The Sweetest Dark (13 page)

“But—” Chloe clenched her hand into her napkin.

“Yes, Lady Chloe?”

“She didn't even show it to you before wearing it! She broke the rules.”

“That specific rule applies to jewelry worn with the school uniform. As it is Sunday, and Miss Jones is not in uniform, the spirit of the rule remains intact.” Mrs. Westcliffe gave a nod. “Good morning, girls. Oh, and, Miss Jones. Kindly do put up your hair before chapel.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Another nod, and she was gone.

All through the meal, the girls at my table kept pretending not to stare at the cuff. I didn't attempt to hide it, nor did I attempt to flaunt it. I acted just as I imagined any of them would, allowing it to slide oh so casually along my wrist as I ate my food, as I sipped from my cup. When a short-lived sunbeam slipped across the table and I reached into it for the sugar, a spray of light dappled my skin and the china bowl like sparks from a bonfire.

All the girls appeared curious, but none of them appeared either especially pleased or dismayed, except for Lady Sophia.

From her place down the table, Sophia looked from the cuff up into my eyes, making certain I noticed. Then she smiled, smugly satisfied, like the cat that'd gotten the cream.

...

Whatever else Chloe cared to insinuate, I did have hairpins. In fact, as luck would have it, I had two in my pocket that I'd stuck in there last weekend, because I'd been bored and restless in chapel and they'd been digging into my nape.

Two were sufficient to hold up my hair—perhaps not as neatly as the other students', but then again, none of them were of my particularly inferior blood. So who cared?

I had Jesse's gold and Jesse's attention, and they didn't, so who cared?

It saved me a trip to my room and granted me an extra fifteen minutes of delicious breakfast, which is why it was after chapel and well after noon when I finally made my way back to the tower. The clouds were shedding their promised rain, decreasing the temperature by a good ten degrees and tinting any light that seeped into the castle the shade of murky steel. Raindrops peppered every window, as if the wind could not decide in which direction to blow.

I would need my oilskin for the trip through the woods. Magical or not, I'd caught colds before.

Shadows lapped the tower stairs, charcoal over gray. My door was ajar, but I thought nothing of it. Gladys would have been in and out by now, making my bed, straightening my things, likely spitting in my water.

The bed
had
been made, but the quilts were all rumpled. That's what happened when someone sprawled atop them, as Lord Armand was when I opened my door. Armand, in a wrinkled shirt and trousers and black woolen socks, his coat and tie and shoes dumped in a soggy heap on the floor. It looked for all the world like he'd been napping.

I stood for a moment without moving, my fingers tight and cold on the knob.

“Hullo,” he said sleepily, rubbing a hand along his jaw.

He's here in my room, right in the middle of the afternoon. Great God, there's a boy in my bed in my room—

I came to life. “Get out!”

He yawned, a lazy yawn, a yawn that clearly indicated he had no intention of leaving. In the moody gray light his body seemed a mere suggestion against the covers, his hair a shaded smudge against the paler lines of his collar and face.

“But I've been waiting for you for over an hour up here, and bloody boring it's been, too. I've never known a girl who didn't keep even
mildly
wicked reading material hidden
somewhere
in her bedchamber. I've had to pass the time watching the spiders crawl across your ceiling.”

Voices floated up from downstairs, a maids' conversation about rags and soapy water sounding horribly loud, and horribly close.

I shut the door as gently as I could and pressed my back against it, my mind racing. No lock, no bolt, no key, no way to keep them out if they decided to come up… .

Armand shifted a bit, rearranging the pillows behind his shoulders.

I wet my lips. “If this is about the kiss—”

“No.” He gave a slight shrug. “I mean, it wasn't meant to be. But if you'd like—”

“You
can't
be in here!”

“And yet, Eleanore, here I am. You know, I remember this room from when I used to live in the castle as a boy. It was a storage chamber, I believe. All the shabby, cast-off things tossed up here where no one had to look at them.” He stretched out long and lazy again, arms overhead, his shirt pulling tight across his chest. “This mattress really isn't very comfortable, is it? Hard as a rock. No wonder you're so ill-tempered.”

