Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Why are you so sullen, Ivy?”
Greer asks me over breakfast the next day.
“I’m not sullen.”
Greer shrugs, unconcerned. “You’ve had a sour look on your face since yesterday. Did something happen? Is Lydia poorly again?”
“No, no, nothing like that.”
I take a bite of currant scone and blink a few times. Focus up, Ivy. No time for self-pity now. “It’s kind of you to ask, though.”
“I love you, Ivy. I’m sorry if I ever made you doubt it.”
Doubt it? All she did was make me doubt it. From the very first moment she left me alone in the garden, I’ve doubted it. I’ve spent half my life chasing her approval. It’s the entire reason we made a good pair of best friends.
But then she pours me a cup of tea, two sugars, the smallest splash of milk, just how I’ve always taken it, and something in me softens.
“I love you too, Greer.”
A footman strolls into the cottage, straight-backed in his midnight-blue livery. He’s carrying a scroll of paper on a silver tray. Emmy is the one brave enough to take it. She unrolls it and reads, “‘Lady Ivy Benton, Lady Greer Trummer, Lady Emmy Ito, Miss Faith Fairchild, Lady Marion Thorne, and Lady Olive Lisonbee are cordially invited to an audience with Her Majesty, Queen Moryen. Immediately.’”
Our lady’s maids flood into the cottage with well-practiced choreography. Within minutes, hats are pinned and dresses are buttoned and we are off across the damp lawn to Kensington Palace.
We follow one of the queen’s unsettling footmen up the main staircase, just like we did on the Pact Parade. I can’t believe I missed it before, how strange and mottled the veins of their hands are, the hollowness around their eyes. A human body wasn’t built to last forever. I wonder how old this one is, who he was before this, if he even remembers.
A steady stream of rain falls on the glass roof, and the tree in the middle of the atrium sways slightly.
“Any guesses?”
Emmy whispers to me.
“Not a one,”
I reply honestly.
We veer left at the top of the stairs into an expansive ballroom. My heels slip against the carpet as I stop short. All six of us take identical gasps.
The ballroom has been transformed with rosebushes, dark ivy crawling up to the ceiling, ferns shoved into every corner.
There’s an orchestra playing a strange, off-kilter tune and tables covered in mismatched iridescent china.
There’s a crowd of women here already, and I spot my mother and sister surrounded by a gaggle of my mother’s old friends, including Greer’s mother.
The queen approaches us.
She’s dressed in a gown of silver silk, so bright it looks like molten metal has been poured over her lithe body. The sleeves are covered in glass beads that trail along the floor behind her. There’s a smear of kohl around her black eyes and a bloodred salve on her lips. But what is most remarkable is the half a deer skull she’s wearing as a crown.
It’s as if she wants us to remember that she’s not one of us.
“What is this?”
Marion asks.
“A tea party,”
Queen Mor answers with a sick smile.
My heart is in my throat as I make my way toward my mother and Lydia, terrified that they’ve been caught up in this. I haven’t seen Lydia since the disastrous night at the masquerade ball, nor have I heard anything since Mama’s letter.
“I miss you. I miss you,”
I say fiercely when I reach her.
“I know.”
Everything passes between us in that wordless way only sisters understand. The guilt and resentment and love all tangled up into something too difficult to put into words, so for a moment all we can do is sit there and feel it, take the force of it as it washes over us.
I hug my mother around her shoulders and she turns around with a gasp. “Darling! The house has been so dull without you.”
Lydia nods. “It’s true. She doesn’t like me much at all anymore.”
They’ve both got a strange, glassy look in their eyes. Their pupils are too blown out, their skin waxy.
“Are you feeling quite well?” I ask.
My mother takes a sip from her porcelain teacup. “Grand. From what I hear, you’re going to win. Honestly, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Mama?”
I ask, confused, but Greer’s mother interrupts me.
“Oh, Ivy won’t win. Both your daughters are failures. It rubbed off on Greer, I fear. It’s the only explanation I can come up with for her disappointing performance. She’ll be victorious in the end, though. We Trummers always are.”
