The Privilege of the Sword (6 page)

In my hand the sword looked solid and workmanlike, like a rolling pin, or the handle of a hoe. Then I looked down the entire length of it and saw how narrow the steel was, how shiny. It had no purpose but distance and death.

I wondered what my mother would say, and found no answer. For the first time in my life, I wished I could be holding a sewing needle instead; suddenly that instrument of torture seemed small and comfortable and harmless. My arm ached, no matter how I turned the sword. I decided to put it away, and go back to my room and change into the sort of girl who might ask a housekeeper if she needed help with the mending.

In the wardrobe, my new clothes were neatly hung and folded. I looked behind them for my old gowns, and found nothing. Nothing in the chest, nothing hung out to air; nothing remained of all my skirts and bodices and petticoats and stockings, carefully chosen and mended and packed a few days before.

I did not bother trying to find Betty. I knew what had happened. I knew, and I was not having it. This was one contest the Mad Duke would not win.

The card in my pocket read:
ARTEMISIA FITZ-LEVI, BLACKBURN HOUSE
. I would be seen on the street in these ridiculous clothes once only. Grimly clutching my cloak around me, I set out through the gates of Tremontaine House to find my friend.

I
T WAS NOT LONG BEFORE
L
ADY
A
RTEMISIA
F
ITZ
-L
EVI BEGAN
to tire of the antics of her new pet. The parrot was a bit too clever—she had expected a sort of colorful talking doll, not something with a mind of its own. The parrot preferred fruit to cakes, earlobes to fingers and velvet to the bottom of its cage. It liked women better than men; when her cousin Lucius Perry came to call, it flew at him, and she had to get her maid to take it downstairs, where, no doubt, it would amuse the house staff far more than it did her, though it had not been acquired for that purpose.

“You look decorative,” she approved her cousin Lucius. Artemisia thought that the right amount of lace always complimented a man’s appearance. Of course, with his slender build, dark hair and blue eyes, Lucius had good material to work with.

“And you look exhausted.” Lord Lucius Perry, lounging in her windowseat, gazed longingly at the fragile cinnamon wafers that lay just at the edge of his reach on an equally fragile painted table. “Out dancing your slippers to ribbons again, coz? What gallant has caught your eye this time?”

In strictest confidence she was perishing to tell him about the duke’s party last night, but he went on without waiting for an answer, “And where is your reprobate brother? Robert promised me a bout of tennis today; is he out already paying court to his last night’s conquests, or still sleeping them off?”

Artemisia smiled patiently at him. He was a cousin, so not worth much more, and a younger son at that. “Do I look awful, Lucius? Have I got rings under my eyes? I bathed them in cucumber water, but I’m not sure it’s done any good—and I particularly don’t want Mama to know what I’ve been doing,” she hinted broadly.

Lucius did not even pretend to be interested. “Nothing awful, I hope. You don’t want to get yourself talked about, Artemisia, not when your prospects are so good this year.”

“Of course nothing awful! What do you take me for? You’re a fine one to lecture me, Lucius, indeed you are. I understand you were once up to all sorts of mischief Mama won’t even tell me about.”

“That’s just it,” he drawled; “I’ve reformed.”

“Well, it’s made you uncommon dull.”

“Do you think so?” He smiled just a little; his eyelashes fluttered over his cheeks as he extended one languid finger toward the plate—but his cousin was impervious to that particular sort of innuendo.

“Honestly, Lucius, you are the laziest man I ever met! Lean over and take your own biscuit, don’t expect me to get up and pass them to you when you’re this close to the table!”

Lucius Perry leaned back, instead, bathing his fine-boned face in a slanting patch of sun. All he could see through his eyelids was a rich, comforting red; if his cousin stopped talking for a minute, he might fall asleep.

No, he wouldn’t: a knocking on the front door and a flurry of feet below heralded the approach of another visitor. “Artemisia,” he said, not bothering to open his eyes, “you want to be careful. You’re pretty, the family’s good, your father’s generous and you’ve got a nice voice. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone offered for you before the year turns. Just don’t compete with Robert in daring: city ballrooms are not exactly the same as climbing trees and jumping out of haylofts back home.”

She drew herself up proudly. “Thank you for the advice, cousin. As if I don’t know how to behave in town! I like it here, a great deal better than in the country. As far as I’m concerned, I’d be happy to call this home for the rest of my life, and I hope I marry a man who thinks so, too: someone with style and a bit of dash like Robert, not a dullard like you, who thinks an exciting day is playing tennis and calling on relatives, and an exciting evening is staying home and reading a book or whatever it is you do with yourself—anyhow, I didn’t see
you
at Tremontaine House last night!”

“Tremontaine House?” Lucius Perry abandoned his lassitude. “You don’t want anything to do with those people, cousin.”

She tossed her head, and her curls bounced. “And why not, pray? I am not the Country Filly you seem to think me, cousin. I know how to handle myself in Society.”

“Do you?” He was leaning forward, his blue eyes dark and full on her.

