Then no one was laughing at Eve’s teeth anymore.
“No, Miss Eve. There’s no problem here,” I say deferentially. Brock bows an apology at her, and when his head is bent, she shoots him a dirty look and an extra gesture I didn’t even know she knew.
“Do let me know if that changes, Marit,” she says, floating regally through the door and into the wisteria curtain, the ends of her ribbons trailing behind her.
For the first time, I realize that maybe she doesn’t need me as much as I believed.
And as soon as she’s gone, Brock steps to block the door, trapping me.
“That little trick with the candies in my room,” he says. “Was that you?”
“No,” I say honestly.
I try to push past him, but he’s as solid as a brick wall.
“You know, Marit, I’ve been watching you,” he says, crossing his arms in a slow, menacing way. “Sneaking around. Visiting the Vestergaards’ library, and that space of Jakob’s in the attic. You’re up to something. And all those infractions,” he says, ticking off his fingers, “are ones that Nina should likely be informed of.” He straightens, rising up to his full height.
“You can’t force me out,” I say in a low voice. I take a step toward him. Now that he’s discovered my connection to Eve, I’ll press it to my full advantage instead of trying to hide it. “When it comes down to it, I have a bigger in with the Vestergaards than you do. But”—I take another step toward him and pluck a golden pink grapefruit from one of his trees—“if you’d like to risk it, go ahead. Just know I’ve got someone pulling for me on the inside. And maybe Mrs. Vestergaard would like to know exactly who is responsible for her wasting time having to find a new seamstress over and over again. Or ruining her curtains.”
He steps aside just enough for me to shove past him and out the door.
But then he follows me into the corridor. “Do you know what else I’ve discovered?” he asks, trying to keep step with me. I bristle and quicken my pace. “You stay up late at night so you can do your jobs without magic.” While he walks, he pulls a silver coin from his pocket. It’s the talisman he always carries, the charm that he superstitiously flips whenever he uses magic. “You don’t like to use it, do you? You hoard it.”
“So?” I ask, throwing open the kitchen door. Wondering if I should make good on my promise to actually tie him to the banister. “What does it matter to you?”
I don’t even hear Liljan approach. Brock’s face registers her sliding down the railing toward us at the last moment, but he’s not quick enough to stop her from landing and plucking the coin from right between his fingers.
“Keep away!” she sings.
He swears. “Liljan, you’re such a royal pain in the—”
She holds the coin out tauntingly to him, then turns and flies into the kitchen, where everyone is gathering for dinner.
“Liljan!” Brock lunges after her, but she manages to toss the talisman over his head to Lara, who giggles and immediately throws it on to Oliver. Brock attempts to grab it but just misses as Liljan leaps and snatches it back again.
“Just how will you keep the Firn away now?” she teases him.
“Do what I do,” Signe calls out as Liljan tosses the coin to her. She passes it to Oliver and says, shrugging: “Pray.”
“Or only use magic when you sit by a fire,” Oliver adds. He throws the talisman to Declan.
“Pour it out all at once, then take a week to rest,” Declan advises. The coin arcs through the air, gleaming in the firelight.
“No, just use a little each day,” says Jakob, reaching up to catch the talisman. He flips it into one of Dorit’s measuring cups.
“Use the right recipe,” Dorit says. “And it will taste like you used magic anyway.”
“Find ways to cut corners. Save and stretch your own magic,” Rae says dreamily. She plucks the coin from the measuring cup and looks at Brock, of all people, with stars in her eyes. She hands it back to him. “And each other’s.”
So they do care. Carrying their talismans and old wives’ tales like armor. Spilling out magic, tending to one another, and hoping for the best. I think of Ivy’s glass orbs hanging in the greenhouse and wonder if they help Brock’s plants grow better, somehow—if, like Ingrid did for me, Ivy poured out some of her magic to help someone she loves.
