Fateful (9 page)

“Why?”

“Because that will mean I’ve been initiated into the Brotherhood. They might have ways of forcing me to do it—Mikhail’s hinted at it before. If the Brotherhood can control me as completely as they claim after the initiation, then he could order me to murder you, and I’d do it.”

He looks me dead in the eye. He means it. Alec can’t swear that he wouldn’t kill me. There’s nothing I can say in response; I simply nod.

After a moment of terrible silence, Alec says, “I wish we might have met in different circumstances.” Then he pauses before he adds, “Thank you for keeping the secret.” Then he walks across the room to another of the booths, where he pulls out a small bundle—his clothes, I realize, set aside for the morning. But he’s obviously eager to be gone, and heads directly for the door, perhaps planning on sneaking up to his room to change.

I call to him, “The door’s locked. Remember?”

“I know.” Alec flashes me a grin that shows me just how handsome he could look, if he were ever happy and carefree. “I’ve got a key.” He unlocks the door and goes through, leaving it cracked open behind him.

He could have let me out when he first woke up. I can’t decide whether to be angry or laugh. My head spins from everything I’ve learned in the past few hours, from the fact that the world isn’t at all the place I thought it was—it’s a thousand times more dangerous and strange. As I walk over to fetch my own clothes, I’m practically sleepwalking.

But seeing my damp, crumpled uniform reminds me that I’ve got to put it back on. I have to return to first class, and in a hurry. Even after all this, I still have to go to the Lisles and get to work.

Chapter 8

I STRUGGLE BACK INTO MY EVENING UNIFORM, which is a wrinkled, damp mess, and dash out into the corridor, where I promptly run into a steward, perhaps the Turkish bath attendant. “Hello, what are you doing in here?” he demands.
Now
the staff shows up.

“Marvelous timing,” I pant. “I’ve got to get back into third class. Pardon me, would you?”

He doesn’t look amused, but I’m only asking to go back where I ought to be in the first place, so he lets me go. I take off at a run. On one hand, it seems almost absurd to be worried about angering Lady Regina, after I’ve learned that werewolves are real and at least one of them is eager to kill me. But not even that can make me forget that I want this to be my last week as a maidservant. If I’m going to start a new life in America, I need to be able to collect my last wages. Every penny counts.

And now I have even more incentive to get away: The sooner I leave the Lisles’ service, the sooner I will vanish from Mikhail’s sight.

Now that it’s daylight, I can see my way around better, and soon I’ve found my cabin. I dash through the door to find the rest of my bunkmates staring at me. The old Norwegian ladies are still tucked in, red-and-white blankets pulled up to their chins, but Myriam has already made her bed and dressed. She sits atop her bunk, vigorously brushing her hair, and when she sees me, she doesn’t miss a stroke.

“I’ve always heard how very proper Englishwomen are,” she says. “Who could have guessed I would get so much proof, so quickly?”

“I don’t want to hear a word about it.” Quickly I start stripping off my uniform—which is only for evenings. There’s another uniform for morning wear, and that, thank goodness, is still folded neatly.

“Oh, look.” Myriam’s still brushing, a smug smile on her face. “You made it home with your underwear. Well done.”

I glare at her, but I have no time to spare. If my cabinmates are waking up, the Lisles will be too, and I’ll be expected to have Irene all decked out before breakfast.

One of the old ladies looks at me through narrowed eyes, then mutters something to her sister—no doubt about how fast young girls are these days. To my surprise, her sister chuckles and says something knowing in reply; the first lady actually blushes. Though I don’t speak a word of Norwegian, I’d bet anything she just got a reminder that they were fast in their day, too.

“Really, it’s disgraceful . . .” Myriam’s voice trails off, and she stops brushing. She leans forward, studying my face more carefully, and her smirk vanishes. “My God. What happened to you last night?”

“Nothing.” But what a ridiculous lie. Myriam knows better already. “I can’t explain now.” As if I could ever explain.

“Has anyone harmed you?”

“I’m fine, I promise!” I groan as I look at my crumpled evening uniform. “Or I will be until Lady Regina sees this later on.” I’ll need to change in the afternoon, if I’m to look proper, but I haven’t any time to press it.

