Chapter 6 #2
Nic found his mother in her dressing room, a soft, scented space with a view of the overgrown rose garden through numerous narrow windows, each tipped with wrought-iron flowers.
Despite Silla’s warning, the duchess appeared to be in no hurry.
A dozen little boxes of perfumed powder sat open before her, while she hummed and plucked the petals off a flower in a gold-painted vase.
“Oh, Nicholas,” she said, far more musically than she ever managed to hum.
“How nice of you to come.” Though she often seemed to look right through him, her smile held genuine pleasure as she turned to face him.
Soft curls danced across her brow and the fabric of her dressing robe hushed as she moved.
Ethereal, he had heard her beauty described, and though Nic had been told he looked like her, his mirror reflected none of her sweetness.
“You make it sound like I never come to see you,” he said, dropping into a chair. “When in truth I am here so often you must surely want rid of me.”
A shadow flitted across her face and Nic wished he had spoken more carefully. One never knew what might set off one of her moods.
“What party are you dressing for, Mama?” he said to retrieve her smile.
It returned with a tremble. “The Haywards are giving a ball. I did tell you, dear. You were included on their invitation, as always.”
“That is very kind of them. Do give my apologies. Unfortunately, I have work I must tend to.”
“Oh!” She swatted his leg. “You remind me. Silla? Silla. Fetch that sweet little timepiece Nicholas made that stopped working.” Turning back to Nic, she added, “I’m not sure what happened to the poor thing, but I’m afraid it needs some love.”
She liked his creations, each one receiving pride of place on one of the many tables throughout her rooms—her aesthetic half bright florals and half clockwork trinkets.
The one Silla returned with was a small frog with a clock set into its belly, its inner reel making it croak the time.
Nic took the metal creature from her hands.
One of its legs was all but detached. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
“Although it might not be worth the effort. Probably none of it is, but it’s good to keep busy. ”
“And I like having them about me, each a little friend.” The duchess spoke brightly, her cheer so fragile he didn’t want to shatter it with his own troubles, yet the frog in his hand was made from all the same parts as the automaton he and Leaf had run from in the style wing.
“You’re good at what you do, Nicholas.”
Nic looked up, catching a hint of lucidity in his mother’s gaze. It unnerved him as much as her encouraging words, and he fiddled with the loose trim on his chair. “How nice it would be if my father ever thought so.”
“You are not enough his son.” She reached out, her hand a trembling butterfly unsure it could make the distance. “He doesn’t understand you.”
Nic wished he hadn’t spoken the thought that so often filled his mind. Better to drown in it than risk cutting his hurts deeper. Or hers.
He squeezed her hand in gratitude, searching for a more cheerful subject, but her eyes were already glazing over as she escaped somewhere he could not follow.
“What do you know about the automata in the style wing?” he said, before he lost her completely.
“Automata,” she said vaguely, and turned to pat her dressing table, searching for the diary that was never far from her hands.
She pulled it close, and its spine cracked as she opened it to the most recent page.
“No. No, I need you here for me,” she said, shaking her head as she dipped her quill and began writing.
Nic tensed. He had sent her into the darkness and now had to tread carefully. Or escape. He knew which was easier.
With a creak of stiff padding, Nic rose from the chair, broken frog in hand.
“I should let you get ready for your party, Mama.” He planted a kiss upon her cheek and, disgusted at how relieved he felt to be able to escape, headed for the door.
Only to stop and turn back, an unasked question burning on his lips.
“Did one really kill Uncle Francis? An automaton?”
She flinched and stopped writing, leaving ink bleeding into the paper.
“Mama?”
“You said something, my love?”
“I asked about Uncle Francis.”
Dropping the quill, she returned to plucking petals from her flower, letting each fall onto the diary’s ink-covered pages. “The house hated him. It hates all of us.”
“Did it hate Rowerre, too?”
Silla cleared her throat as a flicker of confusion stilled the duchess’s hand. Of course no one had told her.
“Time to go, Master Nicholas,” Silla said, opening the door.
Nic hesitated, but as his mother snatched up her diary once more, he wished her farewell and fled, prey to the fervent wish he hadn’t come at all.
