Silverblind (Ironskin) (18 page)

The real problem was what to do with Woglet. He was Dorian’s charge, not Dorie’s, and in particular she couldn’t let Tam or Annika see him. There was the old birdcage, but she could only imagine Woglet’s yodels if she tried to leave him alone in the flat in that. Landlady would be thrilled. Woglet had gone so well to Tam this afternoon, but Tam would be there tonight, and not able to watch a woglet.

In the end, the best she could come up with was a large patent leather handbag that had been a hand-me-down from Aunt Helen’s atelier. Dorie wrapped the precious blue-belled feywort up and slid that in an interior pocket, since she would be seeing Colin after. She had left a note for him at The Wet Pig. Then her boy clothes in a tight bundle, and then Woglet himself. She used her fey senses to catch another of the omnipresent mice, and dropped it in, and let Woglet go to town. That should knock him out for a nice nap.

She did not know what you wore to cocktails with a Young Women’s League, so she pulled at random one of Aunt Helen’s dresses, figuring it would show she tried. It was pink with rosebud buttons and a little lacy cape thing over the shoulders and she thought ugh, what the heck, and put it on.

It was going to be hard to go out the window with a purse full of woglet. Dorie braved the noisy house stairs as quietly as possible, wincing at each creak and bang.

It was not quiet enough. The landlady heard and jumped out in billowy nightgown and fuzzy slippers to lecture her on the rent, and additionally remind her of the house rules about curfew, which Dorie, going out at eight in that hussied-up pink dress, was very likely planning to ignore. It was a lecture Dorie had heard too many times, and it finished up with, “and if you didn’t live with that nice Miss Jacqueline, you’d be out on your ear.”

“I know, Miss Bates. I’m sorry, Miss Bates.”

The landlady harrumphed. “Maybe you will be anyway. Today’s the fourteenth and your rent is two weeks past due. I put up with a lot for the sake of my dear friend Alberta, a sweeter lady never lived. It’s not her fault she has a niece with questionable taste in roommates. But friendship won’t pay the rent.”

“I really am sorry, Miss Bates. Look, I just got a steady position, I promise. We’ll have the money soon.”

Miss Bates poked a bony finger at the rosebud buttons. “And where is that?”

“At the—” But no, that was Dorian Eliot’s job, and Miss Bates was quite capable of calling to check them to see if they really were employing a Dorie Rochart, which they emphatically weren’t. “I can’t say.”

Miss Bates drew herself up to her full height of five foot one. “And just what sort of boarding house do you think this is, missy?”

“No, no, I promise it’s nothing immoral,” Dorie said desperately. “I just mean it’s not official yet, and I don’t want to jinx it.”

The finger jabbed higher. “There’s strange goings-on here, missy, and don’t you think I don’t know about it. I think if that rent isn’t on my doorstep tomorrow by noon, I’ll be talking to my dear friend Alberta just to let her know what’s going on with her niece and that niece’s friend.”

“Nothing’s going on!” said Dorie. Of course that was the moment Woglet started to poke his head up from the purse. She shoved him down, remembering the extra charge for pets. “I’ll ask for an advance at my new job; we’ll get the money.…” She retreated to the front door.

“Those kind of jobs don’t pay in advance,” Miss Bates said sourly, determined to have the last word. She whirled and retreated to her rooms in a billow of floral cloth. “Shoulda started a boarding house for boys, my mother always said. Know where you are then. But no, I thought, girls would be so sweet and
moral.
…”

Dorie hightailed it for the trolley.

The rent. The rent was all her fault. Her stubborn stupid pride—she didn’t want to take eggs to Malcolm, she didn’t want to beg her aunt for money. But she couldn’t let Jack fall into a hole through her stupidity. Jack would have had her half of this month’s rent ready, if she hadn’t had to pay Dorie’s half last month. She groaned. There was nothing for it. She would have to man up and ask Aunt Helen to loan her the rent. It would be better than jeopardizing her new job.

