The Hidden Goddess (52 page)

Gifts and Decisions

The next day, Stanton came for her early in the morning. He told her to fetch her hat and reticule, and put her into the Institute’s carriage. They rode to the train station, where the Institute’s private car was waiting for them, as overstuffed and elaborate as Emily remembered it. It was filled with flowers—masses of blush-colored peonies in heavy crystal vases. Emily settled herself onto a soft leather sofa; Stanton whuffed down beside her, dropping a silver and gold box onto her lap. It contained chocolates. He scooped out three for himself and held them in his hand.

“I’ve made three decisions and brought you three gifts. The chocolates are the first gift, but I mostly bought them because it didn’t feel right not having three.”

“Credomancers and their trines,” she teased. She removed a silky chocolate from a gold foil shell. “All right then, let’s have the decisions first. In order, so I can keep them all straight.”

“First, I’m keeping the Institute. Second, we’re eloping.” He popped two chocolates into his mouth at once. “No big ridiculous wedding, no orange blossoms, no authority muttering a bunch of nonsense over our heads. Jump straight to the honeymoon. Seems better that way, don’t you think?”

“Oh certainly. But I have to say, the second decision seems a bit at odds with the first.” Emily bit into her chocolate, sucking at the sweet cherry at its center. “If there isn’t a wedding, won’t you be missing out on a huge credomantic opportunity? And who’ll run the place while you’re gone?”

“There’s already been a wedding,” Stanton grinned at her. “Mrs. Zeno is going to run the Institute.”

“Mrs. Zeno?” Emily said. “I never knew there was a Mrs. Zeno!”

“There wasn’t, until last night at midnight,” he said. “Zeno married Miss Jesczenka in the conservatory. It was a beautiful ceremony. I wept.”

“And how precisely did Miss Jesczenka go about marrying an orchid?” Emily said, not even bothering to imagine how such a union might be consummated.

“Well, actually it was more a kind of a credomantic swindle than an actual wedding,” Stanton said. “By pledging herself to Benedictus Zeno, father of modern credomancy and founder of the Institute, she gains sufficient status to wield power on my behalf.”

“So she can take care of things while we’re off honeymooning and eating chocolate,” Emily said. “That sounds like a wonderful arrangement. How long are we going to be gone?”

“That’s the third decision,” Stanton said, his eyes glittering. “We’re never going back.”

Emily looked at him.

“But you said you’ve decided to continue as Sophos. How can you do that if you’re not in New York?”

“Another credomantic swindle,” Stanton said. “It’s not necessary to have Dreadnought Stanton running the Institute in the flesh, as long as the illusion of Dreadnought Stanton’s mastery can be maintained and exploited.”

“I don’t get it,” Emily said.

“It’s an arcane concept known as Syndication,” Stanton said. “ ‘Dreadnought Stanton will still be Sophos—he just won’t be me, and I won’t be him. They’ve bought all the rights to my name, and will pay me licensing fees for it in perpetuity. They’ll use it as they see fit.”

“They bought your name? But I was just starting to get used to it!”

“For the Institute’s purposes, Dreadnought Stanton will always be shrouded in mystery, never seen, always off on some grand adventure or another. Mystic Truth Publishers will
keep putting out books about him. But Mrs. Zeno will run the show.”

“What about the Stanton Agency?” Emily asked. “Don’t tell me she’s going to run the Institute and the Agency at the same time? What a lot of work!”

“I’m sure she can handle it all with briskness and dispatch.” Stanton smiled. “She’s the finest credomancer I’ve ever met.”

Emily nodded at the assessment and took another chocolate.

“I’ll have to pick an entirely new name, of course,” Stanton said. “Which brings us back to the gifts. Gift number two, to be precise. I’m leaving the choice of my new name up to you, since you seem to be so particular about it.”

“You’re going to let me choose your name? My stars, what’s gotten into you?”

“I’m in love,” he said. “Madly and unquestionably.”

“And no more secrets?” she said softly. “No more evil ex-lovers? No more bloated malevolent chunks of you hidden in remote locations around the world? No more Black Glass Goddesses who want to claim you for their own?”

“No more secrets,” he promised.

“All right, then,” she said. “What’s your middle name?”

Stanton, seeing how neatly he had been trapped, frowned at her. He took three more chocolates and chewed them vehemently, arms crossed. He steeled himself, but then abruptly lost his courage.

“I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t.”

“No more secrets,” she reminded him firmly. “And really, how much worse can it be? Aloysious? Percy? Lucifer?”

“Wordsworth,” he finally muttered.

“Wordsworth?” Emily drew her brows together. “Dreadnought
Wordsworth
Stanton?”

“After William Wordsworth, the tooth-squeakingly pretentious English poet who wanders lonely as a cloud. I must say, it doesn’t suit me at all.”

Emily refrained from commenting on that.

“William,” she said ponderingly. Then inspiration lit her eyes. “Will. That suits you perfectly!”

“Will Edwards,” Stanton spoke the name experimentally. “Sounds very matter-of-fact. I shall endeavor to acquire a sunburned neck to go with it.”

“Oh, stop it,” she said.

“Should I adopt the custom of chewing on a straw, or should I carry a plug of tobacco in my jeans pocket?”

“Edwards is a perfectly decent name,” Emily said frostily. “But, come to think of it, it’s not really my name, is it?”

“We could always use my mother’s maiden name, if you’d prefer.”

“Which was?”

“Van Breeschoten,” Stanton said.

“Edwards it is, then,” Emily said. “And the third gift?”

“You do like getting gifts, don’t you?”

“Who doesn’t?” She tumbled over him, feeling in his pockets. Empty candy wrappers scattered like jeweled petals. “Now give! What is it?”

