Copperhead (17 page)

“For all my grand plans, what ended up happening was I would go down to the tenpence dance hall to drown my misery. Women no charge, you know. And the more you promise and flirt, the more men buy you coffee and pastries and bring you little tokens like scarves and so on. I became very good at promising and flirting. I mean, it’s my natural bent anyway, I suppose. We can’t all have high-minded skills.

“And there I was in a white dress with a green sash and I met Alistair.” She smoothed her lilac gloves over each finger, feeling the outline of the manicured nails below. “I’m always making up for not going into battle,” she said. “For not helping to kill the fey before they killed Charlie, and through him Mother, and nearly destroyed Jane.”

Rook stopped there on the sidewalk. They were half a block from the house, Alistair’s house. The gaslight flickered in the wind. She was watching the unreadable words on his face, so she didn’t notice his hand move until it was there, brushing one copper curl off of her cheek. Then it was gone, leaving her stomach with a funny bottomed-out feeling and the thought that perhaps she had just imagined his hand moving and it was only the wind.

“Never be sorry that you could not kill,” Rook said.

Ice formed on her breath as she stood there, until gold light came on in the windows of her house, and panic rose up. Helen turned from him then, and walked, faster and faster till she was racing up the stairs to her door, wind pulling water from her eyes. She tugged open the front door and hurried in but she had to look back. Rook was still there, a slim black outline in the cold.

Rook. Rook.

And she turned.

Alistair. Alistair.

The foyer was faintly lit with the light from the open door to the games room; the smell of a wood fire drifted down the hall. She closed the front door silently behind her. The air in the tiled foyer was chill and damp. She could try to make it to her room. She could confront him now and get the lecture over with.

Or perhaps she could brazen it out, though her cheeks were red-pink with cold, though the cold rose off her in waves. Still. Why not? She stripped off her coat and outer things, shoved them under the hall table, and glided on stockinged feet down the cherrywood floors of the hall to peek inside his games room.

Alistair was drunk.

He was by the fire, which glinted off his curls. His long legs were propped on the table on a pile of newspapers; his hand hung loose over the leather club chair with a partial glass of whiskey in it.

Just as quietly, Helen began to tiptoe away. But not quietly enough.

“That you, doll?” said Alistair.

Helen crept back in. She was going to brazen it out, wasn’t she? Be a good liar, like Tam had said he was. A lump caught in her throat as she thought of the boy stuck with Grimsby and the men tonight. Was his father even now filling that small head with tales of rage and revenge?

“I wondered if you were still up,” Helen said.

He stared moodily over his glass into the fire. “All white she was. Is. Still,” he said. Yes, very drunk. “But we dragged Grimsby away from there.”

“To get drunk?” she said. The words just slipped out.

Alistair sloshed to his feet, arm over the top of the chair to look at her. “Yes, to get drunk,” he said, making his point with a waving finger. “You wouldn’t deny him that, would you? Course you would, coldhearted witch, no fun at all…”

Helen was stung by this sudden attack. “Don’t I go to all the parties with you?”

Alistair waved this away. “Not what I mean. Your sister, always looking at me as though I weren’t fit to black your shoes. As if I hadn’t rescued you.” He cupped his hands and opened them in an expansive gesture, spilling the rest of the whiskey onto the shining floor. Bitter alcohol scented the fire-warmed air.

Helen did not care to talk about this, and particularly not with this version of Alistair. “You should go to bed,” she said. “I’ll send George in to clean.”

“Bed?” he said. “You don’t tell me when to go to bed. Unless you’re coming.”

“No, thank you,” said Helen. She prepared to make her escape, but his voice rose a level and stopped her.

“You don’t tell me what to clean,” he said, and opened his hand, letting the whiskey glass smash to the floor.

Now Helen did back up a step.

“You should have heard them all last night,” hissed Alistair. “Talking about your sister. My fault for taking her in. My fault for not throwing her on the street immediately. Your connections. Dragging us down.” He advanced. “Insinuating I can’t run my own household.”

