Chapter Twelve #2
He smiled thinly. “No apology is necessary, Miss Elderwood. I understand that hysteria in times of grief is rather common. My condolences for your dear sister.” He held her gaze for a moment and smiled again. Something in his eyes when he mentioned Persephone made her skin crawl.
Then he turned to Mr. Plum and whispered just loud enough for Elswyth to hear him.
“I swear, Lignus, women get bolder every day in this country. It’s this exact kind of unruliness that leads to societal decay.
We need strong men, or soon we’ll be no better than the aboriginals with their matriarchs and mother trees.
Mark my words, if these conversations about women’s suffrage continue, soon we’ll be the colony. ”
“Indeed, Captain,” Mr. Plum said. The two men stood, crossing the dining room to look at Lord Forscythe’s case of cigars. More servants poured from the kitchens carrying plates of lotus flowers crystallized in sugar.
Elswyth clenched her jaw and focused on her plate.
She picked a few petals of the lotus flower, but the sweetness sickened her.
Their conversation stalled, but eyes seemed to linger on her long after she’d faded into the background.
How badly she’d wanted to say what she really felt—but how could she when her future depended on some man’s approval of her?
When Mr. Plum and Captain Burr had gone, Silas turned to her. “Quite the performance,” he said, keeping his voice low.
Elswyth dabbed her lips with a napkin and then cleared her throat. She assumed he meant last week’s tableau vivant. They hadn’t spoken of it since. “Yes, well, thank you for volunteering. I didn’t think anyone would, for a moment.”
“I don’t mean the tableau vivant,” he said. “I meant your performance just now. You were foolish to speak about such things.”
“I only spoke the truth.”
“Look around you, Elderwood. Do you think these people care for the truth, if it interrupts their dinner?” His expression had grown dark, and his voice was hardly a whisper.
“I suppose… I suppose that your opinions of the colonies are complicated. Given your ancestry.”
“I think you will find them remarkably uncomplicated,” Silas said flatly. “Although I do not have the privilege to speak them so freely. What I don’t understand is why you are so critical.”
“Beyond the obvious.”
“What is obvious to some is madness to others,” Silas replied.
Elswyth hesitated. She thought of women found dead in alleyways, mutilated, while the police did nothing and the nobility ate lotus flowers in their gilded palaces.
“One does not need to travel far to see the abuses of empire,” she said. “One simply needs to cross the Thames.”
Silas said nothing. When Elswyth dared to look up from her plate, he was staring at her, an unreadable expression on his face. He looked almost angry, with his eyebrows drawn together, amber eyes smoldering beneath them. His lips twisted into a slight frown, revealing a dimple on his left side.
“What is it?” Elswyth said.
“No one knows quite what to make of you yet,” Silas said.
“Is that so?”
Silas leaned toward her and spoke in a low voice.
“Miss Elderwood, I don’t know why I am saying this, but I suppose I shall.
I imagine that you want to make an impression here.
That your matchmaker has told you to dazzle, stand out, be noticed.
Thus your idiocy, upstaging Venus with that tableau vivant. ”
“Idiocy? I thought it went rather well.”
He wrapped his hand around the arm of her chair so hard that the wood creaked. His fingers were so close to her thigh that the heat of his skin soaked through the thin silk of her gown.
“One thing you should know about Venus, Miss Elderwood—nothing she does is accidental. Drusilla did not break a cello string. She meant to put you on that stage, hoping you would make a fool of yourself.”
Elswyth blinked. “What? To what end?”
“To remind you of your place,” Silas said.
“And what purpose would she have for that? You should know that she has good reasons to court me as an ally.” Elswyth looked at him significantly and then glanced over her shoulder, checking to see that no one could hear.
“You cannot be so na?ve—”
“Na?ve?” Elswyth said, raising an eyebrow.
“I only meant—”
“I do appreciate your concern, Sir Silas,” Elswyth said, cutting him off. A chill seeped into her voice. “But I know what I am doing. And you would do well to remember that I know things that would ruin your reputation as well.”
Silas frowned, turning away and dabbing his lips with a napkin. “If you knew anything, you would know that I am already ruined. A bastard is ruined the moment he is born. And with that knowledge, consider this, Miss Elderwood: When Venus sat you at this table, she sat you with me.”
Elswyth frowned. Captain Burr and Mr. Plum returned to the table and sat. Silas leaned away from her, straightening in his seat.
