Chapter Ten
The town house was stifling.
The two days between Eliot’s missive and Elspeth Winn’s engagement party had passed with disturbing swiftness.
Since our meeting in the library, Noé and I had made little progress in the matter of Sybil’s murder—though we had managed to get into several additional arguments—and for the first time, I was becoming distinctly aware of how short the three-week period which Bastian had given me to solve the case truly was.
A narrow and diminishing boundary, like a thread tugged close to snapping.
And when it did…the cloisters would be waiting.
Now sweat clung to my skin, dampening the pits of the ivory gown I was wearing.
All around me were people—packed into the sitting room I was standing in, throbbing in the corridors and up the narrow stairs—yet thus far, I’d caught a glimpse of the guest of honor only once.
Elspeth had been a competitor alongside me in the Vainglory, though she’d been dismissed after the second trial, when Bastian had challenged each of us to beat him in a game of cards.
She’d looked much happier when I’d spotted her earlier than she had while being escorted out of Fortblanche: Her skin was glowing, her dark eyes shining almost as brightly as the ring on her finger.
I pulled at the sleeve of my gown, sidestepping to avoid falling casualty to the crush of bodies. Noé had absconded to the bar shortly after our arrival, leaving me—for once—blessedly alone. But where was Eliot?
“Miss Lovett!” My hopes briefly rose at the sound of my false name, then fell as I took in the speaker.
From across the room, a tall, fair-skinned girl was shoving through the crowd, her arms extended as though to embrace me.
Her golden hair was bound in a loosely knitted caul, the strands glinting with the violent, toothy shine which only silkwitch hair did, like a white grin spread too wide.
Anais Tremblay. Of course, the society witch would be present at an event such as tonight’s.
Though I wouldn’t have previously thought it possible, life seemed to have poured more money into my fellow maiden’s purse in the months we’d spent apart.
Her clothes, already some of the finest among ours during the Vainglory, appeared new, unwrinkled as though they’d just been stripped off a dress-shop model.
I wagered the upgrade had something to do with the rather ridiculously sized engagement ring she now sported: set with an emerald, almost an exact match to the color of her eyes.
Betrothed, then. I hadn’t seen that in the papers. To whom, I wondered?
My eyes focused on her hands as Anais drew nearer, and the pink lace gloves she was wearing differed vastly from the accessories which Marie-Louise had described to me—the gloves Anais had lost the night of the Midway Ball—and yet…
I felt my attention focus. Bastian still had yet to gather any suspects for me to interrogate as he’d promised, but here was one in front of me now. How to approach this?
“Hello, friend.” The cheerfulness in Anais’s voice took me briefly aback. I flinched as she reached for my hands, squeezing my fingers as though we were intimate acquaintances. “So good to see you. A bit earlier than expected, no?” She glanced around. “Is Noé with you?”
I collected myself. “He went to fetch a drink. It is lovely to see you as well—”
“No—no wine.” I was cut off as, abruptly, Anais’s head snapped forward, toward a maid who I now registered was standing before us with two glasses on a tray. As if remembering herself, the other silkwitch blushed, glancing over at me with an apologetic smile. “I do not drink it.”
My brow arched. For a half second, she’d almost sounded like the girl I’d known during the Vainglory.
I dismissed the servant with a smile, then faced back toward Anais. “You were never one to turn down a drink before. What’s happened—change in your palate?”
Anais did not seem amused by my quip. “So brazen,” she cooed. “And yet, you know that I do not favor alcohol. It is Adélard’s belief that an engaged lady should express temperance in all things, particularly drink.”
The name shocked me enough that I momentarily forgot my mission. “Adélard?” I echoed disbelievingly. When the other silkwitch made no move to correct me, I continued. “Anais, you haven’t. The Cloister Master?”
Anais refused to look at me directly. Her chin swiveled to face the opposite wall, her fingers finding the band of her engagement ring.
Was it only my imagination, or was there a desperation to the way she twisted it—like a captive tugging at the irons which held them hostage?
“He felt awful for me, after the horrid way his nephew treated me during the competition,” she answered in a pinched tone.
“There was some concern, you know, that the rumors about us in the papers would spread even further. Tarnish the impeccable Drake name.” Briefly, her gaze flicked to mine, then distanced itself again.
