Chapter 14 Margot
14
Margot
The first day of summer
Almost exactly three weeks after the arrival of Rastanaya’s letter, and Margot’s almost full confession in the tower of Greenwillow Manor (she couldn’t bring herself to tell Yael about the Claunecks’ claim on Bloomfield—her parents’ last secret, the heaviest burden she bears, and one she doesn’t know how to share with anyone, especially with the deadline a mere season away now), she finds herself standing in front of the only mirror in her cottage, fidgeting with the low, low neckline of an absolutely stunning, entirely impractical dress. It’s an elegant confection with a shimmery blue-and-purple bell skirt that looks like it’s made from starlight-kissed hyacinths, along with a gold-and-purple-corseted bodice that accentuates her curves and plunges deeply, leaving a swath of creamy skin exposed.
Rastanaya, who has been in town for nearly a week to prepare and set up with her entourage, presented both Margot and Yael with gold-wrapped boxes after dinner at the tavern last night. She declared that the manor and Margot’s flowering arrangements had “exceeded her wildest whims and most fanciful dreams.” Yael had tried desperately to peer inside her box, but Rastanaya chided them, telling them both to open their gift only when they were alone so that it was a surprise.
Yael is certainly going to be surprised. Whether that’s a good thing or not, Margot’s not sure. But really, when it comes to Yael Clauneck, there’s much she’s unsure of, so this feeling is nothing new.
Pushing thoughts of Yael away for the moment, Margot turns, examining herself from all angles. Her purple hair is swept up into a pair of elaborate five-strand braids and pinned into place with her mother’s silver combs—another small memento Margot found in her mother’s things after she’d slipped into the coma, and that Margot couldn’t bring herself to sell. Her tattoos are fully on display, and Margot feels powerful, lovely, and entirely not herself. Perhaps she should wear her garden boots under the dress just so she doesn’t get swept into the fantasy of this day? After all, when the guests go home tomorrow and the flowers are cleared from the manor, Margot will be right back to working in the greenhouses with Yael.
She’s not even sure about that, though. How will Yael feel seeing all these people from their old life? How will Margot feel? After all, she hasn’t seen or been seen in high society for years. What will they think of her now? Her stomach flips at the thought, and she takes a sip of tea—fortified with brandy—leaving a ring of purple lip stain on the edge of the cup.
She’s going to be fine. This will be fine. Seeing people from her old life is fine, and if they ask questions about Margot’s parents, well…
She isn’t quite sure what she’ll say, but she’ll think of something that doesn’t involve the truth or the contents of the letter that’s now tucked into a box under her mattress. For tonight, at least, she can leave it here. Doesn’t she deserve one fantastical day free from it?
A small tinkling sound startles Margot out of her thoughts. She looks around for the source, expecting to find someone walking through the cottage door, but no. It’s just the enchanted compact Sage gave her, resting on the table. It trills again and Margot flicks it open. A message in Sage’s handwriting scrawls itself across the mirror glass in silver ink.
Don’t even think about wearing your garden boots today. Or anything with a strawberry on it.
And then a second later: I’ll be there before the show starts. My horse threw a shoe, and I’m running late.
Margot still can’t believe Sage is coming to the fashion show. To any fashion show, really. It’s entirely not her scene, but when she’d messaged Margot a few days ago, fresh off her latest adventure in the Swamplands and suggesting that she come to Bloomfield for a quick visit before the next two-month expedition she had lined up, Margot told her everything. Well, almost everything. She’d told her about Yael Clauneck (Sage swore prolifically when she heard the Clauneck name) and how they’d found their way to Bloomfield. About working in the greenhouses together for the last few months, and how the fashion show was being held at the manor now that Yael had introduced her to Rastanaya. Margot very deliberately did not mention the way that Yael made her laugh. Or the extremely complicated mess of feelings they inspired within her.
Sage promised to be at Rastanaya’s show, declaring herself more than able to sit through a few hours of high-society nonsense in order to meet this Clauneck…
They’re not so bad, Margot had insisted. Really. You might even like them.