Helen’s heart beat wildly. Social drinking she could understand; everyone did it. Sometimes you accidentally drank too much and regretted it the next day. But not these frightening rages—and they had been coming more and more frequently. Her hand felt along the doorframe for something to shield herself, but there was nothing, and she was exposed in his glare as he advanced.

“Stop it,” she said, but Alistair reeled on her, flush with drink.

“Where have you been?” he said, and there was a keen edge to his words.

“Out,” Helen said. Her hands trembled as she turned, but she would not cower in front of him. She had made her choice. He had been charming and handsome and sure and she had thought she must very probably love him. And it had made so much sense … hadn’t it? Jane had her career, her plans, but Helen had nothing except her face, and that face was supposed to land her her fortune. Which was Alistair Huntingdon, her charming white knight coming to save her.

His face reddened further as she turned away. “Out with that man on the street? That …
dwarf
?”

Helen froze, the ugly slur ringing in her ears. He had seen them.

Alistair’s smile was cruel. He had her. “Yes, I saw you. Barefaced and brazen, out walking with Grimsby’s pet dwarf,” he said. “Did he tell you he’s an informant for us? Where’d you find him—when you sneaked off to find Jane? Or were you slumming with the dwarves? Mixing, mingling, rutting?…”

“Don’t suppose it’s any of your business,” she said, and felt the country drawl that irritated him slip out.

She was cold and he was hot. He grabbed her wrist and sleeve, stumbled as she jerked. A button tore off as she pulled away, as she slipped and fell on the polished floor. Her hand skidded on the broken whiskey glass.

“I paid for you,” Alistair spat. “Paid for your face.”

Helen closed her eyes, clutching her injured hand to her chest, wishing she could close her ears against the torrent of abuse that flowed from his lips. Accusations, true and fair, she knew like a knifepoint in the ribs. Her eyes opened on that thought, that even if they were true and fair it hurt, it hurt, and she could not stand it. She clutched the copper necklace he had given her so tightly, her cut palm painful against the cold snake heads.

He was ranting and everything Frye had confessed to poured into her thoughts. Helen stared at Alistair and thought, You will apologize now. You will tell me you still love me. That things will be all right.

She did it more on a miserable whim than anything. More on a fragile wish that things could be as they were. As she had seen him when she first met him, that shining white knight. Wielding the fey power to change someone was hard; Jane had said so frequently. Frye had said she studied for a long time.

She did not expect Alistair’s eyes to go glassy as she clutched her necklace, willing him to change. For him to turn and say, “Forgive me, Helen.”

Chapter 8

THE HYDRA STRIKES

Helen backed up a pace as he moved closer, stumbled, sat down in the leather club chair.

“I am being too harsh,” Alistair said, and again, “Forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” Helen said automatically, for wasn’t this what she had wanted? Alistair leaned in, half-smiling, and yet … some hesitation, some lurch in his walk recalled that dead farmer, a mask for a fey.

“I love you,” he said. He dropped to one knee beside her and took her hand, a simple, caring gesture. “I have been too busy to spend time with you recently. We should travel together. Get out of the city for a while. You always wanted to see Varee.”

“I have,” her voice said, but her head shook,
no no no
. His fingers closed around hers. Trembling, shaking, she said: “They have beautiful fashions.”

“We will buy you mountains of dresses.” But that was something Alistair
would
say. He was not ungenerous. He liked to see her beautiful, beautifully attired. She was being silly. Alistair was being thoughtful. It was what she had wanted. “We will pick out exactly the sorts of things you like.”

“And send them back for alterations until they’re perfect,” Helen said. She recalled how they had sent back dress after dress from before the wedding and she wanted to smile back at him. She had dreamed up things she’d never known she wanted, and he had indulged all those dreams.

“You know what you should do,” said Alistair, eyes shiny and bright. “You should learn to create your own patterns. You have such beautiful fashion sense. You could set up a little atelier right here among the shops, be a modern woman.”

The idea was breathtaking. It was as if he had looked to the bottom of her soul and pulled out something she had never thought to want, and now that she saw it hanging there, shining, she felt her heart beating out of her chest with pure lust for the idea.

