The Deepest Night

Chapter 14

Sophia was here now. Chloe was here now.

So, naturally, dinner became an exercise in exquisitely mannered persecution.

For evening meals the dining chamber was aglow with candlelight, twelve silver, twisty-armed candelabras stationed in a row down the center of the table, twelve more reflected back at us from the shiny black windows, countless dancing bright flames. There were vases of flowers dotting the table as well, along with salt cellars and frilled glass dishes holding rainbows of perfectly arranged hard, round candies that I was dying to taste but knew better than to try. They seemed like someone’s idea of cheerful decoration.

At Iverson, Sophia had been at the far end of our table and her stepsister at another table entirely. But tonight Sophia sat directly across from me and Chloe was just two chairs to my left, a hapless young army fellow stuck between us. It was clear by the time the soup was served she’d already fixed stars in his eyes.

To my right was yet another officer, but silver-haired and mustachioed, who’d granted me a nod and a grunt before getting down to the business of eating.

Mrs. Westcliffe would not have approved of dining sans conversation, but I did. If only I could as easily avoid Sophia’s knowing gaze, and Chloe’s light, venomous chatter, which kept floating my way.

“ … so happy to be here, of course! To do my part. It’s the least one might expect of a girl in my position. After all, you boys are doing all the real work. Only a fool would imagine that a mere summer of volunteer nursing would compare to your sacrifice.”

“Er,” said the man.

“But I told Mamá I simply had to do something. I simply couldn’t spend the summer acting as if everything was normal. You know, attending dances and dinner parties and all those silly things. So I told her I was coming here to help, and no argument about it, if you please!”

“That’s awfully kind of you, my lady.”

“Oh, it’s nothing! Nothing at all! And naturally my little sister had to come along, too. She’s so adorable, simply has to follow wherever I go! Isn’t that adorable?”

“Quite,” replied the man, practically melting in his chair.

“But both of us followed Eleanore,” pointed out Sophia, smiling with exaggerated benevolence over her sauced turbot. “And that’s even more adorable, don’t you think?”

“Who?” said the fellow.

I concentrated on my own turbot, taking apart the fish flake by flake with my fork.

Chloe murmured something, and the army man said, “Oh!” and shifted and darted me a look.

“ … rather a wretched case, really.” She slanted closer to the man, ensuring that neither of us would miss a word. “I heard she had nowhere else to go. Poor dear, she’s just the most piteous creature. A charity girl, you know. It was either here or the streets for her.”

“A shame,” said the man.

Chloe shook her head sadly. “And she’s just so hopeless, you know? Of course, I don’t mean that in an unkind way!”

“Of course not!”

“It’s just … well, did you see what happened today? When I first arrived?”

“No.”

“She made a huge mess of things in the induction room. Couldn’t listen to anyone, couldn’t follow orders. Even at school, she was always the girl who couldn’t manage to get anything right.”

“There’s always someone like that around,” whispered the man conspiratorially.

“True,” Chloe agreed, pouty and ravishing, batting her comely brown lashes. “There’s always someone.”

I leaned out of my chair, pried loose one of the decorative hard candies from its place, and popped it in my mouth.

It tasted a lot less like sugar and a lot more like salt, but I kept eating it. It was either that or chuck it at Chloe.

Across the table, Sophia only smiled.

He watched her at dinner.

He watched her all the time, he supposed, but dinner was easiest, because they were both stationary at the table, trapped for five full courses at least, and even though he could no longer seat her at his side—the chief nurse now had that honor; Lottie Clayworth, who seemed thoroughly happy to remain at Tranquility for the duration of the war, as long as she got to complain about it, had his other elbow—anyway, even though he could no longer have her next to him, Lora was still at the table, which was good enough.

So he could watch her. Providing he was stealthy about it, he could do it for minutes at a time.

Armand had perfected his stealth years ago. He knew all the tricks: how to keep his lashes down but his gaze up; how to smile without smiling; how to listen without reacting. How to walk without sound, to embrace the shadows. He even knew the trickiest trick of them all: how to shine in public so brightly no one noticed what he was really about, because all they saw was dazzle.

He was especially good at that.

Every evening, Armand and the officers and doctors and nurses gathered at the table to enjoy Cook’s best efforts. The conversation tended to be vague and genial and unequivocally impersonal. Charts, medicines, village life. Most of the men balked at discussing anything more serious with the women around. Had Mandy nothing else to consider, he’d be bored out of his skull.

