Christina frowned slightly at Octavia. “Or it could be quite a bit longer. It’s up to Lord Carlo. It’s summertime and there are so many house parties and balls that he is hardly ever home.”
“You’re welcome to stay and wait,” Octavia said, deepening Christina’s frown. “Why don’t we sit so we can talk in comfort?” She swept an arm backward, indicating they should adjourn to another room.
“If you don’t mind,” Alan said. Esmerine was beyond grateful for his generally unflappable nature, because she seemed to have lost her tongue completely. The party proceeded across the room, with Esmerine limping behind the group until Alan fell back with her. Everything had become surreal, the huge rooms and Dosia’s absence and the sisters-in-law …
They entered a room richly furnished with couches upholstered in cream-colored silk with tiny green flowers, sumptuous red walls, and a massive piece of furniture that baffled Esmerine. It had a long, painted body and a similarly painted top that was propped open, and the legs were all gold and looked like birds of prey balanced on ornate perches. “Pianoforte,” Alan explained quietly, catching her expression, but even he looked overwhelmed, she noted, when she saw his reflection in the tall looking glass over the fireplace.
Esmerine knew very little of human wealth, but she understood immediately that Dosia’s husband had a tremendous amount of it. Alan’s family had seemed well off, but nothing at all like this. The thought of stealing Dosia’s belt back from this house made her shiver.
“Please do have a seat,” Octavia said, urging them to settle on the couches.
“So, you can fly, Mr. Dare?” she continued, once they were seated and the maid had brought around coffee and platters of little iced cakes that would have easily fed ten people.
“Well, I would imagine so, Octavia, he is a Fandarsee,” Christina answered. “You’ll have to forgive my sister such silly questions.”
“That little boy, Swift,” Octavia said, “is he your brother?”
“Oh no, no,” Alan said. “He’s an orphan.”
“An orphan!” Octavia clasped her heart and looked at Christina. “I told you we should have kept him around.”
“How is my sister?” Esmerine said, growing unbearably impatient.
“She’s fine,” Christina said. “We’re working on her manners.”
“Manners?”
“Using silverware properly, how to address people, and things of that nature,” answered Christina.
“She’s gotten a lot better,” Octavia said. “And her dancing is really coming along.”
Christina made a small noncommittal sound.
A silence followed. Esmerine had no idea what to say. How could she ask anything important of these girls, like whether Dosia was happy and whether she loved Lord Carlo and he loved her? Even if they answered, it might not be honest.
Somehow the conversation plodded along, with the sisters prattling on about how Dosia was learning to dance and paint and how their brother got Dosia dogs, which Octavia pouted about a bit: “He knows I’ve always wanted dogs and he thought they’d make a mess.” As much as the sisters talked, Esmerine never learned anything of worth, nothing about how Dosia really felt, if she’d come willingly, or if Lord Carlo had taken her away, as they had assumed.
When Octavia asked if Esmerine cared to stay, she hesitated, torn between wanting desperately to see Dosia, and wanting just as desperately to be alone with Alan again and away from the vast, opulent rooms and Christina’s air of condescension.
“Esmerine … we’ve come this far,” Alan said. “We ought to stay until Dosia returns.”
Esmerine was panicked at the thought of staying in the grand house, but he was right. She couldn’t give up now.
Chapter Twenty
Esmerine didn’t have proper clothes for dinner, according to Christina, but Octavia said she could wear something of Dosia’s. Esmerine limped after her, up a staircase that crisscrossed in the middle, with statues that looked like baskets of flowers for ornamentation.
Dosia’s room was hung with tapestries and trimmed with yet more gold. A painting over the fireplace depicted a convoluted battle scene with rearing horses and men in armor, and more paintings adorned the ceiling. The bed had a canopy taller than Esmerine’s head, with embroidered linens and curtains. The floor space seemed too large for the room, dwarfing even such a large bed, and a few chairs rested against the walls, lending an air of formality more so than comfort. There was no sense of Dosia there. Once again, Esmerine had the eerie feeling that Dosia had disappeared, that maybe she’d never even been here at all, and certainly she would not come back.
