Chapter 7: Bitter Fruit

7BITTER FRUIT

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?

I will pluck it from my bosom, tho’ my heart be at the root.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Locksley Hall”

Thomas had never masterminded asecret mission before. Usually it was James who planned the secret missions (at least, the important ones; Matthew often planned secret missions that were entirely frivolous). It was a mixed experience, he decided as he and Alastair trotted down the steps outside the Institute doors. On the one hand, he felt guilty that he had misled his kind aunt Tessa as to the reason for their visit. On the other hand, it was satisfying to have a secret, especially a secret shared with Alastair.

Especially, Thomas thought, a secret that was not weighted with emotion, with longing and jealousy and family intrigues. Alastair seemed to feel that as well; while he was not exactly buoyant, he was quiet, without his usual snappishness. That snappishness, Thomas had always thought, came reflexively to Alastair, as though it were necessary to punctuate anything good with some bad temper, to maintain balance.

Alastair stopped at the bottom of the Institute steps and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “It’s a good hiding place, Lightwood,” he said, without the gruff tone that he normally used to disguise being in good spirits. “I would never have thought of it.”

They were both bundled against the cold, Thomas in a tweed overcoat given to him years ago by Barbara, and Alastair in a fitted dark blue paletot that showed off the lines of his shoulders. Knotted around his neck was a dark green scarf. Due to the winter and the vanishing English sun, Alastair’s skin was a few shades lighter than usual, which made his eyelashes look even darker. They framed his black eyes like the petals of a flower.

Petals of a flower? SHUT UP, THOMAS.

Thomas looked away. “So what happens if demons come looking for it now? You tell them you don’t have it and they go away?”

Alastair chuckled. “I think they can sense where it is, sense its presence somehow. If they keep turning up at my house and don’t sense it, they’ll stop. That’s my theory, anyway. Which is good,” he added, “because the last thing my mother needs right now is demons frolicking in her herbaceous borders.”

Thomas could also hear the genuine current of worry in Alastair’s voice, under the easy dismissiveness. Sona Carstairs was pregnant, due to have her child very soon. It had been a difficult pregnancy, not helped by the death of Alastair’s father only a few weeks past.

“If there’s anything else I can do to help,” Thomas said, “do please tell me. I like to be of use.” And at the moment, there’s no one to be of use to besides Christopher, who considers me another lab implement.

Alastair frowned at him. “That coat is huge on you,” he said. “Your neck must be absolutely freezing.”

To Thomas’s surprise, Alastair drew off his own scarf and looped it around Thomas’s neck. “Here,” he said. “Borrow this. You can give it back to me next time I see you.”

Thomas smiled without being able to help it. He knew this was Alastair’s way of saying thank you. The scarf smelled of Alastair, of expensive triple-milled soap. Alastair, who was still holding the ends of the scarf, and looking Thomas directly in the eyes, his gaze unwavering.

A light flurry of snow drifted around them. It caught in Alastair’s hair, his lashes. His eyes were so black that the pupils almost lost themselves in the soft darkness of the irises. He smiled a little, a smile that made desire beat through Thomas’s blood like a pulse. He wanted to pull Alastair against him, right here in front of the Institute, and wind his hands into the clouds of Alastair’s dark hair. He wanted to kiss Alastair’s upturned mouth, wanted to explore the shape of it with his own, those little curls at the corners of Alastair’s lips, like inverted commas.

But there was Charles. Thomas still had no idea what was going on between Alastair and Charles; hadn’t Alastair been visiting Charles just this past day? He hesitated, and Alastair—sensitive as always to the slightest hint of rejection—dropped his hand, catching his lower lip between his teeth.

“Alastair,” Thomas said, feeling hot and cold and vaguely sick all at once, “I have to know, if—”

A cracking noise split the air. Thomas and Alastair leaped apart, reaching for their weapons, just as a Portal began to open in the center of the courtyard—a massive one, much larger than the usual. Thomas glanced in Alastair’s direction and noted that Alastair had dropped into a fighting stance, a short spear held out before him. Thomas knew they were both thinking the same thing: the last time something had appeared suddenly in the Institute courtyard, it had been a tentacled Prince of Hell.

But there was no sudden rush of seawater, no howl of demons. Instead Thomas heard the stamping hooves of horses, a shout of warning, and the Institute carriage came crashing through the Portal, barely remaining on all four of its wheels as it came. Balios and Xanthos looked very pleased with themselves as the carriage spun in midair and landed, with a jarring thud, at the foot of the steps. Magnus Bane was in the driver’s seat, wearing a dramatic white opera scarf and holding the reins in his right hand. He looked even more pleased with himself than the horses.