But he had her, just seven chairs down to his left. Eleanore Jones, who ate with such a tension about her he wondered that she didn’t crack apart into pieces, and even that was fascinating. Head down, unspeaking, quick small bites. Like someone was always about to snatch away her plate.

He’d noticed how she winced at the electrical lights, so he’d banished them from the meals, relying upon candles instead. He’d told the colonel in charge of the hospital that he thought it best if they reserved the generator oil for the soldiers’ needs, which got him another Dashed good thinking, old chap from the military machine.

But Armand was a charlatan, a dazzler. The soldiers could have all the oil; he didn’t care. He’d wanted the candles for her. Because she winced at the electrical lights. Because when they were on, she wouldn’t look at them or walk beneath them.

And because, for some reason, that hurt him. The lights themselves never hurt him—he had no notion why they bothered her—but watching her having to be so careful, watching her eat like a starved dog on a chain, watching her coiled so tight in her chair and avoiding the eyes of everyone around her, finishing first, waiting without words, never asking for more—

It hurt him. It infuriated him. He wanted her to have everything she ever wanted, and he wanted to be the one to give it to her. And how delightfully ironic, how ridiculously sidesplitting it was that the only thing she really wanted was something—someone—Armand could not give.

it is to you now, Jesse had told him, that first night she’d come to stay at Tranquility. i give to you her earthly cares, her beating heart and mortal life. she’s rich with magic, rich with possibilities. be careful, louis. protect her. she’s more fragile than she looks.

Right, he’d thought. Thanks for that, you bloody damned bastard. She looks about as sturdy as a dandelion tuft, so you’re bloody reassuring.

Then again, Armand heard talking stars now. So nothing was exactly reassuring.

From her place down the table, Chloe released a musical laugh. Sophia echoed it, sharper. They sat up straight and ate only what they should, smiling and chatting, practicing their English-rose charm. He knew from experience that Chloe would have half the men in love with her by dessert, and those she didn’t manage to ensnare, Sophia would scoop up in the following days. They were well matched in their mutual hatred: both attractive in their different ways, both witty, both relentless.

Yet when he found his gaze drifting to them now, all they inspired in him was a vague sense of weariness. He couldn’t help but think there wasn’t anything genuinely interesting about either of them. He’d known girls like them forever and ever.

The secret dragon at his table took her final bite of salad and glanced up and around, candlelight tangled pink in her hair, gold along her lashes. He watched her tighten into her silent coil, still and taut until the next course was served, then bend her head and begin again.

I smoked back to him that night, and this time I didn’t hesitate to shake him awake.

“We’ve got to work on a plan to get Aubrey,” I said as soon as his eyes snapped open. “I can’t stay here and be a nurse.”

Armand’s hand reached up and covered mine, pressing my palm to his shoulder.

“All right,” he said.

We met just after dawn at the swimming bath. I thought it’d be belowground (even the term “swimming bath” made me think of dank, moldy places), but it wasn’t. It was located at the back of the mansion, up against one of the unfinished wings. I’d glimpsed it from the air and thought it a hothouse, because it was long and rectangular and, like Prince Albert’s famed Crystal Palace, composed almost entirely of glass. Tall glass walls, peaked glass roof. A glistening sparkler set upon the emerald lawn.

Perhaps someone else had considered it a hothouse as well. Inside there were palm trees in elaborately enameled Chinese pots, and some sort of fleshy, flowering vine crawling up stakes secured in all four corners. The air was moist with the scent of plants and disinfectant and loam—a considerable improvement over the meat smell any day.

The light around us bloomed lustrous soft, colored with the new day. Condensation from the bath formed a thousand crystal tears that trickled slowly down the walls.

“Ready?” Armand asked. He was in his bathing costume, standing upon the first tiled step that led down into the blue-green pool.

No, I wasn’t. But I shrugged out of my robe anyway, approaching the steps.

I’d never swum in the ocean. I’d never had the luxury of a hot bath. Even at Iverson we washed ourselves with sponges, because that’s what ladies did.

Yet thanks to Moor Gate, I had nearly drowned too many times to count.

I thought of Jesse in my dream, telling me about fate. I thought of Aubrey, who was suffering, and how endless the Channel looked from Iverson, slippery chopped water that went on and on and on, a skin over bottomless depths.

“You remember how to swim?” I asked Armand, which was dumb, because of course he did.

“Yes,” he said, holding out a hand to me.