She squelched the humiliating recollection of her host putting her to flight. “Certainly. There’s nothing so terrifying at Tremontaine House”—she laughed brightly—“except perhaps for the Mad Duke himself, of course. He’s quite rude, isn’t he? I don’t know what all those people see in him, really.”

“No, you wouldn’t. That is why he’s dangerous.” His smile was now consciously charming. “Of course you understand Society, cousin: you are one of its brightest ornaments. But the Duke Tremontaine is outside Society. Even he agrees that that is where he belongs. And he encourages others—not, of course, that you could be so encouraged—but those around him, to, ah, to explore those outposts as well.”

“Well, they all seemed perfectly normal to me: the usual sort of Ball and Salon types, just both in one place, that’s all. It’s hardly—”

Her curls splashed her neck as she turned her head toward the commotion downstairs: a clatter in the marble hall of booted feet, a shrill cry.

“Perhaps it’s Robert,” Lucius drawled, “with a new conquest.”

Someone was running upstairs—two someones. The first was the footman, who opened the door to the sitting room just wide enough to announce breathlessly, “A—female, my lady, who will see you, she says, though I did—”

“From the party,” a girl’s voice insisted shrilly. “Tell her Katherine, Lady Katherine Talbert—only I don’t have a card—from Tremontaine House.”

Lucius dealt his cousin a jaded look.

The footman threw open the door. “Lady Katherine.”

There stood the oddest figure Lady Artemisia had ever seen outside the theatre; worse than the theatre, really, because there the actresses in boys’ roles at least made some attempt to trim their hair, hide their figures and adopt a manly bearing. This was so clearly a girl, small and round, her long hair messily escaping from a ribbon in frizzy tendrils. Only her clothes were a perfect copy of a man’s, in every detail.

Artemisia Fitz-Levi put a hand over her mouth. She knew it was rude, but she couldn’t help it, the laughter just came squeezing out. The girl stared at her. Her face went pale, then red.

“From Tremontaine House,” said Lucius smugly. “Well: you see my point.”

Katherine Talbert spun on the heel of her ridiculous boots, and ran clattering out the hall and down the stairs.

N
O ONE WOULD HAVE LOOKED TWICE AT THE BOY IF
he had not been running frantically through a very sedate section of the Hill, where running generally meant some kind of trouble.

“Hey, there!” A hand shot out, bringing the figure to a skittering stop. Philibert, Lord Davenant, was not an observing sort of man; he saw a boy’s face because he expected to see a boy’s face, and the estimable Lord Davenant was one who liked the world to be compassed by order and decorum. This boy’s long hair, therefore, meant University, and few scholars belonged on the Hill. Furthermore, the boy had been crying and seemed terrified at being apprehended.

“Aha,” said Lord Davenant. “What’s your hurry? Something in your pockets, maybe?” He thrust a hand into one of them, keeping a grip on the boy’s wrist.

“Help!” shrilled the boy. “Let go of me!” He tried to wriggle out of the older man’s grasp. “How dare you?”

“Little rat!” Davenant surveyed him, half-amused. “Shall I call the Watch, or just thrash you myself?”

The boy wiped his nose with his free arm. “If you were a gentleman,” he said suddenly, “you would escort me back to Tremontaine House.”

“Oh.” Abruptly Lord Davenant dropped the wrist as if afraid of contagion. “So you’re that kind of rat, are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Go on, get off with you.” Davenant’s views on Tremontaine were well known in Council. The last thing he wanted was to be seen accosting one of the Mad Duke’s fancy boys on the open street. “There’s your direction, go on.”

The boy drew himself up and walked away shakily.

I
HAD FORGOTTEN THE WAY AND HAD ONLY A DIM RECOLLECTION
of what Tremontaine House looked like from the street. All the walls of all the great houses looked the same, and all their black and gold-tipped gates. I tried to walk as if I knew where I was going.

“Hello, Lady Katherine.”

Standing before me was a boy about my age. He was plainly dressed, with a plain, ordinary face. It took me a moment to recognize the duke’s servant, the valuable Marcus, the boy who knew where everything was. He said, “I’m heading back to Tremontaine House, if you’d like to come with me.”

I followed him in silence. He had never introduced himself, and he didn’t do so now, just talked to me as if we had always known each other.

“It’s a nice day, isn’t it? Betty thought you’d run away, but I guessed you might just have gone for a walk; you wouldn’t want to get her in trouble by disappearing or something. You should try exploring the House gardens,” he chatted amicably, “they’re very interesting. Paths, and statues and fountains and things, though I think they’ve turned the fountains off for the season. The gardeners dig up the flowers all the time and put new ones in. They grow them in a big glass house. It’s quite a production. You can have flowers put in your room, if you like. Want me to order them for you?”

The front hall of Tremontaine House was cool and white and empty. Gone the bustle and striving of last night; in their place was a spooky sweet serenity.

“Where is the duke?” I asked.

“Gone. Everyone’s gone to the Riverside house.”

“Everyone? But I—”

“Oh, not you. You’re staying here.”

“Alone?” Panic sharpened my voice.