The Beholder
Page 1
Dedication
For Wade, who taught me how to breathe.
You are solid ground to me.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Anna Bright
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Copyright
About the Publisher
Il estoit une fois un Gentil-homme qui épousa en secondes nopces une femme,
la plus haütaine et la plus fiere qu’on eut jamais veuë. . . .
Le Mari avoit de son costé une jeune fille,
mais d’une douceur et d’une bonté sans exemple, elle tenoit cela de sa Mere,
qui estoit la meilleure personne du monde.
—Cendrillon; ou, La Petite Pantoufle de Verre
Once upon a time there was a nobleman, who took for a second wife
the haughtiest and proudest woman that had ever been seen. . . .
The husband, on his side, had a daughter, of unexampled gentleness and goodness.
She inherited these qualities from her mother,
who had been the best creature in the world.
—Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper
1
POTOMAC: ARBOR HALL
Once upon a time always began on nights like tonight.
Candles flickered in the trees that grew up through the marble floors of Arbor Hall, setting aglow the faces of the partygoers beneath them and the garlands of shattered glass sparkling in their intermingled branches. My heart beat like a hummingbird trapped between my breastbone and spine.
I ducked behind an old oak climbed over with ivy, hiding for a moment from the music and all the people, careful to avoid the gap carved around its trunk.
Tonight wasn’t truly a beginning. I’d loved Peter forever, even if I’d never told him so. Tonight was growth—a page turned. Tonight, I would reap from seeds I’d sown and tended half my life.
Tonight, I’d go to sleep with a ring on my finger and my future clear before me. Confident in the promise that tomorrow and the next day and the next would be happy days, always the same, always close to the ones I loved. Ready to do my duty by Potomac and take my place as its head someday, with someone strong and trustworthy at my side. Just as soon as Peter said yes.
I tugged an ivy vine loose with shaky fingers, looped it into a wreath, and pinned it over the loose ponytail I’d made of my curls.
Tonight, whispered my heart. You’re getting engaged tonight.
My breath came fast at the thought, my knees practically knocking together.
Momma had told me the story of my birthday a hundred times. On the night I was born, she paced here in Arbor Hall beneath the trees, pleading with me to leave the safety of her womb and enter the world.
It was a wild, wonderful, magical place, she said. Back aching, ankles swollen, she walked through the forest sheltered beneath the hall’s marble dome and whispered stories to where I waited in her belly, as if to prove it to me.
The tale of the Beauty and the Beast, of the girl who rode off into danger to save her father. The story of the girl so kind to a fairy in disguise that her voice rained flowers and pearls all around her.
Through the years, Momma would tell me those stories again and again. Those, and so many more, as we sat in the shade of the trees outside or in the cool of this very hall.
I only wished she were here to see what would happen tonight.
A hundred couples in wreaths like mine and their finest clothes danced under the great Arbor at the center of the room. Hundreds more wove between dogwoods veiled in bridal white and river birches sloughing off their bark like old paper. Here and there I spotted people I knew. The designer who’d made my gown was radiant in her own, its pale pink silk looking soft as a rose petal against her gleaming dark skin as she danced with her husband, a well-to-do farmer. Nearby, a group of boys and girls I knew from school were laughing, faces flushed as they kept up with the music. Dr. Gold and Dr. Pugh, my father’s physicians, stood beneath a willow to one side of the room, debating something I couldn’t hear.
I took a long breath, squeezed the rosary in my pocket, and stepped out to join them all.
So many people—but of course I bumped into him. Into Peter.
Finding him in a crowd was inevitable, like everything else about us.
Peter flashed a tight grin as he regained his balance, steadying the laurel crown in his tight black curls and straightening his jacket. “Hi, Selah. You look nice.”
He didn’t look nice. With his skin glowing smooth and soft brown in the candlelight beneath the oak, dressed in tweed and smelling like springtime, he was so handsome I could hardly meet his eyes. My nerves flared, and I fought the urge to hide from him like a child.
We hadn’t exactly talked before Daddy extended the proposal, and I’d acted bright and busy and distracted when I’d run into him in the fortnight since.
I could never have told Peter outright how I felt.
Peter Janesley. Six feet tall, black, with curly hair and a strong nose and full lips. Shoulders that tended to round when he was thinking, his father’s light brown eyes, his mother’s careful hands. Peter, the boy who was brilliant at math and at sports and didn’t feel compelled to pretend he was bad at either. Who could’ve been friends with anyone, but who never made anyone feel invisible. When I was fourteen, I’d learned how to graft roses from his mother just to spend time at his house. The day Sister Elizabeth scolded me till I cried over an algebra test, he’d helped me at their kitchen table until I understood everything I’d gotten wrong.
