The Sweetest Dark

by Shana Abe

  Every bit of me aching and aflame.

  • • •

  Saturday edged nearer. I tried not to think about it but it ate away at me anyway, ever gnawing at the back of my thoughts.

  I endured my classes. Monsieur Vachon had decided that since I was something of a prodigy, it would be his duty to deconstruct me, to take apart my talent piece by piece until he could reassemble it into a whole that better reflected him.

  In other words, he was forcing me to learn scales, to read music. I was as clumsy at it as the ten-year-olds in his beginners’ class, but at least it required something most of my other lessons did not: absolute concentration.

  Otherwise, my thoughts were flurried. An unpleasant tightness had lodged in my chest and it would not leave. Even the fiend could not make it leave.

  History, art, French. I’d stare at my textbooks and see nothing; I’d stare at my teachers and see nothing. At the walls. At my supper.

  Saturday tea was looming. Judgment Day, four days away. God knew what would happen to me if the duke didn’t like me. If Chloe decided to openly shame me. If Armand kept up his focused, uncomfortable attentions.

  If I used the wrong spoon for the sugar, or sneezed on the scones, or knocked over a priceless vase—

  Three days. Two.

  One.

  “I said, pass the butter.”

  Malinda was the unfortunate soul assigned to the seat next to mine for meals. She bore up under this regrettable burden as well as she could, which was to say not well.

  “Are you earless, Eleanore? The rest of us might enjoy butter on our potatoes, too. If you’re quite done with it.”

  I’d been clutching the butter bowl for who knew how long, staring at the ribbed yellow curls and seeing … nothing. I handed it over to Malinda without looking at her, glanced down, and realized I’d forgotten to take a curl.

  “Thank you,” she sneered. “So very kind of you.”

  “Now, Miss Ashland,” scolded Caroline, in a spot-on imitation of Mrs. Westcliffe. “One must always show charity to a charity case!”

  The other girls erupted into laughter.

  “It’s true.” Mittie was sawing through her portion of tonight’s beefsteak, which had been boiled to the consistency of shoe leather. “No matter how pathetic some girls may be, there is always the possibility they will sink lower without proper guidance. So, in that spirit: I say, Eleanore. Did you plan to comb out your hair for the duke’s tea?”

  “Or mend your skirt?” snickered Stella.

  “Oh, do wear the brown one! That one the color of mud. So fashionable!”

  “It truly compliments your lack of a figure!”

  Malinda was closest. I suppose that’s why it happened to her. She was the one at my elbow, stuffing her mouth with a cube of potato while glancing down the table at Sophia, eager for reassurance that she was in on the fun.

  I bent toward her and said quietly, “Choke on it.”

  Her eyes went round. Her hands flew to her neck. She began to cough and then to wheeze, her face turning red. Bits of food flecked her lips, and her fork clattered to the floor.

  Everyone stopped eating to stare. Lillian, at her other side, began hitting her vigorously on the back. Malinda lifted her arms straight out in front of her, waving them frantically. She was probably trying to get Lillian to stop.

  “Stop,” I said to them both, and at once Malinda sucked in an enormous gulp of air.

  Lovely, whispered my fiend, dancing with glee. Lovely, lovely power.

  Lillian hovered, a hand raised, ready to clout Malinda again.

  “Great heavens,” drawled Lady Sophia, rolling her eyes. “Such a fuss. Someone give her a drink of water.”

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t toss down your food so,” I said to Malinda. “Not very dignified, is it? You’ve potato all over your face,” I added.

  She seemed too out of breath to reply. She swiped her napkin along her mouth and glared at me. I smiled at her.

  My entire body buzzed with an energy I’d never felt before. It spread through me, marrow to blood to flesh, sinister and strong.

  I had done that to Malinda. I didn’t know how. But I had.

  I stared down at the food on my plate, the blanched meat and potatoes and asparagus tips sprinkled with pepper, and suddenly it all looked luscious.

  Beside me, Malinda was surreptitiously flicking food from her lap.

