And Andrew was not a man to let an opportunity pass him by.
“This experimental science,” the redheaded noble was saying, “sounds fascinating.” He took Rafe’s hand and held it closer to the light reflected from the mirror towering on the wall behind them. “Why don’t you tell me about it while I gaze at your beautiful fingers?”
“Oh,” said Rafe lazily, “one man’s fascination is another man’s tedium.” Even he knew better than to engage in an actual description of his work in such a moment. “I do, however, offer you leave to make free of my fingers.”
Rafe knew this game like he knew his own body, had played it from a youngling, up until a few weeks ago. A breath of flattery, a honeyed sigh, a hollow endearment, and before long they would have found release with each other in an upstairs bedroom, or outside behind a hedge, or perhaps they would be in the redheaded nobleman’s own home, anywhere rather than scuttling around this insipid ball avoiding Will. The duke might have denied him his Master’s robe, but there was another art of which Rafe had already long been master, for which a robe was, in the end, but a hindrance.
And yet the single-minded focus with which he usually practiced that art eluded him, ruined by an unwonted sense of distraction. He started at the sound of a squeak from behind him. “Now, Horn,” a high-bred Hill voice drawled—gods, these mindless nobles!—“this fellow has a job to do. You wouldn’t want to deprive the other guests of the delicacies on his tray just for fifteen minutes of pleasure with him, now, would you?”
“Thank you, milord,” said the squeaker, presumably the servant whose peace was being troubled.
“Nonsense, Halliday,” said another mindless noble, this one elderly and irritated. “I’m far more interested in the delicacies he’s carrying on his backside.”
“Now you’re being silly. There is a more than acceptable Ruthven red in the salon. Come join me in a glass, and we can make a wager on what tonight’s Swan will be.”
“Hmph. As you wish.”
Could these ninnies hear themselves? Rafe longed to talk to Will, to huddle away in a corner with him and discuss solids or velocity or the orbits of the spheres. Something that mattered.
He shook his head. No need to think of Will. The languid redhead in front of him was the proper object of his attention.
“Rafe!” called a voice from his right, and he looked over to see Will coming toward him, brushing past a table draped in dark ivy. “Please, let’s talk this through.”
“Forgive me,” he said to the redhead, his voice strangling. “We will see each other very soon, I’m sure.” And with that he was away.
The redhead gave a smirking bow as Tremontaine came up to him. The duke looked at him for a moment without saying a word. “Damn him!” he muttered then, and continued after Rafe.
Micah had been breathing steadily for several minutes now. She thought she might be safe coming out from behind the curtain. Remember the artificial numbers if you start getting anxious, she thought. And remember what Tess said. She peeked out, saw no one looking, and stepped from behind the curtain to find herself before some kind of roasted bird and a big tower with thirty-four pastries on it. There were seventeen people in this room. Seventeen was a lot, but not more than she could handle, especially now that she had known to expect them. She took one of the pastries and bit into it. It was no tomato pie, but it wasn’t bad. A little bit of meat, some asparagus.
“Now, who might you be?” Whoops. Make that eighteen people. She turned around to see a pale woman behind her with dark hair and funny teeth. The woman kept talking but Micah felt another flutter of panic, so she began calculating. The fourth key of 1,024 is four. The seventh key of 343 is three. The eleventh key of . . .
By the time she was calm again, the woman was looking at her, not saying anything, starting to get the “I’m confused” expression, and Micah began feeling an intense pressure; the woman must have said something she expected a response to. Micah fought the urge to duck back behind the curtain. She could do this. “Fascinating,” she tried. “Why don’t you tell me more about that?” She held her breath. Tess had better have been right.
“Well,” said the woman, looking to either side and lowering her voice, “you didn’t hear it from me, but Lord Humphrey said . . .”
Micah’s eyes widened. Could this actually be working? This woman was doing just what Tess had said people would!
