Chapter Eighteen #3
Elswyth nodded, intently watching his expression. “I understand how it feels to be ignored. Sometimes it makes me furious.”
To her surprise, Silas smiled. “My, you’re getting better at this.”
“At what?”
“Interrogating gentlemen under the guise of friendly conversation.”
Elswyth flushed. “That is not what I—It’s rude to insinuate anything other than—”
“Lord Forrester and Mr. Plum led me to believe you were utterly tactless. But you must be well-practiced by now. If I’m correct, you’ll ask me where I winter next, and then if I was in the city during autumn of last year.
I’ll save you the trouble. Wintering is a verb only for the very rich, which I am not, and around the time your sister disappeared, I was in Cairo on business for Dr. Gall. It is all quite well documented.”
Elswyth frowned. Had she really been so obvious? She felt foolish again, like she’d been playing a game where everyone knew the rules but her.
Silas must have marked her expression. He looked away. “I don’t blame you, Miss Elderwood, for suspecting the foreigner. I suppose I should be flattered that it took you this long to interrogate me.”
“Your ancestry has nothing to do with this,” Elswyth said.
“Shockingly, I believe you. You are so different from your sister in that respect. You see the roots of things, I think, where she saw only the flowers. I wonder how two sisters could be so different. One so strikingly observant, the other so notoriously vapid.”
Elswyth snapped at him. “Watch your tongue when you speak of my sister or you will find poison on it.”
Silas, to her surprise, looked shocked. “Calm yourself, Elderwood. You wouldn’t want to make another scene.”
Silas flagged down a passing servant and took two glasses of champagne from his silver tray.
He handed one to Elswyth, and she surprised herself by taking it.
Nearby, lords and ladies mingled, watching them.
They must have made a strange pair, standing before the topiary.
She composed herself and spoke again, this time in a near-whisper.
“I will not hear my sister’s name dragged through the mud. Not by the likes of you.”
“Why do you care so much?” Silas asked. “Why carry on this charade of looking for your sister? You must have loathed each other.”
Elswyth wiped a bead of sweat from her champagne glass and then sipped. “Do you have siblings, Sir Silas?”
“If Lady Harrow had been able to provide my father with heirs, do you think I’d be allowed to parade around London dressed in finery?”
“So no, then. Look over there, then at the wall,” Elswyth said. She nodded to the nearby entryway where woody vines and purple flowers draped over the arch. “What do you see?”
“Wisteria vines?” Silas said.
“You see wisteria vines. I see the night my sister rolled her ankle escaping down the wisteria outside her room, to kiss some boy from the village. And there, in Lady Melrose’s gown, in the silk, I see the first hand-me-down dress that Persephone ever gave me.
Horribly purple. In your hand, in the brandy, I see the first time I ever got drunk, when Persephone stole a bottle from the kitchens and we snuck into the gardens at night.
Everything I see, everything I touch, everything I hear has threads that lead back to her.
And so I cannot exist in the world without her. ”
Silas moved to speak, but Elswyth kept talking. She wasn’t sure what emotion she felt in her throat—something like sadness, something like rage, something like joy, all crawling over one another to be the first to escape her lips.
“You cannot understand what it means to grow side by side with someone and have them taken from you. Persephone might have been vapid and vain and occasionally cruel. And with that, she was intelligent in her own way, and wild in her moments of joy, and yes, she had a keen eye for the beauty of the world. She saw the flowers, as you say, and I loved her because so often I forget them. When two trees grow next to each other, they each fill the place the other leaves empty in their quest for the sun. And when one dies, it lives on in the ways it shaped the living. A single sister is but half a soul. And half of me died with her.”
Silence settled between them, but the party around them carried on as if nothing had happened.
Servants passed with trays of champagne, ladies laughed their tinkling laughs, and the band plucked their instruments, preparing for the next song.
Their silence only existed in that corner of the room where two strangers stood side by side, apart from the rest.
Silas looked at her again with his unreadable expression. It took a moment for him to speak.
“Will you dance with me?” he asked.
Elswyth blinked. “What?”
“Will you accompany me in the next dance? The cotillion. Or the waltz, if you prefer. There might even be a polka…”
“You want to dance. With me,” Elswyth said.
“Yes,” Silas said flatly.
“Did Venus put you up to this?”
“I’m afraid we’ve had something of a falling out. I thought her stunt with the poison ivy was a bridge too far.”
