Ironskin

by Tina Connolly

  But there was no Charlie, and her light-headedness popped, and then she was standing on her feet clapping with all the other men and women she didn’t know, who didn’t know her, who looked at her and looked away, again and again and again.

  Jane sat down with a rush as the crowd swarmed after Helen and Alistair, cheering their names and congratulating them for this wonderful, glorious day.

  * * *

  There was dancing, but Jane deliberately found another room to sit in, where it wouldn’t look like she was wanting to dance and not able to find a partner. She ended up sitting next to the old woman who had called Helen fey earlier, and two other old women who loosened their shoes and watched the girls on display flit back and forth from the crammed ballroom to the room where the cakes and tidbits were laid out. A smaller dance with some of the youngsters was going on in this room, and an old man with a fiddle played for the kids and competed with the string quartet’s sound emanating from the larger dance floor.

  The sea of slinky gowns sliding back and forth between the rooms was arresting. Décolletage was low, T-strapped heels were high. Desperation was on more than one dewy cheek, plainly mixed with the waxy lipstick, the false eyelashes, the tight waves of curls. Single men were few—a lost generation.

  But one beauty slinking past in an apricot gown needed no such ornamentation.

  “Ah, the Prime Minister’s wife,” said one of the shoe-loosened women.

  “The lecheress,” said the other, fluttering her handkerchief, and they cackled.

  The woman’s face, elegant and porcelain-smooth, gave no sign that she had heard.

  “She’s beautiful,” whispered Jane under her breath. Her face was peaches and cream, symmetrical, classic. Her apricot frock with its beaded net overlay clung softly to her lines, an elegant column. So this was the woman Mr. Rochart might have loved. An idle summer fling? Or passion, loved and lost, a tragedy bound by the rules of society?

  “Fey beauty,” croaked the woman who had said it before. “It’s not smart to be that beautiful.” The other old women were in dresses thirty years out of date: full dark skirts and corsets, kidskin boots, and rows of tight buttons everywhere. But this one was modern. She wore a silk dress in sea-foam green with net flowers at the shoulder and waist. It draped oddly on her hunched and sagging form, and the leather heels slipped from her thin feet. She had a tiny pair of jeweled pince-nez that she studied the Prime Minister’s wife through. “Not smart at all.”

  “Why not?” said Jane.

  The women bent in, free of the restrictions the younger generations placed on their words. “They used to say the fey were drawn to the exceptionally beautiful,” said Pince-Nez.

  “Or exceptionally talented,” said Shoes.

  “May you be blessed with ordinary children,” contributed Handkerchief. “May you be born plain.”

  “Why? What did they do with extraordinary children?” said Jane. She knew one of those, though surely the women meant a different kind of extraordinary.

  “Steal them. Take them back to the forest,” said Pince-Nez.

  “Eat them,” said Handkerchief.

  “Bah,” said Shoes.

  Pince-Nez agreed with Shoes. “They take them for entertainment.”

  “And because they covet mortality,” said Shoes in sonorous tones.

  “My granny knew someone who got eaten,” Handkerchief said obstinately.

  Jane did not believe that the fey had ever eaten people. And “covet mortality”—well, the bodiless fey had certainly taken over corpses during the war. They killed with fey bombs that prepared dead bodies for the fey—then reanimated them, used them to fight hand to hand. That was why the crematory kilns had been going nonstop during the Great War, to save their loved ones from that wretched fate. But that was a war tactic, a horror designed to strike fear into humanity. A very effective horror, but not the desired end in itself.

  But entertainment … “What do you mean by that?” she said to Pince-Nez.

  Pince-Nez stretched her feet comfortably into the path of a woman towing two marriageable daughters away from the food. “Anything that lives forever gets bored,” she said.

  “Like you, you old bag,” said Shoes amiably.

  “Even if I reach my hundredth I will never be bored,” said Pince-Nez, rapping on the iron of her chair for luck. Her ropes of necklaces clacked against each other. “But the fey were.”

  A woman walking by shushed Pince-Nez, out of habit.

  “So they stole humans to feed on,” Pince-Nez said.

