Of Noble Family

by Mary Robinette Kowal

  Looking very grave, Vincent sat at the table across from him. As Frank explained what his mother had said, Jane rose from the bed slowly and kept her hand on the bedpost as she did. The last thing she needed to do was faint in earnest. She crossed the room and sank into the chair next to Vincent. Frank’s account was quick and methodical. As he spoke, Vincent’s face grew more grave, and new lines appeared around the edges of his mouth.

  When Frank finished, Vincent bent forward and rested his head on his hands. “We should not have freed Zachary.”

  Jane was at a loss to see how he could have reached that conclusion from Frank’s recital. “But it puts him, at least, beyond Pridmore’s reach.”

  “But we have done it with forged papers.” He had never sounded so dispirited.

  Frank cursed a moment later, as he apparently understood something that remained opaque to Jane. How could the papers be forged, when Lord Verbury had given them to Vincent? She chilled as comprehension took her. Because Lord Verbury’s handwriting had changed after the stroke, Miss Sarah had drawn up the papers. It would be easy for him to claim that they were counterfeits. The resemblance to Mr. Pridmore and the embezzled funds became clear. Lord Verbury had caught them by encouraging them to commit a criminal activity. If Vincent had merely held the deed and done nothing with it, that would have been one thing, but his father could have made an accurate guess that Vincent would free the young man. Once the manumission entered into the public record, it became a different matter.

  Vincent wrapped his fingers in his hair. “I had thought that my very public break with my family would protect me from being seen in collusion, but that same history will be very good for presenting a case that I kept my father a prisoner.”

  “But he is still a traitor,” Jane protested. “That has not changed—”

  “I hope not.” Vincent sat up, rubbing his brow. “But I cannot help remembering that the reason he was caught during the coldmonger’s affair was because his papers were entered into evidence. If there is a forger … with the right solicitor and the right judge, there is no telling what he might accomplish.”

  “But this is far-fetched, surely.” And yet, as she spoke, she could see the webs of intrigue as clearly drawn as the lines of a glamour. “Surely this has not all been to get you here and create a case that you forged the papers used in the trial.”

  “I do not know. It may be an action of opportunity, or perhaps he is merely manoeuvring out of habit, and wants nothing more than to ensure that I do not take him back to England to face trial.” The tension seemed to have drained out of him, leaving only exhaustion behind. Every line in his figure bent down. Vincent pushed himself out of the chair. “Now, if you will excuse us, Frank.”

  Rising, Frank showed every evidence of confusion, but settled back into his role as house steward quickly. “Of course. If there is anything you require, please let me know.”

  “I shall. Thank you.” He walked Frank to the door and closed it behind him. Then Vincent leaned his head against the wood. When Jane stood, he did not acknowledge the sound of her chair sliding back, nor the rustle of her gown. Cautiously, Jane rested her hand against his back. Through his coat, the steady rhythm of his heart soothed her. Jane had expected it to be racing, but it beat as though he might actually be calm.

  He lifted his head, and turned to her. “Do you trust Frank?”

  Jane’s first instinct was to answer that she did, but she paused to consider before speaking. “When we first arrived, I did not, but I do now. I take it you do not?”

  “I do not know.” Running his hand through his hair, he shook his head. “I had a realisation during dinner about why it took me so long to be comfortable with your family, and before that with Herr Scholes.”

  “Oh?”

  “I could not believe that their warmth was genuine. I kept looking for hidden mockery and insult. There were none. I am having the same thoughts about Frank now.” Grimacing, he dipped a hand in the ether and began rolling a thread of yellow between his fingers. “I am aware that my judgement is poor right now, but … but the thoughts are still there.”

  To live with so little trust would destroy Jane, and it was breaking Vincent. She had been watching the slow erosion of his sense of self and worth without any ability to halt its progress. The revelations tonight had left Jane staggered, and she suspected that there were still more things undiscovered. Almost worse was the understanding that this want of trust was how Vincent had lived for years before breaking away from his family. It repulsed her. The baby kicked against her side, and she put her hand there to try to soothe it.

