Voleta folded her arms, relieved to see the prince had recovered his wolfish smirk. He seemed to like shocking people. Well, if there was one thing she was good at, it was milking gasps from a crowd. “I’ll tell you what, Your Highness, for every reason you can think of for why dancing is secretly an awful chore, I’ll match it with one of my own. We’ll see who runs out first.”
“A parlor game! Splendid. I like games. All right. I’ll start.” The prince paced a moment, though this seemed to Voleta to be more of a theatrical performance than needed deliberation. “It’s repetitive,” he said, smacking his fist into his hand. “It’s just counting to three forever and ever.”
A woman in a flame-red wig seemed to choke upon a sob while her partner stifled a laugh.
“It aches your feet something awful! I’m all blisters and corns,” Voleta said, pulling up the skirt of her silver dress a little to show off her silver slippers. Xenia looked positively green at the mention of corns, but the lady at her elbow applauded. “See, she knows it’s true!”
“I nearly lost a toe last week to a lady with poor timing and an overfondness for Bundt cake,” the prince said, turning to share his smirk with the crowd. Reggie applauded like a windup doll.
“The music’s bad,” Voleta fired right back.
“Now see here!” cried a young man in the crowd. His ire was quickly drowned out by a mixture of laughter and jeers.
“No, no, she’s right. She’s right! Our composers have been in a slump. Let’s not pretend. Let’s not spare the drunkard’s feelings,” the prince said. “Let’s call it a draw, shall we?”
“Are you giving up already?” Voleta said, crossing her arms lightly.
“One last gripe, then.” He extended his hand to invite hers. “A dance is all chase and no catch.” The prince bowed his head and waited. Flecks of light churned through his thick hair and across his open palm. She puzzled a moment over where the light was coming from before she understood: She was the source. The glow of the chandeliers reflected off the silver threads in her gown, casting little white stars all about her.
Voleta drew a breath.
The mob leaned in.
She placed her hand in his, and he kissed it.
The moment she left Voleta’s side, Iren had begun watching her through the daisy-patterned screen that ran the length of the servants’ vestibule. The space was overcrowded, but the other footmen and governesses were very leery of the giantess wearing a haystack wig and were doing their best to stay out of her way. When out on the reception floor Voleta began to push through the crowd, Iren shadowed her down the length of the screen, sending porters and nursemaids diving from her path. She was too distracted, too anxious to notice the havoc she was causing. Ann, who ran along in her wake, was the first to realize who Voleta was making a beeline for, and said, “Oh, dear. That’s Prince Francis.”
Iren stopped and gripped the screen as if it were the bars of a cage. She glared at the prince, standing there with his hands in his pockets, and watched his mouth move. She hated him on sight. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Voleta was being used as courageous bait in a cowardly trap. The whole plan stunk. She’d be sure to tell the Sphinx so the next time she saw him.
“Iren, not to be a pest, but didn’t you warn her about Prince Francis?”
“I did. I tried to,” Iren said, feeling the urge to defend herself. Ann didn’t understand what Voleta was like. A warning was as good as an invitation.
“I know he seems charming at first, but—”
“We need him,” Iren said. The music had stopped, and a crowd had circled around Voleta and the prince. Iren could hardly see the dark scrub of Voleta’s hair bobbing in a sea of elaborate coiffures.
“You don’t! No lady needs a lord as much as she needs her safety and happiness. There are worse things than being unmarried and untitled, believe me. It doesn’t have to be so—”
“Not for that. We don’t need him for that.”
“I don’t understand,” Ann said.
“We need him to help a friend.” The dance floor erupted in laughter and some applause. The crowd parted a little, allowing Iren a window into the scene. “That’s all I can say,” she said, watching the prince bow to Voleta. He seemed to ask for her hand. Voleta gave it to him, and he kissed it.