Armand’s bathing costume consisted of a skintight black tunic that stopped at his shoulders and midthigh. It was the least amount of clothing I’d ever seen on him. On anyone.

My costume was similar, but red with white stripes and a belt above bloomers and a short ruffled skirt. I looked like a stick of peppermint candy. It was all Armand had been able to find in storage, a forgotten leftover from someone’s long-ago summer visit.

Fashions changed, but even so. I could not imagine the woman who’d first spotted this rig in a shop and thought, I’ll look stunning in that!

“Right,” I said, steeling myself. “Let’s get this over with.”

I walked forward, took his hand. His fingers closed over mine.

I touched one foot to the water and jerked it back again.

“You said it was heated!”

“It is,” he soothed. “It feels a bit brisk now, I admit, but you’ll get used to it. Trust me.”

I lowered my foot back into the water, fighting the goose bumps that raced up my skin. I held his hand hard and brought my other foot in. The water sloshed up to my shins, and I stifled a shriek.

Heated water should be warm, and this wasn’t anything close. Only Armand’s hand felt warm, and I fancied that was just because the rest of me had gone so cold.

“Come on,” he coaxed, and took me down another step, and then another one.

Ice water to my thighs, my hips, chilling me in places I refused to consider. My feet halted in place.

“Who’d have thought,” Mandy said, laughing, “that a girl bold enough to take on the Huns themselves would be so frightened of a little water?”

“I’m not frightened,” I bit out. “I am freezing.”

“Sorry, waif. Only describing what I see.”

“I am not frightened.”

To prove it I took another big step—too big. My foot skidded off the tiles and I lost my balance and plunged all the way into the pool. Water flooded up my nose, into my mouth, my eyes and ears.

Armand yanked me upright, still laughing as I sputtered.

“Oh, God,” I said, my teeth chattering, my body trembling, my hair fat dripping ropes down my face. “Oh, crikey. Crikey!”

Smooth as satin, he glided in front of me and took me in his arms. He pressed me to his chest and kept me there, both of us bobbing in place.

Water to my shoulders, neck. Shoulders. Soft lapping water, the steadily brightening light. His arms around me. My cheek above his heart.

Mandy wasn’t laughing any longer.

I became abruptly, acutely aware of my breathing. Of his. Of how my own arms had stolen around his waist.

Of how wherever we touched, I was no longer cold at all.

I felt his hand shift, his fingers weaving though the floating mass of my hair. His touch along my shoulder blade, satin again … but it brought back the shivers.

“Bad news,” he whispered, not letting go.

“What?” Was that my voice? It sounded so reedy.

“I’m afraid this is the warmer end of the pool.”

I tried to laugh, but it came out mostly choked. He pulled me closer.

“Lora—”

“My, my,” said someone behind us. “You do realize the walls are made of glass, don’t you?”

We broke apart at once. I ended up on the deeper side; Armand had to pull me back until I could stand without the water smacking me in the face.

“Good morning, Sophia,” he said evenly. “What a surprise to see you up and about so damned early.”

She stood at the edge of the tiles in a vanilla lace dress that already looked wilted, smiling a cool, cool smile. “Well, you know. The early bird and all that. I’ve found that one discovers the most interesting sights first thing in the morning.”

“I’m teaching Eleanore how to swim.”

“Oh? Is that what you’re teaching her?”

“So far. Perhaps you’d care to shove off so we can get back to it.”

“Back to what, exactly? The swimming or the lovemaking?”

I said, “We weren’t—”

“Both,” retorted Armand. “And if you don’t mind, I’d rather we didn’t have an audience.”

“Then don’t do it under glass.”

“Stop it, both of you.” I slapped my hand against the water for emphasis. “We’re just swimming, Sophia. Honestly.”

“Honestly, Eleanore, apparently neither of you have realized that half the mansion is already awake. So unless you’re planning a wedding in here—”

I bobbled back and choked again, water filling my mouth.

“—I think it’s best that I stay. I’m an excellent chaperone. Pious as a saint. Ask anyone.”

“Bugger you,” Armand muttered.

“Language, Lord Armand! I’m shocked.”

“I doubt it, since you’re the one who taught me that word.”

Her smile returned. “Chloe was right about one thing. This summer would have been positively wasted on dances and social calls. Why, I might have missed all of this! Shall I go wake her to join in our fun?”

Armand shook his head in disgust. “Stay, if you must.”

“Smashing!” She clapped her hands. “Swim away, children. Swim away. I’ll just be right here. Chaperoning.”