“I wondered if it was possible to ride a carriage through a Portal,” he said, jumping down from the seat. “As it turns out, it is. Delightful.”

The carriage doors opened, and rather unsteadily, Will, Lucie, and a boy Thomas didn’t know clambered out. Lucie waved at Thomas before leaning against the side of the carriage; she was faintly green about the gills.

Will went around the carriage to unstrap the luggage, while the unfamiliar boy—tall and slender, with straight black hair and a pretty face—put a hand on Lucie’s shoulder. Which was surprising—it was an intimate gesture, one that would be considered impolite unless the boy and girl in question were close friends or relatives, or had an understanding between them. It seemed, however, unlikely that Lucie could have an understanding with someone Thomas had never seen before. He rather bristled at the thought, in an older-brother way—James didn’t seem to be here, so someone had to do the bristling for him.

“I told you it would work!” Will cried in Magnus’s direction. Magnus was busy magicking the unfastened baggage to the top of the steps, blue sparks darting like fireflies from his gloved fingertips. “We should have done that on the way out!”

“You did not say it would work,” Magnus said. “You said, as I recall, ‘By the Angel, he’s going to kill us all.’?”

“Never,” said Will. “My faith in you is unshakable, Magnus. Which is good,” he added, rocking back and forth a little, “because the rest of me feels quite shaken indeed.” He turned to Thomas, looking as if he’d entirely expected to find him loitering about the Institute steps. “Hello, Thomas! Good to see you’re here. Someone ought to run up and tell Tess we’ve arrived.”

Thomas blinked. Will hadn’t greeted Alastair, which Thomas thought was rather rude until he looked around and realized that Alastair was no longer there. He’d slipped away, sometime between the arrival of the carriage and now.

“I will,” Thomas said, “but—where’s James?”

Will exchanged a look with Magnus. For a moment, Thomas felt a spasm of real terror. He did not think, after Barbara, after everything that had happened, that he could bear it if James—

“He’s all right,” Lucie said quickly, as if reading the look on Thomas’s face.

“He’s gone to Paris,” said the strange boy. He too was looking at Thomas sympathetically, which Thomas found a bit much. He didn’t even know who this stranger was, much less desire his concern.

“Who are you?” he demanded shortly.

There was a moment’s hesitation, shared by Magnus, Will, Lucie, and the stranger—a hesitation that seemed to close Thomas out. He felt his stomach knot, just as Will said, “Thomas. I see we owe you an explanation; I think we owe one to all those close to us. Come into the Institute. It’s time we called a meeting.”

---

Cordelia froze. She thought for a moment she was still in the dream, that James was a vision, a horror her mind was conjuring up. But no, he was here, impossibly, he was here in their suite, his face blank but hell burning behind his gold eyes. And Matthew had seen him too.

Matthew let go of Cordelia. They stepped away from each other, but Matthew didn’t hurry; he wasn’t trying to pretend something else had been happening. And indeed, what would have been the point? It was humiliating; Cordelia felt foolish, exposed, but surely James didn’t care?

She put her hand out and took Matthew’s, curling her fingers around his. He was ice-cold, but he said, cordially enough, “James. I didn’t think to see you here.”

“No,” James said. His voice was even, his face expressionless, but he was white as chalk. His skin looked as if it had been stretched too tightly over his bones. “Clearly not. I had not thought—” He shook his head. “That I would be interrupting anything.”

“Did you get my letter?” Matthew said. Cordelia looked at him sharply; it was the first she’d heard of a letter to James. “I explained—”

“I got it. Yes.” James spoke slowly. His coat had been thrown over the chair behind him. He was in his shirt and trousers, one of his braces slipping off one shoulder. Part of Cordelia longed to step forward and fix it for him, to brush back the messy hair from his forehead. He was holding something—a green bottle, which he was turning over and over in his hands.

“Has something happened?” Cordelia asked. She thought suddenly, with a spasm of fear, of her mother. Of the baby due any day now. But surely she would have heard from Alastair if anything had happened? He knew where she was staying. “For you to journey all the way to Paris—”

“I would have come earlier,” James said, his voice low. “I would have come the night you left, if it were not for Lucie.”

