Landry Park

by Bethany Hagen

  “I sent Elinor down with a message for you, but you were too busy with the festivities to pay her any mind.”

  “Do you think for a moment that I wouldn’t have come up if I had known he was in your room?”

  “I didn’t exactly know how to tell you, okay? If I had written a note, she probably would have read it, and I didn’t want to burden her with something like this. If you would not have been so intent on spending all night drinking and dancing, you could have seen him.”

  “And then what would you have done, David?” Cara followed up. “Sent him back out into the snow?”

  “I would have found a better place for him to hide!”

  “In a house full of people? With every room full? There was no better place than my bedroom,” I said.

  “There was the nuclear shelter.”

  Every gentry house had a well-stocked shelter underneath it in case of a nuclear attack. Food, water, medicine for up to a year. As far as I knew, no one had ever used them for anything other than tornadoes since they’d been built. “Father would have found out somehow. He knows everything about his property at all times,” I insisted. “I did the best I could.”

  We sat in silence for a while.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked again.

  “I don’t know, Madeline, what do you think we should do? Since you felt so capable handling this situation on your own before?” David’s voice was as flat as the steel-gray clouds outside.

  I hoped he could feel the anger I was radiating right now. I hoped it was burning him. “Why are you angry with me? You were basically the one who brought him here with that present.”

  “I told him to stay away,” David groaned. “I told him to mail the thing. I never imagined that he would run away and jump on a train.”

  “He’s hotheaded like his brother,” Cara said softly.

  David and I ignored her. “You should have planned it better,” I accused him.

  He threw up his hands. “I just wanted to do something nice for you. And somehow that makes me a terrible person?”

  I thought of the painting—the Madeline with cold eyes and the atomic crown. “It was a terrible present,” I told him, my voice shaking.

  “I thought a Landry like you would like it.”

  I was so furious I couldn’t even form words. He went back to staring stonily out the window.

  “I think we should try to break him out,” Cara said into the tense silence. “We just have to distract the constables or something—or maybe we could bribe them.”

  “Even with your money, it would be hard to bribe an officer under my father’s control,” I pointed out tiredly. “No amount of money you could give him would be worth his life. And trust me, if he ran, my father would find him.”

  She tossed her hair. “Well, we can’t just leave him to rot in jail.”

  “Or worse,” David added. “Who knows what your father will do.”

  I sighed, and picked at my white coat. “There is no other way. I am going to tell my father the truth.”

  David sat up. “Not about the revolution?”

  “Of course not! I just meant about Charlie hiding in my room. I’ll invent some story about meeting him someplace in town, and how I was friendly to him, and that he wanted to bring me a Solstice present.”

  “You really think that will help Charlie?” Cara asked doubtfully.

  “And you really think your father will buy that?” David asked.

  “If Father knows beyond a doubt that Charlie was not there to hurt anyone, he will have to let him go.”

  David shook his head. “It won’t make a difference. It’s all over now.”

  • • •

  The car dropped Cara at her house right as she received a message from Addison saying that the stress of the thwarted Rootless attack was too much for her and she was leaving straight for an airport to join her husband in New Miami.

  “Oh, thank God,” Cara murmured.

  “You won’t miss her?” I asked distractedly, thinking about the task that awaited me at my own house.

  “Are you kidding? I hope she stays in New Miami for a year.”

  “That’s healthy,” David remarked from his corner of the car.

  Cara’s teeth chattered as she climbed out of the car. “Lord, I miss my pink coat. It was so warm.”

  Pink coat?

  Where had I seen a pink coat before?

  “Cara, I saw your coat ages ago.” I paused. “At Jack’s house.”

  “What?” She seemed at a loss, and then tossed her hair over her shoulder, as if to cover her discomfort. “You must be mistaken.”

  The door closed abruptly and I sat back, trying to piece it all together. It all made sense. She had worn a coat outside the night of Marianne’s debut, and it had been taken by Jack or by another Rootless and then given to Jack. But why?

  Maybe her attacker had been a Rootless all along, and Cara had been telling the police the truth. But why would she lead me to believe it was someone else?

  And to confuse matters even more, I saw Ewan rounding the corner to the front of the house as we drove off, a leather charge satchel slung over his shoulder.

  “That was Charlie’s brother going in,” I told David. “You don’t think he’ll hurt Cara, do you?”

  “He’s probably going inside for charges,” he said dully. “She’ll be fine.”

  The last time I’d seen Ewan, he’d been so angry and vicious. I couldn’t imagine how furious he’d be now that the gentry had his brother.

  “But last time we saw him, he was so bitter. He made Cara cry.”

  David caught my look. “Trust me, Madeline. She’s safe with Jack’s son. I would turn the car around if I thought anything different.”

  We drove down to the skyline penthouse where David and Christine lived, passing glaciers and mountains of dirty city snow.

  “David . . .” I said as he opened the door, wondering if he knew the truth about Cara and her coat.

  “How I am going to tell Jack that I let his youngest son be captured?” he asked before I could start, running another hand through his hair as he stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  “I don’t know.”

