“Good,” I said.
“Let me do it, Bee,” said Will, pushing himself forward in his chair. “You can tell me what to do, but stay out of the room.”
My heart constricted with affection, and hope flickered inside me briefly before I was forced to snuff it out. Will’s hands had not been as steady as mine in the best of times, and now one was tormented beyond use, and the other trembled just lying in his lap. I shook my head.
“I can do it,” he said. “You never saw what I could do, Bee. Marguerite never gave me a chance. I’ll make it, and then you can cure me of the madness and the consumption at once. And that way if it doesn’t work, at least you are spared.”
“Even you do not believe it will work, Percy?” asked Valentin.
“I believe whatever Miss Hope says,” said Will. “As should you. But it could go wrong. Alchemy is very—”
“Precise.” I let my gaze rest on his bandaged fingers, then met his eyes, which welled with misery. “It has to be me, Will.”
Will lowered his head. He closed his eyes, and from the way his chest rose and fell, I knew he was trying not to cry.
“You brought Will’s supplies? And the brazier?” I asked. Valentin inclined his head in assent.
“Bring them here,” I said. “We will need more supplies, I think. I will give you a list. The substance in the brazier is the most important thing. If that is damaged we will have to start over. It will take months longer.”
“Nothing was damaged,” said Valentin. “We shall do exactly as you say, Miss Hope. After dinner.”
“Dinner,” I repeated, as though I had never heard of it. I was hungry, but for once I did not want to eat. Food would pull me back into myself, banish the heedless energy that I needed to propel me forward. If I did anything as sane as sit down to a meal, I might decide I could not face madness after all, even for Will.
“Yes, miss, dinner,” repeated Valentin, firmly. “Dinner, and then a good night’s sleep. We will begin in the morning.”
Terror rose in me at the thought of lying awake until dawn, waiting. I could do it, but I could not spend a night contemplating it.
“I slept all day,” I said, and heard a note of pleading in my voice. “I would rather—”
“Tomorrow we will do things your way, Miss Hope. Tonight, you will join me at dinner.” He extended his arm. I hesitated to take it. His face tightened, reminding me that this man had ordered Will’s fingernails pulled out. He might even have done it himself, and in any case did not seem to have been troubled by it in the least. I took his arm but looked back at Will. Will laid his head against the high back of his chair. His body was slack with resignation as he watched us go.
“Is Will coming?” I asked.
“The maid will bring him some soup. The men do not like to dine with a man whom they were required to torture, at least not on the same day.”
“Yes, I can imagine how unpleasant that would be for them.”
Valentin escorted me out of the room and closed the door behind him. “We are wicked, in your eyes,” he said.
“Oh, not at all.” My sarcasm fell flat, even to my own ears.
“And it does not concern you that your…” Here he glanced at me. “Your friend defrauded my employer?”
“It seems to me your employer could afford it,” I said, but without energy. The thought of sitting through dinner with this man and his cohort made me feel bone weary, and at the same time filled me with dread. I couldn’t think of any good reason Valentin insisted on forcing me to eat with them. I imagined them eyeing me the way he did, assessing my virtue, perhaps drawing different conclusions than Valentin had.
He led me down the stairs and into a spacious and handsomely appointed dining room. The walls were a pale spring green, with recesses on three sides for marble busts of unattractive men. Four of Valentin’s soldiers stood clustered around a wide, gleaming sideboard, pouring themselves aperitifs from a crystal decanter. They each wore similar suits of dark blue, and though they had not changed for dinner, all but one of them seemed comfortable in these genteel surroundings. The biggest of them, a ruddy, simple-looking fellow, held his glass as though he was sure his grip would break it. They froze in the midst of their actions when we came in, staring at me bluntly. I wished I were wearing a less crushed and dusty gown, and then sternly reminded myself that I did not care.
“Miss Hope, may I introduce you to Herr Martin,” said Valentin, indicating the German nearest us. The tall, dark-haired man made a shallow bow without setting down his sherry. His smile curled up on one side, showing teeth like a wolf. I looked away quickly.