It was not his idea. It was not Alistair.

“No!” Helen cried.

He let go of her hand, confused.

“No,” she said again, and with a great surge of will let everything relax and her mind wipe clean until the strange thread that bound them broke.

Alistair faltered, standing, and she thought his eyes swam clear, but he turned his head away from her, it was so hard to tell.… He turned back, saw her frightened face. “No what? No pretty dresses? Don’t be silly, pet.”

“Stay away,” she said firmly, feet planted.

His temper rebounded. “You’ve been out. You and that double-crossing dwarf are plotting against us all. You’re the reason Copperhead’s turning against me, why they’re keeping secrets from me. Do you deny it?”

“Deny what?” She was at sea.

“You know where she is, you useless doll. Where is she?” His voice rose and rose. “Where is Jane Eliot? Where is Jane?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” gasped Helen, and backing up, slammed the door to his room in his face. Then turned and ran, scooping up her things from the hall as she went. Her stockinged feet slid on the cold floor, slipped numbly on the stairs, till she threw herself into her bedroom and locked the door.

She did not know what she would do if he came—if it came to a direct confrontation like that. She was good at sliding away, at giving in. She did not know how to tell him “No,” and take that. But she knew how to run, and he was drunk, and he might let her go, finding the game not worth the candle.

Helen pressed her ear to the door for a long time, staring at her bleeding palm, smelling the whiskey soaked into her seafoam silk. But nobody came.

*   *   *

In her dreams she sees the house, their old house. Except it is not theirs anymore. Charlie is gone, Jane is gone, Mother is gone. Helen lives on charity, on borrowed time and space in a bit of attic at the neighbors’. Like Helen’s family, the neighbors straddle that uncomfortable line between gentility and poverty, except they are further down the ladder. The wife had money, once. The husband has a bit of land and he tries to make it pay. They had one cow and now they have two, for the Eliots’ former cow is keeping Helen in skirts and schooling.

Helen is not given to moping. She is angry at being alone. She is heartbroken (at least, something feels broken inside) at being here in an attic without Charlie and Jane and Mother, or perhaps what she means is, without people who love her. People who chose to leave her. That is not fair, and yet. She saw Mother waste away for
no Charlie,
even though Helen was there. She saw Jane run to the city to find someone else to love her, even though Helen was there.

And Charlie is gone because Helen was
not
there. Because Helen could not pick up a staff and kill.

That is what it comes around to, every time she runs through it, and then something in her head tells her that Jane and Mother were right to leave, because when it came down to it, Helen had proved she couldn’t be there for someone who needed her.

It doesn’t matter that she knows this is nonsense. Every time her heart breaks a little more. Her spine stiffens a little more. Her jokes become louder and shriller, as she covers herself up in a cloud of decorative nonsense.

They like her at the village school, when she lets them. She goes through several cycles in the time she is there, before she goes off to governess in the city. She lets them all like her and then she pushes them all away. The method varies. Once her best friend acts nasty to her. Polly. Calls her a charity case, right in front of Sam, whom Polly likes, too. Helen has no idea why on this day it is suddenly too much, but it is, and she runs away. It is late spring, and she lives on the land and stolen table scraps for a week, and when she comes back it is summer, and she doesn’t see any of them for three months, is gone when they stop in, lets all those relationships heal around her, because she is better at being alone.

When school starts in the fall Polly is best friends with someone else, and Sam has moved away, and Helen comes in and dazzles them, and runs the school with an iron fist for a season. But then that pales and she drops all her friends, again, yet again, for they are not really friends, she knows inside, no matter what they claim, and turns to her studies for a few months.

At graduation she is invited to all the parties, and they give her mementos and write “remember me” in her memory book, but if you asked them, they would none of them say that she had truly been their friend, only perhaps that they would like her to be, or that she had been “a good deal of fun, when she wanted to be.”

It’s one of those dreams where you can know what others said about you, just as if you were dead and they talked around your coffin.