Stanton wrestled with her, laughing. He pulled her down onto his lap, then reached into his pocket. He pressed a silver dollar into her hand.

“What’s this?”

“A silver touch-piece,” he said.

She turned it over in her hand.

“My last act as Dreadnought Stanton, Sophos of the Stanton Institute, was to create a touch-piece with the power to heal any decent, loyal servant who craves the blessings of his Sophos, even if he be the lowliest of peasant.”

“But I thought you couldn’t heal yourself.”

“I couldn’t, not until I relinquished my name. It was put to a magical trust. And this physical being you see before you ceased to be Dreadnought Stanton. Dreadnought Stanton still exists, but this person before you is not him. This person before you is the lowliest of peasants, craving the blessing of his Sophos.”

He took the silver dollar from her hand and touched it to his lips, closing his eyes with surprising reverence. Then he opened his eyes again and looked at it.

“Did it work?” Emily said breathlessly.

“I don’t know,” Stanton said. “I don’t feel any different.”

He snapped his fingers.

“Flamma,” he said.

Nothing happened. He looked at his fingers for a moment, then let his hand catch Emily’s.

“It worked,” he said softly.

“Then you are—”

“Cured,” Stanton said, nuzzling her neck behind her ear. “Completely and utterly unable to channel magic in any form.”

Emily twisted to look back at him, her heart trembling. She pressed her hand to his face and realized that indeed he was no longer hot. His cheek felt warm and pleasant.

“It’s done, Emily,” Stanton said, as if he could feel how hard her heart was beating. “I’m just who I am—no more, no less.” He was silent for a moment, and his face was slightly anxious. “Do you think it will be enough?”

Emily took his face between her hands and pressed her lips to his.

“It will be plenty,” Emily said. “But you’re sure you won’t regret it?”

“I’ll either regret it or I won’t,” he said.

The strange arrangement of words, the lack of utter conviction that she had come to expect from him, startled her. But then she realized that the uncertainty was one last gift—a gift he didn’t even know he was giving. Any other answer would be a credomantic gloss, a promise he didn’t know if he could keep. She flung her arms around his neck and hugged him tight.

“Thank you,” she whispered in his ear. “For taking the chance.”

When he looked at her again, his face had taken on a familiar polish. “I can tell you one thing with complete certainty. I won’t miss Rose Hibble running around after me all the time.”

“She was the first on my list for the root treatment,” Emily confided in a low voice, sliding her hands along his chest. She loosened his tie, slid it from around his throat, let it drop to the floor among the shining candy wrappers.

“That might have been satisfying,” Stanton said, his voice low. She unbuttoned his collar. Then she moved her fingers down the front of his shirt, one button at a time. “Miss Edwards, it appears that you’re unbuttoning my shirt.”

“I have some etchings to show you,” she murmured. She pulled the fabric free and ran her hands over his smooth chest. Her new right hand had such delicacy of feeling that she could feel the edges of the red birthmark, the mark of an outstretched hand. She pulled back curiously, stretching out her fingers to cover it.

“It matches perfectly,” she breathed, staring at it.

“I was born to be the consort of a goddess,” Stanton said, his chest rising and falling beneath her hand. “I’m just glad it turned out not to be one of black glass.” He pulled her close, his hands smoothing along her back.

“No corset,” he said, squeezing, his words a teasing whisper. “Skycladdische.”

“You’d better believe it,” she said, pressing her chest against his and covering his mouth with a kiss that tasted of chocolate.

“Wait,” he said, pushing her up a bit. “We can’t.”

She sat back, looked down at him, her eyes wide.

“You said we could jump straight to the honeymoon!” she protested. “Don’t you dare tell me you’ve changed your mind, and you’re going to get all persnickety now just because we haven’t had some goddamn authority say a bunch of nonsense over our heads!”

“Not at all,” he said, standing and sweeping her up into his arms. It was a rather undignified move, given the closeness of the car and the clutter of the decor, but he managed to accomplish it nonetheless. “It’s just that this railcar happens to have a bed. A very large and proper bed. That would be nicer, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Emily said, as Stanton bumped her head against a vase full of peonies, sending pink petals fluttering to the floor.

Epilogue

Several weeks later, each astride a frisking black Morgan that was displeased at having been pulled up to stand, Emily and Stanton sat looking down over a valley south of Sacramento. In the purpling summer twilight, with a gentle warm breeze stirring poppies and lupines, Stanton was moved to quote Wordsworth:

They were both silent for a moment, admiring the beauty of the valley and the resonance of the words. Finally Emily spoke.

“Didn’t think much of the girl walking with him, did he?” she said.

“Apparently not,” Stanton admitted. He directed her attention to a distant cluster of buildings. Barns, corrals, and other outbuildings stood scattered around a very large, pleasant-looking house with broad shaded porches. There were spreading oaks and flower beds and a vast kitchen garden plot that, even viewed from a distance, made Emily ache to plant something.

“Built by a cattle baron who went bust in the panic of ’73,” Stanton said. “Completely furnished, probably horribly. But there’s six hundred and forty acres with good pasturage and water—perfect for horses. It’s bordered on the west by the Sacramento River, very near Komé’s tribal settlement. We can bring her home to her daughter.” He allowed Emily to absorb the scene in a long silence before speaking again. “So, what do you think? Will it assuage the anguish of living in sin?”

Having engaged in vigorous and passionate debate while on their honeymoon trip from New York, they had arrived at the startling—and rather liberating—conclusion that the marriage itself was not at all necessary. Stanton no longer had a name to give, and taking Emily’s would have involved all the tedium of authority and nonsense they’d hoped to avoid. So, in the end, he had returned to her the simple gold band she had worn for so long, sliding it onto the ring finger of her new right hand. And she had given him a slow soft kiss. They were the only vows required.