“Marit’s up to something,” Brock announces. His chest is heaving and his eyes are spitting fire, and I suddenly try to make myself invisible in the corner of the kitchen. “And I don’t trust her in the least. I think she’s spying on us.”
“What?” I cry.
“She’s snooping around the Vestergaards. She isn’t being entirely honest about why she’s here. Don’t you think you should have told us all a certain critical little piece of information?” he asks. “That you knew Eve before you both came to this house?”
“Is that true?” Rae asks. She comes to stand next to Brock, folding her arms over her chest. “Did you know her from before?”
“Y-yes,” I stammer. “But, for fig’s sake, I’m not spying on you.”
Dorit sidles up next to Brock, still holding her wooden spoon from the stove. Jakob and Liljan take a step closer to me, as if we are a seam that is splitting down the middle. In a move that mirrors it, Brock takes off his jacket and methodically tears the fabric with a loud ripping sound. I gape at him.
“Mm,” he says, grimacing. “Seems as though this is going to need mending.” He waits a beat, then holds it out to me. “Would you like to borrow my talisman?” he asks wickedly.
Jakob bristles. He’s moving before I can react, taking the coat and throwing it back at Brock.
“Fix it yourself.”
Jakob’s body is tightened into a protective stance in front of me, and I try not to notice the curves of his muscles under his shirt.
“It’s all right,” I say to him quietly. I step forward, looking between the two sides of the staff. “It’s true. I did know Eve from before. But I’m not spying—I’m only trying to look out for her. We grew up together. She’s like my sister.” I extend my hand, offering to take Brock’s ripped jacket. “After all,” I say softly, “who’s to say what lengths we would go to for a sister?”
To his credit, Brock looks the slightest bit sheepish when he hands over the jacket.
“I’m still going to stitch it together using some horrible dirty word,” I inform him.
“Well, first start with this,” Nina says, barging into the kitchen. “A warm evening dress for Eve. Mr. Vestergaard is taking Mrs. Vestergaard and Eve to Tivoli Gardens.”
Philip Vestergaard. Seeking out private time with Eve and Helene.
Again.
It’s just kindness, I tell myself. And it’s in Tivoli Gardens, a public place surrounded by crowds. He’s taking care of his brother’s widow and the only family he has left around the holidays.
Yet I still feel a stirring sense of unease.
It’s hard to hide, even while I feel Brock’s eyes search my face for a reaction.
“You’re up to something,” he repeats. He smiles wolfishly and pockets his talisman. “And I’m going to find out what it is.”
I pluck out a knife and hold it up until he saunters away, then slice clean through my grapefruit.
“Any way I could get a ticket to Tivoli?” I murmur to Liljan and Jakob.
“Perhaps we should all go,” Liljan suggests cheerfully. “Listen, you got us into the ballet,” she says, licking jam off her fingers. “Now, leave this one to me.”
Chapter Sixteen
Philip
November 25, 1866
Tivoli and Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens
Tivoli shimmers with lights.
I follow Helene and Eve through the darkening night to the wooden gate with its ticket houses on each side. Beyond the gate are twining strands of canals and moats, spilling out from the lake, looping around the gardens. The reflections from the gaslights gleam in water that’s as black as ink. I recoil
at the sound of a shattering scream, taking me instantly back to the war. But the shriek is merely carrying through the night from the roller coaster. I hear the creaking of its joints; more screams as the carriages fall, mingling with laughter. There’s a crackle of fireworks.
I take a breath and feel a deep sense of pleasure. Beautiful Denmark.
Beside me, Eve’s eyes are wide and alight with wonder.
But Helene is irritable. She’s even stiffer than usual around me, as though a sheen of ice covers her every move. She wears that coat with the embroidered flowers on it, but as usual, she wears no jewels. She never has. It rankles me, as if it’s a personal affront.
Aleks may have saved the mines the first time, but I was the one to find the jewels and save us the second time.
Not him.
Me.
