by Erin Satie
He took a fresh look at the problem in the clear light of morning.
Before, he had treated Lady Lily like a neutral party. Someone who could be swayed to his side through argument or… emotional attachment. Now that the scales had fallen from his eyes, he would try a different approach. She was a strategist. A skilled manipulator. If she played at politics, it was because she wanted something. If he found out what, he could exploit it. Perhaps negotiate a trade.
He considered going straight to Clive with information about the Orphan Pearl. But he had designed the bet, and if he had won he would have expected her to stand by her pledge. He could do no less. She had not, after all, played foul. She had never misrepresented herself. Quite the contrary, actually. She had warned him, in plain words, that he should not think too highly of her.
And still he’d believed only the best. His stupidity staggered him.
But now he understood. And if he could engineer another opportunity to speak to her, they could speak frankly. The situation was not beyond salvaging.
A few days later, he sat down to dine with Jack Pym at the Athenaeum. Pym hailed a stranger, round-faced but lanky, with thinning hair and owlish eyes, who returned the greeting and pulled an empty seat up to their table.
“Ho, Pym. You haven’t shown your face around here in a while. Tell me—”
Pym interrupted. “Every time someone asks me about my next project, I erase a line of poetry.”
“Well,” said the stranger, “conversation over, then.”
“Listen, Valery, I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine. This here is John Tacitus Ware—”
“I’ve heard of you, haven’t I?” Valery asked.
“It’s possible.”
“Something about a mountain? Daring rescue?”
“That was a long time ago,” John said. “But, yes.”
“Ware, I have the honor of introducing you to Theodore Valery, a talented playwright and librettist who’s taken London by storm…” Pym paused. “Is there a particular accolade you’d like me to share?”
“Well, you know that show at the Capital? The reviews haven’t been bad—”
“But tickets are sold out for weeks,” said Pym. “Everybody’s talking about it. You had a hand in it?”
“All the dialogue and all the songs. But the crowds aren’t coming for me. They’re coming to see Lady Lily Spark, back from the dead—”
“Who?” John asked, suddenly paying much closer attention. “She can’t be performing.”
“No, of course not.” Valery crossed his arms on the table and leaned into his story. “But she’s taken a box seat for the evening performance every day this week. You know the Earl of Bexley is a part owner of the theater?”
John shook his head. “Bexley?”
“The Duke of Hastings’s heir. But they’re estranged, and Hastings has never set foot inside the theater.”
“I had no idea,” John murmured.
“It seems Bexley has some unsavory habits,” said Pym. “Though he’s put his weight behind several truly marvelous productions over the past year—well, he and his countess. She’s the one who hired me.”
“But what were you saying about Lady Lily?” John pressed. “I can’t imagine her attendance alone is enough to draw a crowd.”
“You must not know the lady’s reputation,” said Valery. “It’s absolutely like her to walk right into a tense situation and bring all that trouble to the surface. Stir things up.”
“Come now, Valery,” chided Pym. “Let’s not pretend you’ve ever moved in the same circles as Lady Lily. It’s all rumor to us.”
“Not until the last week, certainly.” Valery laughed. “But I shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds. People come to spy on Lady Lily, but they stay for the show. I’ve already gotten several inquiries about new work.”
“I know we’ve just met and it’s early to be asking for favors—but is there any chance you could get me a ticket?” John asked. “I’d be very grateful.”
“You see how it works,” joked Valery to Pym. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to my career. Of course I can get you a ticket, Mr. Ware. It would be my pleasure.”
True to his word, Valery met John underneath the sheltered colonnade that lined the theater’s grand entrance. The playwright escorted John through the door, waved the ushers away, and led him up a wide, curving flight of steps that circled around a blazing chandelier whose hundreds of candles dripped wax that hardened into pellets before hitting the marble floors below.
“It’s not the best seat in the house,” Valery apologized, as they reached the top of the first staircase and started up another, much narrower one. “But you’ll hear well enough.”
“It’s perfect. If you ever need a favor, and I could be of service, you have only to ask.”
“I’ll take you up on that.” Pausing at the entrance to a balcony crowded with hard, narrow seats, Valery pointed. “Third row from the front. Second in. Your view of the stage won’t be very good, but Lady Lily sits in a balcony directly opposite, one level below. You’ll see her perfectly. Shall I leave you to it?”
He was surrounded by young men just out of Oxford, families in their Sunday best, several groups of young matrons. It was hard to believe that so many ordinary, perfectly respectable citizens would spend a whole evening at the theater just to catch a glimpse of Lady Lily. Valery must have underplayed his own role in the production’s popularity.
The door to Lady Lily’s box opened just as the orchestra began to warm up. She swept in alone, swathed in black—a severely cut gown, stripped of adornment, matched with elbow-length gloves and a long lace veil that covered her head and shoulders.
A murmur rose up from the audience. The whole gathered assembly rustled like a living organism, straining in her direction. The young men to one side of him, the matrons on the other—they all looked.
Standing upright and facing the stage, she lifted her veil inch by inch. The low, rounded neckline of her gown left little to the imagination. She wore a necklace, a single thick rope of gold that pointed like an arrow toward the deep cleft between her breasts.
