The Deepest Night tsd-2

by Shana Abe

  “But, sir,” protested Mittie, either because she hated me the most or loved whining the most (probably both), “is that fair? All the rest of us have to show what we’ve learned—”

  “Do you desire to sit through a ten-minute cacophony of sharps and flats, Miss Bashier? I do not. I assume your parents do not. Let us accept with grace what we cannot change in a week, ladies.”

  “Or in a lifetime,” muttered Caroline, provoking a fresh round of snickering.

  After class, as everyone was crowding through the ballroom doors, Sophia swung into step beside me and sent me a slanting look.

  “Are you really that poor a player? Or is it on purpose?”

  “No,” I answered grimly. “I really am that poor.”

  “That’s too bad. I was rather hoping you were doing it deliberately. To put a tweak in Vachon’s nose.”

  “Vachon carries a stick with him, in case you didn’t notice, and he’s very glad to use it. I have no interest in tweaking any part of him.”

  “How disappointing,” she sighed. “And all this time, I thought you such the rebel.”

  I was surprised into a laugh, and her pale eyes grew just a tad too wide.

  “Well, after all, there was that business of you getting shot. Certainly no other girl here would ever have done such a thing.”

  “Yes. It was so rebellious of me to have put myself in front of a bullet I never saw coming.”

  She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And the fact that you’ve captured Armand’s attention, if not his heart. The mudlark and the aristocrat! If that’s not the out-and-out definition of rebellion, I don’t know what is.”

  “Lord Armand and I are friends, Sophia. That’s all.”

  “Oh, come! We’ve been chums for weeks! I thought we were beyond all these silly lies. He practically salivates whenever he sees you.”

  Ahead of us Stella and Mittie were strolling arm in arm, whispering and tittering.

  “Friends,” I said again, firm.

  “Is that why he was driving you back from wherever you went yesterday? Just to be friendly?”

  “He was driving me and Westcliffe,” I pointed out.

  “Hmm. Where did you go yesterday, by the way?”

  To see the mad duke. To hear a mad idea.

  “Nowhere,” I said. “Just to the village, to see the doctor.”

  “I say, Eleanore.” Mittie broke off the whispering to throw me a glance from over her shoulder. “Stella and I have had the most marvelous notion.”

  “Yes!” Stella gave me a big grin. “We’re all so concerned about how you have nowhere to land soon. Summer and all that. So why not go stay with Sophia for the holiday? She could always use—” She paused, brimming with glee; I braced myself.”Another maid!”

  This sent them both into peals of laughter. Lady Sophia shook her head. She walked up between them and put her arms around their waists.

  “I have all the maids I need, thank you. But perhaps the scullery? I can check with the cook, I suppose.”

  More laughter, and I watched the three of them saunter away down the corridor, rich and happy and secure in their world.

  I confess, sometimes I daydreamed about Turning into a dragon and biting their heads off.

  But they were probably poisonous, anyway.

  The conversation I’d been dreading came two days later.

  Again, in Westcliffe’s office.

  “Miss Jones. You will be pleased to know I’ve received notification regarding your new residence for the summer.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ll not draw out the suspense. You’ve been assigned to the Sisters of the Splintered Cross Orphanage. It is in Callander. In Scotland.”

  “Oh.”

  “Southern Scotland, I believe. Have you ever been?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Ah. Well, I’m certain it’s a fine place. Scotland is, by all accounts … quite interesting. I have your schedule here, your train tickets and such. You are to depart the day after graduation. A fortuitous bit of timing, I think! I suggest you begin packing soon. It’s never wise to leave matters to the last minute, is it?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I shall be candid with you, Miss Jones. It may not be practical to plan for your return to Iverson next fall. The war has forced many unfortunate changes upon us. Shipping you all the way back from Callander a few months from now might not be in anyone’s best interest.”

  “But it will, of course, be up to the duke to decide my fate?”

