There Will Be Phlogiston (6 page)

Rosamond was not enjoying being engaged.

It had all the disadvantages of not being
engaged—one was still expected to do the same sort of things and
behave in the same sort of way—and the additional disadvantage of
being expected, and therefore required, to spend more time with
your intended. He visited her at home, escorted her to the park and
the opera and the occasional ball.

They had, with great ceremony and much consultation,
chosen a ring together.

He had not attempted to kiss her again.

His mother was apparently too frail to travel, so an
uncle had formally welcomed her to the family. The engagement
dinner had been a small and sober affair. And afterwards came many
parties.

It was all rather disappointing. Her father should
have been so pleased with her—she was going to be a marchioness,
after all—but he was too busy turning Gaslight inside out and
upside down looking for his half-Celestial bastard son.

Rosamond rebuked herself for having lacked the
foresight to be born out of wedlock.

It was hard not to resent him . . . or whatever it
was. Her half brother had told her once that he didn’t like being
called
him
. That he didn’t feel it was who he was.

Rosamond would have given anything to be a boy.

Well, not to
be
a boy precisely. She very
much liked her hair and her trim ankles and her tiny waist, and she
had seen a sketch of the Elgin Marbles once, so she was aware that
there were some respects in which boys were utterly ridiculous. She
had no desire to contend with one of
those
drooping around
inside her undergarments.

But if she had been a boy, she would have been sent
to university instead of finishing school, and then on a Grand
Tour, and she would have been able to run away whenever she fucking
well wanted to.

And
her father would have cared. Would
apparently have torn the city apart for her.

She could run anyway, of course. But she had no
skills and no money, and she suspected life for an unprotected
gentlewoman might not be entirely full of the sort of adventures
she wanted to have.

She sat curled in the window seat in the pink
drawing room, watching the glinting reflection of her engagement
ring in the glass. She didn’t like it. It was very proper, of
course, very tasteful and expensive: a solitaire diamond for
steadfastness and purity and other similar qualities she did not,
in fact, possess or wish to possess. It was probably shockingly
vulgar, but she had so wanted a garnet. A blood-red, shining
garnet, as big as her fist.

She sighed.

Lady Wolfram’s unfocused gaze hovered over her
briefly like a tsetse fly. “Ah,” she said, with her blank and
bitter smile, “young love.”

And Rosamond had to try very, very hard not to hate
her mother.

That evening she went to a card party, and even Lady
Mildred’s dress—seafoam-green with five tiers of pink and yellow
flounces—was insufficient to divert her.

Anstruther Jones was there as well. Not that she
paid him any heed.

She saw him—or rather she ignored him—fairly often
these days. He couldn’t gain admittance to the very best houses, of
course, but his money and Lord Mercury’s patronage meant he was
welcome at the sort of places that gave desultory card parties on a
Wednesday evening.

She had overheard some of the other debutantes
giggling about him. They agreed with her estimation that he wasn’t
handsome, which—surely—should have been the end of the matter. But
it wasn’t. It turned out there was much to be said on the subject
of Anstruther Jones. At least as concerned his mouth. Eyes. Breadth
of shoulders. Hardness of chest. Ripple of thigh as experienced
when dancing.

“I heard,” Lady Mildred whispered, “there’s a word
they use in the undercity, for when somebody isn’t comely but they
make you . . . you know . . . fluttery on the
inside
.”

Rosamond rolled her eyes so hard it was a wonder
they didn’t spin in their sockets.

“What’s the word?” asked one of the other girls.

Lady Mildred put a hand to her mouth, and murmured
coyly from behind it, “
Likerous
.”

Rosamond had to concede: whatever it meant, it
sounded filthy.

And it suited Jones right down to the ground.

“But,” put in Lady Cynthia, “I thought that was a
lozenge.”

“You stupid goose, that’s licor—”

At that moment they caught sight of Rosamond, and
fell immediately silent, five faces set into blank stares.

“Personally,” she said, “I prefer
fuckable
.”

And glided away, with a toss of her ringlets.

Rosamond could have ruled those girls, just like at
school, but she was heartsick and weary and couldn’t be
bothered.

Let Mildred have her empire of slaves.

Eventually, Rosamond excused herself from loo and
retired to a corner under the pretence of giving a wet damn about
the latest edition of
The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine
.
It was a strategic choice and meant she need not worry about
looking bookish, but truthfully she found little pleasure in
fiction anyway. What was the point of reading about other people’s
lives? Especially if they were better people.

Especially if they had better lives.

She turned the pages at regular intervals and
watched the room from beneath her lashes.

Dull dull dull dull
dull
.

Even the marquess’s two southern friends did little
to enliven the tedium. They were loud and polished and laughing,
but they spoke mainly to each other, and then in the cant that had
apparently lately become all the rage in London—and so most of what
they said was impenetrable anyway.

And Rosamond suspected—though she was no expert
herself—nonsensical.

Eventually card games were abandoned and the
conversation became general.

“I say, what what, my boff,” observed one of the
marquess’s friends, “I hear chant that the Clockwork Circus is in
town. Shall we bing it thence?”

The marquess sighed. “Must we? I fear it will be but
tawdry amusement.”

In case he happened to look at her, Rosamond
composed her expression into one of corresponding contempt.

Lady Mildred, however, seemed to have no conception
of how foolish she would look gainsaying the taste of a marquess.
“Oh no”—she clapped her hands with the sort of charming, girlish
excitement all of Rosamond’s dedicated practice had failed to
adequately replicate—“it is quite delightful, and perfectly
respectable. My father used to take me when I was young. We would
eat spun sugar and candied apples, and see all the marvellous
things.”