Before I can respond, a butler dings a bell.
“Shall we?”
says the queen. Flanked by footmen, she sits down and gestures for us to join her. The table, which stretches the length of the room, is covered with more food than necessary for a tea party. Green grapes are piled high next to split pomegranates and spiral-cut hams. In front of me is a three-tier dark chocolate cake, its icing half melted by the flickering taper candles.
Someone clutches my hand, and when I look up, I’m expecting to see anyone but Greer. Her blue eyes are wide with fear as she looks straight ahead.
I glance around the table. We are surrounded by our family and friends. Greer is on one side of me, Lydia and my mother on the other. Across from me are Faith, her sharp-faced grandmother, and a man with eyes the same shade of blue as hers.
Marion sits to the left of Faith with her mother and younger sister. Down a ways are Emmy and Olive and their mothers, as well as a few of the other debutantes from the season, Deidre Rutland, Sara Middlebrook, Fiona Devon, Althea Jones, and their chaperones.
The queen sits at the head of the table, the candlelight reflecting in the empty eye sockets of her deer-skull crown.
The whine of the violins seems to itch right under my skin, and I’m suddenly ravenous.
“Welcome, honored guests.”
The queen extends her arms over the feast. “How lovely it is to have you all here today.”
“You terrify me,”
Althea Jones pipes up. “I’d really rather not be here.”
The queen shoots her a deadly glare. “Well, you are here, and you will be here as long as I am amused.”
I tense up, terrified for Althea. She’s usually such a shy girl.
“Well, I’m honored to be here,”
chimes in the man I suspect is Faith’s father. “I never thought we’d be invited again after my little secret was revealed.”
He gestures to Faith.
Faith spits out her tea. “Secret? I’m a person.”
“Don’t take that tone,”
her grandmother snaps. “He’s done you a favor by acknowledging you now. He could have left you to rot with that whore mother of yours forever.”
“That’s enough!”
Marion bellows.
“Marion—”
Faith whispers, like she doesn’t want the rest of us to hear her.
“They don’t get to speak to you like that,”
Marion says.
“I’ll speak to my daughter however I please.”
Soon everyone around the table is in a frenzy. “What is happening?” I ask.
The queen claps her hands with glee. “I’m so glad you asked, Lady Ivy.”
The crowd goes still. “Welcome to my next lesson. Any wife of Bram’s will need to learn to tolerate gossip and rumor. What better way to test that than to have your friends and family tell you exactly what it is they think of you. Your loved ones have been enchanted to speak the truth, without the filter of civility or concern for your feelings. When they leave this room, they will forget this day ever happened.”
But we’ll remember. That goes unsaid. We’ll be left to live with whatever we learn today.
The deer skull, the awful music, the piles of food all make more sense now. The queen isn’t throwing us a normal party. This is like the faerie revels I used to imagine. If everyone but us is going to forget, she might as well throw exactly the kind of party she wants.
She wants to be entertained, that’s all. I remember what Eduart said. After an eternity, there is only boredom or the lack of it.
The chatter starts back up. Emmy bursts into tears at something her mother has said and runs for the door. She pulls and pulls, but it’s locked.
“You must last an hour,”
the queen declares, watching with a glint in her eye.
I turn to my family.
“I was the one who spilled that bottle of ink on your favorite shawl two years ago,”
Lydia says. “I’m sorry I blamed it on the cook’s cat.”
“I know. Your hands were smeared with black, and you’re a terrible liar,” I reply.
The worst part of me thinks about asking them both for things I know I don’t actually want the answer to, like which one of us is my mother’s favorite or if Lydia loves me as much as I love her.
But there’s only one thing I truly want to know.
“You might as well tell me—”
I say to Lydia. She doesn’t need me to complete the rest of the sentence. You might as well tell me where you actually were those two weeks you went missing.
Lydia sighs, exasperated. “Ivy, I don’t remember where I was. It’s all one big blank spot.”