The lace on the dress was scratchy, the snoring handbag awkward. She longed to ditch this outfit for her field clothes and a free woglet on her shoulder. But she only had to make it a short trolley ride over to Aunt Helen’s. Well. And then, through the party. Damn, she was starving. There had been nothing in the cabinets except Woglet’s mouse. Dorie filched a double handful of mulberries from one of the campus trees and got on the trolley without incident, her fingers stained purple with juice. She dampened down her aura as the conductor passed her—no one’s here, move along—and avoided paying the fare. She had forgotten how simple it was, having all her fey powers back to smooth her way. No one even gave her a second glance until she stretched both feet out in front of her, taking up the aisle. A few shocked glares reminded her that a) girls didn’t do that, and b) she had unthinkingly put on her dirty hiking boots. Another glance down told her she had gotten a smear of purple mulberry on her pink waist. Dorie tucked her feet back under her chair and hunched her shoulders. Smaller, smaller.

Aunt Helen lived in a nice but comfortable part of town, with old fruit trees in the front gardens and kids playing tag in the quiet road. She had two other children besides her adopted boy Tam—twin ten-year-old girls. Dorie had always been fond of her cousins, so she had stopped in frequently in the last four years she had been in the city attending the University. With Tam at school in the country, Dorie had been fairly sure of not encountering him. Now, though, she was planning to meet him. As herself. What was she doing? Perhaps she should turn and go, meet him at ten as Dorian, as planned.

But no, she wanted to test the waters. She wanted to
know
.

Dorie knew the location of all the fruit trees on her route—one was a plum tree across the way from Aunt Helen’s, with sweet black-purple plums that dangled over their brick wall. She stopped there in the summer twilight, her fingers closing on the plum. As she touched the fruit her whole arm tingled, like a jolt from faulty wiring. She let the plum go and stared up at the tree in disgust. Some sort of poison, clearly—those new-fangled pesticides coating the tree. But she was hungry, so she touched it again—and recoiled again. Her fey side was not going to let that one pass. Woglet stirred in her purse as she massaged the tingle from her fingers.

“Dorie!” shrieked a voice from across the street, and another said more sedately, “How do you do, Cousin Dorie?” The girls were on the small side, being a quarter
dwarvven
through their father, her uncle Rook, but not so much as to make them stand out. They had Helen’s copper-blond hair and their dad’s laughing eyes. Though identical, they seemed to deliberately form their characters in opposition to each other—Rose liked pretty dresses and books, and Violet liked to be dirty and blow things up. Still, more than once Dorie had caught Violet reading in the garden, and Rose helping Violet to create an explosion. Dorie often suspected their established characters were part of some deeper mischief against the grown-ups.

“Girls!” Dorie said in delight, and one grabbed her free hand and the other her skirt and swung her toward the house.

“Mother will be glad you finally showed up,” said Rose.

“Only a half-hour late,” said Violet.

“Better late than never?” said Dorie.

“It’s all right,” said Rose. “They haven’t got past the stage where they congratulate one another yet. It’s boring. We’re supposed to be in bed.”

“Pfft, bed,” said Violet. “How can we sleep when we’re going on an adventure tomorrow? We’re all packed.”

“Packed? Where are you going?”

“Somewhere fun,” said Rose.

“Somewhere far,” chimed in Violet. “And we’re never coming back.”

“They don’t think we know,” Rose added, more seriously. “It’s a dead secret.”

“Never?” said Dorie. Surely this was one of the twins’ games.

Rose grinned, launched into an old children’s song: “Never sits upon an old oak tree…”

“Singing of a fairy fey so free…”

“Never falls and tumbles down…”

“Boom, boom!” they shouted together.

“But try to focus, Cousin Dorie. The canapés are still to come,” said Violet. “Cucumber and cress.”

“Tuna and olive.”

“Pineapple and frog legs.”

“Gorgonzola and little green newts.”

They opened the screen door and shoved her in. Dorie stumbled in, hand automatically going to her purse to keep it from swinging and waking Woglet.

A whole roomful of women, dressed to the nines, looked her up and down.

Surprise flooded Aunt Helen’s dear face at the sight of her wayward niece, and Dorie felt answering guilt. Surely she could have come to her beloved aunt’s beloved charity thingy before now. All the help her aunt had given her over the years, and she couldn’t come sit nicely for a few hours and eat canapés? What was wrong with her?

Helen rose to greet her, immaculately dressed and not a glimmer of reproach on her face for Dorie’s ratty boots and stained pink dress. Was her lovely face set with strain, or was that Dorie’s imagination, spurred on by the twins? “Please join us, love,” she said, and she squeezed Dorie’s hands. “We were just discussing the new plans for the hospital. So many good ideas in this room.”