  “Er—of course. The scholarship is entirely in His Grace’s control. In his current state, however …”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You are a sensible girl, Eleanore. I will not encourage you to cling to false hopes; they will not serve you well.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “We understand each other. Excellent. I know I may count on you to make the most of your final days here at Iverson, the better to shape your years to come.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good afternoon, then.”

  “Good afternoon, ma’am.”

  That night before dinner I visited the library. It was mostly deserted, only a trio of ninth-years at a table poring over a fashion magazine stuffed with drawings of coy, smiling debutantes in viciously expensive gowns.

  I sent them a look; they returned it. None of us spoke, and they all went back to cooing over the gowns.

  I had no interest in magazines, at least not in any of the ones Mrs. Westcliffe deemed suitable for proper young ladies. I’d come for a book I’d noticed in passing not long ago, one of the few books here that wasn’t about housekeeping or sewing or the care of husbands: Charts of the Principal Cities of the World, Including Railroad and Telegraph Lines.

  It was large and heavy, with a jolly thick layer of dust along the top. I hefted it from the shelf and dropped it onto the nearest table, earning me another look from the trio, which I ignored.

  I flipped through the pages. Buenos Aires, La Paz, Havana, New York. Cairo, Dakar, Cape Town, Riyadh, Angora, Budapest … Rome, Paris. London. Glasgow.

  I squinted at the Glasgow page, which was indeed cobwebbed with lines representing every railroad and telegraph line imaginable. I turned to the previous page, which showed the city as a dot in the big, flat map that was Scotland.

  Callander was inked in there, a speck on the page. It wasn’t even in southern Scotland, as the headmistress had claimed. From what I could tell, it was much nearer to the middle. Far from Wessex. Far from the impeccable Iverson School for Girls and the eligible youngest son of a duke.

  I studied it a while longer, trying to measure the distance with my fingers, but all I could figure was that it was hundreds of miles north of where I was sitting.

  Hundreds.

  I rifled through the pages again until I found Prussia (principal cities: Berlin, Königsberg). I didn’t know exactly where Aubrey’s medieval prison-ruin would be, but honestly, it hardly mattered. Prussia was huge and impossibly remote. Past England and the Channel, past all of France and Belgium, too. It made the distance to Callander look like a jaunt to a neighbor’s house.

  I slapped the book shut, sending motes of dust aloft and forcing the trio to coo even louder over the absolutely dreamy smocking on a plaid taffeta dinner frock.

  You’re waiting for the moment I Turn into something more than just smoke. You’re waiting for Lora the dragon.

  Lora-of-the-moon, Jesse used to call me.

  It’s not yet. But soon.

  Chapter 7

  To my great astonishment, the graduation ceremony was to take place out-of-doors, upon the wide, open green of Iverson’s front lawn. It was a picturesque enough setting, with the cerulean sky and trimmed grass, the rose gardens framing it all in pathways of flouncy bright blooms. Even the animal-shaped hedges looked nearly benign. But out-of-doors meant the sun, and the sun meant parasols, a bobbing sea of them above the audience in their wicker chairs, a handful more
held by those of us stranded in our row upon the makeshift stage.

  A patchy breeze tugged at the trim of our formal uniforms like a fussy toddler wanting attention.

  The trim was black lace. Every inch of our formal uniforms, in fact, was black, because they’d been dyed that way about a month past to honor the death of our school patron’s eldest son.

  Which meant that I was clad in the most stifling outfit imaginable from neck to toe, perspiring and miserable in the heat of the day, for no good reason. The breeze wasn’t strong enough to cool, and the parasol I’d been handed before being ushered up to the stage was also made of lace. I sat dappled in fiery sunlight.

  “What a silly to-do,” Malinda was grumbling. As ever, she’d been seated at my side. “When we’ll be seeing all these same people at parties as soon as next week.”

  “Some of us will,” Lillian corrected her, with a smug glance at me.