We’ll see. Sage had signed off then, since a fight was breaking out behind her in the tavern.
Margot just hopes Sage doesn’t want to fight Yael for some reason. (There are so many reasons Sage might want to fight Yael. Perhaps it’d be best never to leave the two of them alone.)
Margot finds a scrap of paper on which to scribble her reply to Sage: Don’t be late! And don’t worry, I’m not wearing anything you’ve seen before, I promise.
As she’s putting the compact into her dress pocket, a knock sounds on the door. “Margot?” Yael’s voice drifts through, eager and tentative all at once.
Margot smiles to herself. Casting a final, satisfied look in the mirror, she flings the door open.
Yael stands out in the garden, wearing their own gift from Rastanaya: a formfitting merlot-red suit embroidered with a pattern of black vines and nearly black plum roses. A single low-placed button holds the jacket closed, revealing the lack of any shirt beneath, just a black swath of fabric across their chest. The suit clings to Yael’s narrow hips and accentuates their shoulders in the most delicious way. Their dark hair hangs loose, waving about their face, grown out past their cheekbones after these months in Bloomfield. They hold a bottle of wine and lift it as they start to speak, but their mouth only hinges open as their eyes roam over Margot, something boiling in their gaze.
Unable to stop herself, Margot smirks.
Yael makes a small, helpless noise. “What are you wearing?” they ask, their voice jagged, as if in physical pain.
“Do you like it?” Margot spins, letting her skirt billow into a bell around her waist.
“You are…” Yael swallows hard. “It’s a very, very good dress.”
Margot fights every part of herself that suddenly wants nothing more than to pull Yael Clauneck into her cottage and kiss them.
Where are such thoughts coming from? It has to be the dress. The excitement of the day. Her nerves. Well, that’s not all. It’s also the way Yael’s changed in the last few months, the way Margot feels seen by them. They way they’re looking up at Margot right now.
She brushes these thoughts away along with a loose strand of hair. There’ll be time to puzzle out her feelings later.
“Let’s go,” Margot says, offering Yael her arm. “The show starts soon, and I want to see the guests as they arrive at the manor.”
Though Rastanaya described the crowd she’d invited as “intimate,” there still wouldn’t have been room for them all to stay at the tavern. And anyway, the designer wanted her audience’s arrival in Bloomfield, passing through its open stone gates and riding into the quiet woods, to be part of the magic of the show. They’d stayed at an inn at a crossroads up the Queens’ Road instead. It’s probably better that Margot’s former peers are seeing her for the first time after all these years, resplendent in a ballgown rather than in her typical work clothes following a day in the greenhouses.
At least Yael likes the dress, and Margot inside it, she thinks with a private smile.
Margot and Yael walk in companionable silence, arms linked as their shoes crunch over the now weed-free gravel path between the cottage and the house.
“Wow,” Margot breathes as the house comes into view.
“We did good work,” Yael says.
They really have, and Greenwillow Manor is nearly unrecognizable. Well, that’s not exactly true. Margot recognizes it, because it looks like it did when her parents had a full staff to help them run it, and not like the run-down shell it’s been for the last few years. Thanks to these weeks of Margot’s and Yael’s efforts, Rastanaya’s limitless budget, and the labor of the designer’s assistants over the past few days, Margot knows that behind the front doors, the public rooms of the manor have been scrubbed and filled with borrowed furniture. Cut flowers from Margot’s greenhouses also decorate the first floor, spilling over in extravagant arrangements that she and Yael have worked on for the last week. There will be waiters moving through the crowds with trays of champagne, as well as a reception afterward in the house.
