Shana Abe - The Sweetest Dark

The Marquess of Sherborne. Of course. Aubrey, Armand’s older brother.

So it became that my third visit to Tranquility was not for a party but a wake.

Fittingly, the sky was overcast with storm clouds again, although the wind wasn’t perfumed with impending rain. It was a tepid, muggy day, made muggier by the fact that I was dressed entirely in black, which seemed to repel the breeze but soak up the moisture.

We all wore black, we Iverson girls. It had taken Almeda and the castle staff nearly four days to dye the formal uniforms of us all.

I reeked of dye. Tranquility reeked of grief.

The manor house would be open to the public all week. Tradition dictated that the locals would come by to pay their respects in stages: fishermen, farmers, merchants. Today was our day, and a line of ebony-clad girls marched up the grand curving driveway—pinkish grit from the crushed shells speckling our shoes—without anyone speaking a word.

Mrs. Westcliffe led the way, carrying an offering of white lilies. Lady Chloe was just behind her, carrying nothing but her fine looks, which seemed even more heightened in black. I had tried to hang behind at the end of the line, but all the youngest girls were there, and the three teachers at the very back gestured for me to get ahead and move to the front with my own class.

That’s how we entered the mansion. That’s how we greeted Armand, because the duke wasn’t even there. I heard people whispering from the corners of the black-and-white parlor that he was upstairs, locked in his quarters.

By the time I reached Armand, the strain was clear on his face. Most of the girls had just curtsied and gabbled a few words. Chloe, on the other hand, had thrown her arms around him and held her lips to his cheek, a few seconds too long for anyone to mistake it as a mere token between friends.

My turn. I gave no kisses. No embrace. I held out my right hand and he accepted it, his gaze drifting down, unanchored, to stare blankly at where we connected. His fingers were cold, barely curved around mine.

“Remember the shark,” I said, the first thing that came into my mind.

Armand looked up again. A little of the focus returned to his eyes.

Be strong, I was telling him. You are more than this moment, I was trying to say.

He understood me, I think. His fingers regained their life, clasping mine hard.

Tonight, I mouthed to him, another something that just popped into my head.

He nodded, I moved away, and the girl behind me took my place.

Eventually, the duke did come down to make his greetings, and if it had been quiet in the room before, now you could hear a mouse squeak.

The best word to describe Armand’s father was ghoulish. His suit hung off him—he’d lost even more weight since the day on the yacht—and his face reminded me of the jack-o’-lanterns we used to carve on All Hallows’ Eve, all sunken red eyes and bony outline and uneven teeth. The Iverson girls shrank back from him en masse; his starving, jittery desolation looked actually contagious. Only Mrs. Westcliffe approached in her assured clip across the marble tiles. She’d already passed the lilies to a footman, so she was able to take up both of his hands and keep them in hers as she murmured something to him none of the rest of us could make out.

None of the rest of the people, I mean. Maybe I had dragon hearing since my transformation, because I heard her as if she had spoken just to me.

“Reginald,” Mrs. Westcliffe had said. That was all.

And there was so much anguish behind that one word that I knew not to mistake it as a mere token between friends.

...

That night, I waited in the tower for the dark to reach its full bloom. My plan at first was to go to Jesse and then Armand, but Jesse himself had quashed that.

I hadn’t seen much of him since our night together. Only a few occasions around the grounds, working with Hastings, driving the carriage or cart. Once a fleet, illicit caress of my cheek in the bamboo grove of the conservatory before class. His music to me since then—including tonight—had all been the same reassuring tune.

All’s well, beloved. Catching up on sleep. We’ll see each other soon.

I had decided to let him have his way, since he’d been gracious enough to let me have mine.

The sounds of the castle settling in for the night seemed both repetitive and heartening. How quickly I’d become accustomed to this place, I realized. I was even rather fond of it. My tower, the old-fashioned teachers and lessons, even the other girls, snooty and insolent and so untouched by grimy reality.

The bountiful food.

On an evening such as this, with the moon smiling and the stars sparking to life in milky, silvery bands, I almost wished I could stay here forever. Which seemed a very upside-down thought, because as much as I appreciated my life in the castle, it was a place that had been constructed with only one purpose in mind: to hide from death.

But there was no true hiding from death. It would hover and wait. It didn’t even need a war to claim lives, although I’m sure the war helped. Death had taken Jesse’s parents and mine, Mittie’s father, and Armand’s brother. Too many inmates from Moor Gate to count–if anyone but me had even been counting.

Everyone who’d built this fortress was dead. Everyone who’d set the stone and mixed the mortar and thought about the trajectory of arrows and swords with each new layer in place: dead. Everyone they’d ever loved, too. You could make all the secret tunnels in the world, cross your fingers for all the low tides to steal away, but Death was the Great Hunter, and he would still end up finding you.

“But not now,” I whispered to the stars. “Not here, not tonight.”

Almeda arrived for her final evening check. I bid her good night and got a nod in response, accompanied by a stern “Get into bed, then, miss. Dreams don’t dream themselves.”

Another half hour, just to be certain. And then, right as I was about to do it, lift into smoke, I heard a tiny scratching at my door.

I whirled about. It wouldn’t be Jesse. He was back in his cottage; I could feel him there.

A voice spoke, the barest slight sound beyond the wood. “Eleanore.”

