38

THE NEXT MORNING, THEODOR BROUGHT ME BACK TO MY SHOP. Responsibility reasserted itself. I had Alice and Emmi to consider, and it was up to me to take care of my shop and make sure they had work. And wait to hear that Kristos was safe. It was never far from my thoughts that what had happened to Nia was my fault. I had to be sure no one else was hurt because of me.

We worked diligently over the following days. Alice did what she could despite her hand, still thick with bandages, and I sewed as quickly as I could to make up for Penny’s absence. Even with her best efforts, Alice could only do so much, but Emmi was a more adept learner than I had expected, and could soon work long seams to my satisfaction as well as rolled hems, and even effect some decent topstitching. Alice was apprehensive at first, both of the skills I allowed an untrained seamstress to practice on clients’ commissions and of letting a Pellian work with clients in the front room, but her pragmatism couldn’t argue with Emmi’s nimble fingers. Once Emmi left her kerchief at home and finished a simple but fashionable jacket to wear at work, Alice lost any objection to her presence in the front room, either.

Emmi and Alice gossiped about the body in the river, but I didn’t say anything. When Alice described the grotesque way she had been stabbed—expertly and precisely between the boning in her corset—I had to leave the atelier. It didn’t appear that anyone else had connected her death to the messenger boy’s, though both stabbed bodies had been found in the river. I should have known better. I should never have allowed her to put herself in danger.

The girls were gossiping again when I returned. “The Stone Castle!” Alice shook her head. “Nonsense. He told Sophie already—”

“Told me what?” I tapped my toe on the floorboard.

Emmi clammed up, but Alice plowed ahead. “Your brother wrote to you from port, yes? That he’s at sea?”

“Of course,” I answered quickly, flustered. I had heard nothing else from him, or from Pyord. I had done everything Pyord asked, so I had to cling to the belief that Kristos was safe and would be released soon. That perhaps he had been released and was hiding or escaping the city. That I would hear from him.

Alice folded her hands. “There’s talk in some of the taverns that he’s actually a prisoner in the Stone Castle.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” I answered.

Emmi, still uncertain around Alice, chose her words carefully and spoke more slowly than she usually did with me. “Some of the Red Caps in our market said he’s being tortured for information about the leadership and their plans. That he’s refusing to say anything.” She hesitated, then added, “They said they even arrested Penny to make him talk.”

“What nonsense,” I said, a bit too quickly. “How would anyone in the taverns know what happens inside the Stone Castle?”

“They say they’ve heard from the other prisoners, ones who have been released,” Emmi said. “They say he’s been held ever since—ever since you said he disappeared, actually.”

“Truly,” I said with a shaky breath, “he’s not a prisoner.” I prayed this new wrinkle couldn’t reveal me and my own treachery. It was too late to stop what had already begun, in any case. I retreated to the counter. An uprising was coming; violence was coming—I could feel it like the first frosts, settling deep into my bones. I couldn’t stop it—no one could.

“These came while you were out,” Alice said. Two messages—one on the flimsy slips merchants and tradespeople used, one a formal, heavy scroll. I opened the flimsy paper first.

Safe, hiding, more soon, was all it said. In Kristos’s cramped handwriting. No one could have mimicked it. I clutched the paper in my hand and slipped it into my pocket, fighting tears of relief. I couldn’t let Alice see the emotion a scrap of paper inspired without risking her discovering the truth. So I swallowed my tears and my smile alike and picked up the other message.

I opened the heavy paper—Theodor’s handwriting, an invitation to dinner at his home. The formality was half in jest, I was sure, but perhaps not quite entirely—I traced the well-formed calligraphy and knew that Theodor wanted to give me a fine dinner like a gift, like all the other gifts he had given me—the time in the greenhouse, the view from Viola’s ballroom. Things he knew I would enjoy.

I wanted, desperately, to see him. When I thought of the revolution simmering in every alley and corner of the city, I wondered if it was wise. I should, I reasoned, stay as far from him as possible, as though the dark tendrils of Pyord’s plan could follow me wherever I went and poison Theodor. I imagined his hands writing out the note, the intensity I so admired about him changing his features as he formed each perfect letter. I had grown to accept that we were separated by class, probably indelibly, but the only small moments of comfort I had experienced in the horrible past weeks had been from Theodor. And he was leaving soon—for safety, but away from me. One happy evening, I told myself. I would allow myself one bright memory in the swiftly approaching, unavoidable darkness that I knew could leave no one in Galitha City untouched.

