Chapter Three #2
I remained perfectly still, holding his gaze while in my chest, my heart continued to pound. What did he want with me? Was it on behalf of his friend—this Evans person—that he’d come? In pursuit of some kind of revenge?
“You must forgive my earlier criticisms,” Mr.Greaves continued when I said nothing.
“Your unfortunate decision to place your trust in Guillaume the valet aside, you’ve proven a rather difficult girl to track down.
” Lifting his chin higher, he frowned as if a new thought had occurred to him.
“What do you use on your hair, by the way? Mauveberry leaves?”
I blinked at the change in subject. “Boiled walnut.”
“Boiled walnut,” he echoed contemplatively. He was smirking again, and it irritated me—the way he regarded me like I was some sort of windup toy, as if all of this, my very presence, was horribly amusing to him.
As if sensing my thoughts, his expression wiped clean. “I am not sure how long you have dwelled on the Isle d’Eylau,” he said levelly. “There is a bird local to the capital called a lyrebird.” He quirked a brow. “Do you know it?”
Realizing he was awaiting my response, I shook my head once. No.
“Lyrebirds are expert mimics,” Mr.Greaves supplied helpfully.
“They survive by imitating creatures that they are not. You are evidently a silkwitch, and yet you go to great lengths to pretend otherwise—you have taken no husband, no prestige, for yourself.” He rested his elbows on his knees, placing his chin atop his steepled hands. “Why are you lying, lyrebird?”
His attention was unnerving, yet turning away felt akin to submission. “Perhaps I am not the marrying kind, sir.”
His chin bobbed atop his interlaced fingers. “Perhaps you are not as good of a liar as you think.”
The flush bit into me like a fever, unexpected and total, as if I’d been pulled into a patch of sunlight: exposed.
“I was not raised in wealth,” I heard myself admit, surprised when I realized, a moment later, that I was speaking the truth.
“After I moved to the Isle, I attempted to do as you’ve suggested—to enter the ranks of society, procure for myself a Weaver husband.
” I cleared my throat. “The women here did not hesitate to put me in my place.”
Mr.Greaves accepted my answer without reaction. “And the disguise?” he prompted. “Most girls of your kind cover their hair before marriage, but I have witnessed none willingto alter it as you have.”
“I adopted it shortly after it became clear there was no room in the marriage market for me,” I replied. “Shielding a prize implies its value. I prefer to erase it altogether and avoid tempting those who would cut it off.”
At that, Mr.Greaves hummed lowly, the verbal display of sympathy—of pity—from him so grating, it made me want to grind my teeth. “You were not raised amongst others like yourself, I presume?” he asked. “Other silkwitches?”
I hesitated as a tide of visions swept over me: endless flocks of sheep, the brooding bulk of the mountains watching dispassionately over their woolly backs; my uncle’s guilty smile, greeting me like an apology when I answered the door; the whisper of space that always blossomed between my mother and me when we were alone in a room together.
“No,” I forced out.
Another hmm , this one longer and weightier than the first. “And if I were to tell you that there was a way to join the so-called society ranks you mention,” Mr.Greaves said carefully, “to secure for yourself the marriage you have so far been unable to…Would you take it?”
I stiffened, my hand tightening around the reticule I still clutched at my side.
A way to join the…ranks. It was impossible to deny the fizz of desire that bubbled up at his words, and yet…
What could he possibly mean by his statement?
With the crimes I’d carried out on my clients’ behalf, I was certain they’d no sooner welcome me back into their social circles than a murderer would use their bloodied weapon to serve cake at tea—it was simply too incriminating.
And even if, by some miracle, they didn’t outright reject me, there was still the reality that there were only so many Weavers in Balmoore, and far too many silkwitches to compete over them.
My life since arriving on the Isle d’Eylau wasn’t glamorous by any means, but with my dyed hair and my wallflower existence, there was a chance, however slim, that the government would overlook me when I turned twenty-one and it came time to ship me to the cloisters.
If I shed my disguise and put myself forward as a silkwitch, that chance would wither along withit.
From his armchair, Mr.Greaves watched me without speaking, settling back into his seat.
For what felt like the dozenth time in the span of our encounter, I wondered if I should make my escape, the doorway lingering temptingly at my back, just waiting for me to reach out and grasp it.