The veil rose higher, past her chin, revealing a closed mouth, a dreamy unfocused gaze. She stared into the distance as though she could see straight through the walls and streets of London into some far horizon. Every eye was on her, but she was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to notice.
But of course it was a pose. When she finally turned to face the crowd, nobody could have doubted it. She propped one palm on the rail and leaned over to survey her admirers, tipping the full magnificence of her bosom toward the audience.
Good God, but if any woman had ever been sent to earth for the sole purpose of making men weep with desire, it was she. She had the steely confidence of a courtesan. The poise of a queen. But that wide, mocking smile she cast out across the crowd? It was hers alone, and it hit him like a slap.
Lady Lily thought she could make every person present dance to her tune. She thought she held them all in thrall, as she’d held him—
But, God, she wasn’t wrong. The theater was packed. The librettist had all the work he could handle. And John was hard as a rock.
The discordant noise coming from the orchestra pit dwindled to silence. The audience followed suit and Lady Lily sat—slantwise, though, with one arm curved over the rail of the balcony. From his high perch, John could see the way she sat with her legs stretched long and loose before her, some dark jewel on her slippers throwing off sequins of light as she wiggled her toes.
A sweet, shy melody drifted up from the orchestra, faint enough that the sound of John’s chair scraping the ground made everyone in his section turn to frown at him. He was beyond caring. He slipped back down the narrow stairwell and down the corridor lined with doors to the boxes.
Which one of them belonged to Lily?
Which one?
He paced back and forth, his agitation growing rather than diminishing. The overture fin
ished, and a song filtered through from the stage. A back-and-forth exchange between several singers, muffled by the intervening walls. Their voices were lively and carefree, the traditional mode of fictional characters on the verge of terrible and unexpected suffering.
John froze. What was wrong with him? All he had to do to locate Lady Lily was count. She’d been sitting in the fifth box from the end.
He found the right door, eased it open, and slipped inside.
The room beyond was small, square, papered in deep maroon stamped with a stylized flower pattern in gold. A lamp burned on a small table, and five empty chairs lined the walls to either side. The sixth chair would be out on the balcony, pressed into use by Lady Lily. At intermission she might step inside the anteroom to powder her nose, have refreshments brought in, mingle with friends.
The singing was louder in the anteroom. Clearer, too. Despite the quick tempo, he could understand some of the lyrics now.
John paced a slow circle and settled, finally, by leaning against the wall right next to the narrow door onto the balcony proper. Lady Lily had a secret. He knew it, and would use it against her. That was the game they were playing. He could exert pressure—make threats—while honoring to the terms of their wager.
The back-and-forth ended and a baritone began an aria. His voice, full of furious urgency, could have been a personal rebuke. It boomed into the theater with such force that the walls vibrated, the song of a man who would not lower himself one inch for the convenience of his fellows. A voice that proclaimed, with every note, that the singer would choose death over a blow to his pride.
What had happened to John’s pride? Had he abandoned it entirely?
The baritone reached a crescendo. The orchestra followed his last, explosive notes with a clash of symbols. In the sudden and shocking silence that followed, John heard the scrape of a chair and the light tap of slippered feet on the balcony.
The door opened. He had been standing in an unlit closet while she’d bathed in the blazing limelight. She ought to have been blind and fumbling while he reeled her in, comfortable with the dark. But she was dazzling enough to cancel out whatever advantage he might have gained. He could have lain before her like a sunbather, just to soak her in.
“Ware?” she asked. “Is that you?”
He reached out and cupped her cheek in his hand. Her skin was so smooth. Fine downy hairs along the cheeks, perfectly elastic.
Through the still-open door a buttery soprano carried clearly. The new song formed a sharp contrast to the baritone’s—it was sweet and plaintive, full of yearning. And Lady Lily made a little breathless noise, her lips parted, her eyes going wide.
He shifted his grip around to the back of her neck, so that he could tilt her chin up at the right angle. He slanted his head, sealed his lips to hers—and forgot about his pride, because it meant nothing.
Her lips were softer than any flesh had a right to be. They gave to pressure as though filled with air, two clouds plucked from the sky to warn him that he had tumbled out of reality and into a dream.
She fisted one hand in the sleeve of his evening jacket, and he felt the pull all along the seam at his shoulder. It slayed him, that she trusted him to keep her steady when just the touch of her lips made him lose all his bearings.
“Why are you here?” she asked, coming up for air.
He ignored the question and kissed her again. Licked her mouth open, shuddering when she yielded, and tangled his tongue with hers.
“Ware,” she gasped, pulling away again. Every soft pant made his heart beat faster. “What are you doing here?”
He shook his head, but it didn’t rattle any coherent thoughts loose. “Tell me what you want.”
She froze, holding him at bay. Her voice lowered to a purr. “What I want?”
He stroked his thumb along the line of her jaw, and the unyielding flex of muscle there cued him, as her voice hadn’t, to her mood. She could be impossible to read. “There has to be something that you want. Something I can give you.”
“For what?” she asked, pushing at him when he tried to kiss her again.
“The pearl.” He sighed. “To make you change your mind about the pearl.”