Elswyth looked over her shoulder to where Venus swirled on the dance floor in the arms of the prince.
“What will she think?”
Silas laughed. “I imagine she’ll be quite irritated. But that’s rather the point, isn’t it?”
Ah. There it was—he wanted to dance with her to annoy Venus. That, at least, Elswyth could understand.
She mulled it over for a moment. Silas was a bastard and a known rake.
He was not of the same station as Elswyth despite the fact that his natural father was one of the most powerful men in the British Empire.
He was not an ideal dance partner, but he did not seem to fear the queen’s disapproval, and she doubted that she would receive any other offers.
She could leave alone and confirm her status as an outcast in the eyes of the ton, or she could make a scene and rankle Venus while doing it. The choice, it seemed, was clear.
“Well?” Silas asked.
Elswyth looked over her shoulder, frowning. “I won’t say that I am ecstatically accepting, but I will accept, Sir Silas, if only to irritate Miss Forscythe. And I do not think I will have other options. The disdain of the queen has made me all but untouchable.”
Silas frowned, looking her up and down. “I wouldn’t say that.” He extended his arm. “If it suits you, we can take the next waltz. That shall limit the amount of time you must bear my presence.”
Elswyth sensed something in his tone. Bitterness? Resentment? Perhaps, even, disappointment?
“Fine,” Elswyth said.
“Fine,” replied Silas.
They stared at each other for a moment, and then Elswyth begrudgingly took his arm. It was firm under her grip, even through the suit, and she couldn’t tell if he was tense or simply very muscular. She could venture a guess. The thought harried her.
The crowd seemed to part for them as they walked, and ladies quickly dispatched their fans to whisper behind them. The room was almost as fixated as when Venus danced with the prince, although this time there was an air of scandal to their whispers.
Silas led her stiffly to the dance floor. “Smile,” he said, forcing a smile himself. “Pretend as though you fancy me.”
Elswyth noted the way his cheeks dimpled. “That will be rather difficult, Sir Silas.”
“Do try your best.”
When they reached the dance floor, Elswyth spotted Venus in a group of women, frowning as she sipped her champagne. Then Elswyth really did smile.
The dance was a diagonal waltz. Elswyth took her position across from Silas. When the music began, he led, his massive hand against the small of her back. They stood breathtakingly close, and she could smell his cologne: juniper and mahogany. The swift movements of the dance made her heart race.
She risked a look around the room.
“What’s the matter?” Silas asked.
“Everyone is staring,” she said. It was true. Now even the queen leaned forward in her seat, watching with cold curiosity.
“I should think you are used to it by now,” Silas said. He looked at her curiously.
Elswyth clenched her jaw. Had that been a joke about her scar? “Perhaps you are, but I am not.”
He shrugged. “I do not dance often. Not many young ladies are eager to be seen publicly with a bastard.”
“And yet privately it seems they enjoy you quite deeply,” Elswyth said.
Silas smirked. “I am not so much of a rake as they may lead you to believe.”
“Oh? I suppose the incident in the hedge maze was an accident. Perhaps you tripped and fell into Miss Forscythe.”
To her surprise, Silas almost seemed embarrassed. “I don’t suppose I can convince you that I was in love with her, can I?”
“I would find that hard to believe. Although I think that says more about my feelings for Venus than my thoughts about you.”
He sighed. “No. It was never love. I helped her feel some modicum of freedom. And she helped me…”
“Pursue your passions?”
Silas smiled sadly. “Forget them.”
The dance took them apart for a moment. Elswyth turned, staring at him as they circled. When they came back together, Silas spoke first.
“When you are a bastard, people presume what they like about you. Bastards beget bastards, as they say. I have never thanked you for your discretion, Elswyth. It eases that burden.”
Elswyth was unsure what to say. The moment of earnestness was unexpected from Silas, usually so coy or cold. Then she scowled, turning away from him.
“What is it?” he said.
“I finally have one secret worth something, and you’re making me feel bad about sending it to the gossip columns.”
“They wouldn’t print it, anyway. Everyone is convinced you have it out for Venus now.
She’s made sure of that. Even if you did start telling people about us, they’d assume it was gossip intended to destroy her reputation.
Oh, and Lady Forscythe has bribed all the popular gossip rags to portray her family positively. So they tend to go for smaller fish.”
“Like deformed provincials from dying houses,” Elswyth said.