Chapter 20

C HAPTER 20

Another day passed, and another dinner. Conversation, already stilted, became nearly impossible. Hester was forced to be grateful to Imogene's son, Jacob, who embarked on a treatise about horse training that would normally make her want to run screaming into the night, but which was significantly better than silence.

She wondered where Richard was, and how he was faring. Maybe it was a fool's errand. Probably it was. She wavered back and forth between believing Cordelia's story and doubting it, often several times an hour.

After dinner, the party retired to the parlor. Samuel excused himself to go check on Evangeline, and the rest of them sat around the room, looking at each other with dull eyes. Even Master Strauss's well of horse-related information eventually ran dry.

"Cards?" asked Imogene, waving a deck in the air. "Anyone?"

No one said anything.

"We needn't play for money."

Still no one said anything.

"Come on, I'll spot you an ace. Cordelia? Hester?"

Hester groaned. "This is dreadful," she said. "Not you, Imogene. I'm glad you're here. I just can't imagine that we're terribly good company at the moment." She looked around helplessly. "Perhaps it would be better if everyone just went home."

"Not before congratulating me, I hope," said the Squire from the doorway. "You see, Evangeline has just consented to be my wife."

The words hung suspended in the air of the parlor for so long that Hester started to question whether they had ever been spoken at all. Surely she'd imagined it. Surely her brother had not just said that he was engaged to Evangeline. Surely Doom had not won.

But Evangeline was standing behind the Squire, her hand clasped firmly in his, and the look in her eyes was unadulterated triumph.

"My goodness!" said Lady Strauss, into the horribly awkward silence. "What a surprise!" She shot Hester a warning look and all at once the words landed and became something real, something that was happening right now, like the ground coming at you after the horse had thrown you off.

It's too soon! Hester wanted to cry out. It can't have happened so fast!

The sense of impending catastrophe had been with her for so long now that it had almost faded to background noise, but suddenly it all came roaring back, clutching at her throat like a strangler. Doomed, you are doomed, the worst has come, the worst is here, you have failed and all will be ashes…

But it can't be! It's too fast! I'm not ready… and Richard's not back yet…

It was a tiny, hopeless thought, in a tiny hopeless voice, but it stiffened her spine. She was not a maiden in a tower, waiting for her faithful knight to save her. She was a grown woman, goddammit, and even if an aged spinster was among the most socially powerless of creatures, she would not concede to Doom without a fight.

But now was not the moment. Evangeline had moved, swift and sure, while Hester was still fumbling about, trusting to her brother's instinct for self-preservation. If she was going to extract Samuel from Doom's possibly sorcerous clutches, the last thing she wanted to do was show her hand too soon.

Bless Imogene for filling the gap. She roused herself from her horror and plastered a smile on her face. "How delightful! Samuel, you dog! You never so much as hinted to me!" She stretched out her hands toward the couple. "Why, you could knock me over with a feather!"

"Had to be a gentleman, of course," said the Squire gruffly. "Couldn't go talking until I knew my feelings were returned, don't you know."

"Yes, of course. Quite right," said Lord Strauss, nodding approval.

Evangeline leaned in closer to the Squire, her cheek against his shoulder, and then suddenly Cordelia leapt up and clapped her hands together.

"Oh, how wonderful!" the girl cried. "We shall be a family now!" She practically danced up to the Squire. "Shall I call you Papa, sir?"

What, Hester thought, the absolute bloody blistering hell?

Then Cordelia giggled.

She had laughed often enough these last few days. Penelope Green could have pulled a chuckle from an anchorite. But Hester knew Cordelia's laugh, a tiny, timid tapping, like a scattering of seeds across stone. It was certainly not a giggle, and it had never been accompanied by a girlish toss of her head.

Except for that one, terrible dinner. She'd giggled then, hadn't she?

It's happening right now. This minute. She's being—what did she call it—being made obedient. Evangeline is working her body like a puppet.

Hester half rose out of her chair, heedless of the scream in her knee and the stab of sympathetic pain in her opposite hip. She had to stop this. She had to do—had to—

Do what ?

Cordelia turned toward her, almost prancing across the intervening distance. Hester stared as she came closer, her mouth turned up in a broad smile. Her hands settled on Hester's left arm.