  “Yes, I guess this is something for Eleanore to remember. You will remember it, won’t you, darling Eleanore? When you’re back with all the other sad, tatty orphans in your sad, tatty orphanage, mucking about in the Scottish slums?”

  I gazed at the parasol sea before me, dark shade hiding porcelain faces, fans undulating, diamonds flashing. Silks and linens and hats and feathers. Servants weaving through with lemonade and champagne.

  Not a single snatch of conversation I’d overheard had been about the war. It was all who had seen whom where, and when, and whom they’d been with, and what they’d been wearing.

  “Oh, yes,” I said softly. “It would be quite impossible to forget such a magnificent display of affectation.”

  It took Malinda a moment to untangle my sentence. Then she straightened, her cheeks going pink.

  “Well! I like that! Here you are amid your betters, and you have the nerve to say something like that!”

  “I have the nerve for rather a lot of things, actually.” I turned my head to hold her eyes. “You’ve no idea.”

  “I don’t doubt it!”

  “You seem indisposed,” I said, darkening my voice. “Indeed, darling Malinda, I fear you’re horribly ill.”

  It wasn’t nice of me. I know that. But sometimes the best way to fight nastiness is with a good, sharp dose of something even nastier.

  I turned away again as she began panting, pulling at the collar of her shirtwaist.

  The very first row of the audience held the most important people, I assumed, because Mrs. Westcliffe was there, and some old men in fine coats, and one young man in particular at the end of the row, dressed in black like me, but with a starched white shirt and a dove-gray waistcoat and tie, and a ruby ring that wasn’t his on his right hand.

  Like everyone else, Armand’s face was obscured by the shade of his hat. Unlike everyone else, however, I felt him staring at me. I could always feel it when he stared.

  Malinda began to make small mewling noises under her breath. She sounded distressingly like a sick kitten.

  I leaned in close. “You’re fine,” I said, and went back to gazing out past the parasols.

  I hadn’t been able to tell Armand about Scotland. I’d smoked to his room twice since that night, but he’d never been there; I thought it likely he hadn’t been at Tranquility at all. I’d hoped it meant he’d gone to London, as he’d said, and sold my pinecone.

  I had no intention of mucking about in slums any longer, not in Scotland or anywhere else. If Westcliffe wasn’t having me back next year anyway, there was no point in doing what the government or any of the adults ordered me to do.

  I would take my money from Armand, purchase some decent traveling gear and a ticket to Someplace Else. I would empty my chest of gold into my suitcase, board a train, and not look back. Never mind Westcliffe and Armand and Jesse and the Splintered Sisters of the Holy Whatever. Not only was I magical, I now had means. If I desired to disappear, no one would ever find me.

  After I was settled somewhere, I would think about—think about—rescuing Aubrey.

  If Jesse truly expected me to risk my life for a stranger, he could damned well come to me in a dream and tell me so himself.

  This is what I remember from the momentous 1915 Observance of Graduation at the Iverson School for Girls, Wessex, England:

  Westcliffe taking the stage for her welcome speech, which was about—surprise!—the virtues of modesty and faith, and how this was unquestionably one of the most promising classes of young ladies she’d ever had the pleasure to host.

  (Sophia, hiding her mouth behind her hand: “She says that every year.”)

  Malinda playing the upright piano that had been rolled into place beyond the podium; she’d recovered enough by then to destroy only a few bars of Stella and Beatrice’s treacly duet.

  My head beginning to ache.

  Chloe Pemington walking up the stairs to the stage, enveloped in a cloud of overripe perfume. She’d won some sort of award from the professors for perfect deportment.

  (Sophia, snorting.)

  Chloe accepting her engraved silver chalice with a condescending nod, floating like a sylph across the stage. Men in the audience transfixed.

  Sophia after that, reciting her book passage with a familiar crisp yet singsong elocution that had the headmistress beaming, because apparently she couldn’t tell when she was being mocked.

  My head, throbbing.

  Another speech from one of the front-row gentlemen, who mumbled so severely I couldn’t make out a single word besides wives. Although I suppose it might have been knives.