Rosamond scowled into “Railway Magic.”
Not a
spike wrenched from its good hold, not a tie un-tied, not a timber
splintered.
Bah. Why should Lady Mildred, who had no sense and
no chin—well, barely any chin—get to have spun sugar, candied
apples, and marvels? She tried to imagine Lord Wolfram taking her
to the circus, buying her trifles, holding her hand, laughing with
her over some childish nonsense. But she couldn’t. It was nothing
but a puppet show, a caricature, impossible.

“Lady Rosamond?”

It was Anstruther Jones’s voice that brought her
abruptly back to the party. She just about managed to suppress a
physical start, and then she was irritated. She told herself she
was irritated at him, but, truthfully, she was irritated at herself
for that momentary loss of control.

A weakness anyone could have seen.

And perhaps Jones already had. His eyes were intent
upon her. She would almost have preferred it if she had seen
contempt, or triumph, or
something
. But there was only
warmth, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking and how she
felt.

“I beg your pardon?” she said icily, as though she
hadn’t been distracted, and he was simply beneath her notice.

“I said, ‘Will you be joining us?’”

Joining them? They were going to the circus?

Something perilously close to excitement unfurled
within her ruthlessly guarded heart. It would be . . . a change. A
break. An escape. Something new to see and do.

And fuck Lord Wolfram. She could enjoy candied
whatever-it-was and all the other things perfectly well on her own.
She didn’t need him.

When she was marchioness, she wouldn’t need
anyone.

Lady Mildred tittered. “Our darling Rosie is far too
refined for such girlish pleasures.”

Oh, that odious bitch. Rosamond’s eyes narrowed
wrathfully, but she was double, triple, maybe even quadruple
trapped. The marquess had already made his opinion of the circus
very clear. If she expressed enthusiasm now, she would not only
imply she lacked refinement, but her future husband would most
likely think less of her. It was, after all, her role to agree with
him—at least in public. “I have no wish to go anywhere without the
marquess.”

“I could escort you.” Anstruther Jones. His face the
picture of innocence, the hint of laughter in the curve of his lips
anything but.

There was an excitingly tense silence.

“That is unnecessary, sir,” returned the marquess,
in the same tone of voice Rosamond imagined the hero of a novel
might say
name your friends
, “as I will be escorting my
betrothed.”

Rosamond ducked her head modestly.

But, privately, she was glowing. Take that,
Mildred.

She was going to the circus after all. And the
marquess, who usually treated her with a detached courtesy, was
oddly attentive for the rest of the evening, barely straying from
her side for a moment.

She knew enough of the world to recognise it for
what it was: pure possessiveness. But she did not think one would
wish to possess something one did not value, and so she fully
intended to make the most of it.

She watched Jones slyly as the marquess draped her
stole over her shoulders. She had enjoyed kissing him very much
indeed—and thought about it often, most particularly when she was
alone and sleepless, her hands idly touching the secret places of
her body—but kissing was not freedom, or a place in society.

Kissing was not a future.

It was just . . . kissing.

She had thought his attentions—his obvious interest
in her—would prove a disadvantage. But she was starting to think
perhaps the opposite was true.

Perhaps he would be useful to her, after all.

Rosamond was not enjoying the Clockwork Circus.

She had been daydreaming about gleaming sunlight and
rainbow tents, gasping crowds and magical sights.

But it was not like that at all.

Even the small dark pleasure she could have derived
from doing something of which she knew her father would not have
approved was swallowed up by the smog and drizzle, and the grimy
reality of a sodden field and a scattering of sideshow tents, as
garish as toadstools through the greyish haze. The big top itself
squatted at the centre, its red and white flags crackling and
snapping in the wind, and the air was sticky-sweet with roasting
chestnuts and mulling wine, toffee and cinnamon and sugar. It
should have contributed to a festival atmosphere, but it only
churned her stomach.

Despite the weather, there was a sizeable
crowd—mainly, at this time of day, the middle class, the idle, and
the itinerant. Rosamond, prey to a strange restlessness that was
too ambiguous to be hope, had dressed with special care that
morning in a gown of dark-green moiré silk with Pagoda sleeves and
a green-and-gold fringe. And now she was jostled, dishevelled, and
muddy, and nobody seemed to care how fashionable and pretty she
was. It was noisy too, the incessant babble around her blending
into the harsh cries of the touts and the grinders, and beginning
to give her a headache.

The rest of her party, however, seemed to be
experiencing no such adversity. Everyone seemed so terribly gay,
and that just made her feel awkward and uncomfortable and strange
on top of everything else. As if she was missing whatever internal
part was required for happiness.

Perhaps Lord Wolfram was not the sticking point of
her imaginings.

Perhaps
she
was.

She had gazed, occasionally, at the image of herself
reflected by the family portrait that hung by the stairs: a grave
little girl, pristine in white lace, her pastel eyes revealing
absolutely nothing.

She peeped up at her future husband. He merely
looked bored.

How eerie it was, to be amid so many people, and to
be so utterly alone.

She found herself looking for Anstruther Jones, but
he had gone off somewhere with Lady Mildred. They were probably
laughing together, and he would be looking at her with all that
smouldering intensity and unexpected tenderness.

They should wed. Neither of them could likely hope
for better and with her family (moderate) and his wealth
(excessive), everyone would say it was a fine match.