“Give that here,” Myriam demands. When I just stare at her, she repeats, “Give it to me!”

So I throw it at her, still hardly understanding. It’s not as though she can make it any worse.

Myriam inspects the fabric carefully. “It’s not dirty. Just wrinkled. I can use the iron on it this morning, get it ready for you.”

Using an iron is no fun—heating the heavy, cast-iron thing at a fire or stove, covering the handle with a damp cloth to try and keep from burning your palm, going over and over the wrinkles five or ten or twenty times each to finally get them out. It’s no small favor, and I’d never have predicted Myriam would offer. “I—thank you. Really.”

She tosses her thick hair. “It’s a good excuse to send a note to George. Ask him about the ship’s laundries.” But I don’t believe that’s all there is to it, and for the first time, I give her a true smile. It feels as though I haven’t smiled in years. Myriam doesn’t return it, instead cautiously spreading my uniform on her bunk, showing that cloth the kindness that she apparently doesn’t like to admit to.

Our cabin has no mirror, but what does it matter? I can see that my morning uniform looks right, and though my hair is undoubtedly a frizzy blond nightmare, it won’t matter once I get it pinned up and put on my linen cap, which by now I can do in seconds. “I’ll see you after lunch,” I say.

The mere mention of food makes my stomach rumble, and all at once I realize I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday. Fear had banished my hunger, but now it comes back, so hard I nearly swoon.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Myriam’s face suggests that I must have gone pale, too.

“I will be.” I hope it’s true.

Thank God for Miss Irene. When I arrive in her room, she offers me some sweet cakes from a tin. “I thought you might’ve missed dinner last night,” she says as I gobble one down. “Mother kept you so dreadfully late.”

“You’ve got to stop sympathizing with the servants, miss.” I hate to say it, but it’s true. “The two of us get on, but when you run your own house, if you worry this much about everyone who works there, they’ll run roughshod over you.”

Even at Moorcliffe, we already know that if a mistake must be admitted, it’s best to admit it to Irene first. She’ll plead with her parents on our behalf—which is useless with Lady Regina, but sometimes works on the Viscount. For every one of us who respects Irene for her kindness, like Ned and me, there’s another who thinks her weak for it. If there were no higher authority in the house, no doubt half the staff would pay her orders no attention at all.

“I don’t want to think about that now.” She looks so pale, so drawn. I want to ask her if she’s well, but at that moment, Lady Regina glides in—already turned out to perfection by the damnably efficient Horne. Hurriedly I turn away, as if examining Miss Irene’s wardrobe, and lick the last of the crumbs from my lips.

“Still dawdling, Tess.” Lady Regina sounds more annoyed than angry; it’s Irene she’s focused on this morning, not me. “Irene, I want you in the yellow dress today. It’s so fresh and delicate.”

That pale yellow washes Irene out until she looks sickly. I venture, “Maybe the pink, milady?”

“It’s not your place to argue with me,” Lady Regina snaps. “You think I don’t know what’s best for my own daughter? Or that I don’t understand the latest fashions better than some servant?”

I think you keep trying to dress your daughter in the colors that suited you when you were young, without ever asking yourself if Irene needs something different.
“Yes, milady.”

Irene sighs, so softly her mother doesn’t hear. But I do.

Lady Regina remains in Irene’s room throughout the entire process, critiquing everything I do—from whether Irene’s shoes have been polished brightly enough (even though they reflect back as well as a mirror) to how I comb her hair (too gently for her taste, as if ripping at the poor girl’s scalp would somehow magically make her hair curl). But the worst of it is how Lady Regina keeps on at Irene—and what she keeps on about.

“We ought to have had Layton travel separately from us,” Lady Regina says. “He might as easily have come over on the
Lusitania
.”

“It would be less embarrassing,” Irene agrees, as I slide the white silk hose up her leg. “He really did get dreadfully drunk at dinner last night, Mother. Can’t you speak to him about not having so much wine?”

“Layton is a young man. Young men have their foibles. Only the most foolish sort of woman tries to break a man’s spirit. When the time is right, Layton will take a wife and behave properly,” Lady Regina says, as if marriage ever made a man change. But she sounds weary; Layton’s dissolution the past two years has tasked even her patience with her favorite child. “Once again you’ve completely failed to understand my meaning, Irene. Are you so blind to the opportunities we would have, were we women traveling alone? Any number of gentlemen onboard would have offered us their protection.”