She has to be telling the truth. Nausea pools in my stomach. “You don’t remember anything?”
“Not one single thing. But I have these dreams.”
Her voice trails off, soft and distant.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I can’t explain it any better than that.”
My mother watches us, that uncanny glazed look in her eyes.
“I think it’s your turn to tell the truth,”
Lydia says to me.
I’ve tried so hard to be the perfect sister, to save our family from ruination by any means possible, tamping down my anger, my own wants, in the process. I’ve done it all because I love my parents, and I love Lydia more than I will ever be able to explain. But the anger in me is rising again, that awful tide of hurt I feel powerless to stop. She’s so much easier to love when she’s not in front of me. “We had a plan, Lydia, and I can’t understand why you abandoned it.”
“Ivy—”
She says my name like a warning. This is the one topic still too sensitive to touch—not her disappearance, but her third and final betrayal.
“We made a pact,”
I say. “We had it all figured out. You were going to marry Percival Chapwick, I was going to live with you forever, and we would have been happy. I was never going to be any good at any of this.”
I gesture at my gown and swept-up hair and the palace. “You were the one who was meant for society. You were always perfect and sweet and good.”
“I couldn’t stand it!”
Lydia stands up at the table, knocking her chair over behind her. “I was perfect and sweet and good, and then I realized one day I was never going to get to be anything but that. You, Mother, and Father all put me on this pedestal I never asked for. I couldn’t live up there forever.”
“We were going to be together!”
“Are you mad that we’re not together, or are you mad that you finally had to grow up and take some responsibility?”
It stings as badly as if she’d just hit me. “I’ve taken all of the responsibility! You’ve left everything on me. I’m not strong enough to bear it—this wasn’t the role I was supposed to play.”
“It was a child’s fantasy, Ivy. I was never going to marry Percival Chapwick. I thought we were just playing a game when I promised you. It was never real.”
“It was real to me!”
It was the bedrock upon which my life was built, and it crumbled underneath me. I’m not under the queen’s enchantment, but I can’t stop myself from telling the truth. What does it matter anyway? She’s never going to remember.
We’re both crying now, big, ugly tears we’re powerless to stop.
“I don’t want you to hate me,”
Lydia says. “I’m sorry I don’t remember the bargain I made. All I know is that I went into that throne room and I panicked. I thought of a life as small as our mother’s, and I couldn’t bear it. I don’t know what came over me.”
I feel so unbearably guilty. What’s the point in doing everything I can to save my family if I can’t save my sister—the person I love most in this world—from my own vitriol.
“I don’t want to hate you!”
My voice cracks, echoing through the marble hall. “You were always the most beautiful, the most refined, the most beloved of us. You don’t understand what it was like to live in your shadow.”
She takes a step toward me, and I step back, swiping a hand roughly down my tear-streaked face. “You were perfect.”
She throws her hands up in frustration. “I was perfect so that you got to be everything else. You think I didn’t want to talk back to my tutors, or fall asleep during etiquette lessons, or run in the woods instead of needlepointing with Mama? I might have been perfect, but you were the bravest, the most daring, the most fun. You were everything I never got to be, because I was protecting you.”
None of it matters anymore. “And now you’ve abandoned me.”
Tears stream down her cheeks. “That’s not my fault.”
“But our future rests on me, all the same,”
I say. “I had no other choice. Mama and Papa aren’t strong enough to survive exile from society. I never would have stood a chance at getting an offer of marriage otherwise.”
My mother is too deep in conversation with Faith’s grandmother to overhear us. I don’t even know if she’d be offended to hear me say it.
“You don’t know that for certain. Sometimes I think you enjoy your martyrdom,”
Lydia replies.
I thought I could carry the responsibility of this family on my shoulders, but it’s crushing me. It’s like I can’t breathe anymore.
“It’s not your responsibility to save us,”
Lydia says.