Her eyes showed white all around the edges, like a frightened horse's, and the horror and helplessness in them struck Hester like a blow.

I don't know how to stop this. I don't have the faintest idea. I send Richard off for proof, like an absolute mooncalf, when I should have been trying to find everything ever written about sorcery and how to stop it. She felt as if she was watching someone mortally wounded bleed out on the floor in front of her, with no idea how to staunch the flow.

"You shall be my aunt now," said Cordelia's mouth, while Cordelia's eyes screamed.

Don't give it away. Don't let Doom know that you know. "Yes," said Hester. "Yes, of course. How lovely that will be." She patted the girl's hand, feeling her skin crawl at the touch. Cordelia's skin was ice cold and clammy with sweat.

Her eyes went over Cordelia's shoulder, to where Doom stood, still clinging to the Squire's hand. The woman's gaze was slightly unfocused, her face arranged in a pleasantly neutral smile. Perhaps it was difficult to work two bodies at once. That seemed likely. Hester remembered how Cordelia had stood, blank-faced, in the corridor while her mother spoke to the Squire, not even acknowledging Hester's existence.

"You must have so much planning to do!" said Imogene, once again coming to the rescue. Hester would send word to the Church requesting that she be canonized as a saint at once. "How soon will you be wed?"

"Oh, as soon as possible," said the Squire carelessly. "I'll send for a special license. No need for a big church wedding, you know, was never one for all that frippery!"

"A small service in a small chapel will be more than enough for me," purred Evangeline, looking up at the Squire with a look that might have been adoring if not for the hardness of her eyes.

"My goodness," said Hester. She pushed herself to her feet. Cordelia almost didn't move out of the way in time, and Hester saw a line form between Doom's eyebrows. "My goodness," she said again. "We have so much planning to do. Why, the thought makes me quite faint! But a good faint, a good one, not a bad one, not like when I haven't eaten breakfast, you understand…" She let her mouth witter on, hoping that her brain would come up with something brilliant in the interim. It declined to do so.

Imogene took one of her arms with a wry smile. I know what you're doing, that smile said. "Let me help you upstairs," she suggested. "And we'll plan the guest list, shall we?"

"Not too many people, mind," the Squire huffed. "I said a small wedding, and I meant it!"

"No, no, of course not. We shan't invite any of the cousins, which is probably for the best, because we have so many cousins, you know, and I've always thought that Cousin Celia's children were dreadfully ill-behaved, although maybe they've improved, it's been years, and I do think that children are likely to improve, don't you? Particularly when the problem was that they would jump on the furniture and filch pastries from the tea trays, and of course you don't expect anyone to do that once they're past thirty, do you?"

Samuel and Lord Strauss had a slightly glazed expression after this recitation. So did Doom, although Hester doubted that she was listening.

"I'll help you upstairs, Auntie," said Cordelia, clapping her hands. "May I call you Auntie now? Oh, do say yes! I would like it best of all things."

How in the name of God did I not realize what was going on before? This doesn't even sound like Cordelia. She talks like girls did when I was a child. Mostly girls we didn't like. The sort of girl who runs to tattle to an adult at any opportunity.

Cordelia's ice-cold fingers closed on her other arm like a vise. The girl's mouth was still stretched in that terrible smile, showing all her little white teeth. If she had suddenly turned her head and sunk those teeth into Hester's cheek, it would have been a shock, but not really a surprise. The rabbit in a trap again, biting anything that gets too close. And this has been going on her entire life? How has she not broken completely?

Perhaps she had. As Hester had learned from her engagement, long ago, sometimes it didn't matter if you broke. You kept going. You weren't given a choice.

"Well," said Imogene, once they were out of the room and partway up the steps. "I told you, didn't I?"

Shit. Doom could hear every word through Cordelia's ears, couldn't she? "I never would have thought it, at Samuel's age," Hester said hurriedly, giving her friend's arm a warning squeeze.

Imogene gave her a puzzled look. Hester widened her eyes. Imogene's gaze flicked suspiciously to Cordelia. I am going to have to explain later, Hester thought wearily, and then, How the hell do I explain this? I still don't have proof.

Her lack of proof seemed increasingly trivial at this point. Surely anyone who so much as looked at Cordelia's face would know that something was happening. Surely.

