Chapter 5
A Note to the Reader:
Regarding My Engagement
The first time I met Lewis was the day of our engagement. It was an impersonal encounter, a joint gathering hosted by the Guild Academies.
Over a dozen couples were presented that night, the heads of the Guild calling our names and joining our hands beneath glistening chandeliers, to hearty applause.
They made it all as grand as possible, with a lavish dinner and ball, soft music and warm candlelight and all the windswept beauty of Old Harrow.
They lavished us with wine and the finest costumes the Guild’s considerable vaults could buy.
It was calculated, the whole of it, to make us feel valued, lauded—to instill in us the weight of our upcoming task.
“Miss Ottilie Rushforth,” the headmistress called.
I stepped forward out of the line of other young women, my hair perfectly swept up, the heavy beading on my bodice glistening. I turned in place, the long drape of my gown tugging into an elegant swirl about my legs, and looked down to the line of waiting young men.
My expression was set, my posture one of dignified ease—skills that I had learned over eleven years in these glittering halls. But beneath my skin, my blood thrummed.
I was, at that point, uncertain at the notion of a Guild husband. I rebelled against the expectation of it, the insistence upon duty and fidelity to an organization that had stolen me from my mother’s side and kept me contained within stone walls.
I heard Pretoria’s voice in my mind, roiling against the confinement of the Guilds, prior to her escape. I remembered the face of her lover, Emeline, frozen in confused horror at the moment of her execution, and my chest burned with rage.
But there was a power to this moment, a weight of respect and responsibility that left me unexpectedly stirred.
Madge’s influence came with that feeling, bolstered by the pride in her eyes as she watched me from the assembly with a baby in her arms and two children clinging to her skirts of rose and powder blue.
They were beautiful children, well-behaved and calm.
And already marked by the Guild, with their emblazoned little sashes of ebony silk. Adepts. Full mages.
The rush of my blood sounded loud in my ears.
“Mr. Lewis Illing,” the headmaster of the men’s academy boomed.
A man with perfectly combed dark blond hair stepped forward.
He wore a neatly trimmed moustache and there was gentleness in his resigned hazel eyes.
He was not the tallest or the broadest among the men, but he filled out his uniform well and his bronze threads, tricked by the candlelight, glistened every so often.
Lewis walked down the line of mages and, with one arm crooked behind his straight back, offered me his free hand. I took it—a brush of warm skin—and we proceeded to one side. There we took up station next to one another, watching as the next couple was named.
We let go of one another’s hands. I resisted the urge to fidget.
My mind churned, searching for something to say, but everything felt mundane.
This man was to be my husband within the next year.
We were expected to copulate, to produce children, to serve the Guild side by side for as long as the Guild saw fit.
What if I hated him? He was handsome, but that meant little.
He might have a temper, or unbearable habits, or unsavory expectations.
That was when his fingers brushed mine. It was a small movement and his head did not turn, his eyes did not leave the proceedings, but one of his fingers hooked through mine in a small, nearly imperceptible gesture of comfort.
“We shall be good friends, Miss Rushforth. Allies.” His voice was soft and genuine, and I could not help but believe him. “Pretoria sends her love.”