  The door slammed shut, and he vanished inside the building. I leaned my head back on the soft leather seat and tried not to take David’s nettled words personally. He was upset. We all were.

  At home, Jude greeted me in the foyer with a bow and a soft kiss on my cheek. “You must be terrified. Almost attacked in your own room,” he said.

  I set aside thoughts of Cara for the moment. “I’m holding up. Do you know where my father is?” There wasn’t a moment to waste.

  “He’s busy at the moment, but he asked me to give you the wonderful news.”

  I pulled away from Jude. “News?”

  “He would like for you to debut next week. Isn’t that fantastic?” Jude took my hand in between his own, the leather gloves on my bare skin cold to the touch. “When I asked him, just yesterday, if I could escort you to your debut, I thought it would be months before we were dancing in your ballroom together. But now it will only be days.”

  I blinked at Jude. A debut? Now? When my father was terrified of a rebellion? After Charlie’s capture, I could barely wrap my head around the idea of any light-hearted activity, much less a debut.

  Besides, a week spared no time to put together a party of this size. Cara’s debut with David had seemed hasty and it took them at least four weeks to plan. And Jamie would hardly have time to cross the Atlantic, and so my closest friend would be missing from what was supposed to be one of the most important days of my life.

  “But the guests from out of town . . . ?”

  “That’s why your father is so busy. He is personally inviting all of his friends from across the country.” Jude tucked my hand in the crook of his arm. “I have met with the president and countless admirals and generals, but a party full of the Uprisen . . .” he shook his head in happy disbelief. “I
t is amazing.”

  It couldn’t be a coincidence. Charlie captured and my debut happening so quickly. Especially if my father was finally gathering the Uprisen after months of delay.

  “Excuse me, Jude,” I said politely, and extracted my hand from his arm. “I will see you at dinner.” And then I hurried down the hall, my button-up boots leaving brownish snowmelt puddled on the marble.

  I doubted Father would be in the library. With Jude, my mother, and me in the house, he’d want more privacy, most likely in his study. The light of a wall screen flickered through a crack in the door. I pushed it open, expecting to find my father conferencing with someone but instead found an empty chair and a screen showing a view of the foyer where I just was. On the screen, I saw Jude examining the paintings and sculptures, still in his wool coat and gloves, as if waiting for someone to take his coat and formally invite him to sit. It was eerie to watch him—oblivious to being watched—and to know that I’d been on that screen just a minute ago.

  Sunlight filtered in through heavy wooden blinds. It had been years since I’d really looked around my father’s study, and I’d forgotten how dark it was, even in full afternoon light. Dark wood panels echoed a dark wood desk and dark wood shelves, all watched over by a massive portrait of Jacob Landry. Old books of science and history lined the shelves, interrupted here and there by brass bookends in the shape of atomic symbols and glass paperweights with frozen purple galaxies inside. Two ivory-handled guns were mounted on the wall, hanging over a glass case with the very first lantern prototype Jacob Landry had built, the kernel of radioactive material long since removed.

  I was about to leave when something caught my eye: three old books on a low table near the case, on their side and topped with a silver model of the Large Hadron Collider, a paperweight in the shape of the machine that had sparked Jacob Landry’s research into the potential of private atomic power.

  Checking the hallway to make sure I was alone, I lifted the model and took the books, surprised at how soft the old leather was. Replacing the model as quietly as I could, I left the study and took the stairs two at a time up to my room.

  These had to be Jacob’s journals.

  T

  he journals ended up having to wait, and so did talking with my father. Mother came up to my room, throwing off her coat and scarf and pulling me into her arms, as if I’d just survived a car crash. The smell of ivy-scented soap and gin overwhelmed me.

  “I’m fine,” I said, trying to wriggle out of her grip. There were so many things to do, and I felt the heavy desperation of knowing how impossible all those things were.

  Mother caressed my hair. “To think that you could have been hurt! Killed!”

  “I was in no danger,” I told her plainly. “Mother, can’t you see how blown out of proportion this is? How obsessed Father is with punishing the Rootless?”

  A flicker of something was behind Mother’s eyes and she looked away, turning her head toward the door.

  “Mother . . . ?”

  She stood quickly. “We must dress for dinner. I’m so glad you’re safe.”

  I couldn’t ponder this new mystery because it was time for our meal, and then drinks with Jude after that, who seemed reluctant to let me go anywhere without shadowing me. But after the festivities, finally, I caught a moment alone with Father, who was by himself in the library.

  He had lit an opium cigarette and was reading a book by firelight, his face creased in concentration. “Ah, Madeline,” he said, noticing me. “What is it you wish to discuss? Your debut?”

  “No, I—” my voice failed. Standing in front of him was like standing in front of a mountain, preparing to beat my hands against the stone. I took a deep breath and remembered Charlie’s frightened eyes. “I need to talk to you about your prisoner.”

  “The boy?”

  “His name is Charlie.”

  Father stiffened. Outside, the wind blew louder, rattling the windows in their frames and sending soft storms of snow against the glass. “You have my attention,” he responded slowly.