“Of course, I assured Adélard that I would never speak out against family.”
Comprehension settled over me. Dorian—of course, this betrothal had its roots in him.
After I’d outed her affair, Anais’s marriage prospects should have been struck dead along with her chance at Noé.
And yet, rather than resign herself to the cloisters, the other maiden had evidently found a way to salvage her reputation—namely, by extorting the man who ran them. Her former lover’s uncle.
I was unsure whether to pity or admire her. Scoffing, I asked softly, so only she could hear, “Is that how you’ve played it?”
Her eyes traveled sideways.
Taking advantage of her uncertainty, I pressed forward. “Say, friend, I wonder whether you would be inclined to take a turn about the room with me. There is a matter I’ve been meaning—”
“Miss Lovett.”
My pulse sped at the interruption. Glancing over, I found Eliot standing behind me, dressed in a smart pin-striped suit, a gray cravat knotted around his stand collar. His curls were slicked back, his eyes merry.
He smiled gently at me. “Might I steal you for a moment?”
The room seemed to expand. At once, all thoughts of Anais left me. I had no troubles nor cares; everything was just as it ought to be. I was perfectly fine. “Of course, sir,” I returned.
He held out his arm, and I moved to take it, Anais already having slipped away at his approach. I’d barely brushed the sleeve of his jacket when I felt a presence to my left. “Darling. Your wine.”
Something pressed against my hand—a glass, cool and thin-stemmed.
I accepted it instinctively as Noé sidled up to us.
He and I had barely spoken on the drive from Fortblanche; when he’d detached himself from me shortly after entering the party, I’d mistakenly wondered if he’d decided to let me conduct my business with Eliot in peace.
I should have known better than that. With Noé, every retreat was tactical. He left only so that he could come back—at the worst possible time.
My heart sank as he grinned. “Hello, Lear.”
Eliot’s jaw was like a knife. The tenderness which had filled his gaze only a moment ago had vanished now—damn Noé. Tonight, of all times, I could not afford this. Couldn’t risk having Eliot’s confidence in me waver any more than it already had.
Lowly, Eliot hissed, “You brought him?”
My cheeks warmed. “His father never would have let me leave the house without him,” I hissed back, still gripping my wineglass. “You said it was urgent—my notice was short.”
“Am I intruding?” Noé interjected. He looked altogether too pleased with himself.
I could see it in the curl of his smile, the mean glint in his eyes.
“I can step away if you’d like. Miss Lovett and I do spend so much time together already.
” He grinned. “By the way, Lear, how did you enjoy the opera the other night? I’m offended you didn’t come and say hello.
My fiancée tells me you two had quite the productive chat without me. ”
The heat beneath my skin surged higher. I thought Eliot would snap in two. Pushing past Noé, I slipped my hand through his elbow. “Don’t pay him any mind,” I murmured under my breath. “Shall we go?”
Eliot’s gaze was still clouded when he glanced down at me. I held my breath as he hesitated—one second, two—his stare parsing mine, his expression as stoic as I’d ever seen it.
Finally, he nodded. My lungs contracted; I felt my lips part in an exhale.
We’d barely advanced a pace when Noé stepped after us. “I think I’ll come along.”
Eliot whirled. “If you believe—”
“Where do you mean to take her?” For the second time, Noé cut in. There was a harshness to his interjection which hadn’t been there previously—a soberness which made me look his way. “The garden, I assume—to speak in private?” He narrowed his eyes. “How do you think that will look?”
Stepping nearer, he jerked his head at me.
“I’m her fiancé. I go where she goes, or the eyes of society follow.”
Eliot scowled. I could tell he was readying a rebuttal—just as I knew, deep down, that whatever excuse he produced would not be enough.
This was not the opera house; here, there were no nooks in which to seclude ourselves, no mouseholes to vanish into.
If we wished to hide, we needed to do so in plain sight.
Sighing, I squeezed my escort’s arm. “Eliot. He’s right.”
The taller boy remained where he was. His attention was fixed on his friend, his stare honed with the kind of whetted calculation he’d often used against me in our early interactions during the Vainglory, when neither of us had decided if the other was friend or foe.
His mouth was stern, a perfectly flat line.