Glamour in Glass (30 page)

“Yes, sir. However, I should let you know that I taught it to M. Chastain and some of his students while in Binché. None of them are Bonapartists, but this particular fold of glamour is out of the box.”

Wellington narrowed his eyes and Jane could see him adding that information to his calculations. “Well. Let us hope that Napoleon does not find that out.”

The mention of the Ogre’s name recalled to Jane’s mind what Lieutenant Segal had said to Anne-Marie. “There is one thing more to relate, and I am sorry not to have told you sooner. I heard Lieutenant Segal say that Napoleon will be here tomorrow.”

Startled exclamations sprang from the lips of every man in the tent. Wellington clapped his hands for silence. “Are you certain?” When Jane asserted that she was, and recounted spying the first troops on the road, he scowled and narrowed his eyes into an expression of fixed determination. “Then, if you will excuse me, this changes my preparation significantly. One of my aides-de-camp will see you back to Brussels.”

The Vincents rose. Jane could not stifle a groan as she did so, and another cramp wracked her stomach. Wellington exclaimed, staring in astonishment at the seat from which she had just risen. “Madam! Why did you not tell us you were wounded?”

Her cushion was covered in blood.

Twenty-five

Glamour and Rue

You must not imagine the horror which engulfed Jane as she stared at the seat she had so recently vacated, and at the blood which stained it, and as she became aware of how her trousers clung to her skin with more of that same blood. Nor should you imagine the guilt that overcame her sensibilities, or the heartbreak as Jane recognised that she had lost her child.

The activity around her buried these sensations in a whirl of confusion that left Jane all too aware of her own culpability. It overwhelmed her senses to the point of numbness. She could not look to Vincent. He was at once the source and the victim of her guilt.

The surgeon carried her away into the hospital tent as if there might yet be something that could be done, but Jane knew the damage had already occurred. She only lacked the knowledge of which of her actions had caused it. Had it been the glamour? The run through the fields? Their precipitous flight in the carriage and the jolt as they went off the road? Or was it woven from some combination of these threads? There was even the possibility that she, like her mother, was prone to trouble and might have lost the child regardless of circumstances, but Jane thought it unlikely that she could escape reproach so easily.

Beneath all of this guilt lay another, deeper layer of shame, for one of the first thoughts to go through Jane’s mind after apprehending that she had miscarried was that she could, at last, work glamour again.

The surgeon hastily erected an enclosure around her to protect her from the prying eyes of the men who worked in the tented hospital. Vincent was denied entry as the surgeon went about his business. For that, Jane was thankful, as it saved her from his disappointment.

The surgeon, used to dealing with soldiers, was perfunctory in his manner, but thorough for all that. There was nothing to be done for her child, and yet Jane submitted to his ministrations with her eyes closed while around her began the sounds of war.

*   *   *

Jane lay on a
camp bed, curled on her side in the borrowed dress of a captain’s wife. Where had once been life, a dull ache filled her from hip to bosom. Vincent pushed his way past the curtain that they had shielded her with. The deep sadness in his face was in no way masked by the evidence of his ill-treatment. Even bruised, the way his brows bent down and the corners of his mouth dipped broke the last reserve of Jane’s strength.

Her eyes burned and her throat knotted. She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in her hands rather than confront him.

“Oh, Muse.” The chair by the side of her bed creaked with Vincent’s weight. “Jane, I—” His voice broke and he rested a hand on her shoulder.

Jane could not bear his touch, but neither could she speak past the palpable guilt that clogged her throat. His ragged breaths told her all she needed to know of how he bore the news.

Vincent stroked her shoulder. “Jane, please forgive me.”

This plea opened her eyes. “Forgive you? This is none of your doing. Every person of sense implored me to take ship for England, but I would not. The guilt in this is entirely mine.” She rolled on her back, away from his hand, and put her arm over her eyes.

“If we had left when Napoleon first marched…” The seat creaked as Vincent shifted. “Reason told me to go then, but my pride kept me here.”