  The hot broken bits of sunlight on my arms and lap, blinding.

  Lillian, Mittie, and Caroline and their poem, entitled “An Ode to Good Old Iverson, My Home of Homes!”

  Demons with machetes inside my skull, hacking to come out.

  And then Lord Armand Louis, striding past me without a glance to take the podium, about to give the speech that would change everything.

  “I hope you will forgive the Duke of Idylling’s absence on this important day,” he began, his voice smooth and commanding, the very opposite of Mr. Mumbler. “My father sends his best wishes to each of you, and most especially to each of the young women graduating from this fine school, of which he is quite justly proud. I realize I am not so eloquent nor so fluent in public discourse as His Grace, but I shall do my best to be an adequate speaker in his stead.”

  Armand paused to flash a smile at the audience. Four of my classmates released audible, smitten sighs.

  “I believe I echo my father’s sentiments when I state that it is imperative, even in turbulent times, to celebrate the importance of learning and perseverance. Indeed, in times such as these, recognition of such achievements becomes even more significant. What else do we truly fight for? We fight for the glory of our country, of course. For our king. But also for our way of life. Our way of thinking. Of being.”

  Was this some emerging drákon skill? I’d never heard him speak like this before. He was cool and calm and mesmerizing. He had all of us, including me, leaning forward in our seats, hanging on his words.

  Armand removed his hat and let the sun illuminate him entirely. Shining dark hair, intense blue eyes. The harsh light along his white shirt and skin cast him almost aglow.

  “Iverson is an ideal illustration of who and what we are. Of what we must defend. The welfare of your daughters is dear to every fighting man out there, I promise you. They risk their lives for them, for us. Such a sacrifice is overwhelming.

  “I was reminded of this recently by a student from this very school. A tenderhearted girl who came to me with an idea, one I hope you will all embrace as fervently as I did. Miss Jones? Miss Eleanore Jones? Where are you?”

  Oh, God. I shrank back in my chair. What was he doing?

  Armand pretended to search the crowd for a few seconds before spotting me cowering under my parasol. He gestured emphatically in my direction.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it is due to this girl that a plan has been set into motion that I hope will benefit th
e lives of a good number of soldiers and their families. As many of you know, my home, Tranquility at Idylling, is large—and largely empty. With my father’s blessing, I intend to fill those empty rooms with heartbeats, with souls. I am going to transform Tranquility into a convalescent hospital for our own wounded soldiers.”

  Another pause, and a gradual, rumbling, swelling resonance from the crowd that I read as part approval, part disbelief. Armand spoke again, louder, before the sound could grow beyond him.

  “And I am delighted to inform you that this same kind girl, as true an example of the Iverson spirit of generosity and service as ever was, has volunteered to spend her summer there as our very first nurse!”

  Armand took a half step back from the podium, smiling again, allowing the swell of sound to crest into happy applause. Then he walked straight to me, bowing before me and lifting a hand in an invitation to take mine.

  What else could I do? I placed my fingers over his and he lowered his head to press a kiss upon my knuckles. The applause grew even louder.

  “Voilà,” he murmured, a word that only I could hear.

  Well, forget about my piano performance. There was no way I was going to try to follow that.

  One hour later, at the al fresco reception, beneath some anemic clouds and that unrelenting sun:

  “A moment, Miss Jones.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You are certainly full of surprises. Why did you not mention to me your conversation with Lord Armand regarding the hospital?”

  “Uh … I beg your pardon, ma’am. I assure you, I was as amazed as you when he spoke of it today.”

  “Had you bothered to tell me you’d volunteered as a nurse for the summer, you might have saved many of us a good deal of trouble. It is not an uncomplicated task to arrange a future, Eleanore. A good many people went to some effort on your behalf to secure your place at the Callander orphanage.”

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am.”

  “Indeed. Had I any inkling of your interest in nursing, I might have arranged to send you to one of the many worthy hospitals already in existence.”