Something in Iren snapped. Ann, sensing the sudden change, said in a breath, “Wait, Iren dear, don’t!” But Iren was already moving, knocking porters and governesses to the wall. She rounded the edge of the screen, brushed past the doormen, who scarcely offered a quibble, and thundered onto the main floor. Iren wasn’t thinking, exactly. It was more like she was envisioning what she was about to do to the prince. She would pick him up by the foot and whip him about until he was just a bloody suit full of jellied bones. She would pop off his head and pour out his brains and stamp upon the puddle. And if anyone got in her way, she’d kill them, too. She’d kill all of them.
Iren parted the crowd like a crack in the earth. She knocked a blond lord on his heels, splashing his drink in his face. When a woman’s waspish bustle blocked her, she bowled through it, spinning the woman like a top. She crushed toes, tread on skirts, and broke apart dance partners without acknowledgment or apology.
She startled Voleta and the prince so badly, they both leapt. Iren glowered down at them, breathing in great, angry heaves.
“I think your horse is ready, milady,” the prince said, attempting to play off his fright with a joke.
Recovering her wits, Voleta clapped her hands and said, “Oh, you’re right on time, Iren! Right on time! I need my calendar. Prince Francis has just invited me to join him in his box at the Vivant tomorrow night.” Voleta paused to give the prince a half curtsy. “The Mermaid is debuting a new piece. I told him how keen I am to hear it. And His Highness also has invited me to the after-party. Isn’t that wonderful of him?” When Voleta finished her explanation, she seemed to continue to communicate with Iren by the vehicle of her eyebrows, which said, Calm down. It’s all right. This is working out in our favor.
Iren’s posture softened a little as she absorbed Voleta’s message. She couldn’t bring herself to apologize, but she did bow her head.
“We can’t have you telling the Sphinx we’re a tuneless clan,” Prince Francis said, studying the imposing governess as if he were preparing to guess her weight. “If the Mermaid can’t redeem our music in your ladyship’s ears, no one can.”
“And I look forward to the redemption, Your Highness!” Voleta said brightly.
The moment Voleta shut their bedroom door on a still-babbling Xenia, she looked up at Iren and asked in exasperation, “What were you thinking? Charging at the prince in front of half the ringdom like that?”
“I don’t know!” Iren tore the wig from her head and threw it at the vanity mirror. She couldn’t very well say that she didn’t really know what had come over her. She hadn’t been thinking at all. She had just acted on sudden and insistent instinct. “He’s attacked women!”
“What do you mean?” Voleta plopped down on the floor and began unbuckling the straps of her shoes.
Iren retold Ann’s account of the chambermaid’s tragic end aboard the prince’s ship. Voleta listened as she hung up her dress and put her shoes in the trunk. “Well, how was I supposed to know all that?”
“I don’t know!” Iren boomed.
“Then why are you shouting at me?”
Iren raised her arms and let them fall in one defeated flap. Her voice was quiet and contained when she spoke again. “Because you shouldn’t go tomorrow.”
“Of course I should go!” Voleta wriggled into her nightgown. “This is what we’ve been suffering for. This is why you’re wearing a rag doll wig and I’m batting my eyes at a poisonous toad. If I can get one moment alone with Marya tomorrow, all of this will be over. We’ll be back on the ship by morning and in the air by lunch, and Senlin and his wife will be together at last. And I tell you what, we’re all going to deserve a honeymoon after t
his! I’m marrying Squit, and we’re not doing any chores for a week. We’re going to lie in bed all day and run around the ship all night.”
Iren felt a sharp, peppery sensation in her throat, a feeling so unfamiliar, it took her a moment to realize what it was: the threat of tears. “You shouldn’t get your hopes up.”
“About what?”
“About Marya coming back with us.”
Voleta began to shake her head in a small quiver, but the range of the motion grew as she spoke. “After just two days, I can hardly tolerate this stupid place. Imagine how she must feel after nearly a year! She will want to leave. She will jump at the chance. I know it. I know it!”
Iren sat on the edge of the bed. She suddenly felt drained and very old. She hated the feeling. “I’ve spent the past two days worrying about whether or not you could do this. Whether you could handle your temper and fit in at parties.” She scoffed. “I should’ve been worried about myself.”