  “What are you planning to wear, Eleanore?” asked Sophia.

  “What do you care?”

  “I don’t, much. I was merely curious. I thought you might like to take a look at my wardrobe to see if something fits.”

  “What?” gasped Mittie and Lillian together, perfectly timed.

  Sophia shrugged. “Well, why not? She’s going to represent Iverson. Our class more than the rest. I’d rather she make a better impression on His Grace than not.”

  Beatrice laughed uncertainly.

  “Why don’t you come by my room after supper?” Sophia was ignoring all the other girls to hold me in her flat gaze. “And we’ll see what’s what.”

  “All right,” I said, lifting my chin. My newfound power buzzed through my veins like caffeine, like potent gin.

  Let her try to humiliate me with an ugly frock. Let her try.

  “Splendid.” She looked away once more and took a bite of the leathery steak, chewing and chewing and chewing.

  • • •

  I had not ventured into the section of the castle that housed the other students. I knew that they had their own wing and that it was adjacent to my tower. Sometimes late at night, when the wind stilled, I heard their whisperings, secret confidences exchanged. Sometimes when I looked down the connecting corridor, I saw the dull orangey glow of their lamps shining beneath door slits or silhouettes of girls slipping from room to room in their robes.

  But I’d not been invited into that realm, so I had not gone.

  Sophia walked ahead of me without looking back once, obviously certain I’d do nothing but follow. It was what all her other acolytes did.

  They marched behind us in a clot of purple skirts and disbelieving head shakes.

  Every door in this hallway looked alike to me, white paint with sharp black trim. I wondered if the other girls had to count them just to remember which one was their own.

  I suppose it was inevitable that I would enter one sooner or later. It was actually surprising that none of my classmates had thought to torment me this way before tonight.

  I might have been a princess in a tower, but Lady Sophia was an empress in a palace, one complete with a fireplace, fancy paintings, and a rug of lavender posies on cream so thick I sank with every step. All the furniture was rosewood, slick with wax. The windows had been hung with sheer, billowing curtains—bridal lace, just like in Mrs. Westcliffe’s office.

  My only consolation was that there were two beds in this room, not one, each pushed against a wall. So at least the empress had to share.

  Mittie went and flopped across the far one, eyeing me with outright hostility. She looked like an angry pug ready to mark its territory.

  The other girls positioned themselves silently along various settees and chairs. No one sat near Mittie.

  “Let’s see,” said Sophia calmly, still ignoring everyone but me. “I’d say we’re nearly the same size. If you’re a tad smaller, it won’t matter. Everything this season drapes so loose. I have a few things that might do.”

  She opened an armoire so huge it reached nearly to the ceiling. I glimpsed the same white and plum uniforms that hung in mine. She pushed those aside on the rod ruthlessly with one hand.

  “Here. And here. Perhaps this. This … this …”

  Colors began to spill forth, delicate creations of taffeta and organdy, serge and chiffon, pitched to the unoccupied bed like dirty rags, a few slithering to the floor. I remained near the doorway as she worked. I was waiting for the punch line of her jest.

  “Tea with His Grace, but not Sunday tea,” So
phia mused aloud, examining the pile of frocks. “So … I think not anything too bright.” She plucked free two of the gowns, handing them off to Lillian nearby. “And nothing too long.” Another gown gone.

  Her fingers traced the sheen of a blue satin tunic. “Too bold for an introduction to a duke? What do you think, Caro?”

  “I …” Caroline clearly didn’t know what to think. “I imagine so?”

  “Agreed.” The tunic was tossed to Lillian. “Ah, wait. I have it. Yes. Here we are.”

  She used both hands to free a new gown from the mess, shaking away all the rest in a tumble of unwanted glimmer. She turned around to me with it held up in front of her, a smile at last breaking through the calm.

  The dress was beautiful. Of course it was; all of them had been. This one was floaty and silvery gray, the color of the moonlit mist of my dreams. It had a silver sash and a dash of silver sequins along the bodice. I knew straightaway it was worth more than I’d make in a year as a governess.