Dorie nodded mutely, her words deserting her as usual, and looked for a seat. The windows were open to catch the evening breeze, and several of the girls wielded pretty paper fans. Everyone was in a perfectly pressed cocktail dress, or at least a sleek skirt. Nobody had rosebud buttons. Maybe she had gotten that wrong, then. Just how long ago had Helen given her that dress? She sighed, tugging on the scratchy lace on her shoulders. See, this was why she didn’t come to these. She could find plenty of things to say one-on-one to Colin, as Dorian. Or to Jack, as herself. But a roomful of perfectly turned-out women? She thought back to Dr. Pearce’s suggestion that she be the liaison for the lab, and she snorted. He couldn’t see past her blond curls to see what she would really be like when confronted with a group of people she was supposed to charm. Dorie was emphatically not charming.

She took the last remaining seat, a delicate wooden chair with a finely embroidered cushion. Half of the embroidery was blown away and the rest of the cushion was covered with scorch marks. Violet had been here.

“We were just discussing the overcrowding at the Mercy Hospital this summer with the Young Women’s League,” said Helen. “We’re trying to raise funding for a new wing.”

“It was state-of-the-art when it was built,” another woman put in earnestly. “But that was almost fifty years ago. Population has finally bounced back after the war and is climbing all the time, especially among the lower classes. It is our humanitarian duty to have adequate facilities.”

Dorie nodded sagely as if she had a clue about the hospital facilities and looked around vainly for the promised canapés. She hoped some of the canapé recipes were the twins’ little joke and not an actual description of the menu. She rather liked frogs’ legs, but newts with Gorgonzola sounded a bit … slimy. Ah, there was one tray at least, right next to a thin blonde who was ostentatiously ignoring it. Dorie cradled her wyvern-stuffed purse in her arms and tried to creep across to the cucumber sandwiches. They were on the other side of the room from her, so it turned out that creeping was impossible. All eyes followed her as she clumped her way across the room.

Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, thought Dorie, and she took the entire plate of sandwiches. “Thank you,” she said politely to the girl, who was trying hard to pretend this wasn’t happening. Dorie tromped in her boots back to her blown-up chair and sat down with the plate, balancing it on her purse. Down at the other end of the room she saw a broad-shouldered girl sitting stiffly with her own sandwich and for the first time she felt mildly pleased to see Annika.

The thin girl next to Dorie cleared her throat. “We’re discussing what sort of gala we should hold for the potential donors. A buffet luncheon? A cocktail hour?”

“I think a brunch in the garden would be classic and delightful,” said another.

“No, we want them to
drink,
” quipped another.

“Morning cocktails are the best cocktails,” drawled another. “Speaking of…” She waved her fan languidly at a man who had just poked his head in through the swinging doors, holding a silver tray. Gone were the boots and dirty jacket, even the explorer hat. He had on a nice suit, and he looked about as uncomfortable in it as Dorie felt in her pink dress. Still, the sweet, dreamy face behind the eyeglasses was all Tam, and a number of the girls in the room perked up. He started serving at the other end of the room from Dorie, and she willed her galloping heart to slow. All too soon, he would work his way around, and then see her.… Dorie stole a glance at Annika to see what her face revealed. Her expression was calm, her posture stiff. But Annika, too, watched Tam as he smiled and served the champagne coupes.

“Girls, we’ll take a break for a few minutes,” said Aunt Helen. She nodded at Dorie. “Could you help me bring in the chocolates, please?”

Dorie clomped her way over, following Aunt Helen into the kitchen. As the door swung shut behind them, she was surprised to find her aunt enveloping her in a tight hug. Tears hovered in the corners of her aunt’s eyes. “What is it?” Dorie started, but Helen put a finger to her lips, pulling away.

“Help me sift the powdered sugar,” she said in a loud voice, and then, bent next to Dorie’s ear as they worked. “We’re leaving tonight,” she said. “Rook’s under investigation under Subversive Activities.” Her fingers shook the sugar. “Ever since he got elected he’s been a thorn in the establishment’s side. He’s been too prominently working against this bill that would roll back many of the protections for women that have been passed in the last twenty years. He got a tip-off that they’re trumping up charges against him and he could be hauled in any day—officially they can only hold you for forty-eight hours, but we know several people who’ve disappeared into the system. We have the girls to think of—we can’t risk it.”