Snow (10 page)

“Father!” she screamed, running into the house. “Duchess!” she sobbed as she ran through the house. She made her way to the entrance room where she
found her father and stepmother, both greeting another well-dressed couple.

“What’s the meaning of this?” her father demanded. The duchess’s face dropped when she saw the state of Jessica’s dress.

“This
boy
—he tried to
kiss
me—and then he—and then he—”

The duchess took control of the situation immediately. She called the two maids. “Lucy, Anna—take Jessica upstairs immediately. Edward, would you mind seeing about this boy? Felicia, Lord Belingham—forgive this little intrusion. Let me personally show you the rooms where you will be staying….”

The two evil maids swept Jessica, sobbing, out of the room and upstairs before anyone else could see her. When they arrived at the cool silence of Jessica’s room, she fell on her bed. The two maids left. Long after her tears finally dried up Jessica simply lay staring at the ceiling.

Hours passed.

The duchess finally came in. She closed the door behind her with a strange finality and approached Jessica with a predatory sway that reminded her of the boy.

On guard for the second time that afternoon, Jessica slowly realized she would get no comfort out of this woman.

“What,” the duchess asked slowly, “happened?”

Jessica told her, and in doing so began crying again.

“Oh,” the duchess said coolly. “You dress and act like a servant girl, and you’re surprised that he treated you this way?”

“But he—he touched my—”

“And what did you
expect
him to do, you alone there with him? Give you a bouquet of flowers?”

“But he,
he’s
the one who …” Jessica was terribly confused. She didn’t think she had done anything wrong, besides making the mistake of leaving to see the puppy. The boy had hurt her, not the other way around. “But I am a duchess,” she said finally, thinking the older woman would approve. “One doesn’t treat a
duchess
that way.”

“You
look
like a slattern!” The duchess slapped Jessica across the cheek. She said other things, too, but Jessica didn’t hear them. When she put her hand to her cheek, her fingertips came away with droplets of blood.

“Behaving like a commoner—I have a hard time believing you are your father’s daughter. Maybe you aren’t,” the duchess said pensively. Then her eyes filled with rage. “Do you know what you did, behaving in front of Lord Belingham like that? Do you realize the
embarrassment
your father and I will have to suffer for it? And Count Donhall—it wouldn’t surprise me if his father never spoke to us again for what you did to him.”

“I just wanted the puppy,” Jessica said softly, knowing full well she sounded like a five-year-old. But in the end, that was the heart of it, that was what had caused all of this.

“Well, you certainly aren’t getting a puppy,” the duchess promised. “That, and your absence at this party except when I specifically ask for it, are just the beginning. You want to dress like a commoner?
Fine,
you can dress that way all the time, and do the job of one too. If you’re not going to be a duchess, you can at least be useful. And one more thing,” she added as she left, “if I so much as
imagine
you talk to any of the serving staff again, including Alan, I will have you beaten—the way I should have in the beginning.”

And the duchess, if nothing else, was a woman of her word.

Snow

“Mirror, Mirror.
When people speak, whom do they say is the fairest in town?”

Alan held the looking glass up, as always; the duchess stared and primped into it as always. Some things had changed since the first time, however.

There was the smell, to start with. Burnt flesh cut with a clean, metallic scent like the smell before a thunderstorm. There were the cages of animals—all young, all babies—against the farthest wall of her hidden sanctuary. There was the basket with a bundle in it, a heavy burden that needed to be gone by midnight. There were the vials and pills—blue, blood red, and light purple—with medicines for the duchess’s increasingly frequent fits.

And there was one more thing that changed.

Alan ground his teeth and stammered, but the necklace bade him speak.

“For all her rags and dirt, those who catch a look at her face, the one called Snow—they claim she is the most beautiful, fey thing Kenigh has ever seen.”

The duchess’s eyes might have been hazel, but the look they gave Alan was the blackest he had ever seen.

1. Spring

D
avey sat on the steps of the stable, waiting to run an errand for the coachman, when a figure dressed in old clothes struggled by, barely able to drag the bucket of slop she was burdened with, He leaped up, full of the newly discovered chivalry that often brought smiles and blushes, occasionally even kisses.

“Here, let me help you with—” The pale girl turned her face to meet his.

He stopped short, “Jess?”

Deprived of sunlight, the starry freckles had faded from her face, and her copper-brown hair had grown in black. Her skin had whitened, becoming the pallor so many girls her age were trying to achieve by poisoning themselves with arsenic.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be talking to me, Davey,” Her voice was low, as if she wasn’t accustomed to talk, “I’m being punished. They might dismiss you or your parents,”

“I heard things, but didn’t believe them—making you do all the chores, scrubbing, and cleaning, and locking you up? A
duchess?”

She smiled wanly, remembering their last
argument,“I’m no duchess. Not anymore, at least,”

“I didn’t even know it was you just now,” he went on, “You’re as white as a snowman. And taller than you were,”

He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, “Is this because of the dog I was going to give you?”