Rastanaya’s preview show is called Wild Places at Gloaming, and, fittingly, it starts at sunset. It’s evening now, and the sun is already painting the horizon pink and orange. Flickering torches line the manor’s driveway. People in outfits as lavish as Margot’s and Yael’s gather in clumps outside the manor, leaving their carriages, horses, and other exotic mounts parked in front of the house. Two women in glittering silver and blue dresses, respectively, climb out of separate carriages and meet by the front door, kissing each other’s cheeks and exclaiming loudly. More guests join them as they arrive, a few whom Margot recognizes as her parents’ former friends, and her stomach lurches. Can she really do this? It’s too late to be asking that question, but the sight of all these people sends fear snaking through her.
“Can we go in through the garden door?” Margot grips Yael’s hand. Suddenly, her corset is too tight. Her mouth is too dry. All she wants is to flee back to the gardener’s cottage.
They squeeze her hand back. “Of course.”
Avoiding the crowds, Margot and Yael dart through a side corridor of the manor to leave through a servants’ entrance rather than the main stairway. They slip through a break in the hedges, and Margot relaxes as the garden comes into view.
She really has outdone herself this time.
As per Rastanaya’s instructions, the fashion show will take place along the marble path under the arched trellis that stretches from the terrace at the back of the house to the fountain at the southern end of the garden. Rastanaya asked Margot not to clean up any of the overgrown garden beds, but Margot couldn’t help herself. She pruned a few of the wild roses, though they still sprawl, and she cleared the soil and debris out of the garden fountain and got it running again. She also wove small, glittering lights through the tree canopy—they’re powered by a simple spell that Clementine taught her to keep candles burning all evening—and she used her own magic to convince the neglected jasmine that grows along the garden trellises to flower. Its scent wafts across the garden, filling the night with perfume.
“This looks astonishing,” Yael says. “You really are a genius, Margot Greenwillow.”
She laughs and takes a flute of champagne from a passing waiter. “I couldn’t have done any of this if you hadn’t been helping in the greenhouses.”
“I think we might be an amazing team.”
“I think you might be right.”
Yael clinks their own glass of champagne against Margot’s, and they walk toward the runway.
Rastanaya’s team has set chairs along both sides of the garden path, and people are already taking their seats. The terrace at the back of the house is also full of fashionable people who look vaguely familiar to Margot, though she doesn’t recognize anyone. Also on the terrace is a small band of fiddlers, lutists, and horn players—something more suited to Clementine’s Tavern than a fashion show for Ashaway’s elite—and they play a rowdy tune. Rastanaya stands at the top of the terrace steps, wearing a stunning green dress and a tall, magical vining headpiece that Margot created for her, the vines braiding and shifting and rebraiding themselves atop her curls. She greets her guests as they appear outside, like a queen holding court. For a moment, Margot sees a vision of her mother, standing in much the same way on the terrace and presiding over a party full of her friends. Iris Greenwillow would love to know that all of these guests who merited an exclusive invitation from Rastanaya were here, exclaiming over her gardens.
Except they’re not her gardens any longer, are they?
“Where should we sit?” Margot wrenches her gaze away from the terrace as she and Yael pause at the end of the runway, standing near enough to the tinkling fountain that a few drops of water splash onto them.
“Rastanaya told me we have seats in the front row.” Yael points to a set of open chairs draped in garlands of ivy so that they appear to be growing out of the ground beneath them.
“Up front?” Margot squeaks out. “Where everyone can see us?” She’d imagined they’d be tucked away, like the rest of the designer’s assistants, somewhere they could watch the show without being watched.
“It would be a waste if I was the only one to see you in that dress.”
Before Margot can reply, a loud, high-pitched voice calls out from the terrace. “Yael? Yael, is that you?”
“Oh no,” Yael mutters, dropping Margot’s hand as they look up. They take a long swig of champagne.
A tall, elegant young woman hurries toward them. Black ringlets hang over her pale shoulders, above the severely cut neckline of a red dress woven with dark floral motifs. A silver corset accentuates her narrow waist, and an enormous ruby necklace sits like a duck’s egg in a nest at the base of her throat. Everything about her screams money and power.
“Who’s that?” Margot asks, taking a fortifying sip of her own champagne.