“Perfect!” he’d said. “I knew you could get this.” He’d tapped the problems with his finger, a smile stretching wide beneath his broad cheekbones. I’d tried not to blush.
Peter was smart, and earnest, and kind. After we’d finished studying, he’d cut us both a piece of cake and we’d sat for half an hour on his porch, cross-legged opposite from one another in the rising twilight. Cicadas hummed and buzzed as the light melted off the facade of the Janesleys’ home and the abelias and roses brushing the porch rail.
Once, I made him laugh. Peter had rocked back, lovely fingers clasping his knees, mouth open to show the pe
rfect gap in his teeth, and I’d wanted to trap the moment in a jar like a firefly.
After that, we were friends, and I clung to the fact like a trophy. After I made a perfect score on my next algebra test, he hugged me in front of everyone and ruffled my hair. “Knew you could do it,” he’d said, pointing at me as he backed away, making for his next class.
My feelings built themselves from a hundred little moments like these, rising like a castle in the distance, every humble stone growing into something I could already imagine. Into something on the horizon I’d eventually reach.
And here he was. My past and my future, standing right in front of me.
“Peter!” I blurted. “Ah—thank you. You look nice, too,” I added, remembering his compliment. He huffed a laugh and put his hands in his back pockets. The jacket strained a little over his shoulders. “How are you?”
“Fine. Good.” He nodded. “You?”
“All right,” I said.
Maybe if I said it enough, I’d believe I wasn’t shaking like a leaf.
I wanted to come out with it all—to blurt out exactly what I was thinking and feeling, to explain why he’d heard it all first through our parents and not from me, to see easy confidence in his eyes again. But somehow, I couldn’t say any of it.
Later, I thought. Once we were alone, with the public spectacle over, we’d talk. There would be nothing but the truth between us, and the future ahead.
The music quieted, and Arbor Hall’s doors swung open. Peter dropped his voice. “I need to go find my parents before it starts.” He raised his eyebrows, as if asking for my approval. I sent him away with a nod and a smile.
Soon enough, we’d have all the time in the world.
2
“His Grace, Jeremiah, Seneschal of Potomac,” called the herald, “and Alessandra, Esteemed Consort.” The crowd murmured, clearing a path to the Arbor for Daddy and my stepmother.
There she was. My smother, more like a bag over my head or a girdle around my waist than a guide or a guardian.
Daddy had married her after we had lost Momma seven years before. Looking at her, it was impossible not to see why.
Her hair and eyelashes were thick and dark, her white gown spotless. Her cheekbones and clavicle and wrists stood pronounced beneath her golden skin, despite the heavy curve of her stomach.
Five months pregnant, she glowed. My father looked haggard beside her.
Puffy bags hung beneath Daddy’s glazed eyes, and his black suit drowned his thin frame. I bit my lip, trying to remember when he’d lost more weight.
Not for the first time, I wondered what Peter and the court thought when they looked at my father next to Alessandra—at both of us next to her. My smother, the perfect, ice-cold center of the room.
It wasn’t kind, to speak that way of family. My godmother, one of the nuns at Saint Christopher’s, usually scolded me when I did. Better pray the Hail, Holy Queen, sweet girl, and ask Mary to correct your wayward path.
But I’d never had to speculate on how Alessandra thought I compared to her. She’d made her opinion of me perfectly clear.
I drew in a breath as Daddy and my stepmother reached the center of the hall and stepped out from beneath the oak, feeling people draw back from me as they noticed my presence. I swallowed, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Countrymen,” Alessandra intoned, perfect face earnest. “Women of Potomac. Welcome to Arbor Hall, and happy Arbor Day. We are glad to have you beside us, as we are every spring. Together,” she called to the assembly, “we remember our roots.”
“Together,” rumbled the crowd, “we stretch ever upward.” Their response was a wind at my back, whispering through the trees.
Alessandra beamed. “As every year, the seneschal and I honor the old custom. The sun sets tonight on a thousand new saplings in the southeast quarter, beyond the Anacostia River.”
I fisted my hands, feeling the calluses on my palms, and tried to imagine my smother wielding a shovel in her new gown and jeweled bracelet.
She looked beautiful. But the seneschal’s family was supposed to live simply—to take only what they needed, to feed themselves and Arbor Hall from the same common lands that fed the hungry.
I tried not to think of the public fields we wouldn’t be able to seed if Alessandra kept up her extravagance.
“Spring is the heart of our hope.” Alessandra pressed her hands to her chest. “It was on Arbor Day so many years ago that word of our independence came from England. So today, we rejoice, celebrating the peace we hold dear and our work toward Potomac’s prosperity and growth.”
