His face was so eager that I couldn’t bear to tell him the truth. That it horrified me. Shamed me. That I never wanted to see it again. “It is beautiful,” I said instead. “You are so very talented, Charlie.”
“Thank you, miss,” he said happily, cheeks glowing pink. “I could make you more—not of those, but of any picture you’d like. I’ve gotten really good at dogs, especially if they’re old dogs because they don’t move very much.”
“I would love that, Charlie, but you shouldn’t have come here. The Lodge is solar-powered. We don’t have Rootless in the countryside. If they find you here, they will think you are up to no good.”
“That’s what my father said, and he forbid me to come. Mr. David did too.” Charlie admitted. “But I wanted to see you open your present and I wanted to see Mr. David again. And I got to ride the freight train most of the way here, and it was filled with fresh fruit! I had apples and oranges and even cherries.”
“This is dangerous, Charlie. Very dangerous. Coming here was a huge risk.”
He crossed his arms. “Why haven’t you come back to visit us?” he asked. “Mr. David only came back to have me paint that picture, and you haven’t visited us since the summer. How come?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it. None of the easy answers about political alliances and the necessity of keeping up pretenses held up in Charlie’s poor, runny-nosed, and painfully, painfully sweet presence.
Because I am selfish, Charlie.
A knock at the door interrupted my conversation. Panic rushed through me and I gestured violently at Charlie to hide. He slid swiftly under the bed.
“Miss? Your father would like to see you in his study.”
“Come in, Elinor.”
She came and dressed me in the elaborate Solstice morning dress my mother had chosen the night before—another velvet, blue this time—after she’d laced me into the stiff Renaissance-style corset. I counted the seconds as she pulled the stays tight, hooked the buttons on my gown. After she styled my hair and left, I knelt on the ground and looked under the bed. Charlie grinned out at me as if he thought it were a game.
“Charlie, you must stay here. Use my sink to clean up and find some blankets, then stay hidden. My father would be furious if he knew there was a Rootless hiding in his house.”
“I’ll be safe, I promise.”
“Don’t go looking for David. I will bring him to you.”
“Yes, miss.”
Feeling as if I were leaving something more dangerous than an expired charge unattended, I left.
Please stay hidden, Charlie, I willed him.
I went downstairs to the study, where Father sat behind a large desk, stuffed game trophies peering at us from the walls and corners. I ignored their blank glassy eyes and focused on meeting Father’s as evenly as possible. I could hide Charlie from him. I was made of the same stuff he was.
Mother was there too and, for the first time in weeks, I couldn’t smell the now-familiar whiff of alcohol on her breath when she kissed my cheek. Her hair and makeup were fresh, and she was actually smiling.
“Madeline, do you know who has just been to see me?” Father asked, lacing his fingers together and leaning back in his chair.
I shook my head, desperately hoping it wasn’t a guest who had noticed a Rootless hiding about the house.
“Captain MacAvery. He came about you.”
The quivering panic in my stomach subsided; Charlie was undiscovered for the moment. Whatever had Jude visited Father for? Our unchaperoned walk last night had been technically a breach of etiquette—young people weren’t supposed to sneak off together, the purity of gentry heirs had to be ensured, et cetera et cetera—but it happened all the time and usually no one cared. David and I had been alone more than a few times. But perhaps Jude had been secretly shocked at my behavior, shocked enough to tell Father.
“He came to ask my permission to be your escort at your debut.” Father looked enormously satisfied and I felt enormously stunned. Jude had asked me to debut? Surely my flirting hadn’t been that good.
Mother came out of her chair and hugged me tightly. “We are so happy for you, Madeline darling,” she said. I tentatively hugged her back. I’d forgotten how gentle she could be. I buried my face in her neck.
“I must confess this has exceeded my wildest hopes,” Father added. “Captain MacAvery is a national hero and is bound to advance to the highest ranks of the military. In addition to his very considerable money, you would be entertaining generals, politicians, presidents more frequently than we do now—maybe even dignitaries from other nations.”
I let go of Mother and looked up at Father. “What?”
“Captain MacAvery left no doubt in my mind that a proposal would be imminent. I, of course, encouraged this.”
Wait . . . what? “A proposal? But we have only known each other a week!”
“Marriages have been arranged while people are on separate continents, Madeline. Your own grandfather was married in a proxy marriage where his bride’s father stood in for her. A week is much more than many are given. And you two seem to enjoy each other’s company. Or were those two other people sneaking off for a stroll last night?”
“How did you—”
Father waved a hand. “It is my property, Madeline, and you are my daughter. I know everything I need to.”
“I can’t marry him without knowing him better. I don’t even know his middle name!”
“It is Jacob,” Mother volunteered.
Father leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled together. “How would you feel knowing this? That if you agree to debut with him, agree to be his wife, I will change the Landry deed and my will. You may attend the university and still inherit Landry Park, as long as you are engaged. I imagine Captain MacAvery would be amenable to waiting a few years until you finished your studies. He seems quite taken with you.”
I worried my lower lip with my teeth.
