CHAPTER 12
THE TURNBULL SOCIETY
REQUESTS THE COMPANY OF
Emma Curran
Emma drifted out of the mail room, clutching the invitation. So she hadn’t been wrong about what it meant, the way he looked at her. When he’d kissed her.
No one understands me like you.
Beneath that thrill lay another. The Turnbull Society, whose secrets stretched a thousand years, had invited her into their inner circle. Soon their secrets would become hers. Hers and Jasper’s, to share. Emma almost skipped to her room. She had a week to figure out how to look perfect.
On the night, Emma arrived alone. Jasper had to be at the Turnbull Clubhouse early to set up, he’d said.
But it was easy enough to find the building: They owned a whole town house off Beaufort Crescent.
The first thing she saw was the hall, dominated by a grand staircase and lit by a chandelier the size of a horse.
She tilted her face to stare at the piped-icing plasterwork and the oil paintings, sure she looked like the worst kind of tourist. The marble around her echoed with the voices of the Turnbulls and their dates.
A uniformed server glided forward, holding out his hands. Just beyond she saw Venetia Kent, insolently beautiful in green satin, dropping her coat into the hands of another server. Emma shrugged her own jacket from her shoulders.
“Wouldn’t leave anything in the pockets,” someone said in a stage whisper. Piers Popwell leered into view. “Jasper’s hired a criminal-looking lot, hasn’t he?”
The server’s face remained so rigidly expressionless, she knew he had to have heard. Emma’s cheeks flamed as she handed over the jacket. “I’m sorry,” she said.
But the server only bowed silently and moved away.
“Oh, they’re not allowed to talk to us. Or at all. De Turnbulliis silentium est.”
Piers chuckled and ran a finger up her arm. “My, we are looking luscious, aren’t we?”
The gown was Helena’s finest: a firebird-red silk that draped softly around her chest and left her shoulders bare.
Lying close around her waist, the heavy skirt flared out to blaze around her ankles.
She felt like a living flame in it. Her skin sparked with awareness.
On her walk to the clubhouse, she’d noticed heads turning as she passed.
Eyes lingering. She had imagined over and over how Jasper would look when he saw her in it.
She had not imagined Piers pawing at it.
A few couples were already starting up the staircase, so she extracted herself from his grasp and hurried to join them.
She caught up with Julia and Hugo on the steps.
He in tails, she like a white lace mermaid.
Julia seized Emma’s hand and squeezed, her eyes sparkling.
An air of excitement had begun to catch.
The girls around them were giggling, clutching the arms of their escorts.
And there was Jasper at the head of the stairs, a lion prince. Each couple came forward to be greeted. When it was Emma’s turn, Jasper swung her by the waist and kissed her.
“Jasper.” Emma had to laugh, breathless. “Stop, you’re crushing me.”
“No.” His eyes were too bright. He vibrated with nervous energy, his grip hot through the thin silk of her dress. “Shan’t.”
“Jasper, they’re waiting. Behind me.”
“Oh, all right.” He released her as abruptly as he had grabbed her.
Unsettled, Emma turned and trailed Julia and Hugo through an open door.
Within, a dining room glowed by the light of candelabras.
It was set for twenty, with the finest crystal and linen seen outside a palace. Silver domes covered each plate.
Nine Turnbulls, dressed in tailcoats and bow ties, lined the table. Jasper made a tenth at the head. Emma went to slip into the chair on his right, but he stopped her. “Oh, damn. I should have said. You’re not here.”
Lady Alice Blount, read the place card. “But all the other girls are sat next to their dates—”
“I’m sorry,” said a musical voice. “Have I made things difficult?”
A second Grace Kelly stood beside her, gleaming in a satin sheath.
Her hair a fall of blond silk over one shoulder; her figure all willowy elegance; her smile clear and sweet, like a painted Madonna.
Emma had seen that face, and that name, in the magazines in Julia’s room.
Lady Alice Blount hailed from a family of acclaimed beauties.