Voleta sat down beside her. She had applied her own makeup that evening and had done a much better job. Even so, Iren didn’t like it. She didn’t understand why women’s makeup was the color of bruises and blood, why the powder was as pale as a corpse.
She took up the edge of her apron and wiped away the rouge. “I don’t like that prince,” she said. “He’s dangerous.”
“He is,” Voleta said, enduring Iren’s scrubbing. “But don’t you forget, Iren—we’re dangerous, too.”
Chapter Ten
A lady’s figure is her ledger. Aging is forgivable. Fattening is not.
—Lady Graverly’s Table: Rare Graces and Common Shames
There was no breakfast in bed for Voleta the next morning. Instead, at the stroke of eight, a maid appeared to inform her that the marquis had requested the lady join him for breakfast in the dining hall in one hour’s time.
Voleta had received the message herself because Iren had still been sitting on the bedside, misbuttoning her governess’s dress.
“Didn’t sleep well?” Voleta asked.
“No. Kept waking up to see if you’d snuck out again.”
“Well, I didn’t. I slept like a purring kitten all night long.”
“I know. I saw,” Iren said, scrunching her red eyes shut.
Voleta suggested that Iren get a few more hours sleep. When Iren balked, Voleta reminded her that she didn’t need her for breakfast with the marquis and Xenia, but she would need her for their evening with the prince. Accepting this logic, Iren fell back on the bed still wearing her half-buttoned uniform and began snoring almost at once.
Voleta didn’t know which she dreaded more that morning: being stuck at a table with the marquis or the arrival of the early post. She knew that their cause benefitted from the fuss the Daily Reverie made over her, but she did not understand it. She was not news; she was, at most, an aspiring star in a city full of amateur celebrities. Surely there were crimes and injustices that were more deserving of the public’s attention.
But she was determined to maintain her composure and reputation long enough to accompany Prince Francis to the Mermaid’s after-party.
All she had to do was get through one more day.
She didn’t know what to wear to breakfast, but also knew that deliberation wouldn’t deliver a better result. She selected a dress at random—a long, white, high-waisted affair—and spent the rest of the hour playing with Squit, who’d woken up in a frolicsome mood. She didn’t look in the mirror once, applied no makeup, and tried not to think about all the things she would rather do than go to breakfast. The list was long.
When the appointed hour came, she left Iren sleeping soundly in bed and walked through the high corridors of the marquis’s home alone. It seemed that every wall contained either an ornate and immaculate polished mirror or a piece of art that featured either Xenia, her father, or the two of them together. There was an oil painting of Xenia as a young girl with an oversized bow in her curled hair, and a tapestry of the marquis standing in front of a majestic-looking horse, and a mural of both of them lounging, foot to foot, on a red velvet couch. In all the family portraits, there was no sign of a wife or mother. Voleta’s experience in the Tower had taught her not to inquire after absent family members because the answer was never happy and the memory seldom welcome.
It took her a little wandering to find the dining hall, but there was no mistaking it when she did. The immense table nearly filled the chamber. There must’ve been twenty or more chairs, and she was surprised to discover only one seat stood empty. The rest were filled with formally dressed men and women. The squeak of silverware on plates informed her that the meal had already begun.
The marquis, seated at the head of the table, saw Voleta lurking uncertainly in the doorway and waved her over to the only empty chair, which stood immediately to his right. The marquis was in high spirits. He spoke to Voleta in such warm, familiar tones she wondered for a moment if he had her confused with someone else, someone he liked. He insisted that she allow him to pour her tea himself, which he did, in a stream so weak and dribbling the tea was cold before it plinked into her cup. He spoke as he poured, telling her what a relief it was that she hadn’t hurt herself on the rooftops, and what a wonderful influence she had been on his daughter, who, after just one or two ballroom seasons, still had not managed to provoke the interest of a duke, much less the son of the treasurer. Prince Francis! What a coup for them all!