  Vincent caught the motion. “Are you all right? Truly?”

  “Your child is practising pugilism tonight.” She slid her hand into his and pulled it against her stomach so he could feel.

  He bent his head, closing his eyes as their child beat a protest against Jane’s side. The hand that had been working glamour stilled and let the thread dissolve. Against Jane’s stomach, the warm pressure of Vincent’s hand comforted her, and, just for a moment, nothing beyond them mattered.

  Then his composure crumpled. The panic he had hidden earlier twisted his features into a tight grimace. With a ragged growl, Vincent pulled his hand free and shoved away from the door, putting his back to Jane. He strode to the table and leaned against the back of one of the chairs with his head bowed. Even through his coat, she could see the tension in his back. He stood like that for a moment and then slammed his palms against the wood. “God. This is tiresome.”

  He was not addressing her, she thought, but rather speaking to himself. That Vincent had not woven a Sphère Obscurcie and hidden she took as a sign of trust, which, after this evening seemed infinitely more precious. Jane crossed to stand behind him, careful not to touch him in this state. “What may I do?”

  Still leaning against the chair, he shook his head. For a moment, he held his breath, and then let it out in a slow, careful stream. “Muse, I am sorry you have to witness this.”

  “I hope you know by now that I do not mind it.”

  “Nevertheless, it is embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing? What am I doing to make you feel embarrassed?”

  “It is my own inability to govern myself. What do I truly have to weep over? That my father spoke harshly to me? That he forbade me to use glamour as a boy? I go about the estate and I see men and women who are beaten and living in the most execrable of conditions and bear it. Yet I am unmanned by … dinner?”

  Jane held out her hand so he could take it or not as he chose. “Come sit down with me?”

  Slowly, so very slowly, Vincent straightened. He did not meet her gaze, but, even so, she could tell that the rims of his eyes were reddened. Jane bit the inside of her cheek and kept her hand out. After too long a moment, Vincent slipped his hand into hers. His palm was slick with sweat and he trembled a little.

  Jane led him to the sofa and pulled him to sit down beside her. She retained his hand and the other rested on his thigh. “You know it is more than that. You have been under a very great strain since we received the letter from Richard, and you had not, I think, fully recovered from Murano.”

  He did not reply, but neither did he deny that.

  “I am going to suggest that the stress of our situation is not going to dissipate until well after the baby is born. If you continue to try to contain the … the struggle within yourself, I do not think you will survive.”

  “It is not so bad as that.”

  “How often have you been sick since our arrival?”

  He bowed his head and that muscle in his jaw tightened. She could almost see him building a reply word by word. Long practise kept her silent, giving him space to answer. Vincent grimaced and opened his mouth twice before speaking. “I will grant that the appearance can be alarming, because you have not seen me go through this before.”

  “Even if I had, I should be alarmed. But you did not answer my question.”

  “Five.”
r />   That gave her more than a little pause. They had been in Antigua for a month, and Vincent had been ill more than once per week. “To give me some context, how often—as an adult—did that happen before coming here?”

  He tilted his head to the side and his eyes moved as though counting motes of dust. “Four.” Looking down, he rubbed his free hand along his breeches. “I take your meaning.”

  “Vincent … love. This is destroying you.”

  “What do you propose I do?”

  She slid her arm around his back and pulled herself closer. “The difficulty is not you. The difficulty is your father, and some difficulties are insolvable.”

  The air hissed out of him in that small thin whine and his hand tightened in hers. The other one clenched into a fist. “It is difficult to see things that I know are broken and could be made better, such as the boilers, or the slaves’ conditions, or the embezzling, and not attempt to affect a change.”

  “Can you make changes? When you try to run the estate, he impedes your efforts. It does not seem to me to be anything except a means by which to further degrade you.” She paused to let him consider that, then said, “Why do you keep handing him weapons to use against you?”