  “I told you they ate them,” said Handkerchief.

  “Not that kind of feeding,” said Pince-Nez. “They used to steal children, and everyone knew that. They fed on their beauty, their artistry. Sucked up everything that made them good. Then they let them go … each one a dried-up, shriveled old thing.”

  “Like you,” said Shoes.

  “Least I was a beauty to begin with,” returned Pince-Nez. “Fey beauty, they said I had. It’s a wonder I didn’t get stolen.”

  “That’s enough out of you, Auntie,” said a male voice.

  Jane looked up to see Helen’s new husband shaking his head at them. Handkerchief and Shoes cackled at the intrusion, while Pince-Nez hummed softly.

  “But each stolen child is given a gift,” said Pince-Nez dreamily. Her face softened, and for a moment Jane saw a glimpse of the beauty she might have been. “A gift to take back to the human world, years and years later.…”

  “Where’s yours, you bat?” said Shoes. “In your knickers?”

  Handkerchief roared with laughter.

  “Bah—enough!” said Alistair. “Come, Jane, you mustn’t become one of these harpies already. Take a turn with me.” He took her hand and pulled her up and into the children’s dance.

  There was a moment of shock as she realized this was the second man to deliberately touch her this month. Though Mr. Rochart had not needed the attraction of a clingy silver dress to touch her shoulder (twice), press her hand.

  Jane did not find Alistair Huntingdon handsome. She was not sure that Helen truly did, either, despite him having the features that Helen had often designated as male beauty. His hair was curled, his nose straight, his teeth white and present, but Jane did not find the arrangement of it all pleasing. More to the point, his ruddy face lacked character—both in the moral sense and in the individual sense. But perhaps she was biased from having only seen the face of one man for the last month, a man with a million oddities inscribed on the map of his face, a man who had lived. The comparison—the fact that she was thinking about this comparison—made her pause.

  Alistair was looking at the silver curves of her dress, not at the iron behind her veil. Jane could not decide if that was a blessing or not. But then he smiled politely and raised his gaze to somewhere around her ear. Nodded at the old fiddler, who started one of the popular waltzes—“The Merry Mistress,” Jane thought. Though the family she worked for would never have approved, Helen had snuck off to the ten-penny ballroom (girls no charge) more than once, dragging Jane along as chaperone. Jane did enjoy the music. She would sit on a white-painted metal chair, sip a sugared coffee, watch her sister flit and flirt.

  Now Alistair’s free hand took her waist and he led her smoothly into the steps of a waltz. “Helen was very glad you came,” he said. “She would hardly talk of anything else. You must come back at holidays.”

  “That is very kind of you,” said Jane. She had waltzed before the war; she was pleased to find the movements still in her feet. She did not like the touch of Alistair’s hand on her waist—it seemed too warm, too insistent—but she smiled at her sister’s husband and tried not to think about it.

  “We don’t want you to give up on life,” he said. “No sitting around with the old biddies anymore.”

  “I was enjoying watching the children dance,” said Jane.

  “You are easily amused,” he said, laughing.

  Alistair seemed harmless enough. His foibles wer
e evident from her short study of him—he was indolent, too fond of a life of pleasure and drink. From the way he’d avoided the war he must be a coward, though it wasn’t likely that his inability to fight would affect his marriage. Helen herself had admitted these faults—stated in the same breath that she was sure he would mend them, once he was settled—but counted herself lucky for more reasons than just his wealth and relative charm. So many men of their age had been lost in the Great War. Alistair might be a decade older, his birth might be no better than the Eliot girls’ own. And yet, for the penniless governess to land him was a coup.

  But was it worth it?

  “… and the roses alone cost—oh, but you would be shocked. And then that man couldn’t tell the difference between ‘open’ and ‘overblown.’ It’s the difference between a woman who wields her assets wisely and a common … well. Not a polite word, but he understood the analogy once I made myself clear.”

  Jane focused her wandering mind on Alistair’s boasts. “But surely Helen would’ve been satisfied with something simpler. She is not greedy.”