I looked at Armand standing inches from me, water breaking against his chest, all ivory skin and toned muscles, his jaw set, his eyes narrowed.

I couldn’t tell if it was me or the pool, but suddenly I was much, much warmer than before.

And I knew I should be glad that Sophia was going to stay.

My almost-but-not-quite fainting spell from the day before had been noted by more than just Chloe. I wasn’t three feet into the induction room before Deirdre cornered me.

“Ah, Eliza! There you are.” She gave me that quick smile, which I’d come to realize didn’t necessarily mean she was pleased. “How are you?”

“Fine.” Knackered, actually. I’d been up practically all night and then had my first swimming lesson this morning, and nearly everything about me right now ached.

Armand had been patient with me. Sophia had not. I’d endured her heckling (You call that a forward stroke? Eleanore, you’re useless!) for almost an hour before wading near enough to splash her pretty dress all down the front.

“Good, good. Listen, dearie, I think perhaps you might be better suited for a position slightly less … strenuous than assisting Dr. Newcastle and me.”

“Oh,” I said, partly offended. Mostly relieved.

“There, now, don’t you fret! There are still many important tasks left undone! Why, Mrs. Quinn was just mentioning that we’re always running short of properly rolled bandages. And many of these poor lads are sorely lacking for books and games. You might have a hand in distributing those!”

“Games,” I said.

She clasped me on the shoulder and lowered her voice. “Not everyone is cut out for the realities of war, Eleanore. It is a grim business, a grim business indeed. You’re still very young. You’ve not dealt with death before, and that’s perfectly normal. A slip of a child like you shouldn’t have to dwell on such things. You’re more concerned with bonnets than bullets, I daresay! Have a go at the bandages, won’t you? There’s a good lass.”

Another smile, and she was gone. I watched her until my eyes were caught by someone new: Chloe, seated in a chair by a bed, a man’s hand clenched in hers, speaking something I could not hear. She felt my stare and returned it with a smirk, still talking. A duo of doctors worked frantically around her, both of them spattered in blood, and no one was giving her the boot.

I turned away, my chest tight. I walked a few aimless paces one direction, then another, until I found myself by the piano.

Someone had arranged a sheet over it, but it was already sliding off. A tray of dirty scalpels and clamps had been set haphazardly atop the sheet. A fly buzzed around it, hopping from blade to blade.

I was not useless. I was small and marked with a strange magic; I was different, but I would not be made useless. Not by Sophia, not by Deirdre or Chloe. Not by anyone. I had my own kind of power, and even if practically no one else knew of it or understood it—even I didn’t fully understand it—it was real. It existed.

I scooted the bench into place. I took my seat and raised the cover from the keys.

It took a moment, but eventually a song did come. I followed it with my hands, soft as I could at first, just in case someone noticed and got angry. But no one stopped me, so I kept playing, my eyes closed, swaying in place because this was a meandering, sweeping sort of song, with parts that danced far and near and then doubled back on themselves, echoing, and I needed to concentrate to catch the smallest of the notes.

I wasn’t sure where it came from. It seemed more permanent somehow than the bits of gold and silver worn by the people swarming around me. Perhaps it belonged to the limestone base of Tranquility itself. Perhaps Tranquility was trying to assert its own voice. After all, it wasn’t the house’s fault it’d been designed by a crazy person.

I finished and opened my eyes. Nothing in the chamber had changed. Same bustle, same noise, same smell.

Well, almost nothing had changed.

“I liked that,” said a soldier dreamily from his bed. “Reminded me of home. Of the rye fields in autumn. All the frost on the stalks, and the sun coming though.”

A new man spoke, sitting up as best he could with his torso and both arms swaddled in bandages. “Miss, can you play ‘Tillie down the Lane’?”

“Um, no,” I said. “Sorry. I don’t know that one.”

“How about ‘Always Love a Sailor’?” called out a different man.

“ ‘Green Apples’!”

“ ‘Follow Me to the River’!”

“ ‘When She Said Yes’!”

“No.” I felt my face begin to heat. “I’m terribly sorry. I don’t know any popular songs.”

During all this Chloe had come to stand nearby, her lips pursed, her hands on her hips. She practically radiated triumph, a goddess towering over my hunched-up humiliation.

“Oh, get up, Eleanore. I know them.”

I ducked my head to hide my blush and swiveled off the bench. Goddess Chloe took my place, smoothed her dress, and smiled at the room. “ ‘Green Apples,’ did you say?”

I left to roll bandages.