  Vincent’s breath was shallow and rough. Beneath her hand, he trembled like a snared bird, but somehow he kept his countenance calm save for a contraction of the brow. He stared into the middle distance, gaze darting from nothing to nothing.

  After some moments, he wet his lips and swallowed. “You are correct. If I keep engaging, there can only be Pyrrhic victories.” He nodded slowly, and his breathing steadied. “He will, of course, see this as one more example of running away.”

  “I know.” It pained her to see him struggle, but to hear Vincent say that he would not engage with his father was an immeasurable relief.

  “I cannot win.”

  “I think you just did.” Jane lifted his hand and kissed the tips of his fingers.

  Twenty-three

  To Be a Glamourist

  When Jane awoke the next morning, Vincent was already up and sitting at the table in their room. He wore his nightshirt, which she hoped meant that he had spent at least some time asleep, though she had no memory of him coming to bed. When he saw her sit up, he greeted her with a smile, as though nothing had happened the night before. His only nod to the events was to make arrangements to go with her to the Whitten estate rather than working with Frank as he had originally planned. Indeed, throughout the morning, Vincent seemed resolute in pretending that they had nothing more pressing than working on the glamural.

  In moments when he thought he was unobserved, the ease of his manner vanished, and it was clear that his spirits were oppressed. But whenever Jane or anyone else spoke to him, he rallied and made every effort to seem unaffected.

  Jane wanted to shake him.

  But she also honoured Vincent for attempting to prevent his father from having an effect on him, so for their trip to the Whitten estate, she would let him be only a glamourist again. Having nothing to think of but where a fold was placed seemed a luxury beyond measure.

  As the day passed, however, Jane began to reconsider the pleasures of working on a glamural. She bent over the table that Mrs. Whitten had supplied for her drawings. It felt decidedly strange to be surrounded by people working glamour and to confine herself to paper, but there was nothing for it. In truth, the glamourists from Mrs. Ranford’s and Mrs. Whitten’s estates had a degree of craft that would be enviable in London. There was Jeannette, whose skill with finer weaves was wasted as a field slave. Imogene had an exquisite sense of colour that served her well as a lady’s maid. Indeed, the largest challenge was that many of the glamourists could only be spared from their duties for a few hours at a time, so much of Jane’s effort was spent in managing the work.

  Tilting her head to the side, Jane considered the ice floe she had planned to surround the stairs to the balcony. A répétition mousseux would provide the necessary transparency while appearing solid, but it might be too busy to have it as well as columns of ice going up on the bannisters.

  Vincent’s footsteps approached the table, and a shadow fell across her page. “Muse…” Beads of sweat stood upon his brow from the glamour he had been doing that morning. She suspected he was suffering from the heat more than usual, since he had kept his coat on due to the presence of ladies. He leaned on the table as though consulting with her about the plans and wove a muddied silence around them. “What are we going to do about Mrs. Ransford?”

  Jane lifted her head. “Oh dear.”

  The pale woman stood at the side of the ballroom working on one of the ice columns. Jane had based that part of the design on a memory of visiting an icehouse on one of the grand estates for which she and Vincent had created a glamural. Packed in layers of sawdust lay milky blocks of ice harvested from the estate during the winter. The translucent striations of white and pale blue had put Jane in mind of an ethereal marble. She had intended to suggest that sense of marbling in the columns, but use the translucence to allow parts of the original ballroom to show through.

  What Mrs. Ransford had rendered had the correct shape, but was an opaque white with dark blue streaks. “Perhaps she is not finished?”

  “And how would you thin the folds to create the translucence at this stage without spoiling the form?”

  Jane sighed, knowing he was right. “Oh—wait. Perhaps if one were to use the blue streaks to create fissures.… Imagine using an anchor thread here, like so, to bend the blue around.”