But there was something about his manner that gave me pause.
His fingers were curved over his armrests as if in anticipation of my answer; beneath the thin, uncaring veneer he’d attempted to paste over his features, his expression was rapt, earnest.
He seemed anxious—desperate, even. Like there was a part of him that feared my response just as much as I feared him.
“I am not sure,” I said finally. “I suppose I would have to know more about the offer. And the person making it.”
My reply seemed to satisfy him—Mr.Greaves’s shoulders un-bunched, as if he were releasing a held breath.
“Would you sit?” he asked briskly, gesturing to the plush merlot sofa pushed up against the wall to his left.
When I hesitated, he sighed. “The standoff is finished, Miss Tamerlane,” he stated in a flat tone.
“I clearly have no intention of arresting you, and you are intrigued by me, else you would have left already. We have both shown our cards, and pretending otherwise is tiresome.” He nodded toward the sofa again, more entreatingly this time. “Please.”
I held my position at the threshold for another minute, debating whether to refuse him. Then again, he had a point. Whatever statement standing my ground might have made was meaningless when held up against the fact that I was standing anywhere at all, rather than running.
Reluctantly, I crossed to the sofa and sat down. The cushions sank around me, accommodating and impossibly soft. I tried not to moan at the small display of luxury, like a soothing balm after the hours I’d spent upright.
Not until I was firmly settled did Mr.Greaves speak again. “My surname is not Greaves,” he said from his seat. “It is Lear.”
At his statement, I straightened. Since being ejected from my first and only ball, I had not bothered to learn the names of many of Balmoore’s rich and powerful; still, a few had been impossible to avoid, and the one he’d just mentioned was amongst them. Lear. As in…
“As in Reginald Lear?” I asked aloud. “The Weaver politician?”
He nodded. “My father, yes,” he replied—somewhat bitterly, I noted. “And I am Eliot Lear—his son.”
His son. The proclamation was dizzying, like spotting a previously unseen cliff edge.
Reginald Lear’s—the politician’s—son. I’d attempted to rob the only living child of one of the most powerful men in the entirety of Balmoore, had tried to lift his watch fob , as if he were a common rake I could swindle. Lovett, you absolute fool.
Biting hard at the inside of my cheek, I observed the boy seated next to me anew.
Now that I knew what to look for, it was easy to spot traces of his father in him: The color of his skin, as well as that of his eyes, he must have inherited from his mother, but his strong, straight nose and high cheekbones were almost an exact match to the features I’d seen depicted in countless newspapers.
No wonder he’d been carrying a Woven object when I’d spotted him earlier.
To the son of a man like Mr.Lear, such an item must be no more than a trinket—a magical toy out of an overflowing chest.
Of the thirty or so Weaver lines that were currently active in Balmoore, the vast majority stayed well away from the mercurial realm of politics—some, like the Moreaus, found the bootlicking ways of its residents tasteless, while others were simply too rich to care.
Yet there was nothing in our nation’s laws which precluded sorcerers from governing, and of those Weavers who did take up the call to public service, none were as prominent—nor as controversial—as Reginald Lear.
He’d held his current position as a Councillor on Balmoore’s Virtuous Parliament since before my mother had fallen pregnant with me, though that fact in itself was not uncommon.
No, the whispers surrounding the Lears had little to do with Reginald’s stated agendas—and vastly more with who might be setting them.
A more powerful and secretive force, to which the Councillor acted only as a limb, like a hand stretching out of the dark—hiding the rest of its body in the murk.
And there was another aspect of the Lears’ infamy, too, of which I was aware. A more recent scandal, and a far more tragic one.
“Mr.Eliot Lear,” I repeated, rolling the name on my tongue.
Even the act of speaking it aloud felt dangerous, as if at the sound of it, Reginald’s great eye would sweep over the city to the place where I sat.
“A pleasure. Tell me, is your father familiar with your preference for locking unchaperoned young ladies in hotel rooms with you, Mr.Lear?”
Mr.Greaves— no, Lear , I mentally corrected myself—scowled at my question. “That door is not locked,” he said, motioning with his chin toward the room’s entrance. “We both know it would not hold you if it were, anyway. And no,” he went on after a brief pause. “He is not.”