Outside the tent, a company marched past, feet tramping the earth in perfect rhythm. A horse whinnied in the distance.

Vincent cleared his throat. “You had no choice, in any event. We would have been discovered had you not masked us. I wish I had been equal to it, but your quick action saved us both.”

“I know!” Jane dropped her arm and the empty bitterness inside made her wish to expose all her flaws so that he truly understood her culpability. “I know I had no choice, but what does it say of my sensibility that my first sensation upon realizing the miscarriage was one of
relief
? What woman can see such gruesome evidence and think, ‘Thank god?’ Yes, husband, know that your wife values
glamour
more than our child.” Jane dug her nails into the flesh of her brow and groaned.

Vincent pulled her hands away and held them tight. “Jane, look at me.” She would have counted every fibre in the cotton ticking rather than obey that request, but he said her name again, with more force. “Jane. Do not torture yourself this way. To have had this passing thought is not unnatural and does not mean it is the whole of your reaction. That it repulses you tells me clearly that the greater part of your emotion is grief.”

Jane searched his face, beneath the bruises and the dark stitches over his right eye, for any sign of insincerity. Instead, she saw love.

The guilt, which she had held within her and cradled to her bosom like that lost child, broke into grief. As the first sob took her, Vincent pulled her to his chest, stroking her hair. “Jane, Jane … You will always be my muse, whether you are doing glamour, or a mother, or solely my wife. I shall honour you and keep you all the days of my life.”

Jane clung to him and wept until her lungs ached. Vincent held her until exhaustion took them both, and they slept, leaning against each other for support.

In the days that followed, the love which Vincent bore for her, and she for him, sustained them both. As Wellington clashed with Napoleon, the Vincents retreated to Mr. Gilman’s home in Brussels until recovery from their trials was sufficient to allow them to sail for England. Jane’s parents received them at Long Parkmead, and though Vincent had feared reproach for his part in Jane’s miscarriage, Mrs. Ellsworth showed rare compassion and tenderness, mourning for them without a word or implication of censure.

Thanks in no small part to their contribution to the war effort, Wellington defeated Napoleon soundly in the Battle of Quatre Bras. The war, so long trumpeted and feared, was over almost before it began, with little loss of English life. Though the specific reason was kept a secret from the general public, the Prince Regent made Vincent a Knight Commander of the Royal Guelphic Order for his service to the Crown, and would have raised him to a peer had the newly made Sir David Vincent not implored him otherwise. The Prince did, however, insist upon giving a dinner in honour of Sir David and Lady Vincent.

Jane suffered through the dinner, filled as it was with conversation which seemed commonplace and insipid after the erudite dinners at the Chastains. At the end of the meal, the Prince Regent excused the ladies. Jane resigned herself to the cliquish gossip that would follow and the near certainty of questions about her cropped hair. As she reached the door, the Prince Regent clapped his hands in anticipation. “Now, Sir David, what we all really want is to hear every bloody detail of the war.”

Vincent cleared his throat. “One moment, sir. Jane?”

She stopped in the door, all surprise. The gentlemen at the table had already begun to pull out their cigars, and fiddled with them impatiently.

“Yes, my love?”

“Would you care to stay?” Vincent held his hand out to her and inclined his head in a seated bow to the Prince Regent. “With your permission, sir, I have learned that it is to my folly to do anything without my wife.”

With pleasure, Jane took her place by her husband’s side. Together they related their story to the astonished gentlemen, who were forced to admit that Lady Vincent was a formidable woman and more than an equal partner for her husband.

Of this, Vincent and Jane had no doubt. And Jane? Jane discovered that a formal English dinner party was not a cause for dismay, but for delight—so long as she had her husband by her side.

Author’s Afterword

The morning after I won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, I met David Brin at Strolling with the Stars at WorldCon. It’s a lovely thing where established authors, artists, and editors walk along and chat with anyone who wants to do so. I’ve been a fan of David’s since the first book of his I picked up. He was very gracious to a baffled writer and asked me about
Shades of Milk and Honey
which was, at the time, unsold. After I told him about it, he asked, “What happens in your magic system if a woman is pregnant?”

