Chapter 19
Chapter
Henry Stanton was proved a liar yet again.
Nothing formal, he’d said. Ha.
Our coach rumbled down the long stone drive to Henry’s estate.
A row of willows was planted on either side of the road, their drapery twined with strands of mirror shards that glittered and tinkled pleasantly as the night breeze stirred the leaves.
Music drifted on the wind, too, the energetic strains of pianoforte and raucous laughter.
At least I no longer needed to worry that I was overdressed.
The gown I’d changed into for the evening was a deep sapphire blue embroidered with tiny stars across the bust and hem.
It was cut below my collarbone, across my shoulders, and had puffed sleeves and a full skirt that swished when I walked.
Elizabeth and Catherine had agreed that I looked like a princess.
But despite the gown and the glitter of it all—and because of it—part of me was already regretting the whole venture.
I was nervous. I’d wanted to be part of things—that was why I’d come to London, wasn’t it?
But it was still nerve-racking. This was another world from my seaside town.
It felt like I was about to step foot on another planet, with only hope that I’d be able to breathe the air.
At least Buckland was in a good mood. Presenting Ajax had been more successful than I think he’d imagined. Even a journey to his archenemy’s home couldn’t deflate his spirits.
I tried to keep my own disappointment about Lucy’s absence in check. She hadn’t come to Palmanaeus House for Ajax’s reveal, and she hadn’t returned to Buckland’s in time for our departure. She hasn’t seen Edgar in almost a year, I reminded myself. Don’t be churlish.
As for Ajax, we’d left him behind in his golden cage.
I hadn’t realized we would be leaving him at Palmanaeus House overnight until Buckland began turning off the reliq-lamps and Ajax started screeching and fluttering around the cage.
I’d just assumed Ajax would be coming back to Buckland’s house.
But Buckland had plans for converting a permanent place in the exhibit hall, and said there was no point moving him until then.
It made logical sense, but I couldn’t very well explain it to Ajax in those terms. He just knew I was leaving him, yet again, in a dark and unfamiliar place.
Elizabeth Buckland had looked almost as sad when we left her behind.
“You’re so lucky. Women never, ever get to go to these geomagical receptions,” she’d said, sighing, while plaiting my hair over the crown of my head. “Not even when Father hosts them here.”
Henry’s Heronstone Manor came into view: a sprawling red-brick house, white columns at the entry and climbing vines curling toward a slate roof. A row of coaches was parked out front in a neat line, and footmen swarmed as our driver pulled to the back of the queue.
I wasn’t sure what protocol was—I’d never even seen a house so fine, let alone been invited inside—but clearly Buckland knew how to do this sort of thing. I told myself not to be a country fool and followed the butler up the stairs.
He led our party through the open wood-and-iron doors and then into a cavernous great hall, where I couldn’t help but catch my breath.
We were greeted by a curving double staircase, like twin scrolls unfurled to the marble floor.
Sunbursts of flowers, lush as summer, decorated the railings with ribbon, and a chandelier of glass and reliq-lamps hung from the ceiling and cast gold sparkles across the room.
A servant took my coat as I stood struck and silent, and then Henry Stanton was striding toward us from the open set of doors between the staircases.
“Ah, Professor,” he began, and then he stopped short, almost stumbling, and the usual ever-present smirk slid off his face. “Mary.”
I looked around, then down at my blue dress, afraid I’d done something terribly wrong. Maybe I was overdressed. Or maybe he was expecting me to bring Ajax?
But before I could work it out, Edgar Murray, Viscount Merlton, strode into the room, Lucy bouncing beside him.
“Surprise!” Lucy exclaimed.
“Mary, my dear!” Edgar clasped my hand. “You didn’t really think we’d miss your great triumph, did you?”
Unlike Henry, who even I could admit was unnaturally good-looking, Edgar had never been handsome.
But Edgar Murray had never met a situation he wasn’t certain he could improve—his appearance included.
His dark-blond hair was stylishly arranged to hide the top of his ears, and the double-breasted brocade waistcoat made him look broader-chested than he really was.
“Now, if you’ll follow me”—Henry gestured—“the festivities are out back in the gardens.”
“Should I collect my coat?” I looked around for the servant who’d taken it.
“It’s terribly ostentatious.” Lucy sighed, looping her arm through mine. “But no, you don’t need a coat. Henry’s done something to the air—”
“It’s my working, actually,” Edgar said, raising his index finger.