Voleta did her best to listen as he flattered himself with her accomplishments, but her attention kept drifting to Xenia, seated across from her behind a centerpiece of holly sprigs and pheasant feathers. The lady seemed utterly changed. She stared mutely at her untouched eggcup and fiddled with her hair—what remained of it. Her long, flowing locks had been hacked down to a blond tuft. She looked like a dandelion. She seemed very uncertain of the choice.
The marquis was momentarily interrupted by his butler, who came with samples of several breakfast wines for him to taste and select for the table. Voleta leaned forward and asked Xenia, “Who are all these people?” She nodded down the line of chatting and chewing men and women in evening dress.
It was only then that Voleta realized Xenia was wearing a sparkling, silvery gown, reminiscent of the one she had worn the night before, though with a much deeper neckline. “They’re just a bunch of gossips Father hired to fill out the table.”
“They’re what?”
“Well, somebody has to be here to watch,” Xenia said.
“Watch what?”
Xenia took up one of her toasted soldiers and waved it about like a wand as she spoke. “Us of course. Well, mostly you. After last night, and everything with you and the prince, Papa didn’t want to run the risk of something happening with no one around to see it. It was such short notice, he couldn’t get his usual guests to come, so he hired some gossips. Don’t worry. They’re all perfect professionals.”
Voleta regarded the gentleman in gold spectacles seated on her right. She realized he was sawing and shifting his food about on his china plate, and his mouth was moving in the mechanical process of chewing, but he was not in fact eating anything. He was observing her out of the corner of his eye.
“Why do you always pour such small samples, Billium?” the marquis shouted at his butler. “How can I taste anything if I can’t even coat my tongue?”
“You haven’t said anything about my hair,” Xenia said in a stage whisper, pulling Voleta’s attention back to her. Xenia petted her hair and rolled her eyes like a doll.
Voleta wondered if she wasn’t still asleep. She looked at the lady beside Xenia, who slurped at an empty spoon, then to the impeccable settings and the steaming dishes full of food: kippers and olives, pork belly and cherries, homily and honey, none of which had been touched. She felt a sudden sense of dreamy vertigo, as if she were plummeting inside a nightmare. She sipped her cold tea to revive herself and said, “It’s lovely, milady. But why did you cut it?”
Before Xenia could answer, the marquis inserted himsel
f into the conversation. This morning he wore no wig at all but had a lacy handkerchief draped over his head. One corner hung down between his brows like a widow’s peak. “Ah! Here’s what we’ve been waiting for!” he crowed. A footman marched across the hall carrying a silver tray that held only a folded newspaper. “The morning wagging of the finger!” The marquis made a rude gesture, and the table erupted in a chorus of rehearsed laughter.
The Marquis de Clarke took the paper from the tray and opened it with a flourish of his flouncy cuffs. “Just as I expected! Front page. Look! Here you are, my dear girl, with the prince’s lips pressed to your fingers. Isn’t that a fine etching? I don’t know how they do it.”
He turned the paper so Voleta could see. She stared at the illustration of a waifish woman and a suited man standing in front of a stylized sun, and it was a moment before she realized it was supposed to be her and Prince Francis. He was kissing her hand, and she was touching her bare throat as if she swooned with desire.
Voleta’s impulse was to rip the thing to shreds, though what good would that do? Thousands of other copies were being snapped open and read all across the ringdom at that very moment. She could hardly hope to destroy all of them.
“Here, I shall read the article to the table,” the Marquis de Clarke declared. After a robust clearing of his pipes, he began to read. “‘Lady Voleta and the prince came together like a pair of magnets. Oh, the electric sparks that filled the air of their conversation! The flirtations! The exchange of wits! It was like peering behind the horizon to that starless space where the sun and moon sometimes meet and fall into each other’s arms like hungry lovers.’” The marquis paused to remark, “That’s quite good! Wait, there’s more. ‘The Lady Voleta told a joke about dancing, which we should all expect to hear poorly reprised by the local wits for the next fortnight. Prince Francis kissed her hand, and the lady blushed with the ancient yearning of young loins. Then the band played Hobson’s new waltz, which was well received by all.”’
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