“Lucie?” Cordelia’s mouth went dry. “What could possibly—is she all right?”

James sat forward. “She left London, the same night you did,” he said carefully, “because of Jesse Blackthorn. My father fetched me to help bring her home. She is quite all right,” he added, holding up a hand, “and eager to see both of you. As I have been.”

“Ran off because of Jesse Blackthorn?” Cordelia demanded. “Because of his death? Where did she go?”

James shook his head. “I cannot say. It is Lucie’s story to tell.”

“But I don’t understand,” Matthew said, a furrow appearing between his brows. “You said you would have come here the night we left, if not for Lucie—but we assumed—”

“That you would be with Grace.” It hurt to say it; Cordelia breathed around the invisible spike in her heart.

James smiled. Cordelia had never seen him smile like that before: a smile that was all bitterness, all inward-turning loathing. “Grace,” he said. “I have no desire to spend even a moment with her. I despise her. I shall endeavor never to see her again. Cordelia, Effie told me what you saw—”

“Yes,” Cordelia said. She felt as if she were some distance outside her body, looking down. Matthew, beside her, was taking short, shallow breaths. “You did not seem as if you hated Grace then, James. You took her in your arms. You said—”

“I know what I said.”

“That was the night I left,” Cordelia cried, “the same night. You cannot say you would have followed me here.”

James’s voice sounded scorched, bleak as Belial’s land. “I came as soon as I could. For both of you. I thought, if I could explain—”

“James,” Matthew said. His voice shook. “You didn’t want her.”

“I was a fool,” James said. “I freely admit that. I was wrong about my own feelings. I was wrong about my marriage. I didn’t think it was real. It was real. The most real thing in my life.” He looked directly at Cordelia. “I wish to repair the broken things. To put them back together. I wish—”

“Does it not matter what I wish?” Cordelia tightened her grip on Matthew’s hand. “Does it not matter, all the times we went to parties, to gatherings, and you stared at Grace instead of looking at me? That you kissed her while we were married? If I have hurt you by coming here, with Matthew, I am sorry. But I did not think you would care.”

“That I would not care,” James repeated, and looked down at the bottle in his hand. “I was here for hours, you know, before you came in. I thought I might try getting myself drunk on this stuff, thinking it would keep my courage up, but it does taste like the vilest poison. I could only manage a mouthful. How you can stand it, Math, I’ve no idea.”

He set the half-empty bottle on the table next to him, and Cordelia, for the first time, saw the green label: ABSINTHE BLANQUI.

Matthew’s hand, in Cordelia’s, was like ice.

“That’s not Matthew’s,” Cordelia said.

James looked surprised. “It was in his room—”

No,Cordelia thought, but James only looked puzzled.

“You went into my room?” Matthew demanded, and any thought Cordelia had had that this was a mistake, that the bottle wasn’t his, vanished with his words.

“I was looking for you,” James said. “I saw this, and the cherry brandy—I suppose I shouldn’t have taken it, but it seems I’m not much good at Dutch courage. I…” He looked between Matthew, white as a sheet, and Cordelia. He frowned. “What is it?”

Cordelia thought of the way Matthew had tasted when she kissed him. Sweet, like candy. Cherry brandy. She let go of Matthew’s hand, drew her own in front of her. Laced her shaking fingers together. She was a fool. A fool who had learned nothing from the life and death of her own father.

She could lambast Matthew now, she supposed. Shout at him in front of James for lying to her. But he looked so stunned and fragile, his eyes fixed on some point in the distance, a muscle in his jaw working.

“I should not have come,” said James. He was looking at both of them, at Matthew and Cordelia, rage and love and hope and despair all in his eyes, and Cordelia wished she could comfort him, and hated that she wished it. “Cordelia, tell me what you want. If it’s Matthew, I’ll go—I’ll take myself out of your life. I never intended to hurt either of you—”

“You knew,” Matthew whispered. “I told you in the letter that I loved Cordelia. And yet you come here like this dark angel, Jamie, telling Cordelia you do want her—”

“You said what you felt,” James said, white as a corpse. “I need only to hear from Cordelia, too.”

“By the Angel,” said Matthew, his head thrown back. “There is not, never will be, any escape, will there? Never anything better—”

“Stop.”Cordelia was suddenly exhausted. It was the kind of exhaustion that sometimes fell upon her after a battle, a dark wave rolling over her, as if she had fallen far below the sea and drifted there, unable to raise herself to the surface. “I will not be the cause of fighting between the two of you. I do not want that. Whatever argument you have between you, settle it. I am going to pack my things, and tomorrow I will return to London. I am sorry you made this journey for no reason, James. And Matthew, I am sorry I came with you to Paris. It was a mistake. Good night.”