“I find this a rather elegant solution to all of our concerns. You get your education and Landry Park, the estate gets more money and prestige, and I get the security of knowing our line will continue, albeit a little later than I would like.”
I felt that I was losing the battle somehow, sliding helplessly into my father’s trap.
Helplessly or willingly? It was true that marrying somebody handsome and kind hardly seemed a steep price for everything I’d ever wanted.
Except . . . “What if I want to marry somebody else?”
“Like David Dana?” Father laughed. “He seems otherwise occupied with Cara Westoff. Besides, Captain MacAvery is a better match in terms of money and influence.”
I passed a hand over my eyes. “I need to think about it.”
“You do not have a choice,” Father said. “We marry who we must for the good of the estate.”
Mother looked away, a hand pressed against her chest.
“I am not marrying Jude MacAvery just because you want me to,” I said. “If I do it, it will be my choice.”
“Whatever makes you feel better,” he said.
I didn’t have an answer for that.
After being dismissed, I tried to push the thought of Jude away and focus on Charlie—specifically the issue of getting Charlie safely home. But as I climbed the stairs back to my room, my father’s voice echoed again and again: you do not have a choice.
He couldn’t force me to marry. He wouldn’t.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like Jude. I did. He was kind and genuine and very good-looking. If I was the type of girl who dreamed of getting married just to be married, then Jude would have been the perfect husband. But as it was, I still didn’t want to marry at all, unless it was to—
I stopped my thoughts right there. It didn’t bear thinking about.
When I got back to my room, I flung myself on my bed, oblivious to the miniature that was still there. Facedown in the downy quilt, I became aware of the empty silence of my room. I sat up.
“Charli
e?”
I slid off the bed and looked underneath it. No Charlie.
“Charlie? It’s Madeline. It’s okay to come out now.”
Nothing. I’d been stupid to think of containing a cartwheeling boy under a bed for over an hour. Even Jack could barely contain him. Why did I think he’d listen to me?
I swallowed my panic and tried to think. He’d probably gone looking for David, who was on the other end of the Lodge. I would just wander around, pretending to take a turn in the corridors until I found him. If he had washed himself up, he could pass for a stable boy or gardening servant, although with his clothes in the state they were, I doubted it.
I pushed open my door and started looking, passing several laughing houseguests on their way down to the vast Solstice lunch. Even from up here, I could smell the sweet, sticky breads and fried bacon being carried to the banquet room.
Lit with an idea, I picked up my skirts and hurried down to the kitchens, where Charlie sat on a countertop swinging his legs while Martha fed him scraps of turkey and roast peafowl.
“Oh, Charlie,” I said, coming up to him. “You scared the blue lights out of me.”
“Sorry,” he said, chunks of food tumbling out of his mouth. “I smelled the food and couldn’t help myself.”
“I shouldn’t have left you so long,” I said, feeling suddenly exhausted. “Let’s get you back to my room, and I will try to find David for you.” I piled a plate high with warm bread and meat, and offered him my hand.
Cook helped him down from the counter, and he looked so small in her large arms that a surge of protectiveness ran through me. I had to keep him safe. For Jack and for David. And for me.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Martha said to me as I took Charlie’s hand.
“I do, too.”
• • •
Leaving Charlie alone again seemed like a bad idea. I told Mother that I had come down with a sudden stomachache and needed to rest for the remainder of the day. I also sent a message down with Elinor for David to come visit me in my rooms. She came back an hour later, saying apologetically that she hadn’t had an opportunity to speak with him, as he was so busy playing games and drinking.
Charlie was restless, but still sick and a little fevered, and by the time night began to fall in the early evening, he was ready for sleep. I made a nest of blankets and pillows for Charlie under the bed, and within minutes, he snored softly, more comfortable and warm than he’d been his entire life. I read until midnight—hoping somehow that David would know to come find me—and then tried to sleep too, trying not to think of Jude or marriage or the stowaway boy under my bed. After five or six fitful hours, I gave up and pulled back the covers. I stood up and looked out the window.
Blue swathed along the black backdrop of night, heralding the coming dawn. Suddenly, I wanted to be outside, in the cold, more than anything. Charlie was sound asleep—surely he’d be safe if I left just for a few moments. He would never even know I was gone.
I dressed hurriedly in riding pants and a sweater, pulling on a coat as I left my room. My boots I waited to put on until I reached the door outside, not wanting to wake anybody else.
The dark and cold felt so clear, so clean, that I could’ve stayed there forever. Instead, I walked over to the kennel building where my father kept his hunting hounds. On days when a hunt wasn’t held, it was a servant’s job to exercise the dogs by running them around the grounds. It was something my father and I had done together when I was a little girl, before the estate had started to truly suffer, and he’d grown distant. I pushed the button that unlocked the kennel doors, and the dogs rushed out, tails wagging, the green lights on their collars blinking.
They bounded eagerly around my feet as I walked toward the northern field. I could see the dark blot of the frozen lake in the distance. A weak and pink sun started to shimmer out of the rolling low hills.
The breaths puffed out of my mouth in white clouds.