"Do you not approve?" the girl asked mournfully, her face rearranging into something that resembled a pout. Imogene's eyebrows drew down sharply. And now she is thinking that Cordelia has been an extraordinary actress all this time, and trying to remember what she has said…

"Of course I approve," said Hester, stomping up the steps. Cordelia was providing no physical support at all, which gave her an excuse to brush the frozen fingers from her sleeve. "Careful, my dear, that's my cane arm. Let me lean on Imogene for a bit. Will you run up to my room and ask the maid to bespeak me a hot compress for my knee? It's paining me something awful tonight."

Cordelia's face went briefly blank, then she dipped her head and hurried up the steps in front of them.

"What the hell is going on?" murmured Imogene in Hester's ear.

"I'll explain later. It's very complicated."

"It would almost have to be. Is the girl her mother's creature, then?"

"No," said Hester, sighing, "not the way you're thinking. That's the problem." She paused on the landing and rubbed her temples. "I promise I'll tell you everything as soon as I can."

Her friend's eyes were bright with curiosity, but Imogene was too good a card player to let it show. "I'll look forward to that," she said quietly, and helped Hester up the last flight of steps to her room.

Cordelia fell heavily across the bed and a moment later, the obedience lapsed. She lay like a discarded toy for a few minutes, getting her senses back together, then sat up, trying to shove the memory of the last few minutes aside.

God. The things she'd said. May I call you Auntie now? Her only comfort was that Hester must have known that she was obedient, because otherwise she would never have said she approved of the wedding.

She rubbed her temples. The pressure in her chest had been growing the entire time she was obedient, and she let it out in a sharp teakettle shriek, grateful that Alice was not around to hear. Her maid likely hadn't expected her back so soon after dinner, and that was fine. Better than fine. God only knew how rude her mother would have been in Cordelia's voice. She'd been imperious enough to the maid that she'd ordered the hot compress from.

She was exhausted. Being obedient left her feeling wrung out, muscles aching from stretching just the wrong way and holding positions just a moment too long. She went to the water closet, then shrugged out of her gown and hung it up. Not as neatly as Alice would have done, perhaps, but hopefully it wouldn't wrinkle. Then she crawled under the blankets and pulled the curtains and gazed blankly into the darkness overhead.

Mother did it. She convinced the Squire to marry her. She won.

Does that mean we lost?

With Penelope Green dead, it was hard to feel otherwise. Evangeline would turn out Willard the butler and anyone else she didn't like. Hester would have to move away. And once she had what she wanted, how long would the Squire live? What if she killed him, too, to get all his money?

She's not married yet, Cordelia told herself. There's still a little time. It was considered borderline dishonorable for a man to break an engagement without a compelling reason, but if they could find some proof that Evangeline was a sorcerer and a murderer, that would surely be sufficiently scandalous. After all, if women's reputations could be compromised by spending ten minutes with the wrong man, surely spending ten minutes forcing someone off a balcony would be considered even worse.

Surely.

Probably.

She'd ask Hester in the morning.

… anybody there…?

It was the smallest whisper of a thought and Cordelia would never have noticed it except that she had no reason to think such a thing.

She rolled over in bed. Had she dozed off? Maybe it was just a symptom of that, the random thoughts that drifted through your brain when you were half-asleep.

… hello?… are you listening?…

Cordelia opened her eyes. The banked firelight was just visible as a pale line between the dark swaths of the bedcurtains. The air in the bedroom was still. She couldn't hear breathing.

… please, can you hear me?…

The words dropped into Cordelia's brain fully formed, without any of the swirling pre-echoes that accompanied actual thinking. Was someone whispering to her? She sat up in bed. "Is someone there?"

… Cordelia? Is that you?…

Good god, was there someone under the bed? Cordelia froze. Every childhood dream of monsters under the bed came roaring back into her ears. She stopped breathing.

… are you still there?

Instinct took over. Cordelia snatched the edge of the blanket and dragged it over her head, curling into the smallest ball that she could. If there were monsters, they couldn't get her through the blankets. Those were the rules.

… Cordelia…?

Go away, she thought, yelling the words inside her own skull. Go away, go away, GO AWAY!

It worked. There were no more whispers. In the morning, Cordelia had almost forgotten that they'd been there in the first place.