She walked out of the living room. She had just stepped into her bedroom when she heard Matthew say, sounding more defeated than she had ever heard him, “Damn you, James.”

A moment later, the door to the suite slammed closed. Matthew had left.

---

It took James several moments to summon up the courage to knock on Cordelia’s door.

When he had first arrived at the hotel, it had been easy enough to get the number of Matthew and Cordelia’s hotel room from the clerk by claiming he wished to leave a message. A trip up in the lift, an Open rune, and he was inside, pacing from room to room, checking to see if they were there.

He had gone to Matthew’s room first: Matthew had not even tried to hide the brandy and absinthe bottles—most empty, a few full. They were lined up along the windowsill like green glass sentries. His clothes were everywhere: over the backs of chairs, on the floor, waistcoats and spats abandoned carelessly.

He had spent only a moment in Cordelia’s room. It held the scent of her perfume, or her soap: spice and jasmine. It brought the memory of her back too painfully. He escaped to the living room with one of Matthew’s absinthe bottles, though he could take no more than a single swallow. Bitter fire, it scorched his throat.

He recalled being relieved that Matthew and Cordelia had two separate rooms. He told himself he should not be surprised. Matthew was a gentleman, however strongly he felt for Cordelia. He could talk through this with them, explain his feelings. Things could be all right.

Then he had heard the door open. He had heard them before he saw them—soft laughter, the sound of falling fabric. The moonlight had turned them into moving shadows as they came into the room, neither of them realizing he was there. Matthew setting Cordelia down, his hands on her, roaming over the curves of her body, and she had been kissing him back, her head tilted, hands in his hair, and James could remember, painfully, what kissing Cordelia was like, hotter and better than any fire. He had felt sick and ashamed and desperate and did not even remember reaching for the cord of the lamp.

But he had, and here they were. Matthew had gone, and James knew he needed to talk with Cordelia. Needed to tell her the truth, no matter how awkward the circumstances. They would not become less awkward if he withheld the reason he was here.

He knocked, twice, and opened the door. The room was decorated in pale pastels that reminded James of the sort of dresses Cordelia had worn when she’d first come to London. The wallpaper and bed hangings were celadon green, the rug striped sage and gold. The wallpaper was a repeating pattern of fleur-de-lis and ivory ribbons. The furniture was gilded; a small writing desk stood by the large, arched window through which he could see the lights of the Place Vend?me.

In the center of the room was Daisy, in the process of carrying a striped dress from the wardrobe to the bed, where the rest of her clothes were laid out. She stopped when she saw him, arrested in mid-motion.

She arched her eyebrows at him but said nothing. Her hair had been done up in some sort of complicated knot, which had come very loose. Long strands of flame red spilled down around her face. She wore a dress of almost the same flame red; James had never seen it before, and he’d thought he knew most of her clothes. This one was velvet, clinging to her breasts and waist, flaring out from her hips and thighs like an upside-down trumpet.

A thread of desire unfurled in his stomach, curling around the knot of anxiety there. He had not been this close to her since he had realized the truth about how he felt. He wanted to close his eyes against the pain-pleasure of it—his body, it seemed, was too foolish to know when he wasn’t precisely welcome. It was reacting as if he’d been starving and had just had a plate of the most delicious food placed in front of him. Go on, you idiot, it seemed to be saying. Take her in your arms. Kiss her. Touch her.

Like Matthew did.

He took a ragged, deep breath. “Daisy,” he said. “I wanted to say—I never apologized.”

She turned, laid the striped dress on the bed. Stayed there, fiddling with its buttons. “For what?”

“For all of it,” he said. “For my stupidity, for hurting you, for letting you think I loved her, when it was never love. It was not my intention.”

She did look up, at that. Her eyes were very dark, her cheeks flushed. “I know it was not your intention. You never thought about me at all.”

Her voice was low, husky; the voice that had read Layla and Majnun to him, so long ago. He had fallen in love with her then. He had loved her ever since, but had not known it; even in his blindness, though, her voice had sent disconcerting shivers up his spine.

“I thought of you all the time,” he said. It was true; he had thought of her, dreamed of her. The bracelet had whispered to him that none of it meant anything. “I wanted you with me. All the time.”