What a good question. What a very, very good question. I hadn’t thought about it, but I started to do so. From that simple question came the basic idea for
Glamour in Glass
. It is a subject that Jane Austen did not touch on directly in her books, but you can see the effects that children have on a woman of her period by looking around the edges of her stories. Those attitudes had as strong an influence on Jane Vincent’s feelings about her “situation” as Mr. Brin’s question. I am indebted to them both for the kernel of the novel.

The errors are mine alone, but I had some useful assistance in reducing the number of those errors and would like to take a moment to acknowledge the people who helped me avoid the worst of the anachronisms.

Thanks to the Oregon Regency Society, who helped me get a better understanding of the period, as well as having lovely excursions and balls. I need to particularly thank Charlotte Cunningham and Nora Fosberg Azevedo for their friendship and support. Also thanks to Tara Ryan and Christian Valois for looking at the French details of the Empire and to Madeleine Robins, who gave the whole thing a last minute going over for period details. Mr. David Koch, a New York City carriage driver, took considerable time to talk to me about carriages and how the gait of a horse affects the ride.

Of course, I would be remiss if I did not thank my editor, Liz Gorinsky, who suggested the closing scene. My agent, Jennifer Jackson, is amazing and spots plot problems before I even start writing. The erstwhile Michael Curry, who turns up as Major Curry, is a perceptive reader and gives me very clear feedback, without coddling. Thanks as well to all those who make the book look good: the inimitable Irene Gallo, Tor’s art director; Cassandra Ammerman, my always able publicist; my copyeditor, Susan Andrew; production editor Elizabeth Curione; the wonderful cover artist Larry Rostant; and the cover designer, Jamie Stafford-Hill, as well as the book designer, Nicola Ferguson.

Writing a historical, even an alternate history, is always fraught with the pitfall of What Really Happened. The most difficult scene in this regard was when Jane rescues Vincent, because I had originally had Vincent held in a chicken coop. You see, I needed a way for him to be contained, yet able to be reached without going into shadow, and also plausibly somewhat obscured. The problem is that the book is set in 1815 and chicken wire wasn’t invented until 1847. There are times when I can fudge history, but this gap was too large, because if they had chicken wire, then there was a whole host of other technologies that they would have had as well. Attempting to come up with a different way to secure him, which met my constraints, drove me to distraction.

On the train to the 2009 World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, I had a conversation with Jim Fiscus, who helped me come up with the way in which Vincent could be held, as well as useful information about period military torture. Disturbing, useful conversations, and yet a relief in that it allowed me to continue on and use a trellis in place of my chicken coop. Then I discovered that this containment was too good.

I couldn’t come up with a way for Jane to plausibly save Vincent.

While chatting with then Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America President Russell Davis about SFWA business, we were both venting about writing. I explained my problem and he said, “You need to look at the environment and see what she could use as a distraction instead of having her try to create her own.” He suggested camp followers, who would certainly have been present. La! That got me out of the giant trap that chicken wire had laid for me.

Other thanks are due to Aliette de Bodard, who translated my English sentences into French for M. and Mme Chastain. After much consideration, I decided to use classic French rather than the dialect that would have been spoken in the region, so that more English readers would be likely to understand those passages. Also … well … I know Aliette, and I don’t know a Flemish French speaker. She also helped me find idioms for Jane to misunderstand. My lack of French was further aided by Lucie Le Blanc, who heard my plea on Twitter for a French idiom that meant “if it kills me” and came up with “même si je dois faire flèche de tout bois,” which means “if I have to throw sticks instead of arrows.” I quite adore that.

Thanks to all the folks who beta read this on my website, but particular thanks are owed to: Emily De Cola, Kate Baker, Kelvin Kao, Patty Bigelow, Jamie Todd Rubin, Chris Billet, Laurel Amberdine, Ami Chopine, John Chu, Jim Stewart, Jessica Wick, and Michael Livingston.