Dark power. Compel him to leave.

I was desperate enough to try.

“You must go,” I said. Miraculously, I felt it working. I willed it and it happened, the magic threading through my tone as sly as silk, deceptively subtle. “Now. If anyone sees you, you were never here. You never saw me. Go downstairs, and do
not
mention my name.”

Armand sat up, his gaze abruptly intent. One of the pillows plopped to the floor.

“That was interesting, how your voice just changed. Got all smooth and eerie. I think I have goose bumps. Was that some sort of technique they taught you at the orphanage? Is it useful for begging?”

Blast.
I tipped my head back against the wood of the door and clenched my teeth.

“Do you have any idea the trouble I'll be in if they should find you here? What people will think?”

“Oh, yes. It rather gives me the advantage, doesn't it?”

“Mrs. Westcliffe will expel me!”

“Nonsense.” He smiled. “All right, probably she will.”

“Just tell me what you want, then!”

His lashes dropped; his smile grew more dry. He ran a hand slowly along a crease of quilt by his thigh.

“All I want,” he said quietly, “is to talk.”

“Then pay a call on me later this afternoon,” I hissed.

“No.”

“What, you don't have the time to tear yourself away from your precious Chloe?”

I hadn't meant to say that, and, believe me, as soon as the words left my lips I regretted them. They made me sound petty and jealous, and I was certain I was neither.

Reasonably certain.

Armand's smile briefly grew wider, then vanished. His fingers moved back and forth, playing with the dips and peaks of the crease.

“Where did you learn that piece?” he asked. “The one you played on the piano yesterday?”

And there it was again expanding between us, that electric, ill-defined challenge that felt like danger. Or excitement. I knew his question wasn't casual. He might have been a selfish wretch, but I wasn't the only one who'd get in trouble if we were discovered. It was Visitors' Day, after all, and he could have easily cornered me at the tea. If he'd felt it necessary to sneak all the way up to my room to ask me about the song, it meant he didn't want anyone to overhear.

Perhaps that might give
me
the advantage.

I remembered how his face had looked when I was finished playing. How white. How shocked.

“Why do you want to know?”

The shrug again. “Just wondering.”

“Really. You've skipped your lawn tennis or duck hunting or whisky drinking or whatever else people of your sort do all day, only to come all the way out to the island to ask me about the piano piece. Because you were
just wondering
.” I pushed away from the door. “Coming here to kiss me would have been more believable.”

“Well, it
was
second on my list.”

“I'm not intimidated by you,” I said, blunt. “If you're hoping I'll turn out to be some pathetic, blubbering little rag-girl who begs you not to ruin her, you're in for a surprise.”

“That's good.” Lord Armand met my eyes. “I like surprises.”

We gazed at each other, he on the bed and me by the door, neither of us giving quarter. It seemed to me that the room was growing even more dim, that time was repeating the same ploy it had pulled in Jesse's cottage, drawing out long and slow. The storm outside railed against the castle walls, drowning the air within. It layered darkness through Armand's eyes, the once-vivid blue now deep as the ocean at night.

Beyond my window the rain fell and fell, fat clouds weeping as if they'd never stop.

“Nice bracelet,” Armand said softly. “Did you steal it?”

I shook my head. “You gave it to me.”

“Did I?”

“As far as everyone else is concerned, yes. You did.”

“Hmm. And what do I get in return for agreeing to be your … benefactor?”

“The answer to your question.”

“No kiss?” he asked, even softer.

“No.”

His lips quirked. “All right, then, waif. I accept your terms. We'll try the kiss later.”

I sighed. “I made up the piece at the piano.”

He said nothing, only stared at me.

“Truly,” I said. “I made it up. Right then. It's …” Now I shrugged. “It's just something I do.”

Armand cleared his throat. “You'd never heard it before?”

“No.” I took a step closer to him, frowning. There was something odd going on here; the power between us had shifted. I felt it, that danger feeling fading and something new growing in its place.