“My cousin Araphi Clauneck. You won’t have seen her since she was a child, and too young to run with us at parties. She’s—”
Before Yael can reveal what Araphi is, she’s standing in front of them, beaming. With another squeal of delight, she pulls Yael into a hug.
“Yael! You evil thing!” she gushes. “Where’ve you been hiding? I’ve heard the most surprising rumors about you!”
Yael shrugs, making a noncommittal noise. “Well, you know me, Phi; I’m sure every one of them is true.”
She barrels on, tugging one of Yael’s lapels. “Have you missed us terribly? Rastanaya told me she saw you at that sweet little fair in Olde Post. We must have just missed each other, can you believe it? Have you been bored out here in the country, all cooped up recovering?”
Something about the coy smile dancing across her painted lips plants a seed of doubt in Margot’s mind. Does Araphi know more about Yael’s exit from society than she’s letting on?
But before Margot can wonder further, Yael replies with a coy smirk of their own. “I take it you haven’t been bored without me, what with all the wedding preparations, hmm? I hear congratulations are in order.”
Araphi’s dark, sparkling eyes seem to dim a bit, her lips pressing flat. But the change in her expression passes quickly as she turns to smile brightly at Margot, and she presses a hand to her corset, above her heart. “And who’s this vision?” Araphi exclaims. “What a treat you are in this dress! Clearly another Rastanaya creation, and you wear it beautifully, but I’m sorry I don’t know your name.”
“I’m Margot Greenwillow,” Margot says quickly, as Yael is too busy swallowing champagne to introduce her. “I…well…I set up the gardens for Rastanaya’s show.”
Margot can feel Yael giving her an exasperated look, implying that she’s so much more, but what else is she supposed to say? That they’re standing in the very spot where Granny Fern taught her the importance of soaking oak leaves overnight when making a poultice to cure a lack of insight? Or that she actually does remember Araphi from a party long ago, when Margot and Yael were kids, and Araphi seemed so much younger than they were? And now she’s grown and seemingly thriving among the Claunecks.
“Greenwillow?” Araphi says, her forehead wrinkling. “As in the Greenwillow Manor Greenwillows? I thought…I had heard—”
Thankfully, Araphi is interrupted (and Margot is saved) by the arrival of Sage bounding down the terrace steps. Of course she’s not wearing anything by Rastanaya, and her simple leather pants, her half-laced tunic, and the shortsword belted at her hip cause quite a stir. Margot can hear the fine people of Ashaway whispering about her friend, even over the strange band’s music.
“Am I glad to see you,” Margot whispers as Sage lopes over and opens her arms for a hug.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Sage says, squeezing her for a moment and then releasing her. She takes two flutes of champagne from the nearest waiter and polishes them both off in a few seconds.
Yael makes an appreciative noise at Sage’s drinking prowess, and Sage glares in their direction, narrowing her eyes. “You must be Yael.”
Yael bows. “And you’re Sage.”
At the same time, they say, “I’ve heard so much about you,” which makes both of them turn toward Margot.
Her cheeks heat. Really, must they have met tonight? What was she thinking, inviting Sage to Rastanaya’s show, thrusting Sage and Yael together in full view of the public?
“And I’m Araphi,” Yael’s cousin says, stepping forward. She raises one eyebrow at Sage, appraising her, then smiles wickedly. “I like your sword.” There’s a gleam in her eye that makes Margot feel a sliver of pity for her friend. She never has been able to resist beautiful women in any context, and—engaged or not—Araphi looks like she’d like to have Sage for breakfast.
Of course, she should’ve expected that Sage was more than up for the challenge, and her friend steps forward to take the hand Araphi offers. “It’s a very sharp sword,” Sage says, in a tone that brooks no confusion about where the two of them might have ended up after the fashion show, were both of them free.
Araphi’s gaze darkens, but before she can say anything else, the music stops. Rastanaya claps her hands and announces that they should take their seats, as the show is starting.