Valentin introduced me to each of the men in turn, and I in turn immediately forgot their names. I said nothing. I did not curtsy. If the men noticed, they pretended not to.
We took our seats around the table, Valentin across from me and the man called Martin on my right. The chair at the head of the table was empty. I glanced at Martin, and my eyes fell on his fingers. They were long, rough, and pink from a recent and vigorous scrubbing. Perhaps they’d recently had blood on them. Perhaps the blood had been Will’s.
I felt Martin’s eyes on me, but I refused to meet them. Instead I glared at Valentin. He had seated me next to the torturer. How did he expect me to eat?
“Is she coming?” one of the men asked in German. Valentin glanced at the door.
“She said she would,” he said. “She wanted to meet Miss Hope.”
As if on cue, the dining room door opened, and a young woman in a fashionable satin gown appeared. The men jumped to their feet at once and folded themselves into bows quite a bit more respectful than the ones they had made for me. The young woman nodded her perfectly coiffed and powdered head at them, then made her way to me. Another woman, older but with an unadorned, severe beauty, followed her in. I rose slowly to my feet, more to prevent them from towering over me than from courtesy. The younger woman was an inch or two shorter than I, which left her still above average height for a woman. Her face and hair were powdered, a fashion my mother had never let me indulge in, nor one that much tempted me. Her cheeks were much pinker than natural. She was good-looking, but with a stern set to her jaw and a coldness in her eyes that might make it hard to call her pretty.
“So,” said the woman in English. “You are the young lady who ’as come to rescue William Percy. What did you call her, Valentin? Theo—?”
“Miss Theosebeia Hope,” said Valentin. “Meet Miss Rahel, the older daughter of Burggraf Ludwig.”
“And this is my companion, Miss Berit. You have a strange name,” said Rahel.
“My mother is an alchemist,” I said.
“I know that.” Rahel nodded. “And your father?”
I thought of my father. I imagined him in his beautiful Oxonian study, poring over my notes, trying to break my mother’s code. Or perhaps he had broken it already. Perhaps he was in the laboratory, performing the steps that would soon drive him mad. If he was, it was his own fault. I had warned him.
“I have no father.”
Rahel pursed her lips, looking for a moment like an unhappy German governess I once had. She had stayed less than a year, but she was the reason I spoke German with a Bavarian accent.
“Some man caused your birth, whether he accepted the responsibility or not.”
“He did not,” I said. “Hope is my mother’s family name.”
Rahel nodded thoughtfully. “Ein hübsches uneheliches Kind. Einfach zu nehmen.”
A pretty bastard child. Easy prey.
Rahel raised her eyebrows at me for a moment, and I held back my anger and attempted to look puzzled. Rahel seemed to accept this and moved to her place at the head of the table. The men all sat as she did, and Berit sat beside her. Rahel began to speak to the men in German, and for the moment I was forgotten.
Dinner was veal in a heavy cream sauce, served with lavishly buttered potatoes and boiled peas. It was delicious, but I decided to find it too rich. It was useful to have the occupat
ion of pushing food around on my plate while I listened intently to the conversation and pretended not to understand it.
They spoke of their king, Frederick William II, and his plans to join with the Austrians in the invasion of France. The leaden mass of dread that had settled in my stomach turned over at the talk of war. The Germans rattled off the names of the nations allied against France with easy certainty that this war was theirs to win. Prussia, Austria, Britain: the great powers of Europe saw France in its time of weakness and circled like vultures. The only thing left to be determined, in their minds, was who would take which part.
“Frederick William should not let Austria march first. He is too occupied with Poland—he does not see what can be gained in France,” Rahel said in German. She took as avid an interest as each of the former military men at the table.
“Austria may be too much tempted to give France back to its fool of a king,” said Martin.
“Perhaps,” said Valentin. “But there is no doubt that Leopold made promises to his sister and her husband, and even more to the émigrés. Louis is not a bad man.”