One of her sisters had even married a duke.
That was, apparently, still a career path in this particular crowd.
Jasper pulled Emma aside. “My father asked me to look after her tonight. Family friend. She transferred from the Courtauld this term, so she doesn’t know anyone. You’re farther down the table, but it’s only for dinner. Don’t be angry.”
She gathered what dignity she could to smile at Lady Alice and walked stiffly down the table to find her seat.
It was a long table. She passed Elizabeth Lim and Antonia Viacelli, leaning over their dates to gossip.
And Venetia Kent, holding a fascinated Eddie Spencer in her gaze like a blond, bored cobra.
Even little Tabitha Mountbatten was seated before Emma.
She was almost at the end before she spotted her place card.
Emma had never spoken to Francis Carr. He was a third-year from Granville College and the proud possessor of an overbite, a limited vocabulary, and enough acres of farmland to rival the Prince of Wales’ estate. Now he pulled out her chair. “Care for some punch?”
“Gladly.” Emma flopped into her seat. At the head of the table, Jasper was smiling at something Lady Alice had said. Emma took the glass from Francis and drained half of it. The punch tasted like cough syrup. She knocked back the rest.
Julia settled into the seat opposite Emma. Hugo followed, as glum as Emma had ever seen him.
Julia’s cheeks were pink. “I was just saying hello to Richard. He explained the history of the clubhouse. Then he was telling me about the heraldic designs on the walls…”
“Richard does like to explain things,” Hugo muttered into his wineglass.
“I didn’t know you and Hugo were together, Jules,” said Francis.
“Oh, we’re not,” Julia laughed. “Just here as friends.”
Hugo wilted. Emma knew just how he felt.
“I think it’s starting. Get ready,” Francis whispered.
A row of silent servers had lined up, one behind every chair. A gong crashed, so loud Emma flinched, and the servers leaned as one to whip the silver dome from each plate.
It was bleeding. That was all Emma could think at first, seeing the mass on the stark white plate.
Cubes of raw meat had been carefully molded into the shape of a heart.
Anatomically accurate, some part of her mind noted, while she tried not to be sick.
Someone had even taken the trouble to shape arteries from strips of dried meat.
At the head of the table, Jasper stood.
“With our flesh, we sustain the Society.”
“We sustain the Society,” the Turnbulls echoed.
A cacophony of knives and forks scraped.
Teeth ripped into ragged strips of flesh.
Down the endless table, silver candelabras threw back distorted reflections of jaws working, throats swallowing.
There were spatters of red on the damask tablecloth. Emma’s skin crawled.
“Why’re you not eating?” Francis scarfed down a mouthful. “Venison tartare. S’gorgeous.”
“I’m vegetarian,” Emma managed to force out, between lips shut as tightly as possible to hold in the nausea.
Julia looked up, appalled. “They’ve given you the same as us? Didn’t you tell Jasper?”
“He must have forgotten.”
“Bad luck for you,” said Francis. “It’s a running joke for the annual dinner that the president designs the menu with every kind of meat he can think of.”
Jasper hadn’t mentioned that. Emma ladled more punch into her glass.
“Except pork. Not allowed to serve that here. Tradition,” Hugo mumbled.
Julia’s tone was arch. “Though I heard there was something rather unsavory with a pig in your Society initiations.”
“Ah, but we don’t make the new boys eat it,” chuckled Francis.
The silent servers reappeared to remove the plates. Emma saw Richard signal to Piers. They both slipped out. They returned and placed something with great pomp on the sideboard behind Jasper. A bowl made of a strange veined stone—or was it glass?
“What’s that?” Emma asked.
“The Turnbull bowl. For the ritual, after dinner,” said Francis. “That’s why we’re all here, really. The annual dinner is just to get us together for the ceremony. Turnbulls’ve done the same rigmarole every year since the University started. Same words, same stagy bits, same bowl.”
“Same bowl? That’s a thousand years old? Shouldn’t it be in a museum?” Emma asked.