Margot loses track of Sage as she and Yael find their chairs and the crowd settles. Then, right as the sun sets and the first stars come out against the navy-and-purple sky, an exquisite-looking person with pansies sewn throughout their reddish-brown braids walks in one of Rastanaya’s magnificent summer dresses down Margot’s former terrace stairs.
The show is divine. Models in dresses, suits, and cloaks stroll beneath the oak tunnel, their outfits embellished with heavy floral textiles that match the gardens, or woven twigs and leaves that make the wearer seem like a forest creature walking the runway, or other variations on the theme of wild places at gloaming. They are dazzling and mysterious. Margot’s head spins from the three (five? six?) glasses of champagne she’s had, and much to her surprise, at the close of the show, Rastanaya pauses at the end of the runway to hold out a hand in Margot’s direction.
“None of this,” Rastanaya says, “would be possible without the sublime Margot Greenwillow, who not only inspired me with her flowers and plants when we first met in Olde Post but also generously lent us use of her family’s estate and made the garden so very magical. Please, Margot, take a bow.”
Margot freezes. It’s not her family’s estate, and claiming it seems like tempting fate. Should she correct Rastanaya? Or sprint away to hide behind the closest tree?
Yael gives her a little shove, and Margot stands. Sage lets out a loud, earsplitting whistle as Margot bows and the crowd explodes with applause. Rastanaya blows her a kiss, and then, as she turns to walk away, it’s all over.
The next half hour is a blur of people coming up to Margot, introducing themselves (some of them pretending it’s for the first time), telling her she “simply must come visit them the next time she’s in Ashaway,” and asking for her to decorate their next party. Sage says goodbye—she’s riding through the night to meet up with another adventurer staying in Olde Post—though not without casting Araphi one last, sizzling look.
“Perhaps you’re right about this particular Clauneck,” Sage says to Margot before she goes. “They are rather glamorous, and I love seeing you happy.”
“I’m not that happy.”
“You’re glowing, friend. Especially when Yael’s around.”
Margot glances toward Yael, who stands a few feet away talking with Araphi and Rastanaya. Her cheeks heat as Yael’s eyes find hers for a moment.
“Maybe I’m a little happy,” she concedes.
“Just be careful,” Sage says.
“I will, I promise.”
But the truth is, as Margot’s eyes linger on Yael, she’s feeling anything but careful.
She snags their hand a few minutes later as they walk toward a waiter with a tray of drinks. “Save me,” Margot mouths, nodding toward the pair of women who’ve held her hostage with their compliments on the garden and questions about her parents—all of which she’s deflected with a quick, “They’re traveling, of course, it’s so lovely this time of year!”
Yael grins. “Gladly.”
With apologies, they slip away from the oak-lined garden path. They skirt the party on the terrace hand in hand, then stumble into the shadows at the back of the garden now that night has truly fallen. Yael laughs as they leap over a miniature rhododendron shrub together, and the sound makes Margot’s heart race.
She wants to kiss Yael so badly she can barely think.
Yael Clauneck, whom she’s wanted to kiss since she was old enough to know what it meant to want to kiss someone. Yael Clauneck, whom she should really hate, but whom she likes entirely too much.
Yael Clauneck, who looked at her with wonder long before this triumph of a show.
Margot takes a ragged breath, pausing.
“Daisy,” Yael says, stopping beside a towering hedge. “What is it?”
Yael Clauneck, who’s friend enough to call her Daisy but also someone she’s ready to break all her rules for.
Margot pulls them onto a stone garden bench, hidden away from prying eyes. She leans toward them, strands of her hair that have come loose brushing their cheek. And then, suddenly, they’re not just holding hands. They’re crashing together. Yael’s hands find Margot’s waist, and heat floods her belly. She cups their jaw, leaning in. Their lips are so very close, and Margot asks, her voice barely a whisper, “Can I please, please kiss you?”
“Gods, yes,” Yael rasps out.
Margot’s lips find Yael’s, and as the noise from the party grows louder beyond their hiding place, she kisses Yael until they’re both breathless.