“Tell you what, sweetheart,” Kaab’s friend had said the previous day in Madeline’s shop when they had been there to get clothes. “Do me a favor and say this: ‘Fascinating. Why don’t you tell me more about that?’”
It seemed weird, but Tess knew a lot more about how people acted than Micah did. “Fascinating. Why don’t you tell me more about that?” Micah had repeated obediently.
“Good. Now say, ‘I’m really more interested in what you think.’”
“I’m really more interested in what you think.”
“There. Those are the only two things you’ll have to say all evening.”
Kaab, Vincent, and Madeline all laughed. Micah didn’t get the joke. “Huh?”
“It’s very simple,” said Madeline, reaching out and stroking her hair before she could shy away. To Micah’s surprise, it felt strangely soothing, almost like when Aunt Judith did it. “People love to talk about themselves. All you have to do is never stop inviting them to do it.”
This sounded interesting. “What do you mean?”
“It might not work at the University,” said Tess. “I’m sure they spend all their time talking about how many natural scientists can dance on a rutabaga’s ass or something. But the people at this party won’t be like that. So when you’re in conversation with anybody, if they stop talking and you’re not sure what to do, just say, ‘Fascinating. Why don’t you tell me more about that?’ And if at some point they ask you a question you don’t know how to answer, just say, ‘I’m really more interested in what you think.’ Those two sentences will get you through the entire evening.”
Micah was dubious. “Are you sure?”
“Sweetheart, they’ve gotten friends of mine through years of peddling their asses to men on the Hill who have no right to their thoughts about anything. It should last you for one party.”
But the words of the woman with the funny teeth in front of her brought her back to the ball. “. . . can’t wait to see what Tremontaine will do for the Swan?” Did the woman expect an answer?
All right. If it had worked once, she might as well try it again. “I’m really more interested in what you think,” said Micah, and the woman, amazingly, was off again. But just after she started talking, Micah saw somebody walk by the open door to the room with skin the same light-brown color as Kaab’s. He was dressed like everybody else, but his clothes were brighter and there were feathers on his head. Which meant he was probably Kinwiinik. Which meant . . .
“Well, milk a chicken and call her a cow!”
The woman with the funny teeth stopped in the middle of a sentence. “Pardon me?”
Micah opened her mouth to explain that Cousin Reuben said that all the time when he had ideas that he thought should have been obvious, though he didn’t have ideas very often, but then she realized that it would involve saying something other than the two sentences she knew she could get away with, and besides, every second she stood with this woman was a second farther away from the bliss and relief of enlightenment.
“Good-bye,” said Micah, not wanting to be impolite, and turned around and walked out of the room. Yes, there was danger everywhere. But now she was on a mission.
The “music” was driving Kaab mad.
She regarded the men sawing away with sticks at strings on wooden clubs they held under their chins, men blowing into flutes of metal, a man sitting at a huge wooden box moving his hands all over the front part of it. They looked bored.
Xamanek’s light! The ant-egg people’s insipid food was one thing, the swaddling clothes they wrapped themselves in and th
e shoes with which the women hobbled their feet another, but this clickety-clackety, tweedly-weedly noise was beyond belief. And just look at them all, standing around, talking, dancing, as if they didn’t notice, as if they even liked it! Amazingly, many of the Kinwiinik—even Chuleb and Saabim—were smiling and moving their heads slightly in time to the noise. She turned away and considered the mounds of silver on the table nearby. At least none of her people were dancing.
“Kaab!”
She turned to see Micah. “Ah, my small lordling,” she said. “How are you experiencing the ball?”
“Fine,” said Micah, and pointed. “I need to talk to him.”
Micah was pointing to Chuleb, in deep conversation with two Local men. Kaab’s brow wrinkled. “What is your need to speak with my uncle?”