I penned an acceptance to Theodor, my letters far less fine than his, and sent it off with a messenger.

When the early winter twilight darkened the shop, I hurried home to dress. I wore my best, a deep-blue silk with pinked and scalloped trim pleated along the sleeve and neck edges. Though I wasn’t very skilled at it, I even dressed my hair with extra curls and a ribbon woven through the dark mess. His carriage pulled in front of my door—the first time I had let him see my ramshackle row house—and he took my arm to help me inside.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked, my voice softer, more sensuous than I had intended. The perfume in my hair powder must have affected me more than I thought, I chided myself, flushing pink.

Theodor laughed and traced a callus on my finger, a spot where the needle had nicked the skin so often a permanent bandage had formed. “Can’t I simply want to see the loveliest charm-casting seamstress in the capital city?”

“Try harder at your compliments next time,” I replied, mock punching his arm. He feigned injury, then softened and leaned toward me. I let him sink into my skirts, his hands around my fitted bodice, his mouth finding mine. Then we hit a rock in the road and jounced out of our embrace.

“Serves me right,” Theodor said, rubbing the shoulder that had collided with the carriage’s paneling. A packet of paper shimmied from inside his jacket.

“What’s that?”

“You mean you haven’t read it?” he said, throwing one of Kristos’s pamphlets on the seat between us. I avoided touching it. “Even my father read this one—for the better part of a year all the broadsides and pamphlets circulating this city were just words strung together to the council, and now they read them as though they hold the secret to ending this unrest.”

“They do—or at least, perhaps they did.”

“I don’t know what concession now would stop it, and most of the council is still convinced that meeting any of their terms would only show ourselves to be weak.” He breathed frustration through his nose. “They’re sending my sister to my aunt’s estate in the western lake region, my brothers to the naval stations and the Southern Fortress. To ‘study martial topics.’ To avoid them, more like, and spread the family out over a few hundred miles as insurance.”

“Oh, Theodor,” I said, catching his hand.

“And your brother apparently isn’t at sea, is he?” He flicked the paper cover of the booklet. “He’s here, rabble rousing.”

The initials stared at me from the plain cover. “That’s not possible,” I answered flatly. “They—someone—must be using his name. Or perhaps he wrote it a long time ago, and they saved it.” Kristos’s note to me, in all of its painful brevity, flashed in my memory—Safe, it had said—but I didn’t know anything else. Could he possibly be free of Pyord but avoiding returning to me? Or was Pyord holding him and forcing him to write?

“Smart move, actually.” He leafed silently through the pages, and I peered over his shoulder. “He’s really quite a good writer. This, for instance: A single flake of snow means nothing, but no man would challenge a blizzard. A single crow worries no one, but a flock can strip a field.”

“Revolution must take wing under an entire flock, not one or two voices alone.” I sighed. “Yes, he’s ever so talented.”

He clasped my hand. “At least he’s not writing swill. It’s good treasonous writing.” I almost laughed, but Theodor grew sober again. “And my little voyage to the Allied Equatorial States is off.”

Relief and disappointment fought one another for dominance in my reaction. I finally managed one word: “Nia?”

“Yes. The princes, I suppose, decided that if one of their diplomat’s daughters isn’t safe here, then one of their princesses certainly isn’t.” He stuffed Kristos’s pamphlet back into his coat pocket. “I must admit—I am relieved.”

My heart jumped, and then plummeted back to dark reality. “You’d be safer out of the city, just like your brothers and sister.” And putting off one marriage didn’t avoid them entirely, I left unsaid. To think—I hadn’t wanted to marry at all in autumn, and now I begrudged someone’s as-yet-unknown bride.

“I couldn’t leave the city now. I might be a frivolous gardener and violinist, but I am the First Duke of Westland.” He squared his shoulders. “I have some responsibilities, and I intend to see them through. Besides, I couldn’t leave you right now.” His hand rested on the hilt of his sword, unconsciously ready to defend me. I smiled.

I gazed out the window into the growing darkness. “But if you stay, you could be killed.” Pyord’s plan centered on killing the king, but perhaps also those in line for the throne. The Midwinter Ball was less than two weeks away. Tears blurred my vision, and the lights in the city washed together in the windowpane.

“Better that than find you had been hurt. I’d never forgive myself. All the princesses of all the Allied States couldn’t make me forget.”

