Chapter 22

JUNE 20TH AT THE DESCHAMPS FAMILY HOME

“S it, dear.” Vitus’s mama gestured for him to sit in one of the chairs she kept for these chats.

Vitus sat, and promptly. It was a custom before the formal social events. Once she was dressed, she liked to have a little rest and a chat while she finished the details of her preparations. Vitus knew it was partly to cover for the fact that dressing, in and of itself, could be tiring for her. He was not intimately acquainted with the layers of a lady’s wardrobe, but he knew they were numerous, with various laces and buttons and needing to stand in this position or that so everything could be properly done.

Once she was dressed, while she was fixing her hair, she enjoyed having one of her sons or Papa join her, depending on who was handy. Papa was still tending to some last-minute arrangements. Lucas could not get leave, and so it was Vitus’s role to provide conversation. Or to be nudged into doing what Mama wanted, as seemed to be the more accurate description. “We should coordinate, dear. Before we arrive.”

“Yes, Mama?” Vitus knew what was coming, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to ask the obligatory question.

“Business opportunities first, or matrimonial ones?” Mama glanced at him, clucked her tongue once. “Don’t think you’re getting out of the second conversation, but we can start with business.”

“I need to make my name, yes.” Vitus knew this was true. He and Niobe had discussed it endlessly. He and Mama and Papa had as well. Vitus had spent far too many nights awake at three in the morning staring at the ceiling. Awake and staring, despite knowing perfectly well that ideas were scarce at that hour and also rarely good ones. “And that means finding a few well-placed clients who need talismanic work done. Ideally, a betrothal. Or a Council challenge, but one can’t predict that. I don’t even know who would consider it, if there were one tomorrow.” He held up a hand. “Theo Carrington has aspirations, I’ve heard, but he’s young yet. And I don’t have a direct connection to him besides being at Schola at the same time.” Not the same year, though. That would have allowed some connection.

“Who else, then?” Mama leaned back slightly. “And if Theo Carrington was on the Council, he’d have less time for flirting or whatever it is he does that’s beyond flirting.”

“Mama!” Vitus did his best to sound mock-horrified, because that amused his mother, and she could stand to have more amusement. “My innocent ears.”

It drew a smile from her. “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about, even if you do not indulge.”

That brought them smack around to the matrimonial discussion, and Vitus ceded to it, rather than fight it. He was saving his resources for the evening’s events, which would be delicate navigation all round. He didn’t know who he’d end up talking to, or how it would go, but he could be certain it would be complex and demanding. “All right.”

He took a breath and let it out. “It’s not that I disagree with the idea. The right marriage might bring more opportunities, for me, for Papa, or for both of us. Connections and all that comes with them, not to be too crass. With any luck, it would also bring a fair bit of pleasure for me, company for you, and I don’t know what else. But I find it difficult to get my head around it in the abstract. I adore stones in the abstract, what they might become, the available potencies of a garnet or sapphire or amethyst, or lapis lazuli. But that tells me very little about that particular stone, what I will love most about it.”

His mother snorted. “And I cannot persuade you to work from the list of stones, as you put it, available to you?”

“Most of them do not entirely appeal, for one reason or another, though I admit that’s more a matter of taste than any flaw in them.” Vitus ticked off on his fingers. “Hannah Morris, perhaps. She’s of a good family, but I heard some gossip that makes me suspect she’s seeing someone. The Stream, Mama, which is why you didn’t hear it.” It strongly suggested that whoever she was seeing was not from Hannah’s own Fox House, but another Salmon, too.

“Hester Wallington?” She was from a well-off family. They’d made a lot of money in wool over the generations, and now in woven cloth. Hester was pleasant enough, but Vitus had very little sense of her personality. She was the sort of woman other people described as ‘efficient’ or possibly ‘self-effacing’. Hester had, in his experience of her at Schola - she’d been a year behind him - preferred the library over any other location. Vitus appreciated a library, but not as his only source of sustenance.

Vitus also couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be married to her. He had a fear he’d walk into rooms all the time and not realise she was there. Or, and this was perhaps worse, her family would take pity on them, and be generous - Hester was known to have a substantial dowry. Another kind of man might find that compelling. Vitus just wanted to step gently away from it, and leave her to her books and the inside of her head. There was no space for him there.

And whatever else he wanted in a marriage, he was holding out hope it might be an active sort of partnership. Vitus wanted to come home from his workshop, or whatever the appropriate geography was, and talk with his wife. He wanted to hear her ideas, perhaps she’d read something during the day, or had a thought during her own work or events. He wanted the sort of marriage where he might help her wind her yarn like he helped Mama. Or they could take turns reading a serial out loud, as well as perhaps going to lectures and concerts. And he wanted someone who would at least consider travelling with him, to go look at the places the stones he worked with came from.

“Alexandra Smythe-Clive?” His mother suggested it, almost idly, into the silence.