  Alistair laughed. “I told your sister that your affliction had made you innocent. You have no idea of what is required to maintain one’s position.” He leaned in closer to the good side of her face, his breath hot on her ear. “They are ravening wolves, my dear. Each harpy ready to tear me and my bride down. This is the world we must live in. Your sister and I must be … perfect.”

  “And you fear you are not?”

  “I see you smirk, but your cynicism is truly naïveté, Jane! The common folk weary of the endless sacrifice yet to be made after the war. They must be shown, and indeed, they thrive on our doings. We are the morale of a lost generation, and as such, my cravat must be sharp and new, my plain yellow hair curled and set. My home must be stocked with the latest technology even as it is invented—did you mark the gaslight? And yet there are so few men left, everything is easier for me, you understand.”

  “Of course,” Jane murmured. Her temper was flaring at his assessment of her as naïve.

  “Your sister is a natural beauty, but she lives in an age where beauty plus art can equal perfection. No matter the state of the rice imports or whatever boring thing is claiming her husband’s attention, you see how the Prime Minister’s wife draws the eye. Helen must learn her art.”

  “The art of taking a lover?” she said pointedly, but he laughed this off, unaffected by her rudeness. He was insufferable, and she let go of his hands, pulled back from the dance. “Thank you, Mr. Huntingdon, but I tire easily,” she said.

  Alistair’s fingers lingered at her silver waist. “You will never land a husband that way, you know. Keep your veil over your face, dance even when you are fatigued. It is the only way to win the war between men and women.”

  “The only way, is it?”

  He leaned closer and she could smell the spirits on his breath. His cheeks were flushed. “Perhaps you are not as naïve as you seem. Perhaps you know that your charms could win a man in the dark, before he sees the imperfections under your mask. Come to the ballroom and I will whisper in your ear what man may be thus caught. I know all their secrets, you know. I will find one for you. Tell you his weaknesses, tell you in what curtained room you may find him tonight.…”

  Jane squirmed free from his touch. “I do not require such assistance, sir.” Her cheeks flushed as her temper struggled to burst free. “Perhaps you had better return to your guests.”

  He straightened, smiled, seemingly not offended. “Remember I am ever at your service.” A short nod and he was gone.

  Jane backed against the wall, her breaths short and furious, rage lighting her cheek, bursting flame against the iron mask. “The Merry Mistress” finished with a flourish, and the old fiddler eyed her with concern. For a breath only, then he swung into a foxtrot. The children danced, the women cackled, and Jane felt as though the air had been squeezed from her chest. Pince-Nez’s face swung in front of her, the old woman dreaming of a time when to be snatched by the fey might still be romantic—a shattered illusion, a vanished past.…

  Helen drifted in on the arm of a young man, her face lit with laughter. Halfway through she saw Jane’s mutinous expression and excused herself with a smile and flutter.

  She whisked Jane into the corner. “What is it?”

  “I have employment,” Jane said through fierce breaths, holding back angry tears that flickered orange at the corners of her eyes. “I am independent.”

  “Shh, I know,” said Helen. She rubbed Jane’s arm in a calming gesture she often used when Jane became overwrought. “You’re my brave sister. Breathe.”

  But Jane was too incensed to stop. “I am not grasping blindly for a husband, no matter what yours may think of our family.”

  “Come, Jane, that’s too unfair. What did Alistair say to you?”

  Jane did not think that Mr. Huntingdon’s infuriating words were meant to be a pass at her—they were merely his own horrid assessment of the world they lived in. A brief shut of the eyelids—thoughts of cooling water, putting out the fire. Feel Helen’s calming touch, let it soothe the rage.

  Jane studied her sister’s face, her heart rate slowing, the orange fog clearing. “Tell me, Helen.” A breath, another. “Do you love him?”

  Helen’s pink-and-white face closed off and she let go of Jane. She laughed, copper curls tossing backward; took a swallow of her champagne. “Enough to grace his bed tonight.”

  Jane knew the look: stubborn Helen, determined to see a madcap course to the end of it.