“How I envy your figure!” Octavia said, producing a dress. “You and your sister are both so elegant, like statues!”
“Except when I walk …”
“It must have been such a hardship for you to come. I remember when I first saw Dosia. We played music and showed her a dance, and she wanted to learn too, even though she was clearly in pain.”
This felt like the first real thing Esmerine had heard about Dosia yet. “So … you saw her? When she first came on land?”
“Oh yes. We were all very interested to know what a mermaid was really like! Even Christina, although she pretended she wasn’t.”
“And my sister is married to your brother.” Esmerine was trying to think of a polite way to ask if Octavia’s brother had kidnapped Dosia, but it wasn’t the easiest question.
“They seem happy, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Octavia had rung the bell to summon a maid, and now the maid appeared and hovered around expectantly, so Esmerine let the conversation end. She hardly felt comfortable discussing her sister with Octavia, much less with a maid present. Could Dosia really be happy? Octavia and Christina both seemed to gloss over Dosia’s feelings.
The maid helped Esmerine into a different sort of undergarment. The stays were longer than she had worn in Sormesen, covering her hips, and made without boning, but they still kept her breasts pushed upward. A metal busk ran down the front, sewn into the stays, and kept her standing straight.
The dress was thin enough that she suspected her legs would show through the fabric in sunlight. It had an overskirt that split from the high waist, with embroidered sprays of blue flowers and a border edge of lace with a thin red trim. The skirt dragged on the ground behind her, most impractically. Esmerine thought of how Alan’s wing would feel against her back through the gauzy white fabric, and her cheeks warmed.
The maid replaced her heeled shoes with leather slippers, and Octavia handed her a fan and a scented handkerchief. “You can borrow Dosia’s,” she said, as if Esmerine would need a fan and a handkerchief for something.
“You look lovely,” Alan whispered in her ear as they entered the dining room. But even a compliment wasn’t enough to make up for the excruciating dinner. The room was gloomy, with an intimidating number of servants and dishes and utensils, and the food repulsed Esmerine. Dark-colored meat came in huge hunks on the bone. Fish never had such large bones; these could have been the bones from her own arms, and the flesh was hearty and fatty and smelled unfamiliar. She had eaten small quantities of meat at Alan’s or in the inns, but never such hunks of it.
She was picking at her rice, trying to make it look as if she had eaten more than she actually had, when they heard voices and laughter in the hall.
Octavia beamed. “I told you they’d come back tonight!”
Esmerine stood, ready to rush at Dosia and embrace her, but it quickly became apparent that there were many more voices than just Dosia’s or Lord Carlo’s, and she sat down again as a boisterous group entered the room, with Dosia among them, two little dogs running around her feet. Dosia was glancing back at one of the men and saying, “I’d like to see you try that, sir!”
Everyone was still laughing as Dosia’s smile drained into shock at the sight of Esmerine.
“Esmerine! And—and Alander?”
“Yes,” Esmerine said, just short of speechless
.
“I don’t believe it! Why are you here? Is everything all right?”
“I might ask you the same!” Esmerine cried. “Everyone back home is worried sick.”
“Oh my goodness,” Dosia said. “Let me get a good look at you.” She hurried around the table, light on her slippered feet, as if she had been born to legs. Esmerine stood again to embrace her. Dosia smelled like perfume and cool mountain air, and she was dressed so finely, in a beribboned bonnet and a little green velvet jacket and gloves of fine leather.
“Everyone, this is my sister Esmerine!” she announced to the crowd in general. “Esmerine, you can finally meet Fiodor, my husband.” She tried to tug Esmerine forward, but Esmerine couldn’t move so quickly. “My feet,” she said softly.
“Oh! I’m so sorry! I forgot,” Dosia said.
“You forgot?” Esmerine’s arm flinched from Dosia’s grasp. Then she thought she was acting poorly, and she forced a smile. “I’m sorry, it’s all right.”