“Of course it is! No one else is stepping up! This would all be so much easier if you weren’t so willfully naive. The world isn’t a fairy tale, Lydia. Things don’t always magically work out for the best. There’s no handsome prince coming to save you.”
She rolls her eyes and throws her head back, laughing. “That’s rich, coming from you, who, at this very moment, is hoping for a handsome prince to save her!”
“Screw you, Lydia.”
I look over the table, which is now in full carnage. Faith is huddling with Marion in the corner while her father and grandmother scream at each other.
Emmy’s mother is listing her physical flaws one by one on her fingers.
Marion’s sister is writing down every last article of Marion’s clothing she’s stolen in her absence.
Olive’s mother is giving a detailed account of an affair she had with her husband’s brother, while Olive watches, horrified.
But eeriest of all is Greer’s mother, sitting perfectly silent. She’s never missed an opportunity to say something biting to her daughter.
The queen circles the table. The antlers of her crown keep snagging in the vines and rainbow of ribbons hanging from the ceiling.
She lays a pale, bony hand on Greer’s mother’s shoulder. “Anything to share, Lady Trummer?”
Her mother clears her throat. “As a matter of fact, there is something that has been on my mind.”
“Please share,”
Queen Mor urges.
“Mama,”
Greer whispers, as white as a sheet.
Her mother turns to her. “Does sweet Prince Bram know about your filthy stable boy?”
Tears roll down Greer’s cheeks. “Mama, please don’t do this.”
“Because he really should know that your father and I caught you tangled up in a rather compromising position the morning of this year’s Pact Parade.”
She turns to the queen. “All the finest governesses and tutors in the world, but what a disappointment she turned out to be. Greer’s virtue can never be recovered.”
Greer sobs. “Please, no.”
I’m frozen in horror.
“Greer—”
Lydia says, reaching for her, and it pulls me out of my trance.
Greer springs from the table with a clatter and sprints for the door. The queen waves her hand lazily, and it opens for her. “Let her go,”
she says coldly, and Greer races across the room.
“Greer!”
I shout as I give chase, but she doesn’t slow down. She doesn’t even look back. I’ve nearly reached her, my hand outstretched, but the moment she passes through the door, the queen waves her hand, sending it slamming in my face.
I fall back, landing hard on the parquet floor.
Lydia helps me up. “She’s gone. It’s not your fault,”
she says. But it feels like it is. I love you, Ivy. That’s what she said to me earlier. I love her too. I love her too much to stand to watch her suffer like this. Emmett says if his plan works, I’ll save everyone from the queen’s cruelty, but I feel so helpless, unable to save them now.
“Oh, that’s nothing. Faith—”
Faith’s father starts to say, but I don’t let him finish. I climb up on the table, sending teacups shattering, my foot squishing in a frosted coconut cake.
“I kissed Bram at the Welbys’ masquerade ball!”
I shout. The table goes still. I might not have been able to help Greer, but I can still help Faith.
Everyone is staring at me, scandalized into silence, but my eyes land on the queen. She’s standing perfectly still. Her gorgeous face doesn’t reveal a single emotion.
“What?”
Olive’s mother gasps.
“Well done, you,”
Lydia says, but she’s not smiling, not like my mother, who looks like the cat who has gotten the cream.
I hop down from the table, leaving a foot-shaped smear of cake on the carpet.
Throwing myself on my sword seems to have distracted the party well enough that Faith’s father doesn’t return to the topic of her love affair with Emmett. Instead, the conversation turns to which of us will win.
“Marion is so much prettier than you,”
my mother clucks. “But I’ll still be proud, even when you lose.”
A bell chimes when the hour is up, and the queen is out the door without another word.
I’m not sure exactly when the enchantment will wear off, but I want time alone with my sister to clear the air. I hate fighting with her. We know exactly how to hurt each other.
I tell our mother that I’m taking Lydia to the cottage to lend her a dress, that she’ll meet her at the front entrance shortly.
I take the long way around, toward the back entrance of the palace, to avoid the other guests. The sound of footsteps echo through the marble hall. Emmett enters the room, startled at the sight of us. “Lady Benton and . . . Lady Benton.”