  Probably more than five years.

  “Try it on,” Sophia said.

  I didn’t move.

  “Oh.” She looked around the room, sighing. “Right, everyone out. Give her some privacy. Go on.”

  Lillian went first, still mindlessly clutching the discarded dresses. The others filed out in an unenthusiastic line.

  “You, as well,” Sophia said pointedly to Mittie, who’d stayed on the bed.

  “Why should I? It’s my room, too.”

  Lady Sophia only stared at her. Mittie’s mouth tightened into a downward curve, her pug face gone sour. She was no match for Sophia’s ranking in the pack, and she knew it.

  “Fine,” she huffed, and went. The door slammed hard behind her.

  Sophia looked back at me. “You needn’t be concerned about undressing in front of me. I don’t care a whit about your body or your modesty.” She walked over, shoved the dress into my arms. Layers of gauzy silk puffed against my chest. “Try it on.”

  “Why?” I demanded. “So you can tell me to take it off and then kick me out in my knickers? Or, better yet, tell me I may borrow it and then accuse me of stealing it?”

  “No,” she said, flat again. “I want you to wear it to the tea.”

  “Why?” I wasn’t going to play her game, not without proper answers.

  “Because Chloe will be there. And I want to make her as miserable as I possibly can.”

  My arms dropped. The silver dress felt light as paper in my grip.

  “She’s my sister,” Sophia said. “Didn’t you know? Stepsister, actually. Her mother wed my father four years ago.”

  “You hate her,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

  “You’ve no idea.”

  “How will me in this make Chloe miserable?”

  “Anything that drags attention away from Chloe makes Chloe miserable.”

  The lamplight flickering on Sophia’s desk behind her burned a halo around her pale hair. She gazed at me bright and hard, an unlikely angel in a schoolgirl’s shape.

  I lifted a shoulder. “Fair enough. I’ll wear the dress.”

  Her distant smile returned. “Good.”

  • • •

  The route back to my tower lay thick with night. I knew the way well enough now not to need illumination. My feet took me where I needed to go.

  Sophia’s dress was a silken veil across my arms. It tugged at the shadows behind me, murmuring to the dark as I climbed.

  My door was closed, as I’d left it. But there was something at the base of it. Something new.

  It was a box. A small one, cardboard, unadorned. I picked it up and felt a weight sliding around inside, singing as it moved.

  By the light of my window I pried open the box to find a circlet of tiny roses made of solid gold, perfect as true life, attached to a pin.

  It was a brooch.

  A message had been written on the inside lid. It read: For your tea. And I didn’t come in.

  Chapter 12

  Tranquility at Idylling was surely the largest, oddest house ever graced with the word tranquil in its name. It was much newer than the usual aristocratic manor homes that dotted the English countryside; a sprawling, five-story wonder of limestone and stained glass and spires commissioned by the present Duke of Idylling after he’d decided to remove his family from Iverson Castle fifteen years before.

  In fifteen years, it had not been finished.

  Walking through its halls, it was easy to imagine that it never would be.

  Even on that day, the day of my first visit to the house, I was struck by its strange and awful beauty. It seemed a construction of elaborate nonsense, of inspiration and madness combined. Rounding each new corner was a lesson in surprise; it was always wise to glance both up and down before committing to the next step.

  Up, to see if you were about to be concussed by a stray bit of pipe or scaffolding.

  Down, to make certain the floor didn’t suddenly end.

  In time, however, I grew to learn the folly of Tranquility very well.

  Warrens of elaborately paneled hallways led to nowhere. Luxurious rooms of pressed copper and imported wood were left dusty and half complete. Sometimes there was a roof overhead, sometimes only the sky. A gorgeous grand staircase in the atrium curved sinuously up the wall before ending in open space. The very last step would drop you like a stone two floors down.

  As we motored up the drive, I noticed that the entire south wing tapered off in what looked like the middle of a window, tarps covering the roof and walls, a rubble of bricks and planks exposed to the elements, already dissolving in the salty wind. A solitary old man was stooped low over a retaining wall, slowly troweling mortar along a section at the top.