I pressed my lips tightly together. The Council was nowhere to be seen, but they were undoubtedly to blame for this speech. Secretary Moreau, most likely, though Secretary Allen had probably helped. Their glib words—the peace we hold dear—were like bile in my stomach.
Our little country of Potomac was at peace, more or less, if only because her once-upon-a-time colonizers had retreated back across the Atlantic, abandoning her for a lost cause, forsaking a costly connection that brought them little return.
We hadn’t been liberated so much as deserted because we failed to thrive. We weren’t at peace so much as isolated. Occupied with survival, like most every other little kingdom and territory and tribe on this continent.
“And so we welcome you to Arbor Hall, to celebrate the future.” She put a hand on her belly. “Welcome, all, and happy Arbor Day!”
Applause burst out. “Do you think it’ll be a boy or a girl?” the woman in front of me whispered excitedly to her neighbor, who shook her head, grinning.
I blinked a little. Alessandra hadn’t even mentioned my proposal.
A hush fell again as my father stepped forward to speak.
“Happy Arbor Day, everyone.” He smiled faintly, one hand twitching at his side. “Thank you all for coming.” Swallowing hard, I dropped my gaze.
I didn’t want to watch the crowd cock their heads, strain to hear his words. To see them see how thin Daddy had gotten, how his limbs shook like leaves in the wind.
I couldn’t watch them watch him. Barely over forty, my father looked like an old man, voice weak as water as he spoke.
I wished Peter could stand beside me right now. I wished I already had my answers, written out like a story in a book, black and white and certain.
But then Daddy called for Selah, Seneschal-elect of Potomac, voice creaky as a brittle old oak, and panic filled me. I wasn’t ready. I suddenly wished I could slip back through the trees and hide from his answers and the waiting court.
Instead, I uncrossed my arms and walked to the Arbor, feeling exposed in front of the entire court.
They all knew what I was about to ask.
I sifted through their faces as I passed, ignoring everyone as I searched for Peter.
I’d feel stronger once he stood beside me. I knew it.
When I found him at the edge of the crowd, it was all I could do not to reach for his hand as I passed. But Peter wouldn’t look at my face.
His long fingers were twined together, his earnest gaze trained on them.
My pulse sped.
“Captain Matthew Janesley, I’ve extended a marriage proposal to your son on behalf of our daughter, Selah, the Seneschal-elect,” Daddy said. “Will Peter accept?”
The moments between the question and its answer hung like smoke in the air, burning my lungs.
I willed Peter to meet my eyes. I knew I’d see his answer there. But no sooner could I catch his gaze than he’d glance away again.
Yes, I prayed, squeezing my fingers so hard I feared they’d snap like twigs. Say yes.
Captain Janesley stared at his broad hands, at his feet, anywhere but at my father. Or at me. “No, my Lord Seneschal. Peter respectfully declines your proposal.”
3
I couldn’t hold my silence.
“What?” The word was a breath, a whimper. But not a single person in the noiseless room missed that small sound of hurt.
I felt well and truly naked, stripped bare before them all.
I’d never cared for anyone but Peter. He’d been my first and only choice.
But Peter hadn’t picked me.
He knew me—he was my friend—and he didn’t want me. And all of Potomac was here to bear witness to my rejection.
I’d never have to wonder again what Peter thought of me when I stood beside my family.
I turned toward Daddy, panicked. His eyes darted between Peter and me, confusion and disappointment in the lines of his weary face.
My heart sank into my stomach. He hadn’t reckoned on this. He didn’t need this kind of worry right now.
How could I have made such a huge mistake?
In the scene I’d envisioned, Peter said yes. Daddy would’ve been jubilant. He would’ve given me a kiss, hugged Peter tightly, welcomed him into the family, worn the kind of smile I remembered.
I hadn’t prepared for this, either. I hadn’t imagined what would happen if Peter said no.
My father studied me, asking me silently what he should do. I gave him the tiniest shake of my head, the feeblest shrug of my shoulders.
“Very well,” he managed to say. And Daddy cleared his throat and said nothing else.
The rest of the ball passed in a blur. I sat with my would-have-been in-laws through dinner, hollowed out with embarrassment, flat and thin as a paper doll, like a child disabused of foolish illusions.
I couldn’t stand the pity in Peter’s eyes.
I’d told myself he and I would talk after the announcement, once we had the truth between us. But I hadn’t prepared for the truth to be this.
Our tense meal was a mockery of the festive night I’d envisioned, the ball a total farce. But Peter was well liked, and his parents were respected. His father was a captain in the military, his mother a talented florist.
So I contained myself.
Besides, everyone was watching to see how I’d react.