Chapter Twenty-One Theo
Theo and Nina entered the dining room of Rickers hand in hand, Tamir ahead of them, and Theo’s chest brimming with dread.
On his last visit here, he’d been thirteen.
His father had taken him to the smoking room, said “This is your chance to prove you’re a man of some worth,” then tendered him round a circle of aristocrats, mistresses hanging off their elbows.
Theo had spoken well, he thought, laughing diplomatically when it seemed right.
He’d smoked his first cigar, encased vomit in his cheek, and swallowed on his next inhale.
His father had been proud of that, Theo thought—that his son hadn’t gagged in front of his fellows.
There had been a man named Gumble: a fire Charmer, semiretired from his military career.
He was pigeon-chested, generically handsome in the way of most heroes.
He wore pins awarded to him by the Head of House and spoke about them at length.
In the late hours, he drew young Theo aside, sloshed neat scotch onto his own chest, and said, “See any you like?” He was gesturing to the women strewn about the room—all of them Crafters—feigning interest against bookshelves, staring blankly out windows, or else nursing Artisan men in their deteriorating states.
Theo knew this game. Gentlemen did not blush or concede. He had looked Gumble in the eye, fashioned a smirk, and said “That one.”
In truth, he hadn’t an eye for any of them.
He was still just thirteen, and these women were all old.
The woman he’d nodded to at random was rake-thin and wore too many necklaces for comfort.
There was so much rouge on her cheeks, you could hardly see the shadows beneath.
She was only pretty if you could see past the desperation.
“Then I’ll be having that one,” Gumble had said, finishing the remnants in his glass.
“You’ve got to be careful with the Crafter girls, son.
Mostly they’re diseased. You have to check them over very thoroughly first.” His eyes took on a manic glint then, like some bolt in his mind had suddenly snatched free.
“You can check her for me.” He declared it as though a favor had been traded, passed generously from his hand and into Theo’s.
That was how Theo had found himself inside a coat closet with a much older Crafter woman, and she’d looked, momentarily, as though she might cry.
And Theo had thought, Does a gentleman bring a woman, any woman, to tears?
He hadn’t checked her for disease, whatever that meant. He hadn’t done a single thing other than look into the dank diminutive light of the closet and wish to be swallowed by it.
After a moment of stillness, of silence, he’d simply exited the closet and left her there, winking to Gumble, who’d watched on with a moronic smile. He’d dedicated himself to a corner for the remainder of the evening.
Later, after he’d been bid good night and sent back upstairs to the suite owned by the Shop family, he’d passed that same Crafter woman again, this time in an upstairs parlor, the doors wide open.
And with her was not just Gumble, but two of his compatriots, all in states of hasty undress, bull-eyed and gleaming.
And the Crafter woman looked not at Theo, but through him, as though neither of them were truly there at all.
It only occurred to Theo now, that those women might have had children at home. Maybe partners, as well. Perhaps leasing the warmth of their flesh was better than the mines, better than the mills and factories.
Theo shuddered. He’d spent enough time in the mines now to know that he never wanted to be belowground again, that he’d do a good number of ungentlemanly things to avoid it.
Tamir was greeted by a man in a red suit jacket and white gloves, who resembled a ringmaster but was more likely a ma?tre d’.
“Meester Peters!” Tamir exclaimed, and reached out to clasp the man’s small hand in both of his.
“Tamir,” Peters said tightly and in a way that inferred reluctance. His eyes swept quickly to Theo and Nina. “These are your guests?”
“And what fine guests they will be,” Tamir offered, bowing low enough that he might press his lips to Peters’ knuckles. Peters retracted his hand abruptly.
The man cleared his throat. “They are not to eat from the serving trays,” he said. “Or enter any of the sitting rooms—or the kitchens, or the stables—”
“But you misunderstand!” Tamir interjected, waving his hands in a frenzy. “These are guests from Belavere City!”
Peters blanched. “You mean, they aren’t…?”
“They are not under my employ,” Tamir laughed. “No, no, Meester Peters. You have put your foot in your arse, you see?”
“In his mouth, Tamir,” Nina corrected.
“Yes, right in his mouth. These are Lord and Lady Pontino, and they are my very best acquaintances come to visit me! Did I not tell you I have many good friends in Belavere City?”
