The Sweetest Dark (6 page)

...

The morning sky had brightened into blue velveteen, and, surely only because a pair of teachers strolled behind us, Sophia and her minions let me tag at their heels out of the school and across the green to the chapel.

The sun felt warm on my head, a pleasing heat after the stony-cool inside air. My shadow strode long and rippling over the grass, lapping at the edges of the others, never quite cutting in.

I was deliberately lagging behind. I could not seem to stop gawking up at the castle.

I supposed us to be now on the opposite side from my tower; nothing around me looked familiar. I couldn't see the bridge to the mainland or anything of the sea. In fact, I could no longer even hear it and wondered how large the island could be.

There was no question that Iverson itself was truly massive, enormous dun stones scrubbed pale near the top and blotted with lichen and moss along the base. It went on and on, a big squatting hulk of limestone, gripping its solitary fist of land fast against all comers.

The grounds seemed velveteen, too, perfect as a painting, with clean-cut grass angled sharply around flower beds, tidy shrubs and roses and fruit trees, all precisely arranged. Even the hedges bore the brunt of human design: I realized that they were shaped as animals, all of them, giant rabbits and lions and unicorns scattered about. Everything contained, everything pruned and clever, until the rough woods took over, real nature at last, encircling us.

I caught sight of Mr. Hastings on his knees by one of the beds, a spade in hand. Then the winds turned, fingering through my hair, and that was when I heard Jesse. His music.

I missed a step, glancing all around me. One of the girls a few paces ahead—Malinda? Caroline?—gave the girl next to her a poke with her elbow.

“Oh, my,” she said, loud enough to carry. “Look
there,
Mal.”

So the elbower was Caroline. Malinda slapped her back with a slim hand.

“Stop it!”

“You know you're
desperate
to see him!”

The entire cluster of girls slowed, allowing me closer. Past their shoulders I glimpsed him at the distant brink of the woods, loose-shirted and fluent He breached a hill and strode toward Mr. Hastings without glancing over at the bunching mass of us. Sunlight kissed him from head to toe; he was a figure of splendid radiance.

“Jesse's your
beau,
Malinda!” crowed Lillian.

“Yes!” That was Beatrice, bright and malicious. “Come to pay a call!”

“Stop it, I say! Stop it, all of you!” Malinda's voice had taken on an edge of panic. “He's not deaf
and
mute! He'll hear!”

“If only he could speak to you! He'd tell you about how he wants to whisk you away to his horrible little cottage!”

“And have his way with you!”

“And marry you and have lots and lots of little mute babies, just like him!”

“Jesse's not mute,” I said, before I could stop myself.

I had put my foot in it, it seemed. All the girls paused and turned to me. Malinda's cheeks were red as apples; Sophia arched a single plucked brow.

“What did you say?”

I decided to plunge on. “He's not mute.” It occurred to me belatedly that
mute
might be their private code for something else—
dirty
or
forbidden
or
so savory for a stable boy
—but Lady Sophia only raised the other brow.

“And you know this because, what, in your sole night here, he's already spoken to you?”

“Yes,” I said.

Sophia released a melodic laugh, one that everyone but Malinda immediately copied.

“Impoverished
and
a liar,” Sophia said to them, and shook her head. “Dear me. Not a propitious start for you, Eleanore.”

“I'm not—”

“Jesse Holms doesn't
speak
,” interrupted Lillian. “Not to you or to anyone else. It's why he can't sign up for the war. Even the Tommies won't have him. He's
simple.
Don't you understand?”

“Perhaps she's simple, too,” suggested Mittie.

Sophia turned around, linking arms with Malinda. “A perfect couple, then! Cheers to them!”

I stood there and let them leave. I moved again only when the teachers behind me caught up and shooed me onward.

Before I entered the chapel, I threw a look over my shoulder at Jesse. He was seated alone on the grass where Hastings had been, watching me with a hand held to his eyes to block out the sun.

...