Tonight, I follow the smell of sugar-glazed almonds and mulled gløgg through the gate, gravel crunching under my boots. We round the corner to come face-to-face with an advancing wall of the Tivoli Boys’ Guard, thirty-odd children in uniform, known as the Lilliputian Military. Helene leans forward to buy Eve a bag of hazelnuts and marzipan. She cocks her head at me with an unspoken question and, at my nod, buys two gløggs that wisp with steam.
Her hand is naked when she hands me the cup.
Aleks loved her even more for it, that she didn’t cover herself in the jewels from our mines. She has always preferred simple pieces of glass to our gorgeous rubies, thick and fat, or the dark sapphires that lick and spit light like a fire. But even if she doesn’t want to wear our jewels, she is housed by them, clothed by them, fed by them. Aleks used our newfound riches to buy the Vestergaard estate in Hørsholm. We replaced the necklaces and earrings my mother sold off during the war. We sat in the prime boxes at the ballet house, watching Helene dance. And at Aleks and Helene’s wedding, Vestergaard gemstones twinkled across my mother’s hair like a universe of dark stars.
Helene didn’t wear any.
“Can you stop that?” Helene suddenly asks me, her voice slicing through the air like fresh-cut steel. I must have started to hum “The Brave Foot Soldier” without even realizing it. I sip my gløgg. The fireworks crackle over our heads, leaving glittering trails of fire and smoke in the sky.
“Is it magic?” Eve breathes, looking up. Her voice is so reverent that it almost sounds fearful. I examine her, this small girl Helene plucked from a southern orphanage.
“No,” I say. “It’s gunpowder.” At that answer, Eve seems to relax.
“You don’t like magic?” I ask, eyeing her.
She shakes her head. “No one should use magic.” Her voice turns to disgust. “It’s cruel.”
I laugh in surprise before I can help it. She flinches.
“You do know that you have magical people working all around you,” I inform her. “Working for you. Every day.”
“What?” She looks horrified. “That’s not true.”
“I assure you, it’s very true,” I say.
“But—but doesn’t it kill them?”
She looks to Helene, as if Helene will explain it all, give her an answer to assuage her horror, and I chuckle again, immensely amused.
“Yes, Helene, do you ever feel bad?” I ask, and take a deep sip of gløgg. “That you ask people to pour out so much magic for you?”
The sound of the boys’ guard grows distant, and the lights shimmer in the lake. Helene’s silence grows so stony that the air around her practically crystallizes.
“Everyone makes their choices,” she finally says to Eve. “If it’s worth it to them or not. I pay them well.”
Eve swallows. “But not . . . everyone who works in the house has magic?” She looks at Helene with a touch of suspicion. “It’s not a prerequisite?”
But Helene isn’t listening. She’s radiating fury at the smirk I’m not even trying to hide. “Don’t look at me like that, Philip,” she snaps. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to pay a price, to give up part of my life for something? What do you think ballet is? It took years of my life that I spent practicing and rehearsing, all for those few moments a night on stage. It weakened my body, cost me in injury. And now it’s gone. It might not have taken years from the end of my life, but it cost me part of my life all the same.” She tosses the rest of her gløgg into the street. “Everyone makes their own choices.”
“Irritable tonight, are we?” I ask. I lean on a wooden railing. “Even more than usual.”
“Well, you’re irritating,” she retorts.
There’s a sudden rippling in the crowd as the royal guards spill through the front gate. I turn toward them with heightened interest. So the king must be coming tonight.
Eve steps forward to examine the carvings of the merry-go-round, and then, so only I can hear, Helene begrudgingly admits, “Bournonville and I are disagreeing. He disapproves of the vision I have for the future of the ballet, for dancers. He’s grooming someone else to take over the company when he’s gone.” She swallows and looks away. “I’m not certain they will even allow Eve to audition.”
“So start your own company,” I say breezily, but Helene catches me off-guard when she says, “That’s exactly what I plan to do. Perhaps Eve and I will do a series of salons,” she muses. “Experimental.” She looks away, into the distance. “Perhaps if Denmark won’t have us, we could travel to Paris, St. Petersburg.”