“And an ingenious one, too.” Henry clapped him on the shoulders. Edgar had improved at concealing his thoughts over the last fifteen years, because the tightening around his eyes was almost imperceptible, except that I knew to look for it.
Edgar fell in beside me as we walked through the ballroom, which was more sumptuous even than Buckland’s, gilt and landscapes painted on every wall. “I’m glad you’ve finally come to London. It will be refreshing to converse with someone who can keep up.” He smiled.
I felt a wave of something like vertigo, thinking about the last time the four of us were together—a gang of lonely children with the whole of life before us, glittering and gold.
Before my own dreams turned to ash.
I tried to squash the resentment curdling under my ribs. I didn’t want to be angry with Edgar. I had never asked him to choose my friendship over Henry’s—just as I’d never asked Buckland. It was Henry who’d shattered my heart and left me behind, a discarded sacrifice to his own shining future.
I smiled back. “I was actually going to write to you—have you read Deontolomagica, on Ethics?”
“Have I read it?” Edgar snorted. “I gave Bentham the idea. What is a good action? You see, it depends on one’s definition of good.”
I didn’t especially care; I just knew Edgar would enjoy the subject.
The walls were decorated with nearly as many fossils, skeletons, and mounted exotic creatures as there were paintings—at just a quick glance, I spotted a snarling polar bear in the corner, a plesiosaur spine, a stuffed dodo bird, and a deerlike creature with curled devil horns.
Three geomagicians lounged on couches at the back, deep in earnest discussion, the air around them thick with cigar smoke.
But the back wall was wholly glass, and Henry and Lucy were telling the truth: the party was, somehow, being held outside, despite the April chill.
The garden trees had the same mirror-shard strands as the drive, scattering the moon and reliq-lamplight in dappled silver across the spiraled stone of the patio.
“…and the highest good, therefore, would be that action or moral decision which achieves the most good for the most people—”
“Why, it’s an ammonite,” I exclaimed, interrupting Edgar as I recognized the full shape of the patio.
“Nature’s golden ratio.” Henry turned. He’d been listening. “Mary, would you like a quick tour of the grounds?”
I didn’t want to give Henry the satisfaction, but I couldn’t resist. Buckland declined and went to join a small cadre of geomagicians, but Lucy, Edgar, and I followed Henry onto the grass.
His house—his estate, rather—was like something from a dream.
The air was enchanted to be warm as mid-July, and coats and jackets were strewn across the lawn.
Men gathered in small groups, on chairs and chaises and standing in huddles, and I caught snatches of conversation as we walked, gossip about recent geomagical finds, debates about theory, and discussion of fossil-hunting methods.
My urge to leap in was tempered only by my desire to absorb all the rest.
Glowing orbs—not reliq-lamps, but simply amorphous, flickering balls of pure yellow light—floated overhead, buoyed on slow currents of air.
And no one was playing the instruments. They’d been enchanted to play themselves: a jaunty pianoforte pressing its own keys, and a harp plucking its own strings.
Violins and cellos floated in midair, bows gliding across the strings on their own.
Someone handed me a crystal glass of some kind of port, so warm and sweet I had to be careful not to drink it all at once. I wanted all my wits about me tonight.
“It’s obscene,” Lucy chided Henry as we followed him through the greenhouse, where ripe oranges shimmered like jewels.
“How many reliqs does this take, just to keep these trees alive in the dead of winter? And those floating reliq-lamps. How many men and women gave their magic to light your vanity moons, hmm?”
I hadn’t been thinking in those terms, but of course Lucy was. This kind of luxury would require extraordinary amounts of stored magic, probably thousands of reliqs. Even running this home on a day-to-day would require a huge number of reliqs.
The poor sold our magic to the slicks, and the rich bought it, and that was just how things worked.
But I’d never thought much about what the rich did with their reliqs.
In all the years I’d heard Lucy rant and rage about the unfair economics of reliquary trade, I clearly hadn’t been creative enough to imagine harps and floating orbs, all enchanted with the reliqs one of us peasants would otherwise have used to start our hearth or repair a ripped seam.
But Henry didn’t flinch. “Seven men and women, to light them all, and most of the rest of this, besides. One manifold reliq filled at the Glasswater Mill, and voila”—he gestured with one hand, the light sparkling in his champagne flute—“all of this.”