“You’re an idiot—you know that?” I sighed. “Your parents will arrange a marriage eventually, and it won’t be with me.”

“Perhaps not,” he mused. “I have my own thoughts on that matter.”

My brow knit and I opened my mouth to question him, but he waved me off. “It’s just an egg of an idea, I shouldn’t have even spoken of it. There will certainly be no weddings this winter. For now—please do me the honor?”

We drew up to the front of the most palatial house I had ever seen, aside from the palace itself. “This isn’t your house,” I stammered.

“No, it’s the residence of the Prince of Westland. I’ve never brought you to my ancestral home before.”

“Because you’re hiding that you’re having an illicit affair with a common seamstress from your parents? I figured.”

“Yes, mostly. But they’re away at a card party. And I paid off the servants not to tell on me. Though, frankly, I don’t much care if they do.”

“What’s the worst they can do? Arrange a marriage for you?” Somehow, the specter of revolution and death that haunted the city made me feel cavalier, willing to accept danger and risk to be happy for a few days, for a night only. Theodor could be married to someone else in time—but tonight we could be happy together. Tonight was ours, and tomorrow alone was uncertain.

We pulled through the wrought iron gate and around the circular drive. As though we did this every evening, as though we were the Duke and Duchess of Westland and this was our house, Theodor helped me from the carriage and held my hand as we ascended the stairs. A servant opened the door and took my cloak with a secret smile, and another led me to the small private dining room built over the gardens at the back of the house. It was paneled with mirrors along half its height, carefully arranged to reflect light.

There were candles everywhere.

Dancing candle flames in chandeliers, votives in long lines down the tables, tapers burning in reflective sconces. The room was alive with candlelight.

“This is beautiful,” I said, letting Theodor hold the chair at the head of the table for me. He sat next to me, at my right hand.

“And tonight it’s yours. You’re the lady of the house. Call for dinner when you’re ready.”

I laughed. “I don’t even know how to do that,” I confided.

He pointed to a miniature silver bell in front of me. “Just ring.”

I lifted the bell and it pealed a single clear note. Our first course, a soup, was marched into the room by a servant, who gave me a not-so-subtle wink.

“Why are they being so nice to me?” I asked.

“They’d rather I marry a local girl than some foreign princess,” Theodor said. “I don’t blame them.”

As we ate and talked and the candles burned lower around us, I was struck by how foreign yet familiar this scene was. It was opulent luxury I had only experienced in small doses with Theodor or Viola, of course, but I had never spoken so easily and comfortably with anyone.

“I never want to leave,” I said as we shared a pear torte with burnt caramel drizzled on it.

“The cook is in top form tonight,” Theodor agreed with a pert smile.

“Not that,” I said, “and you know it.”

“Someday,” he said, the bold tone returning to his voice, “I will bring you here and you will never have to leave.”

As much as Theodor may have wanted to make me his Lady of Westland, I knew another noble was probably waiting in his future. But that was for another day—another year, most likely. I shook my head. “Let’s think about tonight only,” I said. “It’s all we truly have. All anyone ever really has.”

He reached out and cupped my face in his hand, impulsive yet tender. “Now can feel like forever,” he said, and he kissed me.

We rose from our seats, and the servant who had come to clear the plates shrank back against the wall with a broad smile, and then everyone and everything else in the room disappeared. I was swimming in a pool of candlelight with Theodor as my only anchor. His hands held me firm, and I buried my fingers in his hair, loosening it from its queue.

“We can’t stay here much longer,” he whispered in my ear, his words not bitter but an invitation. I acquiesced and we sank into each other before the fire. His arms encircled my waist with a fierceness I had never seen from him before. I returned it, my fingers working free the deftly embroidered buttons on his waistcoat, the fine linen neckcloth, the tiny thread button at his throat. I inhaled his scent—the gentlemanly pomade laden with clove oil, and underneath that, the baser smell of sweat.

My lips worked their way down his neck, to his collarbone, as his hand slipped beneath my silk petticoats. We were bathed in candlelight, both of us, reflected infinitely in the mirrored paneling of the walls. It was as though both of us, and the moment itself, went on forever. His fingers traced the clocked design of my stockings, my silk garters, my bare thighs. The room was silent save for the rustle of the taffeta. When he entered me, it was as though all the light I had pulled into every charm I had ever made collided with the light in him, mingled, joined together.

The tear that rolled swiftly from the corner of my eye into my hair was of pure joy, pure light—even if tonight was all we had, we were one.