“No, but he is incompetent. There is no worse crime for a king, and his incompetence has left all Europe in danger,” said Rahel. Her eyes flitted to me, and I trained my own back on my plate. “The Bourbons cannot deal with the revolutionaries. It is no kindness to give them another chance to fail.”
Valentin stared at his plate with a small frown but said nothing. It seemed that the Graf’s daughter tolerated only so much disagreement, and Valentin had reached his quota. She changed the subject.
“I take it our young magician is much diminished since we saw him last.” My gaze was carefully lowered, but I felt her eyes on me.
“Consumption,” agreed Valentin. “He doesn’t have long. His young lady believes she can save him with alchemy, poor child.”
His pity held an edge of contempt. I felt my anger redden my cheeks.
“Be careful what you say, Valentin,” said Rahel. I looked up at her before I could stop myself, and found her smiling directly at me. “The young lady understands every word.”
I froze, with what I feared was a very foolish expression on my face. Rahel made a short, sharp laugh. The game was clearly up.
“How could you tell?” I asked in German.
“You have no skill at feigning stupidity, my dear,” said Rahel, in her own language.
I raised my chin and tried to will the blush from my cheeks.
“I feigned well enough to fool your captain,” I said with an angry glance at Valentin.
“That is no accomplishment!” cried Rahel with another bark of a laugh. “Men are always willing to believe in the stupidity of women. Though perhaps that is not their fault, when women are so quick to make themselves fools for men. Your mother, for instance.”
Valentin widened his eyes meaningfully at Rahel, the universal expression for Stop talking. She took no notice.
“I know of her, of course,” she said, nodding at my shocked look. “My father’s obsession with magic is impossible to avoid when one lives in the same house. I have learned the most famous names, your mother’s included. That armor of hers was quite useful, I recall. I know that she could be rich in her own right if she chose her patrons on the merits of their offers rather than the merits of their faces.”
“My mother is a scientist,” I said as coldly as I could. “Money is not what she cares for.”
“Perhaps not, though if that is true then it is strange indeed that she pursues the ‘science’ of turning everything into gold.”
I bit my tongue. I did not want to argue the value of alchemy with this woman, and still less did I want to defend my mother to her. I speared the last several pieces of veal in front of me with a force that made an unpleasant scraping noise on the china, and shoved them into my mouth. If I was chewing, I could not talk.
“Nothing is so disappointing to me as an intelligent woman who makes herself stupid for a man,” said Rahel. Her wry, even tone was beginning to falter. A flush rose under her carefully powdered face. I noted, with some surprise, that she was actually upset. “And it seems there is no end to the disappointment. Tell me, my dear, what is it about our young magician that earned your devotion?”
I chewed furiously. My mother, alchemy, Will. This woman seemed determined to probe everything and everyone who occupied a painful place in my heart, and I did not understand why.
“He is good-looking, of course, in that careless way that will not last,” she said. “And perhaps that much is over already?”
I thought of Will’s wasted body, his thin, hollow chest. The shadows under his eyes like purple bruises. He was still handsome, but she was certainly right that it could not last much longer. The meat stuck in my throat. I reached mechanically for the glass of wine in front of me.
“He had confidence, I saw that at once,” said Rahel. “He was used to charming women. He expects us to love him, to do anything for him, no matter how little he deserves it.”
“We must be grateful that Miss Hope feels he is deserving of her help,” said Valentin to Rahel through a very still jaw, “or we would not be able to give Burggraf Ludwig what he desires.”
“That is your concern, not mine,” Rahel snapped. “My father has promised me nothing, whatever he may have offered you.”
There was something strange here, some dynamic at play that I did not understand. Rahel hated Will, that much was clear. And yet somehow I could not believe the easiest explanation, that Will had spurned her.
“If you do not want your father to get the Philosopher’s Stone, then why are we here?” I asked Rahel.
“You have not answered my questions, Miss Hope,” said Rahel. “Why should I answer yours?”
