toward some independent action, regardless of the Congress.”
“What do you believe?”
He sighed and released one of my hands, shoving his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. Every time I approach certainty, I find myself with more questions. I think I told you that Kossuth wanted me to speak with Dr. Helmholz?”
I nodded.
“I have been assisting the doctor a little, with his research, when Kossuth can spare me. Mostly writing out his results in a legible hand, but also learning more of scientific methods. I don’t believe Congress can deal with the praetheria unless they understand them.”
“Must they be ‘dealt with’? Can’t they simply live among us?”
“I don’t know. I wish I could believe, as you do, that the praetheria are not dangerous. But I saw the aftermath of that battle in Buda. The creatures make dangerous enemies.”
“We make enemies of them when we treat them so poorly.”
Gábor rubbed his thumb against the back of my hand almost absently. “I don’t disagree. And I don’t mean to argue with you. Only, some of Dr. Helmholz’s results are troubling, and I cannot be certain of his methods. I think his research may not be entirely ethical. He refuses to let me into his laboratory.”
“Have you told Kossuth?”
“I’ve tried. But Kossuth doesn’t want to introduce further complications when the Congress is already so fraught.”
I knew I should feel troubled that Gábor was so worried about the doctor’s research, and a part of me was, but a greater part of me was singing. That Gábor, always so careful of his thoughts and feelings, should share with me meant he trusted me—and that trust meant more than an open declaration from most men. “If it disturbs you, I know someone who might be able to discover more,” I said, thinking of Borbála Dobos.
“Thank you,” Gábor said. He tucked my arm through his and smiled down at me. “And you? Are you well?”
I thought fleetingly of the archduke coming to meet me in the salon where Catherine waited. I could give Gábor a quick answer and make my way back upstairs. That was, no doubt, what I ought to do. But I wanted to return his trust with my own, and anyway, I’d rather be in the gardens with Gábor than any number of fine rooms with any number of archdukes.
“I’m afraid,” I said. “I worry that the Congress will shut away the praetheria, that Hungary will be engulfed by a civil war, and that everything we fought for, that Mátyás died for, will be lost.” Gábor slid his arm around me, and I leaned into his shoulder, finding comfort in the steady thump-thump of his heart. Already, the anxieties of the past week sloughed away, and I had the curious sense that the world was righting, after spinning awry on its axis for a very long time. This is why my heart kept returning to Gábor, despite our disagreements—because when I was with him I felt stronger, more sure of myself, than when I was alone.
“I know now why I break spells. I am chimera. I have two souls, and those souls rupture charms. But I still don’t understand my abilities. If I’m honest, they frighten me. I cannot control the degree of destruction I unleash.”
Gábor was silent for a moment, but his silence was not judging. His eyes were gentle, thoughtful, and I loved him for listening, for not rushing to find me a solution or to talk over my fears. “I would not want anyone, least of all you, to fear who they are. Your powers may be destructive, but you are not.”
“I wish I could be so certain.”
“I wish I could give you some of my faith.” He hesitated. “You don’t have to save everyone, you know.”
I thought of the praetherian, shot dead in the ballroom, of the horrible helplessness that had gripped me. “Someone has to try.”
He shook his head. “Most people don’t want someone to save them. They want the resources to save themselves. You shouldn’t assume responsibility for people who haven’t asked it of you—no one can bear that weight.” He dropped a kiss on my hair. “Not even you.”
From anyone else, I might have felt patronized. But all I felt from Gábor was a vast well of concern. I shifted, turning toward him and raising my face for another kiss.
“Miss Arden?” Franz Joseph’s voice rang through the garden, and I broke away from Gábor, my cheeks burning. I stepped forward into the light beyond the trees, Gábor close behind me. The archduke scurried toward us. “There you are! Your sister said you were not feeling well?”
“The room was a little close,” I said, conscious of Gábor watching me, a question in his dark eyes.
“I beg your pardon,” the archduke said, registering Gábor behind me and drawing up his chin. “I did not know you were with someone.”
“A friend from the Hungarian delegation, here to see the processional. He was in the gardens when I came down,” I said, wondering if my hair was still neat or if I looked as though I’d been illicitly kissing someone. Which, of course, I had—but while being well-kissed was delightful, appearing to be well-kissed was disgraceful. “Kovács Gábor.”
Gábor bowed, then murmured his excuses. I fought the urge to watch him walk away and turned my attention to Franz Joseph. The archduke took my gloved hands in his, kissing each in turn. His military costume was nearly overwhelming this close, the high collar encrusted with gold and glittering medallions at his breast.