Francis chuckled. “That’s sweet. Half the National Gallery is on loan from Eddie Spencer’s family. Rory Clarke’s fourth-nicest bathroom is papered with Picassos. Museums are for people who don’t have their own collections.”
The gong crashed. A new plate thumped down in front of Emma.
A rib cage clawed for the sky. It had been forced into a ring shape, like a crown. Some kind of meat held the thing together, but Emma refused to lean closer to investigate.
Jasper raised a glass. “With our bones, we defend the Society.”
“We defend the Society.”
A loud cracking from her left sent a shiver of nausea up Emma’s throat. Francis was slurping at one of the spokes of the crown. “By God, a different flavor marrow in each one! Jasper’s outdone himself.”
Emma felt stomach acid slosh around her insides. She hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast. She’d been too nervous. Her vision of dinner had been so different. Jasper in the candlelight, laughing just for her. His golden head bent close.
Emma twisted to look at him. Jasper, at least, was just as she had imagined him. Smiling, leaning in to whisper. But Lady Alice was sitting in Emma’s place.
She was getting to know the bottom of her punch glass. It was proving to be a beautiful friendship, although she’d somehow knocked over Hugo’s wine and lost her napkin. The room had also decided to sway just a little, which was off-putting.
She had to talk to Jasper. As she made for the head of the table, she seemed to be drawing some odd looks.
More fool them, because she was Jasper’s guest. Jasper wasn’t even talking to Lady Alice anymore.
He was staring into his wineglass. Of course, because it was Emma he really wanted there.
She would make him happy. But when she reached his chair, his face was all wrong, like a stranger’s.
She’d never seen his forehead so rigid, or that twitching muscle in his jaw.
“What’s wrong?” Emma reached to stroke the line from his brow.
“Nothing.” He flinched away. “Just the ceremony after dinner. It’s complicated.”
“The one you have the bowl for?”
Emma drifted to the sideboard, ran her finger over the glass-smooth bowl. There were dark veins inside the stone. A candle guttered. Now the veins were crawling across the bottom. Horrible. Alive. Emma jumped back.
“What are you doing? Don’t touch that.” Jasper had her wrist, like a naughty child’s. “Go sit down until dinner’s over.”
Emma slid into her seat, chastened. He was being so different. As though something terrible hung over his head. His precious ceremony, perhaps. She only wanted to help, but he’d flinched from her. As though seeing her somehow made things worse.
Francis patted her hand. “We’re not supposed to stand until the president releases us. But here’s dessert, so it won’t be long.”
Emma’s stomach welcomed the news. Dessert was, at least, a reliably vegetarian course.
The gong crashed. A hand put down a plate. And Emma stared into the skull of a small animal. Otter, if she had to guess, by the extra-sharp molars. They’d turned the head upward, so the jaws yawned open. Its little eye holes had been stoppered with resin, so it made a cup for the brandy inside.
Emma tried to banish the memory of her otters dancing in the foam, at the bend in the river near Gabriel College.
It wasn’t Jasper’s fault. He couldn’t have imagined the caterers would use real animal skulls.
He would never have asked for that. Across from her, she saw Julia gingerly prodding the skull.
Disgust wrinkled her delicate nose. Farther down the table, Venetia was already holding hers up with a grin, testing the sharpness of the teeth against her thumb.
The table cheered as Jasper stood for the last time. “With our spirits”—he grinned—“we honor the Society.”
“Spirits,” said Hugo, sloshing the brandy. “Clever.”
“With flesh and bone and spirit,” Jasper continued, “we serve the Society of Turnbulls.”
“We serve the Society of Turnbulls.”
Jasper raised his skull cup. “The president says you may rise. The ceremony begins at midnight.”
He tossed back the brandy and grinned, wet-lipped. “Open house rules till then.”
The gong crashed a final time.
On her plate, the otter skull looked up at her in mute appeal. But Emma threw a napkin over it. She was at a party. It was time to enjoy herself.