“Will’s family is rich,” I said, seizing desperately at a slight chance. “They have a large estate in the north. If you don’t care about the Stone, send word to them. They would surely pay Will’s debt.”
Rahel shook her head and snorted. She reached for her glass and took a long drink of wine, her eyes never leaving me.
“We have appealed to the Percys,” she said when she had set down her cup. She was calmer now. “They have the measure of their son more than you do, Miss Hope.”
“You mean—” I thought of Will’s forbidding face when I had suggested he go to his parents. “They will do nothing for him?”
“Some debts cannot be paid by anyone but the debtor.”
I frowned at Valentin in mute appeal. There was danger here, danger in this woman’s anger. But I didn’t understand why, and I didn’t see what it might change.
“I am to make the Stone,” I said. “Valentin and I have an agreement. I will make the Stone and give it to Valentin. That will pay Will’s debt.”
Rahel fingered the stem of her wine glass, a smile playing at her lips.
“I have to know that our agreement will be honored,” I said. “If it isn’t certain, then I won’t be able—”
My throat closed on the words, but it didn’t matter. None of these people believed I could do what I said, or that I would suffer what I knew I would in consequence.
“And Valentin gives my father what he wants, gets who he wants in return, and Will is free to live out the rest of his days in your arms. A happy ending for everyone. Who am I to stand in the way?”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why would you want to stand in the way? What do you want?”
Rahel threw her napkin on the table in front of her and pushed back her chair. The men stood as she did, but I kept my seat.
“I wanted to see you, my dear,” she said. “And now that I have, I am quite content.”
She left, and Berit followed. The men retired to the next room for cigars, and Valentin offered to escort me to my room. We climbed the stairs slowly. I was more exhausted than I had expected. My head ached, reminding me how recently it had been pushed into a wall. Valentin kept pace with me silently, patiently. At the top of the stairs, I stopped to cat
ch my breath. I looked up through the domed ceiling far above me, into the gray English sky.
“If I asked you what all that meant, would you tell me?” I asked Valentin without looking at him.
He shook his head slowly. “I cannot.”
“Did Will—” I didn’t want to ask this. I had a cowardly impulse to banish the question, not just from the tip of my tongue but from my mind as well. “Did Will hurt her, somehow?”
Valentin was quiet for a long moment. His teeth worked against each other behind his closed mouth.
“No,” he said. I waited for him to elaborate, but he did not. We continued down the hallway, and I counted the doorways as we passed, wondering who and what was in each. We were on the second floor, below the rooms where Will and Dominic were being kept. Perhaps they felt I was less likely to leap from a window in an attempt to flee. If so, they were right, though it wasn’t my skirts that would prevent me from trying it.
Valentin unlocked a door and held it open for me. Inside was a lovely, high-ceilinged room decorated in soft shades of blue and gold. The bed dominated, a beautiful brocaded affair, with a blue satin canopy draping down from a gold filigreed circle. The paneled walls were papered with blue and green chinoiserie, and a broad window and large gold mirror seemed to expand the room outside itself. I crossed to the vanity, letting my fingers trail over the ribbons and beads from a broken necklace as I passed. I threw open the closet doors, where several delicate gowns reflected the same feminine sensibility as the decor.
“I do not believe those will fit you,” said Valentin from the doorway. He watched me with a guarded, flat expression. His fists were closed tight. “But you are welcome to try them on.”
I touched a petal-pink silk gown, and from the still set of Valentin’s jaw, it was clear that I was not only unwelcome to wear it, he did not even like me to look at it.
“Whose room is this?” I asked.
“For now, it is yours,” he said.
I sat in the chair in front of the vanity and opened a drawer. A letter box lay inside. I touched it. Valentin’s posture tightened. His whole frame was dense with restrained action, but he was in control. He wouldn’t stop me. But I pushed the letter box to the back of the drawer. It was not mine, and I was not the sort of person who read letters meant for others. I pulled out an ivory-handled comb. A long black hair was threaded through it. Deliberately, I took the hair between my thumb and forefinger.
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