She turned to face him. Her dress had slipped partway off one shoulder, baring the skin, a soft gold-brown against the crimson of her dress. It had a sheen like satin, and a softness he recalled with an almost painful sensation of wanting. How had he lived with her, in the same house, for weeks, and not kissed her, touched her, every day? He would die for that chance again.

“James,” she said. “You had me. We were married. You could have said any of this at any time, but you did not. You said you loved Grace; now you say you want me. What am I to make of that, other than that you want only what you cannot have? Grace came to you, I saw her, and—” Her voice shook slightly. “And now you have decided you feel nothing for her, but you do want me. How am I to imagine that you mean what you say? Tell me. Tell me something that would make me feel this is real.”

This is the moment,James thought. This was when he should say, No, you see, I was ensorcelled; I thought I loved Grace but it was just dark magic; I couldn’t tell you earlier because I didn’t know; but now all of that is behind me and—

He could hear how it sounded. Unbelievable, for one thing, though he knew he could convince her eventually, especially once they had returned to London. It wasn’t that he couldn’t make her believe him. It was more than that.

The image of Cordelia and Matthew in their embrace came back to him. It had wrenched at him with an awful sort of shock to see them like that. He did not know what he had been expecting, and some part of him had felt a blind sort of happiness in seeing them—he had missed them both badly—quickly swamped by a deep and terrible jealousy. It had frightened him with its intensity. He had wanted to break something.

He thought of Matthew slamming his way out the door. Maybe he had broken something.

But there was more to the memory. It hurt to call it back up, like slicing one’s own skin with a razor. But he did it, and in the memory he saw past his anger, his misery, and he saw how they had looked—happier than he had seen either of them in a long time. Even when he and Cordelia had been happy together, in the memories he had clung to this past week, there had been a melancholy in her dark eyes.

Perhaps she did not feel that melancholy with Matthew. Perhaps, having been sure James would never love her, that their marriage would never be anything but a lie, Cordelia had found joy with someone who could tell her straightforwardly that he loved her, without caveats or denials.

James had come to Paris determined to tell Cordelia the truth—about Grace, about the bracelet. To tell her she had his whole heart and soul and always had. He realized now that this would be binding her with chains. She was kind, his Daisy, the sort to weep over an injured kitten in the street. She would pity him and his chained love, pity him for what Grace and Belial had done to him. She would feel obligated to stay by his side, return to their marriage, because of that pity and that kindness.

For a moment, the temptation was before him. Tell her the truth, take her kindness and her pity and let it chain her to him. Let it bring her back to Curzon Street with him. It would be like before: they would play chess, they would walk and talk and dine together and eventually he would win her back, with gifts and words and devotion.

He let the image hover in his mind, of the two of them in the study, before the fire, Cordelia smiling through the fall of her unbound hair. His fingers under her chin, turning her face toward him. What are you thinking about, my love?

He pushed the thought away, sharply, as if he were puncturing a soap bubble. Pity and kindness were not love. Only free choice was love; if he had learned nothing else from the horror of the bracelet, he had learned that.

“I love you,” he said. He knew it wasn’t enough, knew it even before she closed her eyes, as if terribly weary. “I may have believed I loved Grace, but she was not the person I imagined. I think also I did not want to believe I could have been so wrong, especially about something so important. The time I have been married to you, Daisy, has been—the happiest of my life.”

There, he thought wretchedly. It was some of the truth, if not the whole of it.

She opened her eyes slowly. “Is that all?”

“Not quite,” he said. “If you love Matthew, then tell me now. I will stop importuning you. I will leave you two to be happy.”

Cordelia shook her head slowly. For the first time, she looked a little uncertain as she said, “I don’t—I don’t know. James, I need time to think about all this. I cannot give you any sort of answer now.”

She had put her hand to her throat, an unconscious gesture, and James realized suddenly what lay there above the neckline of her dress: the gold pendant he had given her, in the shape of the globe.

Something lit within him. A small, insane spark of hope. “But you are not leaving me,” he said. “You do not want a divorce?”

She gave the ghost of a smile. “Not yet, no.”

More than anything else, he wanted to pull her toward him, to crush his mouth to hers, to show her with lips and hands what words were inadequate to prove. He had fought Belial, he thought, had twice faced down a Prince of Hell, yet this was the hardest thing he had ever done: to nod, to back away from Cordelia, to leave her without another question or another word.

He did it anyway.