What had he expected? A detailed explanation of a family history both his parents avoided?
A sensible conversation about his worries and the grief that twisted inside him?
To be able to rant about Dashiell trying to slide back into his life like he had never left?
No. Her ability to help him had disappeared a long time ago.
With their party having shrunk to just the two families and their head negotiators, dinner that night was a far smaller affair.
In the lesser dining room, Nic found himself seated with Lady Leaf on his left and Lady Radlay on his right—a position far enough from his father that he might have celebrated, had Dashiell not been seated opposite.
The young man did his duty by his own dinner companions, but once or twice Nic caught the vowsmith throwing a concerned glance his way.
Dinner itself was sumptuous—far finer than anything Nic had ever eaten in his own home.
The soup was replaced with a first course consisting of a glazed ham, a fricassee of chicken and mushroom, crimped cod with oyster sauce, a roast sirloin of beef, two pies of some kind, any number of vegetable dishes, and a whole army of sauce boats.
Nic wished he felt hungrier, but his mind was too busy chewing over problems—the automaton that had known his name, the strange figure from the garden, and why someone might have pushed Rowerre down the stairs.
During the first course, both Leaf and Lady Radlay were occupied with other conversations, leaving Nic to his thoughts and Dashiell’s increasingly frequent glances.
They were all solicitude—enraging after nine years of silence had made them strangers.
Nic ignored them—ignored everyone—until with the arrival of the second course, Lady Radlay turned her attention his way.
“I hear you had quite the entertaining afternoon, my lord,” she said, spiking fear that Leaf had told her friends more than she ought. “Almost I wish I had joined you,” she added in a lowered voice, throwing a meaningful glance Lady Theresa’s way.
“I think perhaps the enjoyment has been overstated,” Nic replied. “Though it was nice to get to know your cousin a little better.”
“How true. I had only met Lord Radlay once before we married, and never had a private conversation. It takes some getting used to—suddenly living with someone you don’t know. And then to living all by oneself within a few years.”
“I am very sorry for your loss.”
Lady Radlay waved this off with a dismissive fork. “Given he was far more interested in his horses than me, I hardly knew him, so it was not so great a loss. Ah! But I hope you will not tell my stepmother I said so.”
“I shall certainly do no such thing. I didn’t know him either—Lord Radlay. But then I don’t know anyone except by their name in the peerage.”
“I cannot decide if that is a blessing or a curse, and so instead I will say how lucky for you that now you know me.” Her eyes danced with amusement, and they spent the next ten minutes flirting delightfully over the syllabubs.
As the second course was removed, Castor came by, topping up their wineglasses.
“I think I might do some exploring of my own tomorrow,” Lady Radlay said. “I noticed a pavilion in the middle of your lawn earlier and had quite the urge to see it. What a strange location for a pavilion, I thought. Was it built for something in particular?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Nic said, swallowing memory of what he and Dashiell had used it for one sultry afternoon in high summer.
Stripped to their shirtsleeves, flicking water from the stagnant fountain at one another had become wrestling, which had become inexpert but enthusiastic kisses that left them raw and breathless.
And an awkward walk back to the house full of subtle touches and lingering smiles.
“Well, perhaps you could take me out there tomorrow if the weather turns fine,” Lady Radlay said. “Though I suspect we will be cursed with rain.”
“I like rain,” Nic said, thoughts still elsewhere.
“But good heavens, my lord, why?”
“It makes music.”
He hadn’t thought before speaking, but in the aftermath of his words, Nic found his gaze drawn across the table to Dashiell. Their eyes met.
“Listen, can you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“The music.” Dashiell had pressed his nose to the cold glass as they watched rain fall upon the gardens. “Rain is like music falling from the sky.”
“That’s beautiful,” Lady Radlay said.
And although Nic didn’t answer, he couldn’t but think of that young man with his nose pressed to the glass and recall he had said exactly the same thing, when what he’d really wanted to say was “You’re beautiful.”
For a beat longer than felt proper, their gazes held, before Dashiell looked away.
“Oh? Well, I would like very much to see a ghost,” Leaf said, drawing attention from all along the table. “Do tell me what you have seen.”