The idea is that women can’t possibly manage traveling on their own, so when they have to, men usually offer their “protection.” This means that they’ll arrange social introductions, dine with the ladies at meals, so on and so forth. A friendly enough custom, though I notice it applies only to gentlewomen; a poor girl or a servant like me can be sent on any number of difficult errands alone, and none of these men will think to “protect” me from lifting heavy boxes, or from the jeering of sailors.

“Howard Marlowe would certainly have offered.” Lady Regina watches as I hold out the skirt of the pale yellow dress for Irene to step into. “Then you would have been sure of spending every meal dining beside his son.”

My hands fumble with the buttons on the back of Irene’s dress at the mention of Alec. I keep my face very still.

You have to stay away from him, Irene. Because he’s dangerous in every way that a man can be dangerous. Because he’s a monster. Because he could destroy you and your family, all of us, by bringing us closer to the Brotherhood.

An even smaller voice within my mind adds,
Because you don’t really know him, and I do. I understand him.

I want—
No. Not even in my mind will I allow myself to finish that thought.

“Alexander Marlowe showed me no special attention, Mother.” Irene suddenly seems very interested in her skirt, smoothing the fabric with her hands; it’s as good a way as any of avoiding her mother’s eyes. “He’s certainly a very eligible young man, but I don’t see why he more than any other—”

“Do you not see the need for haste, Irene? Truly, after all that has happened?” Lady Regina’s expression is very strange. Were I to see it on anyone less formidable, I would say she looked . . . sad.

Irene hangs her head, and she actually sways a little on her feet. I balance her elbow with my hand, but otherwise I give no sign that I can hear this conversation, or notice anything in the room but her appearance.

Servants are sometimes thought to be deaf, blind, mute, and stupid—or so you’d guess, to judge by what lords and ladies will say in front of us. We can choose not to listen, but we listen often enough. I was telling the truth when I said to Alec that nobody knows more about the secrets of a household than its staff. Probably this is Lady Regina’s way of referring to the reduced circumstances of the Lisle family, and the need for Layton and Irene to marry as well as they can.

And yet Lady Regina’s voice was so strange, and Irene is so shaken—

“You must marry,” Lady Regina says as I tie a broad lace sash around Irene’s tiny waist, emphasizing what good features I can. “You must marry soon. If you won’t pursue the most eligible young man fate has offered you, then whom will it be?” Her eyes flash, and there’s something dangerous in the room, something I don’t fully understand. “Who is good enough for you, Irene?”

“I’ll try harder,” Irene promises. She sounds close to tears. “I promise.”

As I kneel on the floor to button Irene’s shoes, Lady Regina continues on, as blithely as though she’d been in a lovely mood all morning. “Alec Marlowe would do quite well. Marlowe Steel is a fortune to rival that of the highest English nobility. True, they’re Americans, but one can’t have everything.”

“What else do you know of him, Mother?”

Not as much as I know of him
, I think. How would Lady Regina react if she knew who—no,
what
—she wanted her daughter to marry?

“Not very much. Naturally one hears more about the father. Tess, her hair isn’t right at all; do it over. Let’s see, Alexander Marlowe. He was attending one of the better American universities before the family moved to Paris. Presumably he took up studies at the Sorbonne. There was a hint of scandal not long ago—”

I realize I’m holding my breath.

“—something about that French actress Gabrielle Dumont. That ended badly.” Lady Regina shrugs. “But as I said before, young men have their ways. No doubt he’s returning to his home country with thoughts of joining his father’s steel business and finally starting a family of his own.”

I remember Alec as he looked this morning, his expression bleak, his profile outlined by the dawn light. He wants to set his father free. He wants a cabin on the frontier where he can harm no one. He’s nothing like the dream Lady Regina is chasing.

And yet, Lady Regina knew something about him that I didn’t. As I fix Miss Irene’s hair all over again, I wonder who Gabrielle Dumont is. A French actress. Sounds glamorous. I wouldn’t have thought Alec would find it easy to run around with women, as he changes into a wolf every night. Yet any young man as handsome and rich as he is would attract female attention.