Something like fear.

“Had
you
heard it before?” I asked, startled.

“Of course not. How could I have, if you just invented it?”

“Yes,” I murmured, not taking my eyes off him, exploring that odd new energy between us. “How could you have?”

He came to his feet. “It's only that my mother used to do that sort of thing. Invent songs like that. It was her Steinway, in fact, a wedding gift from my father. Yesterday you—you gave him a start, I suppose. Gave us both a bit of a start. Bent over the keys like that, your hair all tumbling down. You really resembled her.”

“How old were you when she died?”

He pulled on his coat, spattering water on us both. “Around three.”

“Oh,” I said carefully. “But you remember her playing?”

“I s'pose so.” Shoes on, the tie shoved into his pocket– Armand turned to face me and, just like that, I knew I'd lost him. His gaze had gone cool and his smile faint. He was entirely a lord once more.

“It's been most delightful, Miss Jones. Let's do it again sometime, shall we?”

I let him walk past me, swing open the door. He peered into the gloom of the stairwell before slipping down the first few steps. At the fourth step he paused, looked back up at me, and lowered his voice.

“Where
did
you get the bracelet?”

“Goodbye, Lord Armand,” I whispered. “Try not to get caught.”

I closed my door. I pressed my ear to the wood and remained there another whole minute until I heard him moving off, quick footfalls that faded into the more constant patter of the rain.

...

Jesse was not at home. I knew that without venturing even an inch into the sodden woods.

After Armand had left, I paused only long enough to remake the bed and blot up the water his coat had left on the floor. It was while I was doing that—on my hands and knees, my hair popped free of the measly two pins to tickle my neck—that I realized I was being surrounded by a new song.

Jesse's song.

It rose around me in a lilting cadence, became a caress along my body, an invitation, our own secret code that echoed and repeated, and every single note meant
come find me.

I stood and pushed the hair from my face. I crossed to my window to gaze down at the rainlit green, searching the fingers of fog that curled against the animal hedges and flower beds. The long, wet span of grass bereft of students or staff or too-early Sunday guests.

He definitely wasn't down there. He didn't seem to be outside at all. So … he must be somewhere within the castle.

Come find me.

My heart began a harder beat; I felt tingly, almost anxious.

Come.

Very well. I would.

I put on my oilskin, just in case. Then I went to answer Jesse's call, sliding as carefully into the stairwell shadows as Armand had done a quarter hour before.

Downstairs, the maids were kindling batches of light, moving from lamp to lamp with their waxed-paper tapers to ward off the day's dull chill. We'd entered that numbed, dragging stretch of hours before Sunday tea and after church, when Iverson's genteel young ladies tended to wander off in their individual clusters to genteelly shred the characters of anyone beyond their circle.

Each year had claimed its own location, I'd learned. The older girls usually headed outdoors to brave the tame wilderness—and relative privacy—of the gardens, while the younger ones liked to remain ensconced safely inside, closer to the promise of biscuits and cake. On days such as today, however, all the girls in all the years recognized that they were made of spun sugar: Rain would surely melt them into puddles. Everyone was forced indoors.

The front parlor was out-of-bounds until four, so they'd draped themselves throughout the other common rooms instead. As I passed the library, I glimpsed Chloe and Sophia standing and chatting by the fire with every evidence of civility. But Sophia still had her cat's smile, and Chloe's cheeks were still red.

Perhaps it wasn't so unpleasant to be without a family, after all.

I moved past the doorway without either of them noticing.

Jesse wasn't with any of the other girls, anyway. He wasn't in any part of the castle that I'd yet explored. The more I walked, the more I understood that even though I had gone all the way down to the ground floor, he was still below me somewhere, in the bowels of the keep.

I didn't think students were allowed below the main floor. I knew the kitchens were there, as were most of the servants' quarters; the professors and Mrs. Westcliffe had their own aboveground wing on the other side of the castle. No one had ever specifically told me
not
to go below stairs, however– probably because a true Iverson girl would never, ever dream of mingling with the help.