“Well, that is Fiodor. Or ‘Lord Carlo,’ if we are being proper.”
“In-laws,” Fiodor said. “You could have warned me! I thought I was safe.” He winked at Esmerine. His appearance surprised her; he didn’t seem Dosia’s type, or perhaps it was that he seemed so hairy compared to mermen, with a head of dark curls and a stubbled jaw. Alan had a sharp precision to his accent and features, like the blade of a knife, but Fiodor reminded her of a rock on the shore—craggy and strong.
“And I suppose you’re acquainted with Christina and Octavia, since you seem to be having dinner with them! But let me introduce you to the rest of our friends, here visiting from Ibronia—”
All their names immediately escaped her. There were three single men, a married couple—newly married, judging by their constant giggling and touching—and the younger sister of the wife. Both men and women were loud and cheerful, settling into chairs the servants produced, and asking an exhausting number of questions of Esmerine and Alan and everyone else. Esmerine didn’t want to answer the questions of strangers. She wanted to get Dosia alone and ask questions of her. But it seemed she must continue to wait. More platters of food came out, and the wine glasses never ran dry.
“Are you two married?” the wife asked Alan and Esmerine at one point, wiggling her finger from one to the other.
“Oh no, no,” Alan said. He was sitting beside her but seemed very far away. All the closeness of their journey had evaporated, and now they were just two people enduring a situation.
“Now, I’ve always wondered about mermaids,” one of the men said, clearly halfway to drunk, raising his eyebrows suggestively. “They’re girls, but also fish. Can’t say I’ve ever wanted to seduce a fish. Why are mermaids supposed to be so much better than regular girls?”
“Because their legs are all the more attractive for being hard to get,” Fiodor said, reaching over with a broad gesture and squeezing Dosia’s thigh.
“Be good,” she said. “My sister’s here.” She added, “We’re better because you have to tame us.”
“Now, that just isn’t possible,” Fiodor said. The guests laughed.
“Know that from experience, eh?” the drunk man said.
Dosia shot him a mischievous look, to a chorus of hoots.
Esmerine was staring wide eyed at her plate, wishing her chair would drop right through the floor. Dosia seemed like a stranger, as if Fiodor had been the one to enchant her and not the other way around.
Christina quietly stood up. “Excuse me. I’m going to bed before this all gets out of hand.”
“Now why would you want to leave a gathering just as it’s getting out of hand?” the younger woman cried. Esmerine thought her name was Ambra.
Christina gave her a look of disgust and left the room.
The guests shared stories of ghosts and seemed to delight in making Ambra screech with horror—in fact, the screeching seemed put on, an excuse to clutch the young man beside her.
The sun had gone down long before the dinner finally ended. The servants had trimmed the candlewicks several times as they burned down, lighting everyone’s faces golden. Esmerine lost track of the courses—after the rice and meat there was candied fruit and blue-veined cheese, then little cups of sweet, thick cream and round almond-studded cakes, followed by hot chocolate, and finally dessert liqueur. Once again, the food was abundant as if the guests had all been expected. When each plate came around, Dosia explained what it was, but after a while Esmerine stopped caring—each dish simply had to be consumed and persevered through.
Everyone left the table energetically, except the drunk man, who lolled back a moment, his face red. “Get up, man,” Fiodor said. “We’ll play some cards.”
Esmerine hung at the back of the crowd, clutching her stomach as she limped along. How could this be her sister? Her sister’s life? How could Dosia be smiling and laughing?
Alan slipped back behind the laughing Ibronians to walk with her. “Are you all right?”
“The food was so rich.”
“Tasty, though.”
She nodded but didn’t really agree.
“It isn’t my crowd either,” he whispered. “Then again, I dislike crowds as a rule. But if we’re here to—”
“I don’t know what we’re here for,” Esmerine said flatly. “Dosia’s different.”
“Is she? Even as children, I could see that she was more sociable. Louder, certainly. She was nearer my age than you were, you know, but I didn’t come to see her.”
Esmerine bit her lip. “Well, she wasn’t like this. I don’t know how she could just— I mean, it’s like she doesn’t even care that she left our family, and no one knew if she was all right.”