“Still in the early years of apprenticing as a Healer. They have some quite stringent rules around nepotism when it comes to materials, so it would be a challenge as much as a benefit on the business front. And she’s spending all her spare time, what there is, with her brother and her niece. Not the time, mother, not the time.”

The Smythe-Clives were a social step above the Deschamps. They were not strongly aligned with any of the landed families, which was actually rather interesting. Alexandra and Cyrus’s father was a specialist in arcane kinds of law, though as a researcher rather than a jobbing solicitor. They had family money. He didn’t need to work for a living, just take on questions that intrigued him.

Cyrus had been training as a ritualist, though Vitus had no idea how the death of his wife the previous year had changed that. That was the thing. Cyrus had loved her. Everyone who’d seen them had known that, had known it was mutual. Their choices about marriage had been uncommon. Albion’s Great Families - and also the notable ones - tended to marry only after the apprenticeships were completed. It was another reason he wouldn’t consider Alexandra. Not now, not for some years. Healers were too important.

“Griselda Warren has a sister. A younger sister, as yet unmarried.” His mother said it, and then immediately turned to consider her face in the mirror.

“It would mean being Hesperidon Warren’s brother-in-law, and he is uncomfortably ambitious. Much too much like flying too close to the sun and all the wax of my wings melting,” Vitus pointed out. “Though I will grant you a range of connections and in varying directions.” Hesperidon Warren was relatively new to the Council. He’d made a successful challenge seven years ago, a year into his marriage. “And Dido Talton is apparently almost betrothed to Adamus Mortimer. Don’t suggest that.”

“I heard that her family is rather pleased with the arrangements. I suppose there’s that. I wish her well.” Mama wrinkled her nose. “Adamus always struck me as a tad too martial for comfort. Oh, I know Lucas is in the cavalry, but that’s different somehow.”

“It is different, dear Mama, because Lucas is somehow able to take off his military mode with his uniform pieces. Or even when he hasn’t actually changed. I think the horses help, though.”

“Oh, well. Your brother does whatever it is he does there very well, I must say.” She fiddled with a ring, then thought of another name. “Laodamia Hastings, though she’s not yet done with school.”

“Too young for me, Mama.” It wasn’t uncommon for the woman to be younger, but that was more than a few years. “And I gather she’s quite talented in sympathetic magic, planning on an apprenticeship. Niobe knows Timothy Wallace quite well. They’re finalising the arrangements this month, apparently.”

His mother chuckled, agreeably. “All right. No marriageable misses on the horizon. Are there any other prospects for business? The Sisleys, perhaps? Actually, let me count up.”

Vitus knew what she was counting. There were several young Heirs at the moment. Those men - well, and Jenifry Alton - still at Schola but old enough to have been formally declared as heir to the land magic, whatever customs their families used for that. It made them the right age and station for their families to consider pieces made for them, for the adult obligations they were taking on.

“Matthias Sisley, nephew to Lord Phineas Sisley, his sister’s son.” Sisley’s father had married into the line and taken the name. The Sisleys ran to that kind of connection when the direct line wasn’t an option, and Phineas had no children of his own. Vitus didn’t think that a terribly likely commission, though he’d make the attempt. Lord Sisley wasn’t known for generous spending on anything beyond his own research interests.

“Richard Edgarton, heir to his father, Lord Anthony Edgarton. Temple Carillon, Heir to Lord Ambrosius Carillon. They both might be interested in talismanic work, perhaps. Jenifry Alton, the only child of her father, Lord Siward Alton. He might like a piece of jewellery for her.” Too young to consider for marriage, and whoever married her, she’d hold the title in her own right in due course. He counted through in his head. “And erm. Didn’t you mention one more while I was gone?”

“Oh, that was a sorry tale, Justin Hareward. His father died unexpectedly, some sort of accident, I believe, and he’s now Heir to his grandfather. They’re still getting used to it, but at least he’s a year out of Schola. They might be interested in a piece, actually. Worth having a conversation, letting Lord Hareward know you’re available.”

Vitus spread his hands. “As you say. I think my best choice is to wander and see who wishes to talk. There’s the Faire to consider, that’s a time for more conversations, less obvious.”

The problem with the Council rites was it was a time to see and be seen. People made and kept notes on who spoke with whom, for how long, and whether it seemed a pleasant conversation or a tense one.

“I suppose I must let you do your own work. Would you come and put this on for me, dear? The clasp is a little too tight for my fingers.” Vitus came around behind her, his thumbnail working the clasp. It wasn’t the clasp that was a problem, he thought, but that she had more aches in her fingers. Like the cough, she’d seen the Healers. A few things helped, and none mended it. Perhaps he’d talk to Niobe about a talisman she could hold that would warm to ease the aches. That would be a practical sort of gift to bring home. It ought to work in a bit of agate or carnelian and set in a ring or bracelet. Bracelet, most likely, that would be more comfortable with aching fingers.