  “I knew he was in my room, Father. I was hiding him. He was not there to hurt me or you or anyone.” I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. “He just wanted to give me a Solstice present.”

  “And why would a Rootless boy of no account give a gentry girl—a Landry girl—a Solstice present?”

  This was where I had to be careful. “We had met outside the Rootless gates when I got lost one day. He helped me find my way back to a part of town that I knew.” I kept my face earnest, but not too earnest. I tried not to lick my lips or breathe too quickly or look away as Cara did when she lied.

  Father sat completely still, absorbing my story. “So you met a Rootless boy with whom you spent one afternoon, and he was so taken with you that he wanted to travel seventy miles in the freezing snow and wind to give you a present.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And what was this present?”

  I hadn’t expected this. What would he think if he saw the miniature, with me as the benevolent atomic ruler? Would he be pleased by it or sense its darker undertones? “It’s a picture of me.”

  “Ah. It would not be this picture, would it?” He held up the miniature.

  Surely he could see the sweat on my forehead, could see my dinner dress beginning to stick to my sides and my back.

  “I found this on your bed with your other presents when we discovered the boy in your room. The miniature of Landry Park was quite fine—I rightly surmised that Captain MacAvery had commissioned that piece. But this one,” he held up the miniature, and in the firelight, the atomic symbol glittered, “is such a curious work. For one, I wonder at the message, inserting your face into a poster created to foster a sense of peace and belonging. And secondly, I also wonder how a Rootless boy came across oil paints and canvas? They are so expensive. One must only guess that they were stolen.”

  “They were not,” I said quickly. “They weren’t stolen.”

  “So he bought them? Or he was given them?”

  I cleared my throat. “He bought them. With money I gave him for helping me home.”

  “I see.”

  The fire crackled loudly, making me jump.

  I saw Father mark that jump away in his mental ledger. “What do you want, Madeline?”

  “I want you to let him go. He didn’t do anything wrong—he doesn’t understand all the rules yet. He’s just a boy!”

  “When you were four years old, you could recite portions of Tennyson and Malory. You cannot expect that I will allow a youth of twice that age to claim the ignorance of a child.”

  “I know that you’re worried about our safety and the security of our estates, but you have to see that Charlie did nothing willingly wrong.” I walked closer to his chair. “Please.”

  He placed his cigarette in an ashtray, letting the ash burn its way to the end of the butt. “I will consider letting this boy go.”

  “That’s it?” I asked. “I’m not in trouble?”

  “Should you be?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “I do have certain expectations, however.” Father slid the miniature across the low table between us, where I caught it under my fingertips.

  “I expect you will redouble your efforts to this family and to the estate. I expect you will prove to the world at your debut how happy you are with Captain MacAvery and how willing you are to be obedient. I expect that all the contact with the Rootless will cease and that you will remember where your loyalties lie.”

  I almost wanted to ask what if I don’t? but I kept my mouth shut. He saw the resistance in my face anyway.

  “And if you do not do these things, I suggest you take a lesson from your grandmother, who protested her husband’s treatment of the Rootless, and who consequently never left this house again, not even to visit her dying sister and mother. The garden was the closest she came to the outside world.”

  I shivered.

  “If there is one m
ore hint of your involvement with the Rootless, of communication with them, or sympathy for them, you will say good-bye to your freedom. The university will be closed to you. The city will be closed to you. And I will keep you in this house until you have provided our line with another heir. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, Father,” I whispered.

  “You must choose which place you wish to be—free and at the university or chained to this house,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I’ll see you in the morning. We have a lot of work to do if this debut is to happen next week.”

  • • •

  The seven days leading up to my debut were blurry and endless. I found myself in baths, scrubs, and massages. My nails were polished in three different shades of cream before my mother was pleased. Gardeners and decorators turned the house into a war zone—piles of flowers and ribbon, bundles of candles, and large swaths of cloth made walking through the house all but impossible. And after hiring twenty cooks from the city, the kitchens seethed with activity from dawn until midnight.

  The journals sat under my pillow, safe for the moment. With the Uprisen guests arriving, Father spent most of his time in the dining room or the library in the company of his com-rades, and hadn’t spent enough time in his study to notice the missing books. But I’d had almost no chance to read them with the constant preparations.

  I managed to dash off a letter to Cara and to David, asking them if they’d heard from our friends and telling them of my father’s agreement to let Charlie go, but I didn’t hear back. Even though I was used to David’s random silences, it still gnawed at me. Even one line, one word from him would help thaw the glumness that clung to my bones like damp in winter.

  Jude came to our house at every opportunity, eager to dine with the Uprisen, eager to drink with me and walk with me in the snowy garden. As pleasant as his company was, Charlie’s captivity and David’s noncommunication occupied my mind and left no vacancy for trifling concerns such as our forced courtship. Whenever I asked Jude about David, he shrugged and said that beyond breakfasts at the penthouse, he barely saw him. So David was spending his days and evenings elsewhere—probably with Cara, I supposed.