I waited. The archduke had not yet released my hands, and his fingers tightened around mine as though he were agitated. I was suddenly very conscious that we were essentially alone and wished I could pull my hands back.
“I do not quite know what to say.” Color flooded the archduke’s face. In that moment he appeared much younger than his eighteen years, and I lost some of my nerves. “When I sent my note earlier, I only wanted
to see you for a moment. But now…You saw the parade, did you not? And the Russian delegation?”
I nodded.
“There is so much unrest in my country. The common people in Vienna are restless, wanting freedoms we cannot give them. Croatia and Romania pull at their leash, wanting to be free of Hungary, perhaps of the empire itself. Hungary has already broken most of her old ties. The empire is not what it once was—and now this. If the praetheria do indeed throw their lot in with Russia, we cannot withstand that army.”
My heart recognized the look on his face—that aching sense of responsibility. You don’t have to save everyone. “The unrest affects all of us. May the Congress have the wisdom to guide us.”
Franz Joseph shook his head, one brown curl falling over his brow. “I don’t know if the Congress can act soon enough—and there are too many competing interests and alliances. Hungary sides with Britain and Poland, the Ottomans want to preserve their neutrality, and the German states, though ostensibly on Austria’s side, are not strong enough to support us. France is on the verge of its own civil war, and the Italians hate us for what we did in Lombardy.”
“Surely if it came to war, Hungary would side with you? We are still part of the empire. And Britain cannot want to see a stronger Russia.”
“Perhaps. I don’t know. All I know is that I must do something. I have a proposition for you. You are well-respected in Hungary, and the common folk here see you as something of a people’s hero. More than that, the praetheria seem to like you. I believe if I were to align my fate with yours—that is, if we were to marry—it would calm much of this unrest. At the least, an engagement would buy us time to find a peaceable solution.”
I fell back a step in astonishment, my blush rising to meet his, and the archduke released my hands at last. An actual marriage had played no part in his mother’s talk of illusions. “You want to marry me? Surely this is not what your mother wants for you.”
“She has encouraged me to seek you out, though she does not know I am here now. But I have thought a great deal about this and have concluded it would be good for my country—and for me. The Russian actions today only confirmed my inclination. You are everything I should like in a wife: intelligent, spirited, passionate about justice.”
“But you do not love me.”
His blue eyes met mine, unwavering. “I esteem you greatly. And I have not ever expected to marry for love.”
Gábor. My heart pinged. I knew it was not common among my class, but I had hoped to marry for love. Much as I liked the archduke, I did not love him. I could not marry him.
Not even for a kingdom? I might be an archduchess—an empress, even.
My chimera self stirred, responding to possibility. A part of me should like that very much. Too much.
Not even to stop a war? Was it selfish to want to marry for love, if not doing so could prevent a catastrophe? Surely there were other ways to avert war.
Franz Joseph stepped closer. “Miss Arden—may I call you Anna? I—” He broke off, scanning my face with curious intensity.
He dipped his head toward me, and I registered his intention too late to forestall him. I turned my head, and his kiss landed on my cheek: a butterfly-soft touch of flesh on flesh.
The archduke drew back, his face scarlet, his hands falling to his sides. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t—I mean, I didn’t—”
His incoherence touched me. Had he ever kissed a girl before?
“You don’t need to apologize, Your Highness. You do me honor.”
A spark lit his eyes. He looked as though he might attempt another kiss. I held up my hand. “But I do not think now is the time or place.”
Franz Joseph glanced around the garden as though belatedly recalling where we were. “You’re right, of course,” he said with dignity, as though I were not the worst kind of hypocrite for kissing Gábor in the garden and then implying it was bad manners for the archduke to attempt to do the same. “I have shocked you. Please don’t answer now—think on my offer. Together, we might stop a war.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I could not possibly say yes, not with the memory of Gábor’s kisses so fresh on my lips—but I could not bring myself to say no either.
Catherine was waiting for me at the edge of the garden. My body flushed hot and then cold. How much had she seen? How much had she heard? She did not seem particularly elated, so she could not have heard the archduke’s proposal. I allowed my stiff shoulders to relax a fraction.
Then she spoke. “I saw you, Anna. I came down with the archduke, but he asked that I grant him privacy to speak with you. I saw that boy.”
“He has a name. Gábor.”
“And who is his family? What are his prospects? An archduke is interested in you. You have opportunities now that I—that most women—would be overjoyed to have. Do not throw this away because you think you might be in love. That love will be cold comfort when you find society closed to you and you struggle to make ends meet.”