“Navigation!” said Micah, and Kaab felt her heart clutch. “It’s still driving me crazy, and whenever I ask you about it, you always say you can’t help because it’s the Kinwiinik men who know about navigation. Well, he’s a Kinwiinik man, right? So I’m going to go explain what I’ve been trying to figure out and ask what I’m doing wrong, and he’ll tell me!”
Kaab’s veins throbbed. “I do not think that would be a good idea,” she said, very carefully. “He is a busy man, and he certainly would not—”
“Come with me!” said the girl, her eyes afire. “We can talk to him together! We’ll tell him the whole story, how you gave me the star charts and how it’s been so frustrating and then he’ll explain and it’ll all finally make sense!”
And Kaab would be disgraced, out of the service for good, destined to cook and clean in Uncle Chuleb’s house for the rest of her life. And help look after babies.
“No. You cannot.” Her tongue was wood in her mouth.
“Why not?”
“Micah, do not—”
Someone grabbed Kaab’s left arm and she whirled around. But this was not the place to assume a fighting stance. She relaxed her legs and removed her hand from the obsidian dagger at her belt.
“Your feathers are impressive.” The man who stood before her now was an ill-favored fellow despite his elegant costume: reedy, his leering face pocked, his voice nasal enough to make her eyeballs itch, his gray hair stringy. To Kaab’s horror, he reached up and touched the quetzal feathers on her headdress, and she jerked her head back. He was staring down her front the whole time, even as he made her one of the Locals’ little bows.
“I have the honor of introducing myself: Horace Lindley, Lord Horn, very much at your service.” She gritted her teeth. Micah had wandered off and was probably halfway to Chuleb by now, but Kaab didn’t dare offend one of the ant-egg lords.
“As I was saying—your costume! Such a delight. And that lovely necklace, especially the bit right there . . .” The man’s rude fingers reached now for the gold that hung on her breast, clearly interested in the one more than the other.
Before his hand could achieve its aim, she had her dagger out, pointed at the juncture of his breeches. “I counsel you,” she said coldly, “not to continue what you have begun.”
He raised an eyebrow and gave her a greasy smile. “Oh, you’re a feisty one, aren’t you? If you defend your titty’s virtue like a boy, let’s see how you fancy this instead . . .” To her amazement, even with her blade pointed right at his jewels, the mad old nobleman started reaching his other hand around for her backside.
What was she going to do? Stab him in the middle of the Tremontaine ballroom? Unwise. But if he actually touched her, she honestly wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep from harming him physically. So she took the only other option open to her.
Kaab turned and fled.
* * *
“There you are.” The redhead’s voice was silk. “I feared you’d been spirited away.”
“No,” said Rafe. “I find the continued interruptions of our acquaintance quite tedious, in fact, but there’s a certain person I greatly desire to avoid. I’m sure you understand that sort of thing.” The corners of his mouth turned up very slightly, and the redhead laughed.
“Many’s the man I’ve greatly desired to avoid at many a party,” he said. “I’m not in the least offended.” He spoke to a passing footman without releasing Rafe’s gaze. “Two cakes, from that tower of them over there.”
“Of course, my lord.”
They picked up the conversation where they had left off. And yet Rafe was mystified. The excitement he ordinarily felt in this situation—the skill, the subtlety of the game, the end a foregone conclusion, the only thing in question the path the two of them took to get there—felt muffled somehow. For the Land’s sake, it had only been a few weeks since the last time. He couldn’t be out of practice. He frowned.
“Oh,” said the redhead, “you are of a different opinion?”
What had the man been saying? No matter; the words themselves were irrelevant. “Let us say rather that I am still considering the question.” Rafe offered an indolent smile. “When it comes to the matter under discussion, that is. On other matters I am . . . quite firm.”
“I will keep that in mind, in case I find myself in a position later to make use of the information.” Why, why did this not feel the same?