Peters looked as though he’d heard of Tamir’s “many good friends,” and hadn’t believed a single tale. He turned to Nina and Theo repentantly. “Please, forgive me, my lord. Tamir… well, he often visits with an array of guests.”
“Yes,” Tamir nodded. “But these ones will not be found coupling in your stables. Now, we should be shown through, yes?”
Peters, now the color of puce, nodded and led them through the foyer and then left into a grand crescent dining room, complete with three tiers of seating, brass banisters, all the occupants looking down from their round tables at the band in the bottom most tier, the dancers pulsating around their stage.
This party was not one to be found in Belavere City, where the woman wore dresses with hoops and necklines to the throat, where the most scandalizing thing to occur would be a spilled drink or a muttered curse.
This was Rickers.
There was more flesh here than Theo had ever seen.
Granted, he’d never been permitted beyond the smoking room as a boy.
He tried to imagine his father in a room like this, with men wrapping their hands around women’s backsides, feeling for the edge of their hems. The laughter was louder, somehow savage. It stunk of abandon. Of sex.
The lights were low enough to disguise debauchery, tinged red to incite sin. The band was made of trumpets, fiddles, a piano, a man in reflective blue tails belting notes into a microphone, and the Artisans fumbled about in their delirium, drunk on the rebellion of it.
This was why Morland still stood, Theo thought, why the Crafters in the street were not yet starving. They offered the Artisans something important. Freedom. Temptation. Discretion.
“Welcome!” Tamir said, taking Nina’s hand and leading her to the edge of the first balcony. The men at a nearby table put down their drinks in succession, followed her with widening eyes, wet their lips.
And Theo abruptly blocked their view, staring daggers at them.
“Have you ever seen anything quite like it?” Tamir asked Nina, patting her hand, drinking in her expressions.
She was slack-mouthed. Her eyes stuck to two Artisan men dancing, connected stomach to stomach.
“No,” she said, incredulity making her quiet.
It was her habit to become silent and thoughtful when she was overwhelmed.
There was not so much of her that had changed, Theo knew, even if she insisted she was different.
Her eyes would oscillate of their own accord, reams of thought shifting over them and never settling.
Theo still thought he could read some of them.
He took her unoccupied hand. “Don’t be concerned,” he told her. “They might be drunk, but they’re still Artisans.”
Her torrent of thoughts seemed to halt abruptly, and her gaze flashed to him. “They aren’t Artisans,” she said, snatching her fingers free of his. “They’re animals.”
She lifted her chin, and the light turned her chest alabaster, then red, then gold. Theo reminded himself to look away. He placed his hands behind his back. “Still, they won’t cross any lines with a fellow.”
“I’m not their fellow,” Nina said bluntly in a voice Theo didn’t recognize. “And I don’t want your assistance.” Somewhere in his chest, where Nina had left his heart hacked and bleeding, another cut was etched.
He swallowed. For years she had clung to him, had welcomed him leading her, shielding her. He’d done so willingly, been proud to do it. He’d helped her, hadn’t he? Made school easier for her?
Now, he stepped back several inches, swallowing his shredded ego. “Of course,” he said, inclining his head.
Cold. She was always so outwardly cold toward him now.
And he’d earned it.
If only she could see inside him where guilt churned, slowly ruining him, enough that it had eroded the calcification of his former loyalties, his beliefs. Enough that none of it—honor, duty, tradition—seemed to matter now.
There was hurt in her hazel eyes when she looked at him, fissures of hatred. Blame. He deserved that, too. And if she bid him away again, he would go.
Though he thought it might break him to do it.
He’d tried to once, hadn’t he? He’d admitted defeat and left Kenton Hill. He’d only lasted a day before the draw of her thinned the anger, made it impossible to continue on.
It had taken him seven years to find her again. Seven tortuous, wretched years. He’d be damned if he lost her a second time of his own accord.
So he followed Nina and Tamir around the tables, around the standing parties, and to a group of men whose gaze traveled down the length of her before ever meeting her eye, and he didn’t say a thing.
He’d stay for as long as she’d let him. He’d hope that one day those fissures would close, and he would show her that she wasn’t made for destruction.
She didn’t want this, not really.
And she hadn’t bid him away yet.