Sunday services were cold. Later on, that was mostly what I remembered. The pews were hard; the chapel was cold. The vicar was roughly two hundred years of age and he spoke slowly—
slowly,
with biting clear elocution—about warfare and chastity and virtue, somehow eventually entangling the three. By the time we were dismissed, the tips of my fingers felt numb.

I wanted outside again. I wanted to feel the sun again.

I wanted to see if Jesse was still there by the bed of flowers, free of Sunday lectures, illumed with light.

He wasn't. Only students dotted the green now, girls spreading out in spokes from the chapel door. Most seemed headed back to the main entrance of the castle. A few wandered in groups the other way, toward the gardens.

I thought of the orange in my room and trailed after the castle girls. Perhaps I could sneak it out in my blouse. There had to be a private place somewhere out here where I could sit in the sun and eat in peace. Maybe an arbor or a meadow in the woods.

The graveled driveway curving near the double doors was clogged with students, everyone surrounding a very familiar automobile loaded with trunks. A pair of menservants was struggling to unbind the luggage cords.

My feet stopped moving before my mind had fully processed what lay ahead. All those schoolgirls, and Chloe in cherry stripes and a huge, scarf-fluttering picture hat. Lord Armand standing beside her with a fist on his hip, driving goggles dangling from the other hand, his long-paneled coat flaring with the breeze.

I was held in place, unable to go forward, unwilling to go back. Chloe tilted her head and said something up to him, and he smiled at her, but it was a cold smile, cold as the chapel air. I wondered that she couldn't sense it … or maybe she did and it didn't matter. She was the shining star of the moment and she reveled in it, more beautiful and more important than any of the other girls, even Lady Sophia, now a rosy-pink sylph shunted off beside the auto's spare tyre.

Because Chloe evidently had what no other girl at Iverson did. She had
him.

There was no question Lord Armand was handsome. I'd seen that last night, right up close. Yet I thought now that
handsome
wasn't truly the best word to describe him. Behind the wind-disheveled hair and burning blue gaze lurked a complexity not easily captured by words. Even from a distance, he struck me as deeper, darker, than those obvious good looks suggested. Like the hidden red glint inside a clouded ruby, visible only by holding the stone just right; if you didn't know the trick, all you ever saw was deceptive shadow. And I wondered if Chloe sensed that, either.

Feral,
whispered my inner fiend, plucking the word from my black, black thoughts.
Alpha.

The skin along the back of my neck prickled, and not in a good way.

The breeze shifted. I was upwind and he was down and I swear I saw him lift his face to it, breathe it in deep—then turn at once to find me.

No one else noticed. Our eyes locked.

He didn't offer me his icy smile. He hesitated, then gave a nod instead.

It was enough to cause Chloe to tuck back her scarf and look my way. She
definitely
didn't smile.

Move,
I thought.
Turn around. Go back to the chapel, to the woods, hurry.

But it was too late. Armand leaned close to speak to Chloe, walking off before she could reply. All the girls within earshot turned amazed faces toward me as he angled through them. Straight in my direction.

I managed one step backward. That was as far as I got.

He hadn't run. He hadn't even hurried. But he was there before I could take that second step.

“Miss Jones,” Lord Armand greeted me, with another nod. “You made it, I see.”

No thanks to you.

“I did,” I replied. My mouth had gone inexplicably dry.

“I realized we never finished our introduction last night. I'm Armand Louis.”

He gave it the French pronunciation,
Lew-eee,
which wasn't how Director Forrester had said it at all. It didn't make me like him any better.

He held out his hand. I didn't take it.

If I'm rude, he'll go. If I make it clear I don't like him, he'll go.

“Hmm.” His hand dropped, but he didn't leave. “Well. How is it?”

“How is what?”

He made a vague, circular motion with the goggles. “The school. Mrs. Westcliffe. Everything.”

“Satisfactory.” I took that second step back.

“Have you seen the conservatory yet?”

“No.”

“The grotto?”

“No.”

“How about—”

“I've been at Iverson approximately twelve hours, my lord. I have been to my room and to church, and very briefly to dine. That is all.”