“No, Halliday,” said a querulous voice off to Rafe’s left, “it was sewn by an old bat who traced her lineage back to one of Queen Amelia’s lady’s maids!” The voice, when Rafe glanced its way, proved to come from an old man in a doublet that should never have been imagined, much less cut and sewn. “And now Diane is forcing me to show it off to these foreign nobodies. As if I desired their approval. It’s insulting, I tell you.”
“I don’t know about that, Karleigh,” said the other noble, a young man of some gravity, tall, dark, perhaps not quite as vapid as the others in the room. “I find their presence intriguing. Yes, they’re foreign nobodies who probably do not belong at the Tremontaine ball. But the duchess has her little whimsies. And without the Traders we wouldn’t have chocolate.”
“Bah. They don’t even know how to drink it.” God, how could Will stand to have such people in his house? “My haberdasher’s supplier was at one of their parties. What kind of lout puts spices in chocolate?”
A twitching servant carrying a huge stack of empty glasses elbowed him in the ribs. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. Please forgive me.”
“Hardly. Do that again, you wretch, and it’ll mean your post.” A moment, as the unfortunate man scurried off. “Good god, Halliday, what is the world coming to if even Tremontaine can’t get good help?”
By the Seven Hells, this was gruesome. If only Will knew how Rafe felt, if only he truly understood!
If only pigs could fly.
“But I believe,” said the redhead, “that we were talking about your fingers.”
“Yes,” said Rafe, miserable. “Please continue.”
Alas for Rafe, he did.
Fortune, it seemed, was smiling upon Diane.
Between the two of them, she and Helena had managed to keep Karleigh distracted the entire evening. After tearing him away from Basil Halliday before he could work himself into a foam over the Traders, they had finally settled him into a game of Constellations with Humphrey Devize, the slowest talker on the Hill, and Richard Perry, the most voluble, so she could spend, if her luck held, the better part of an hour untroubled by worry on that score.
Which gave her room, finally, to deal with her husband.
It was one thing for William to make that tedious man his secretary, to invite him to the Swan Ball—and how predictably pretty little Rafe Fenton had played the spoiled child who wished to sit at the grown-ups’ table while refusing to follow the grown-ups’ rules!—but for William to follow his love around like a puppy desperate for tenderness while visibly ignoring her was . . . well, it would be foolish to say “unforgivable,” because Diane de Tremontaine had never forgiven anyone for anything in her life. Suffice it to say, however, that she kept very accurate score. And this was a serious loss.
As the Drag
on Chancellor joined her near a window draped with so much ivy one could barely see out of it, she noticed William on the way toward her in that shocking red—naturally he had scorned to wear the pastel she’d advised—and settled in an instant upon an equal loss to inflict in return.
“Gregory!” she said. “Why have you not asked to lead me in the dance yet this evening?” Her voice faltered, very slightly, as she reached the end of the sentence. Something felt strange.
“Because,” said Davenant, and the strange feeling continued, “I’m quite certain your beauty would cause me to stumble from inattention and tread on your foot, at which point I would have to hurl myself into the river in despair.”
As William drew close enough for her to be within his field of vision, she stepped a hair closer to Davenant than propriety dictated and placed a hand on his arm. “I dare say,” she said clearly, keeping her eyes on her husband’s face as he approached, “I would be so distracted by the perfection of your features I would fail to notice.”
And William walked right past her.
His head did not turn a fraction.
Because, of course, he was following the noxious Rafe.
Rage blossomed in her. It was invisible to her guests, of course, who saw only the magnificent smile she bestowed on the Dragon Chancellor.
“Duchess,” said Master Ahchuleb Balam at her side, bowing, “may I congratulate you on a spectacular evening?”
There was that strange feeling again. Mixed with her fury, it was quite unsettling. “Why, sir, if the evening is indeed a spectacular one—an assertion whose merit I am of course in no position to evaluate—then it is due entirely to your presence and that of your people.” She felt as if she were saying words that had been chosen for her by someone else.
Tremontaine Season 1 Saga Omnibus Page 31