  “Astonishing, isn’t it?” Mrs. Westcliffe was my companion in the chauffeured automobile the duke had sent for us, both of us hanging on for dear life to the straps fixed to the doors.

  “Very,” I replied.

  Perhaps it was the silken dress on my body or the golden roses at my shoulder, but I had determined that I was going to be the most perfect, delightful charity student the duke had ever encountered. I was going to stand correctly, speak correctly, smile correctly, listen attentively. I was going to make him positively reel with my perfection, so I added another “Very,” with a trace more of awe. Mrs. Westcliffe granted me a glance of approval.

  “The duke designed it himself, every corner. When completed, Tranquility will feature some of the most modern and superb workmanship in the kingdom. Of course, with this dreadful war dragging on, finding enough laborers to finish it all has become something of a chore.”

  I wanted to ask about the fourteen years before that, but today I was the perfect charity student. So I merely nodded in sympathy.

  How do you do, Your Grace? So sorry to hear about your lack of peasant workers. What a rather large bother this war with the kaiser has turned out to be!

  A butler stood at the front doors to welcome us. Our little party from Iverson had taken up two of the duke’s automobiles; Chloe and two of her friends had crowded into the second.

  Apparently, when Armand had invited her to tea to make up for her fictitious game of lawn tennis, she’d taken it to mean she could bring along the other fictitious players. And neither of them, I noticed, was nearly as pretty as she. Not by half. One had a weak chin, and the other badly frizzed hair and a red runny nose.

  Clever Chloe.

  We all five stepped out of the autos and into a brisk spring wind. The girl with the bad hair gave a squeal as her dress flipped up, revealing her knees. She slapped it down again as if she were smashing a bug with both hands, still squealing.

  “Come, ladies.” Mrs. Westcliffe brooked no such nonsense from her own garments. Her skirts were firmly in hand as she led the way up the stairs into the house.

  I was the last one in. I paused for a moment to look back at the untilled field before the mansion, the crushed-shell drive and the azure sky. Past the slope of the field and a notched break
of trees, the channel glinted, pebbles of light broken only by the shadow island that was the duke’s former home, and now my own.

  “Miss?” The butler was waiting, watching me with a patience that might have disguised something deeper. Like pity.

  I scurried inside.

  Tea was to be held in one of the few chambers that had been fully completed. It wasn’t quite a parlor, at least not in the traditional sense. It resembled more an auditorium. There was no stage, but I was sure entire theatrical productions could take place within its walls. It was that huge.

  And everything—everything—was black and white.

  The marble checkered floor. The silk-papered walls. Clusters of tables and chairs of every size and shape, all black woods and spotless white velvets.

  Black-and-white rugs. Black-and-white drapery.

  A black grand piano stood ponderously in the middle of it all, a circle of chairs surrounding it like a noose.

  Uh-oh.

  And there were other people here, as well, about two dozen men and women standing in pockets and speaking in small, civilized voices. I saw no sunburned arms or faces, so they might have been the local gentry. Formal suits and starched-lace dresses and ostrich plumes in the ladies’ hair; everyone serious, no one smiling.

  Tea with His Grace looked to be a torturously grim affair.

  Mrs. Westcliffe was addressing a man who was leaning against the piano with one hand. I wasn’t surprised to see that he was dressed to match the chamber. Only the ring on his finger shone with color.

  He wore a ruby, a big one. I knew at once it would be clouded.

  “… and—ah, here she is.” With her back to the man, Mrs. Westcliffe threw me her pinched do-hurry-up look. “Come, Miss Jones. Come at once, if you please.”

  I did. I glided past the others and stood with my lovely, absolute obedience before the man and his ruby.

  “Your Grace, may I present Miss Eleanore Jones, the latest happy beneficiary of your great goodwill. Miss Jones, I have the honor of introducing His Grace, the Duke of Idylling.”

  I sank into a curtsy so low it made my knees ache, my gaze fixed to the floor.