I had no good answer for her, not when my heart and head were currently warring over Franz Joseph’s surprise proposal. I knew what I wished to do, and what society would say I ought to do. But which of those two things was right?
When I didn’t answer, Catherine threw up her arms. “If you won’t look after your interests, I must. Mama left you to my care. Until I’ve had a chance to consult with her, you will stay home.”
“Am I to be barred from everything? What of the Congress?”
Catherine pressed her lips together. “Very well. Church, the Congress, outings involving the archduke.” She ticked the items off on her fingers. “But nothing else.”
And just like that, my world, which had seemed so expansive only moments before, contracted with a bang.
*
The morning after the Corpus Christi parade, I sent a note to Borbála Dobos with Gábor’s address, indicating that my friend knew something of Dr. Helmholz and his praetherian research that might interest her. And then I waited.
I spent the week at home, the picture of insipid young womanhood, setting dreadful stitches in my embroidery and reading torrid poetry that put me in an even more wretched mood. I rambled around the flat at all hours of the day in a vain attempt to shake the tightness from my skin. I fantasized about breaking out of the house: tying my sheets together and escaping through my window as I had once before, or climbing onto the roof from one of the tiny attic rooms where the servants had their quarters and jumping onto the neighboring building and making my escape by rooftop. I might have snuck out in earnest, but I did not want to give Catherine more ammunition without good cause. More than once it crossed my mind that if I accepted Franz Joseph, Catherine could not keep me so confined.
Evenings were punctuated by quiet family dinners, just Catherine, Richard, and myself. Most days Richard returned from the embassy looking increasingly grim.
“The Russians are talking of pulling out of the Congress and opening their borders to the praetheria,” he said, spearing a bite of quail. “Ponsonby thinks it will mean war. Perhaps I should send you both back to England while I still can.”
“I spoke with Mama via the embassy’s mirror conduit,” Catherine said, almost defiantly, as though I might question her for borrowing one of the embassy’s powerful mages for such a domestic errand. She wrapped her hands across her stomach. “She thinks you should return.”
I couldn’t seem to swallow. “Please don’t send me back. She’ll marry me off to the first country squire she can find—in Yorkshire, if she can manage it. I’ll never have the chance to do anything that matters.”
“You’ll have children,” Catherine said. “And the affairs of the estate.”
A slow death by stagnation, then. The children I would not mind so much, but I wanted it to be my choice. “Please. I know I’ve made a mull of things. But what is happening here with the Congress matters. I want to be part of that. I want to be something for myself before I have to be everything for
a husband, for children. Surely you can understand that?”
Catherine went very still.
“If it matters to her so much, surely we can afford her another chance,” Richard said, and for the first time I could see why Catherine might have wanted to marry him. I could have kissed him myself. “Besides, I don’t think the archduke would like it if you took Anna away so soon.”
Catherine sighed. “Very well. But one more mistake, Anna…I want your word you will be careful.”
“You have it,” I said.
Anything was better than going back to England. If I crossed my fingers in my lap, I took care to do so where Catherine could not see me.
*
Ginny brought me a note the next morning: it had been given to her by a boy on the street as she emerged from the archduchess’s school. My name was scrawled across the front in Gábor’s writing. I snatched the note from her and buried it in a small pocket in my skirts.
“Did you tell Catherine?”
Ginny moved past me to plump the pillows and smooth the counterpane on my bed. “And have I worked for you these six years and more without you learning this about me? I don’t tell tales, Miss Anna.”
I ducked my head, chagrined. “I know. Truly, I do. It’s just—this confinement is fraying my last nerves.”
Ginny looked at me with some sympathy. “Your sister only wants your happiness. She just believes it will come in a different form than you do.”
“I wish she would trust me to know my own mind.”
“And do you?”
I brushed her question aside. “How are your lessons?”
Ginny’s eyes brightened, and she launched into an explanation of what she had been learning, ending with a small demonstration of a new light illusion that sent daisies sprouting across my room. “It’s wonderful to belong to something, miss, something bigger than what I do here. You know that. It’s like a bit of wine, it is. Makes you feel warm and strong together.”
“Yes,” I said, wondering what else Ginny was learning at this school of hers. It struck me that Ginny’s life would not always be intertwined with mine: magicians were in high demand. She would be a fool, when her schooling ended, to stay as a lady’s maid. I knew I should be happy for her, for the opportunity it afforded, but as Ginny bundled up a dress of mine for brushing and bustled out, I already felt the cold of her absence.