I let out a siss through my teeth and yanked open the door.

“Sophia. What are you doing here?”

She stood alone on the landing in a robe of some voluminous, floaty material. Probably silk, like the dress she’d lent me. It billowed around her in white tucks and folds, turning her into a very pale ghost.

“May I come in?”

I couldn’t think of a suitable reason to refuse her, and, anyway, it was likely the most civil thing she’d ever said to me. I backed up, lifting a hand in permission, and she floated into my room.

“Oh. This is … pleasant,” she said, looking around at the plain stone walls.

“Yes, it is.”

“I’m sorry I’ve not come before.”

“We’re not at Sunday tea, Sophia, and there’s no one else listening. What do you want?”

She wandered to the bed, which took only a few steps. Her hair fell in a long bright braid down her back.

“I didn’t want to ask in front of the other girls, but I wondered if you would deliver a message to Armand for me.”

For a bizarre moment, I thought she knew what I’d been about to do, and how—but then she turned around and kept talking.

“I know you’ll see him before I will. Maybe you’ll slip out, or he’ll find a way to come to you. Please don’t bother to deny it. I can see the truth on your face. I’ve seen it on his ever since you came. I don’t care about that, I swear. Mandy and I … We used to be friends. In childhood. In London. Only friends, I promise. He was such a sad little brat when we were first introduced, it was all I could do to endure him. But he’s not really a brat. I’m sure you know. Deep down, he’s quite funny and kind. And when I saw him today at Tranquility, in that horrid parlor, I just … I lost my words, I suppose. I lost what I’d meant to say to him. That I was sorry. I didn’t know Aubrey as I did Mandy, but he was always nice to us. Not teasing the way some big brothers are, but good-natured. He was so clearly the duke’s favorite; I know that must have been hard for them both sometimes. But Mandy loved him. So I wanted to say how sorry I was, that I remember Aubrey and I’ll miss him, as well. But I didn’t.”

She seemed to run out of air. Even in the voluminous robe, she looked smaller and more vulnerable than she ever had, though that might have been only a deception of the shadows.

“All right,” I said gently, and escorted her back to the door. “I’ll tell him.”

Tender creatures, these aristocrats. Who would have guessed?

...

I knew no other chambers at Tranquility but the ones I’d been in before. The parlor, the ballroom, the study. I figured Armand’s bedroom would be on the second floor, possibly the third. But it turned out it was on the fourth, a lone secluded chamber, the last before the wing ended in breezes and open space.

A rough wall of plywood had been put up to block the sudden conclusion of the house. A tarpaulin had been nailed over that; it looked streaked with moisture, probably from all the recent storms.

I smoked around the gaps between the plywood and Tranquility’s wall and found myself in one of those richly paneled hallways, with embossed strips of copper going green decorating the tops of both walls.

I hung in the air, obviously out of place. Had anyone emerged from the stairway at the other end of the corridor, they’d think there was a fire.

But no one came up. There was only one heartbeat on this level of the manor house, and it emanated from the one room with a closed door.

I thought about smoking through the keyhole or under the gap at the bottom, but it seemed, well, rude to show up like that. This was his home, not mine, and even though he’d had no qualms about barging into my bedroom uninvited, I was not him.

So I Turned back to girl in the hall, raised my fist, and knocked.

I heard him stirring. The knob began to turn. I grabbed it and held the door in place before he could open it more than a crack.

“Do you have a blanket or something?”

The knob released. He padded away, came back with a quilt that he thrust through the gap in the doorway. I wrapped myself up and went in.

Electric lights, not even gas. No soot, no flickering. I’d never get used to them.

Colored-glass chandeliers lit the room in pools of artificial glow. Newspaper pages scattered the floor beneath the windows, as if he’d been reading there for days and no one had bothered to come and pick them up. There was a rumpled bed with stiffly draped curtains, a few rugs, a desk holding empty wineglasses, and a fireplace—no fire—with a mantel of polished red stone. None of the furniture matched. It seemed as if they were pieces culled from other sections of the mansion, lumped together for convenience and nothing else.

Even so, it was a remarkably spare space, considering its size. The students’ suites at Iverson had more frippery than this.

Armand was staring at me, his hand still on the knob.

“I told you I’d come,” I said. Then, when he didn’t move: “You should close the door.”

He did. I wandered forward into the chamber, the quilt dragging behind me in an angled, weighted train.

I looked up, stepped out from beneath the buzz of a chandelier, and turned around to find him again. He hadn’t yet moved.

“I’ve a message for you from Lady Sophia.”

His face remained empty.

“She apologizes for not expressing her condolences properly to you today. She said to tell you that she’s sorry. That she liked your brother and she’ll miss him.”

“Sophia knew you were coming here? Tonight?”

“No. She thinks we’re lovers. She thought we’d steal away somehow to see each other soon.”

That seemed to wake him some. He took a step toward me, despair roughening his tone.

“Is that why you came?”

“No, my lord.” But since I didn’t have any answer beyond that, I went to his bed and sat upon its edge. I hooked my heels in place against the black-walnut frame and laced my fingers together in my lap. Then I waited.

It took him about two minutes to come over. He climbed up beside me, not touching, and sat with his shoulders slumped. He smelled of sandalwood aftershave and wine.