Emmett looks at our tear-streaked faces. He shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Hello,”
I say awkwardly, unable to tear my gaze from him. He’s dressed in a cream linen double-breasted jacket, his face as infuriatingly perfect as ever. Our last conversation rings in my ears. You’re making a fool of yourself, Ivy.
He drags a hand through his hair. “Hello,”
he returns awkwardly.
“We really ought to be going.”
I grab Lydia by the elbow and pull her toward the door.
At that moment Bram strides into the statue hall and slings an arm around Emmett’s shoulders. He’s got a tennis racquet in his other hand, identical to the one I now see hanging at Emmett’s side.
“Ready, brother?”
Bram stills at the sight of us, then gives a bow. “Ah, the Benton sisters. Always a pleasure. Fancy doubles tennis?”
“No, thank you,”
Lydia answers sharply, pulling me down the stairs.
We’re halfway across the lawn to Caledonia Cottage when she finally speaks again. “You like him.”
She elbows me in the ribs.
I return the jab. “Bram? Of course I do. He’s very difficult not to like.”
“Not him,”
Lydia says in a singsongy voice. “What happened to our plans to torment horrible Prince Emmett together?”
“They still stand.”
“You’re such a rotten liar.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s silly. I’ll get over it.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Silly?”
“It’s nothing.”
Lydia shakes her head. “Like I said, rotten liar.”
We reach the door of the cottage, and Lydia pulls me into an awkward hug. “I won’t pretend to know what’s going on here, but I have confidence you’ll handle whatever it is. When I said you’d make a wonderful princess, I meant it. Just . . . take care of yourself. You don’t need to do everything on your own.”
“I know, I know.”
We turn to see Bram running across the lawn, the tennis racket still in his hand. He approaches us, panting.
“I’m sorry for my rudeness back there.”
He brushes a sun-kissed lock of hair off his forehead. “I should have asked how you were getting home, Lady Lydia. Please allow me to accompany you.”
“Oh—”
Lydia looks at the ground and blushes. “That’s hardly necessary. My mother will be waiting.”
“No, I insist. I’ll accompany you both. If not for your sake, then for Ivy’s.”
A part of me warms, seeing Bram wanting to take care of the person I love most in the world. Her eyes flit to the ground. “Oh, all right, then.”
He takes her hand in the crook of his arm.
“When you’re back, will you ask after Greer?”
I prod Bram. “She seemed unwell earlier.”
Bram bows. “Of course.”
I watch them disappear across the great lawn together.
I’m sitting in bed that night, reading a novel, and Olive is downstairs baking, when Faith Fairchild appears in my doorway. “Can we talk?”
I nod, surprised, and fold my book. She sits down on Olive’s bed, what used to be her bed, and exhales. “I’m sorry.”
The words sound unnatural coming from her, like she’s not used to saying them. “Thank you for what you did this afternoon, for protecting me. You didn’t have to do that.”
It’s been a tense evening. Greer still hasn’t returned, and I’m sick with worry. The tea party this afternoon has left me feeling like a raw nerve, and Faith’s unexpected apology makes me want to cry.
“Of course I did,” I say.
“I’ve been unfair to you,”
Faith says. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . I’m so angry all the time about everyone and everything.”
“I understand. More than you may know. I’m sorry you had to go through that today.”
“It’s fine,”
she says, like she knows it’s not. She rises and then leans in the doorway, like there’s more she wants to say.
Marion pokes her head in and rests her chin on top of Faith’s head. “Is she saying thank you for both of us?”
“Both of you?” I ask.
“Very subtle, darling.”
Faith rolls her eyes and closes the door behind her.
We awake the next morning to a fresh newspaper laid out at the foot of each of our beds. In big block letters is the headline LORD TRUMMER’S ONLY DAUGHTER, DEAD AT EIGHTEEN. BODY PULLED FROM THE THAMES THIS MORNING AT DAWN.