Now he smiled at me, sharp and alluring, and it was just as unsettling up close as it had been from afar.

“Call me Mandy.”

“I don't believe I will,” I said, with another step.

“It's quite all right. Lots of the girls do.”

I summoned my own chilly smile. “How lovely for you. Why don't you go chat with them? I'm sure they miss you already.”

“Eleanore, look.” He matched my retreating step with a forward one. “About last night. You'll have to forgive me if I—if matters didn't turn out as you liked. It's just that, you know, Chloe. She's—”

“Coming this way,” I finished for him.

And she was, striped skirts lifted with both hands, long coils of chocolaty hair blowing past her shoulders. She didn't raise her voice, not quite, but the look she shot me could have melted steel.

“Mandy, darling! They've nearly finished unloading the motorcar, and I promised Lucille you'd take us for a spin along the coast. She's got her hat and gloves and we're all set to go.”

Lord Armand didn't even turn around.

“Tea's at four,” he said to me. “It's decent enough. Will you be there?”

“I don't know,” I answered, honest.

Chloe had reached us. She placed a hand on his arm, fingers curving into his sleeve. The filmy tail of her scarf whisked up between them to tap against his coat.

“Ready?” she asked, almost a purr.

Armand looked from me to her, then back to me. I saw the change come over him, an invisible shield that dropped across his eyes, no warning, no retreat. He resurrected that icy smile, then escorted Chloe back to their waiting group of safely adoring schoolgirls.

...

It was impossible to hold a conversation while driving. That was one of the things he loved best about it, Armand decided. The raucous roar of the engine. The thick smell of grease and oil mixed with dust from the road, coating his face and the inside of his mouth.

And the speed. It was speed without the pure galloping smoothness of a horse, true. Driving as fast as he liked meant jolts that could rattle apart bones. But it
was
speed, and control, and the knowledge that the speed was dangerous and the control a mere fine-edged illusion. A ruse of shiny knobs and grinding gears.

He'd nicked the auto from the motor stable before Reginald had recovered enough from last night's claret to notice. Armand wasn't technically permitted to drive—it was one thing on a very long list of perilous things he wasn't permitted to do—and so, when he could, he enjoyed driving very, very fast. He enjoyed that the Atalanta's engine was so rough that neither girl next to him could politely shout over it. Chloe and her friend rode with their lips squeezed shut and their eyes narrowed and a hand each to their hats.

He'd told Chloe repeatedly to wear something with less of a brim if she wanted to go out motoring with him. She never listened.

What there was of road along this part of the mainland was dirt. Sometimes rocks and dirt. Sometimes ruts and rocks and dirt.

He saw a deep groove in the way ahead and hit the accelerator for all he could. They smacked over it high and bumped back down hard. Both girls screamed: shrill, birdlike peeps.

A pair of ewes stared at them, startled, from a patch of clover growing close to the road. The auto tore past them before the sheep even began their first running hops away.

Under other circumstances, on another day, Armand would have steered right for the next rut. But his mind kept drifting elsewhere.

To
her.

He'd had the worst night. If he'd slept at all, he couldn't remember it. His memory had run like a mouse on a wheel, the same scene, the same face, over and over and over until he was exhausted with it, and still he'd not been able to block her from his thoughts.

Perhaps he'd simply been too tired to sleep. Seeing Reginald again; dealing with the consequences of being sent home midterm from Eton. Again. It was all a right bloody mess. He'd been stewing, secretly sick with dread, the entire trip back, although Laurence and Chloe had eased matters somewhat.

Well, Laurence had. He was out of school, likely forever, so why wouldn't he be cheerful? But Lady Chloe Pemington, joining them at the last moment after attending some royal wedding or another in Norfolk, had been less than her usual carefully charming self.

The water served aboard the train was not chilled enough. The wine was not French enough. The staff was not prompt enough. She'd desired roasted lamb for supper and was served ham croquettes instead, and she had been coolly and surgically tearing apart the sweating steward until at last she'd noticed Armand's steady, interested gaze upon her.