  Helen’s eyes danced back to her young man. She pulled away from Jane and into his waiting, willing flirtation, her champagne sparkling green-yellow in the gaslight. The room was an extension of Helen, chartreuse-glowing champagne, the glitter of citrine, topaz, aquamarine, waxy pearls, and the shiny tops of curled hair. Glittering and silent, a shiny mask of gaiety hiding all.

  Jane would get no truths from her.

  Chapter 6

  THE FOUNDRY

  The next morning was very long. Mr. Rochart had wired Alistair that she would be picked up after lunch, and Jane longed for that time to arrive. She did not belong in that house, and every bored remark and cutting observation of the others over their strong tea or hair-of-the-dog cocktails confirmed that.

  But if she did not belong there, did she belong at Silver Birch Hall? At least she was needed there. Perhaps she would never be comfortable anywhere; perhaps she had not that gift. Jane sat on a loveseat and tried to amuse herself by sketching the languid figures as she listened to Helen and Alistair and the remaining houseguests trade snide news from the wedding. Every one of them had a hangover, and they complained about that, and their gossip that morning was particularly caustic and cruel. The ropes of jewels and bright silk day dresses seemed too gay for the tired and cranky bodies underneath. Jane stirred milk into the bitter dregs of her tea and hoped for each lukewarm sip to quell the sick feeling from the aftermath of too much sugar, too much nerves, too much attention.

  “Why, that’s Helen to the life,” drawled one of them, and Jane found a rope of pearls dangling into her sightline as Gwendolyn or Gretchen or Gertrude Somebody-or-other peered at her sketch. The woman had red bow-painted lips that did not match the lines of her mouth.

  “Jane is quite talented,” agreed her sister.

  “Are you going to color it in?” said Gertrude.

  “I’m not very good with a brush,” Jane admitted.

  “You should’ve studied art at a good school,” said Gertrude. “Then you would know how to use color, for a picture without color is like … what is it like, somebody?”

  “Like a girl without a figure,” said Alistair. “Technically correct, but not worth looking at.” Gertrude laughed appreciatively.

  The casual words flicked like a whip. Didn’t they think she would love to have studied with real artists? It was too easy to see that other life, the one without the war. Oh, she was not fooling herself, she would never have been a real
artist, but with a better education she would have been skilled enough to teach. She might have been a special instructor at a private school, and she would not have been asked so casually why she chose to be so unskilled. A lack of money had killed off one avenue, a lack of normalcy the next, and she had been pruned into this strange and twisting branch that should never have grown at all.

  Jane sat fuming until Gertrude and her candid observations withdrew to the card table, to flirt with Alistair and down her morning champagne.

  Even dreadful mornings eventually end, and at long last a footman entered with the observation that there was a driver at the door for Miss Eliot.

  If in the back of her mind she had thought that “I will fetch you home myself” meant Mr. Rochart would literally be the one at the door, she was disappointed. Not that she had dared think that.

  Still, it was thoughtful of him to arrange her journey for her. He had selected a later train than the cheaper dawn one she had taken to get here, and he had wired for an agency to send a car. The footman hefted her trunk into the hansom while Jane said goodbye to her sister on the front lawn.

  Jane looked at Helen in her pink crêpe de chine frock and collar of garnets and considered, briefly, how many paths a life might take. Her sister’s cheeks were pale from the excesses of the day before, and exhaustion hovered in her eyes. “I wish you well,” Jane said.

  She meant it, but Helen trembled at perceived coldness, and for a moment the barriers of last night broke. She flung her arms around Jane, clouded her with the sharp smell of gardenia perfume. Her rings dug into Jane’s shoulder blades. “Don’t think badly of me,” she said passionately into Jane’s shoulder. “I mean to be good to him, you know. He’s better than you think. And I’m just so tired of being out of options.”

  Jane patted the copper-blond hair. “It wasn’t so very bad, was it? The two of us?”

  Helen pulled back, and Jane’s skin seemed cold where Helen’s body heat had been. “You’ll never understand, you know,” she said. “You’re too brave. You have a history of it, and I have a history of not living up to you. You have memories of being brave to sustain you when you are tempted.”