  Jane moved her hands in the motions that she would use if working glamour, but kept herself carefully free of the ether. She held her left hand out at the angle of one of the blue striations. With her other hand, she turned the palm flat to the floor and pushed it under her forearm as though sliding a curtain aside.

  “You see? By taking hold of the blue and white together, we might stretch it into a gossamer weight into the column. It should actually provide some depth, and … in fact, if we use Nkiruka’s muddling, as she does with the muddied silence, we might even get some diffraction.” Jane squinted at the air, trying to imagine the effect without actually looking into the ether. “Do you think that would … what?”

  Vincent had the most interesting consciousness about him. A slight smile played at his lips. Compressing his lips, he shook his head and looked away.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  When his gaze returned, a flush of warmth swept over Jane at the brightness in his eyes. He leaned in so that his breath brushed her cheek. “When you work, you develop the most becoming furrow between your brows. I was distracted.”

  It was a very great pity that they were standing in the middle of a ballroom. Jane’s knees felt weak enough that she rather thought she would like to lie down. She swallowed. “I am hardly working at all.”

  “Hm. It is perhaps best for me that you are not. Now, your idea…” He pulled a fold of white out of the ether and stretched it as she had suggested. “Huh. That could … you would need to add a glaze on the exterior—say, something like a Chatel finish, to give a lustre. I think.”

  He could be so wicked at times. “You are correct. Otherwise it will have a matte finish, which is all wrong.”

  Vincent wiped the experiment from the air. “Do you honestly think that is what she is going to do?”

  “Well…” Jane studied the column, where Mrs. Ransford was adding another stripe of blue.

  “You just came up with a technique that does not even have a name, and you did it without being able to handle folds.” He leaned in and whispered in spite of the silence. “You forget how good you are at this.”

  Blush overspreading her cheeks, Jane bent to study her drawings. “I think she is leaving after tea, so we can tear it out then. I say ‘we,’ but … perhaps Louisa can do it? She is proving to be quite adept, and I think enjoys the work.” She glanced over to where the young woman was engaged on another ice column. With her head tilted up, her habitually gu
arded expression was more open. Even with the abstracted gaze of a glamourist deep in the ether, her eyes were bright with interest. “Meanwhile … how to redirect Mrs. Ransford so she does not feel slighted.” Jane tapped her pencil against her chin as she considered the designs.

  “Perhaps we should ask her to do some reindeer without antlers, and then we might have some credible sled dogs?”

  “Please be kind.”

  “That was.” Sliding one of the other drawings over, he indicated the front of the ballroom. “What about your snow curtain? It is central, which should make her feel important. If she spins the threads, we can always alter the placement later if need be.”

  “That is a good thought. The snowflakes themselves are not that different in effect from cherry blossoms, and she did do a lovely job with that cherry tree. I will use you as an excuse, since she seems still in awe of ‘Sir David.’”

  He snorted at that. In spite of Mrs. Pridmore’s preference, while working on the glamural Jane had taken to calling Vincent ‘Sir David’ again, professedly to remind Mrs. Ransford that he was the Prince Regent’s glamourist, but truly to remind him of himself.

  “You do not mind speaking to her?”

  “Given that we want to retain her good opinion, I think that is probably best.” Jane patted his arm. “You can be curmudgeonly.”

  He shook his head and pretended to scowl, but the corners of his eyes creased with a suppressed smile. He unstitched the muddied silence and returned to the folds he had been laying in one of the upper corners of the ballroom. Most glamourists would need a scaffold to reach, but he stretched glamour and threw it into place as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  Jane waited for a few moments so that it was not quite so obvious that they had been discussing Mrs. Ransford. Armed with the drawing of the snow curtain, she approached the woman and waited until she tied off the thread she was working with. “Mrs. Ransford, may I trouble you?”

  Breathing quickly, with a flush to her usually pallid cheeks, Mrs. Ransford stepped back from her work. “I am only too happy to take a break, so please trouble away.”