“Oh, no.” Her eyes crinkled at his guilt and concern, and it was painfully obvious it had been a long time since she had grinned. “It’s because …” She shrugged, “It’s not your fault. How is—the puppy?”

“The duke had a talk with old Craddoc and told him to give it to someone else, Jane Cooper, the bobby’s daughter.”

“I hope she takes care of it,” she said sadly.

“I’ll make sure of it,” Davey earnestly promised Jessica, the only thing he could do for her.

“Well, I had better go before they catch me speaking to you,”

“Well, be seeing you—
Snow!”

He said it with a lopsided grin, like they were seven again. That was the last time she ever spoke with David Allen.

But the name Snow stayed with her.

2. Summer

She watched the seasons through the windows of her room, A pair of ravens had come in the spring and nested in the tallest pine, raising a family of fledglings who grew furry and then became slicked down with
shiny black feathers and flew. Once she saw Alan climbing the tree toward the nest and was terrified for him. When she questioned him later he said nothing, only sweated and played with his necklace the way he sometimes did when they talked about the duchess.

From the start of her confinement, they’d had to pretend they weren’t talking, but Alan had been even more silent to her than usual since that day. Snow was depressed, but she suspected something was up, He was always sneaking her little trinkets and things: a speckled robins egg, a tea cake, a little carved whistle in the shape of a dog, small books of poetry by Robert Burns, A new
something
appeared one day when she came back after her lessons to change into her scullery clothes: a basket at her window, as if carefully lowered from above. This was the biggest prize yet: Carefully tucked at the bottom with a white string round its neck was a tiny white kitten whose eyes had just opened and who gave a huge, red-tongued yawn when she lifted it out.

Snow was very, very careful.

The kitten slept under the covers with her at night curled between her neck and shoulder. Snow kept it in her pockets when she cleaned to keep it from mewing. She named it Katrina, She fed it milk and cheese and meat and cleaned up after it constantly.

One day she came back from lessons to change into her scullery clothes, and Katrina was gone.

3. Autumn

Captain Andy Campbell surveyed his colleagues and compatriots. Lieutenant Commander Murray was looking a little gray, but then again Colin always did before a campaign. He rubbed his hands together and through the hair on his head. Field Commander Nigel Kensington stroked his whiskers wisely, still refining the plans, always the strategist. The hill rose depressingly high above them, but they would take it. They had God on their side; they were fighting for truth, honor, and Queen Victoria. In a far-off tree his spies were taking account of the situation and updating orders on an hourly basis. Captain Campbell loved these complicated missions. Why, compared to previous adventures in India, this was nothing.

After their victory feast tonight, they might even begin planning the rescue of the Lady in the Castle.

4. Winter

The door flew open, and the duchess burst in,“I’ll do it myself!” she cried.

Mice went flying. The tame—and carefully named—Andy Campbell, Colin Murray, and Nigel Kensington each scurried their separate ways from the hill pillow with the cookie on top, the towers made from novels by Sir Walter Scott.

Snow knew better than to watch them go; the
older woman would follow her eyes and see her friends,

“My
daughter”
the duchess said, towering over her. Snow knew to never talk back but wouldn’t have chosen to anyway. There was a strange look in the older woman’s eyes. Her face was white, and blue veins throbbed on her forehead. She held a pair of sewing shears, Snow observed as the seconds stretched out. Pretty little silver ones, in the shape of a bird, something large and vaguely foreign,
“‘My’ ‘Daughter.’
How about a brother just like you?”

Snow’s instinct was to look at the duchess’s face and belly, but she didn’t feel she could let her eyes stray from the other’s for a second.

“Am I to congratulate you, My Lady?” she whispered.

The duchess threw her head back and laughed. One of her hands whipped out with praying mantis precision and grabbed a lock of Snow’s hair. With a slower, slightly unsteadier movement, she snipped it off with the shears.

Snow didn’t move.

The duchess held the raven lock up to the light and looked at it with a critical eye. Then she turned and walked out.

“Get Gwen to fix your hair,” she said over her shoulder.

Spring came again, and still there was no heir for the duke, nor release for Snow.

“
I
t should work.
Why doesn’t it work?”

Alan stood by the mirror, not compelled to hold it this time. Instead he surveyed the scene on the laboratory table from a safe distance, behind the duchess.

Machinery hummed: strange things powered by strikes of lightning baited and caught by rods the duchess had had him mount outside her window, A series of brass rods and gears wove their way from the machines to the table and through a mirror with a frame similar to the one Alan was often burdened with. This one was smoky and black and didn’t reflect things properly, He tried not to look in it.

What the mirror was aimed at was more horrible still. Propped up like a doll in the middle of the table was a stuffed body made of pink muslin, A baby’s skull, dug up from a cemetery—a memory Alan wished he could erase—was sewn to the top, and pearl button eyes were hammered into its sockets. Horribly familiar black hair was nailed to the skull. The duchess’s own blood trickled down its body; a bandage was around her wrist, and there was plaster on the area above her breast.

This is worse than the animals.