King Christian IX enters Tivoli through the front gate, trailed by an entourage of guards.
“Either that, or perhaps it’s time to shift my attentions.” Helene’s fingers graze her lips in thought. “Maybe it’s time I learned the business of the mines.”
My head snaps up and I try to mask my panic. No, that cannot happen. Helene needs to stay far away from the mines, in the tenuous arrangement we’ve struck—where she allows me to manage the ownership Aleks left her and never, ever interferes.
“And deny the world of what you can do?” I ask. “I never knew you as one to give up so quickly, Helene.”
An idea of my own is starting to form.
“Eve,” I call. “Come with me.”
I take Eve’s elbow and stride toward the king, with Helene following close behind.
My thoughts turn like gears. King Christian IX may be the father-in-law of Europe, but he’s also deeply unpopular. He gained the crown and immediately lost the Second Schleswig War, forfeiting our duchies—our vital trading veins, the ones my father died for—to Prussia. The king is on shaky ground, in dire financial straits, and desperately trying to strike a new balance between his sovereignty and parliament. There are rumors whispered that he’d even consider handing over Denmark’s very independence.
Something hardens in my chest like a fist. We will not be like that little boy, standing powerless in the cold, on the brink of losing everything, looking with longing at power and magic in an alley.
If we play our cards right, we all have the chance to gain something here.
The head of the king’s royal guard recognizes us from the night at the ballet and lets us through.
“Your Royal Highness,” I say in greeting. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”
“Philip,” the king says. “My daughter Dagmar thanks you for the exquisite wedding gift you sent.”
“And a scepter to follow shortly, for your son King George I,” I say smoothly. “How fortuitous that we should see you here, as we were just discussing an invitation. We would be honored by your presence in Hørsholm in the new year. Perhaps my niece, Eve, could even perform for you and the queen.”
Helene stiffens beside me. She subtly clutches my arm and squeezes it in a viselike grip but doesn’t correct me. How can she? I’ve put the plan in motion already.
Just behind me, Eve sways.
The king smiles with polite, but reserved, interest. “Oh?”
I draw closer to him. “I have business of great importance that I wish to discuss,” I say quietly, so that only he can hear. “Something to help your children, and all of D
enmark.”
He looks at me with renewed curiosity. Now I have his attention.
I step back. “I’ll send the formal invitation to your courtier,” I say.
“Excellent,” the king says.
“What are you doing?” Helene whispers through gritted teeth as soon as we are out of earshot. Her grip on my arm threatens to leave a bruise.
I shake loose of her. “Giving you a chance to make Bournonville reconsider,” I say. “What can he do if you’ve captured the king’s imagination and seal of approval? Make it spectacular. Use magic if you have to. With the king’s backing, you can change the face of ballet and improve the Vestergaard name at the same time.”
And stay far, far away from the mines.
I look at Eve, her hesitant face lit by another exploding firework. “You’re welcome,” I prompt, giving Helene’s shoulder the slightest nudge.
“Thank you,” she says begrudgingly. She looks at me with unmasked suspicion, but for the first time, she almost looks beautiful to me. For once, I don’t see her as a threat. I light my cigar and lead them on through the looping lanes of Tivoli.
* * *
Later, in the carriage, Eve’s head lolls heavily with sleep. Helene covers her with a second blanket and a thick silence fills the cabin.
I catch myself humming again and stop. I think Helene is sleeping too, but then she asks softly, “Why are you giving all those jewels as gifts to the royal family, Philip? What are you playing at?”
I inhale deeply. She still owns the largest share of the mines, thanks to Aleks, and if my plan is going to work, she’ll have to support at least some of it.
“I’m finding a way into their circle of influence.”
“Yes. You’re buying our way into a relationship with them. But . . . why? To what end? Is it going to benefit the mines, somehow?”
Splinters of Scarlet Page 13