“I’m sure she cares. She must be torn between trying to be one thing for you and another thing for her new family.”
A lump rose in Esmerine’s throat. “Don’t call them that.”
“You’re different too,” he said. “That must be part of it. You two were always close and now you’ve been without her for … how long?”
“Two and a half turns of the moon …” It was true. She had learned to live without Dosia in some ways. When she thought of Dosia with their friends back home, perhaps Dosia’s behavior was not so different. She had always been flirtatious and willing to go along with anything. It was the humans that distracted Esmerine—they were not like merfolk. The house wasn’t home. The food was all wrong.
“I just … miss home,” she said softly, unsure what home even meant anymore.
The party had reached the room with the pianoforte. Candles in mirrored wall sconces and several candelabras provided the room with soft light that reflected off of the gold decorations and made their white dresses glow. Octavia settled at the bench to play, and Dosia waved Esmerine to sit beside her. Servants brought around wine and chocolates. Esmerine couldn’t believe anyone had room for more food, but the party greeted the platters as if they hadn’t seen sustenance in hours. Ambra and her gentleman occupied the couch, making lusty conversation with their eyes alone. Fiodor clapped with the music. The drunk man grabbed the wife—unattached while her husband slipped away to the privy—and whirled her around the room’s open space. Alan stood against the wall and seemed to be making a futile effort not to stick out.
Esmerine let her eyesight blur and tried desperately to imagine she was under the water, and nothing had changed so very much. She tried to tell herself she belonged here, in this moment. It was real. Her sister was here, and she was here, and when she went home, Dosia would still be here, and that would be fine. It was normal to get married and leave home, even to a stupid human. Well, whomever Dosia married, it would have been stupid. Esmerine was too sensible for things like that, except with Alan, and even then she was sensible enough to know it could never really happen …
All the anger she felt when Dosia ran away was bubbling up now. She clenched her hands on her lap, stomach gurgling, hating everything.
“Esmerine? Are you getting sleepy already?” D
osia touched her arm. Esmerine hadn’t even realized how far afield her thoughts had drifted. “We’re going to play cards. I can teach you.”
“Oh … no.” Esmerine stretched her arms over her head. “Could we … speak alone?”
“Well, a hostess isn’t supposed to leave her guests alone, but I suppose these are extenuating circumstances. I’m dying to know how you came to find Alander again! And how handsome he’s grown up to be!”
Esmerine shot Dosia an eyeful of her anger. “I didn’t come here to talk about Alan!”
Dosia’s lips twisted in an apology. “All right. Well, let’s go to my room and talk. I just need to tell Fiodor.”
Esmerine sat for a moment, jaw clenched. She needed to say something to Alan too, but it was hard not to simply burst into tears. She briefly caught his eye, and he swept to her side as if he’d been waiting for a signal.
“Should we leave?” he whispered. “You look utterly miserable.”
“No. I need to talk to Dosia first.” Esmerine glanced behind her. Dosia was laughing at some joke of Fiodor’s, which sent a new lance of anger through Esmerine’s heart. She grabbed Alan’s elbow. “Let’s talk in the hall. I can’t spend another moment in here.”
They left the room together. Laughter went on behind the doors, but the dark quiet of the hall had a substance that seemed to hold back the sound.
“I’m sorry I dragged you here,” Esmerine said.
“You didn’t. I offered.”
“You didn’t have to—I don’t know, it’s just, you’ve hardly said a word all evening, and I’ve been trying to go along with everything …” She gasped for a breath. “I miss moving freely, without pain. I miss being me.”
“It’s understandable,” he said in a careful tone, obviously seeing how close she was to breaking down entirely. “But I think you’ll feel better when you talk to Dosia alone and she can be honest with you. She seems happy here, at least.”
She didn’t want Dosia to be happy here. And she didn’t want him to leave her alone with Dosia, but she couldn’t say that. She rubbed her throat, which had tightened from keeping back crying, and managed a sigh.
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