She glanced down the long table. Lord Forscythe sat at the head, surrounded by other men of rank: Lord Forrester, Lord Barry, and her uncle Percival.
Then Lady Forscythe and her peers followed by Venus and the other debutantes.
And then there were the others: Captain Burr, a soldier.
Mr. Plum, a wealthy commoner. And finally, Elswyth and Silas.
No one had been seated to Silas’s left. He was the very last guest, a strange little appendage, as if he were an afterthought.
Silas turned from her and raised his voice, cutting into Captain Burr and Mr. Plum’s conversation. “Gentlemen,” he said, “why don’t we abscond to the parlor for a cigar? Beat me in cards, and I promise to tell you the story of how the Butcher of Bengal earned his name.”
Captain Burr grinned, crooked teeth slightly reddish from the wine.
“Right-o. Come on, Plum.” He moved to stand but then coughed and sat back down.
“Ah. Too much brandy,” he said, seeming embarrassed.
He blinked furiously. Mr. Plum, to his right, cleared his throat.
“Erm—Captain. You’ve got something in your eye. Right there.”
Captain Burr continued to blink. And there, coming from the corner of his left eye, Elswyth saw a small white flower bloom.
Captain Burr paused, wincing before scratching out the flower. It fell on the table. He looked at it stupidly for a moment, and then another flower sprouted in the same spot. He blinked again, scraping at it.
“Are you all right, Captain?” Elswyth said, but she was cut off by Captain Burr’s cough. He hacked once, twice, and then sprayed a plume of blood across the table, speckled with white flowers.
There was a moment of silence before Mr. Plum screamed.
Then the room erupted into chaos. Captain Burr tried to stand but tripped and fell over his chair, landing in a heap on the ground.
Begonia Pritchett, seeing the blood on the tablecloth and the man writhing on the floor, shrieked.
Her Uncle Percival was the only one to run to him.
And yet even he paused a few feet away, simply staring at Captain Burr.
It took Elswyth a moment to realize why: From the skin of his eyelids, white flowers had begun to bloom.
They were small at first, but they grew quickly. Soon they crowded out his eyes entirely, like clusters of little stars. He clawed at them, but for each flower he tore away, two more sprouted. His nails cut red gashes into the skin around his eyes.
He choked again, spraying blood across the floor.
And then, from his open mouth, the stalk of a white flower appeared.
More followed it, creeping from his throat and spreading from his lips in a strange smile, a full bouquet to match the ones sprouting from his eyes.
Captain Burr twitched once, twice, and then was dead.
Elswyth stared at the flowers still slowly pouring from the man’s mouth and recognized the star-white bloom of asphodel.
Elswyth stumbled through the front doors of Devereux Place after a long and silent carriage ride with Silas Blackthorn.
After the death of Captain Burr, all the women had quickly been escorted from the house and into their carriages.
The lords stayed behind to speak with the police, including her Uncle Percival.
Silas had been assigned the duty of escorting her home, to his obvious chagrin.
Silas followed her inside, brushing the rain off the shoulders of his black suit. Elswyth did the same with her gown, but it was no use—the fabric was soaked through and her skin was pale and frigid. “Let me start you a fire,” Silas said.
“I assure you, Sir Silas, your assistance is no longer needed.”
“Not quite a thank-you, but so close. Would you like to try again?”
Elswyth tried to scowl, but her teeth chattered too much for it to be intimidating. “I am more than capable of starting a fire for myself,” she said, lifting her soaked gown and moving toward the doors of the drawing room. “You may be surprised to find that women are not totally—”
Elswyth opened the double doors and stopped.
Inside, to her surprise, was something of a party.
Kehinde sat at the fire with two other people, sharing plates of colorful food between them, talking boisterously.
Across from him was a man with braided hair, wearing a flowing colorful robe and a tall knit cap.
And seated just to his right was a younger, dark-skinned woman in a beaded dress and intricately woven headwrap that seemed to bloom like a flower.
They all stopped laughing as soon as they saw Elswyth, rain-soaked and shivering.
Kehinde—who had been relaxing in his chair with a beer in one hand and one of Percival’s stuffed monkeys on his lap—excused himself and stepped out into the hall, closing the doors behind him.
“Elswyth,” he said, “what is the matter? You are meant to still be at Syon House.”
“I’m afraid the party ended early,” Elswyth said.
“For Captain Burr, at least,” Silas said dryly, still standing in the doorway.