“The pearl,” she repeated, caressing the words. And then, before he knew what she was about, she molded herself against his side and stroked her palm down the front of his pants.
“Oh, God,” he croaked, collapsing against the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh, God.”
“Do you find this persuasive?” She made a fist around his cock and her little hand was appallingly strong. She squeezed and stroked with no hesitation at all. No consideration, either. It was unbearably good. “Does it make you forget about all your worries? All your fears? Everything you know about the world?”
That was never my intention. He opened his mouth, but she crossed two fingers over his lips and that was enough to silence him.
“Or does it make you angry? Even though you want it. Even though it feels good.” She twisted her arm, and he couldn’t breathe through the sudden shock of sensation. Like fire licking right up his spine. “Because it’s not a compliment, is it?”
She let go, marched to the door, and opened it. She looked like she had sprung, fully-formed, from a thundercloud—a child of storms—proud, furious, and completely without mercy.
He had never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
“You can go to hell, John Tacitus Ware.”
It took two steps to reach the open door. But the corridor yawned before him like his future—sumptuous but empty—and he could hardly bear the sight of it.
“Now that you’ve brought it up, hell doesn’t sound so bad,” he said. “After all, every promise the damned have made must burn to a crisp at the first lick of flame.”
He glanced sidewise at Lily, but she didn’t flinch. What had he expected? She had nerve enough for ten good soldiers. Maybe twenty.
“Perhaps I’ll see you there,” he added, before he crossed the threshold. The door shut behind him with a quiet, perfectly controlled click.
Chapter Fourteen
He arrived at Clive’s townhouse just after dawn. The footman who answered his knock showed him to a dim salon. A maid bustled in while he waited, pulling back the curtains and throwing open the windows. The meager sunlight banished most of the shadows but let in the morning chill. The maid fluffed the pillows on either end of a low wood-frame Grecian sofa, picked up a vase whose arrangement of fresh flowers had begun to wilt, and carried it away with a small curtsey.
Clive arrived a minute later wearing a brocaded banyan and velvet slippers over bare feet, his cheeks dusted with gold stubble. “This had better be important,” he said in a sleep-roughened voice.
“If you still think that ‘the orphan girl’ is important, it is.”
“Yes. Still important.” Clive blew out a resigned breath, ran a hand through his tousled hair, and dropped onto the recently fluffed sofa. “All right. Tell me what you’ve learned.”
“It’s a jewel,” John began.
Clive’s low laugh interrupted his explanation. “You did it.” He clapped, a hard, percussive strike of fingers against palm. “Good show. Tell me everything. What kind of jewel?”
“A pearl with a pedigree—legendary—dating back to the eighth or ninth century. If you could imagine something like the pope’s mitre and the queen’s ermine rolled up into a single treasure, this would be it. This pearl is so famous that it has a name: al-Yatima. Translated directly from the Arabic, it means ‘the orphan girl’.”
“Wait.” Clive rubbed his eyes. “Do you mean—”
“Probably.”
“A translation error?”
“If you’d been intercepting French mail, passing translated copies on to our diplomats…”
“And some clerk translated everything word for word, even if the rest of the letter happened to be in French, or Turkish… It makes me sick just to think about it,” said Clive. “We’ve wasted we
eks. Bloody ridiculous.”
“The tables have turned, Clive. You told me the French have been hunting for the Orphan Pearl in Turkey. They won’t find it. It’s in England. Lady Lily Spark has it.”
Clive paled. “You mean Hastings has it.”
“Not yet.”
“But why? What does she plan to do with it?”
“I don’t know her plans—but I can tell you what the French want it for.”
“You can?”
“I think they hope to make a gift of it to Mehmet Ali,” said John. “Do you know much about Mehmet Ali?”
“I know he’s a brilliant general. A strong ruler, harsh but competent, interested in all the right things: science, technology, education.”
“What about his history? How he rose to power?”
Clive shook his head.
“The Sultan sent him to Egypt as commander of a military regiment. Upon arrival, he discovered a healthy contingent of rebels in the country, Egyptians hoping to overthrow Ottoman rule. Instead of suppressing them, he cooperated with them. Helped them to expel the Ottoman governor. Once they’d succeeded, he invited all his allies—men he had worked and fought with, lords and soldiers, hundreds of people—to a celebration, ostensibly to honor one of his sons. When they arrived, he slaughtered them all.”
Clive passed a hand over his mouth. “This is true?”
“True, but not recent. It happened in 1810, 1811. Some years ago now. The fact remains that Mehmet Ali waded through blood to reach his current position. He’s accumulated a great deal of power, but in the most brutal, ignoble fashion. There is a stain on his reputation that he can never erase—”
“But perhaps he can cast it into shadow.” Clive nodded with understanding. “And jewels do glitter so brightly.”
“Exactly,” said John. “If the French make a show of giving him the Orphan Pearl, they’ll be establishing themselves as kingmakers.”
“That’s not the half of it. By accepting it, Mehmet Ali will be announcing his ambitions to the world: to see the Ottoman Empire fall, and replace it with a new empire of his own making. A new capital, a new dynasty… and a very old, very powerful symbol.”