Up and over the hill, Jude MacAvery came walking, an unbuttoned uniform coat flapping around his waist. The dogs ran to him, barking and gamboling around him, and he knelt to rub their necks and scratch behind their ears. I had to admit—he looked very handsome.
I stood completely still as he approached me. Charlie seemed very far away right now. So did Jack and David. Jude was the key to everything I had wanted before I met David and Jack. With Jude, my lifelong dream could be achieved. I could have them both: the university and Landry Park.
Jude stopped in front of me and held out his hands. “Madeline, the day I met you, I felt like we’d known each other our whole lives. Will you allow me to escort you to your debut?”
Maybe it was the cold air or the nosy dogs or the now-blinding sun, but it was hard to think clearly. David was never going to ask me—the image of him kissing Cara at the whist table flashed before my eyes—and a debut wasn’t a marriage. And right now I could see the dawn in Jude’s eyes. I took his hands and responded with a single word.
“Yes.”
As soon as I’d answered, blue lights began flashing around the house, a siren blaring. The emergency system had been activated, signaling for the local police to come to the house.
Charlie.
Without a word to Jude, I started running for the house as fast as I could, the breaths stabbing in and out of my chest like icy knives.
Oh no oh no oh no.
If anything happened to Jack’s son, it would be all my fault.
• • •
Inside, the Lodge was pandemonium. Women were hysterical, men were yelling, servants were rushing for anything they thought would help: tea, opium, brandy.
I shoved my way through them all to the upstairs hallway, hoping against pitiful hope that my room was undisturbed and Charlie still safe. But it wasn’t.
He wasn’t.
Several servants held him pinned to the ground while my father, Arthur Lawrence, and William Glaize stood over him. The crowd of agitated guests made it difficult to elbow my way into the room, but I did it, ignoring their protests and warnings. Inside my room, Elinor sat in an overstuffed chair, looking stricken. Another maid chafed her shoulders and murmured soothing things in her ear. When she saw me, she started crying.
“I’m so sorry, Miss Landry,” she said, face wet and miserable. “I’m so sorry.”
Father turned to me, his face so full of undisguised fury that I took a step back. But the anger wasn’t for me. “He . . . it . . . was in your rooms. Your maid happened to find him stashed under your bed, no doubt planning to hurt you as soon as you came back. Fortunately, she screamed in surprise, alerting us all to his presence.”
Elinor started crying harder. She must have realized, too late, that a Rootless boy, cleaned and wrapped in my blankets, was clearly there under my protection.
“Likely he would have killed us all after he killed you,” my uncle Lawrence said.
“No! I’d never—” A servant clamped a hand over Charlie’s mouth.
Father glared at him, then turned to me and tugged me into a hard hug. “You are safe,” he said, “by sheer chance. If you had been hurt, I would have been devastated. More importantly, the estate would have been devastated.”
I flinched at that.
“I have no doubt this boy is connected to those who vandalized our house and who attacked Cara last spring. His people are likely connected to the death of the mayor. He must be punished.”
“He is just a boy,” I said, trying to sound calm. “What harm could he have done?”
“He looks to be seven or eight. That is quite old enough to kill, if he’s clever.”
“Look at him! Would the Rootless really send a child seventy miles to take on a house full of people?”
“They are not like us, Madeline. They do not think like us.”
I didn’t know what to do. I could argue with my father until I was bluer than a lantern, but he would never bend. I could reveal that I had been harboring Charlie and hope that my Landry blood
would protect me from the worst of my father’s anger. But would it ultimately help Charlie? I supposed I had to try anyway.
“What is going on?” David asked from the hallway before I could frame my thoughts into words. He pushed his way through the crowd around my door, and as soon as he saw Charlie, his body sagged against the doorframe. “Oh my god,” he whispered. “What the hell happened?”
“What the hell happened indeed,” Father said acidly. “The Rootless have crossed the final line. Lock the boy up and prepare our return to Kansas City. If he’s to be made an example of, it must happen in front of his conspirators.”
“What’s all the fuss about?” Cara came into the room and gasped. “Cha—”
I kicked her swiftly. She shut her mouth and glared. But David cast me a grateful look. He wasn’t ready to reveal our connection to Charlie yet. Not before we could figure out how to help.
The servants hauled Charlie to his feet—a short distance—and shoved him roughly out of the room. When he turned his head to look at me, pleadingly, I saw a lifetime of fear in his eyes. And I felt the weight of the atomic crown on my head.
• • •
“What are we going to do?” I asked. The three of us who knew Charlie had managed to snag a car back to Kansas City together, leaving Jude in a limousine full of fawning girls, which he seemed less than happy about. Charlie, handcuffed like a violent criminal, barely tall enough to look out the window beside him, was riding back to Kansas City in a local police car.
David stared at the farmland rushing past, his legs twitching as he ran his fingers through his hair over and over again. Cara was more affected than I would have anticipated, shakily pouring herself glasses of gin and chewing on manicured fingernails.
“David?” I prodded.
“How could you keep this from me?” he finally asked, eyes still on the snowy fields.
Landry Park Page 20
