Without a Summer (6 page)
A look of horror crossed Mr. Colgrove’s face. Likely he used the warming charm more than once a year and was wondering about the effects on his life. Still, he had enough quickness of intellect to exhibit an understanding of the larger implications. “This is why there are no heatmongers, then?”
“Correct. Although coldmongering is also dangerous if done too often.”
Melody turned her gaze upon Vincent. “I did not know that. But the coldmonger our grocer uses is a boy.”
“Most coldmongers die young.”
Jane shivered, thinking of young William. His hands had already shown the signs of his trade. She had known of the difficulty in managing cold, but had never connected that with the general youth of coldmongers. As she thought on it, she could not recollect seeing any coldmonger much past his thirtieth year.
Mr. Colgrove remarked, “Then my coldmonger should have been grateful that I did not require his services in this blasted cold! He should have thanked me for saving his life when I let him go.”
“Quite so! I had not thought that I was doing a social good by not yet engaging a coldmonger.” Sir Prescott laughed, pounding his knee again.
Jane could not find amusement in the misfortune of others. Melody had a moment of shock on her face as well, but masked it behind her teacup. Sir Prescott set a poor example for his nephew by encouraging such ill-judged humour. The young gentleman she could excuse, from nerves and youth, but Sir Prescott should surely know better. He displayed remarkably poor taste, but continued to expand on the subject until even his nephew looked conscious of the way his uncle exposed himself.
Biting the inside of her lip, Jane poured a fresh cup of tea for herself, though she was far from thirsty. She was thankful when the talk moved to trivial things.
Though Jane faced her cousin, the edge of her vision was occupied with her husband. After a day of working, what he most needed was solitude, particularly as his equilibrium had clearly been upset by the surprise of his sister’s call.
Jane sipped her tea and tried to be attentive, but she could not help wondering what would happen when they met Lady Penelope.
It took Jane and Vincent much of a week to pull the old glamour out of the ballroom. It seemed as though the previous glamourist had taken pains to tie the most obscure knots possible. Jane was inclined to conclude that he had been experimenting with new techniques, but Vincent seemed convinced that the glamourist had been the worst sort of amateur. He muttered constantly while removing the old work. Jane shared his sentiment, but was hard-pressed not to laugh at her husband’s inventive turns of phrase—her favourite was “goat-licking amateur,” followed closely by “mongrel’s handmaiden.”
While there was no perfect metaphor for glamour, in this regard it was most like needlework. Each thread or fold of light which had been pulled from the ether had to be tied off to remain in place. To undo it, they had needed to unpick each knot. Indeed, even tearing the building down would do nothing to remove the glamour, which would remain in place until it gradually faded back into the ether. Jane had seen follies in which the remnants of glamurals still haunted the air where the original walls had once been. Nothing save a direct lightning strike would speed the process. It would be lovely if someone would invent a pair of scissors that worked on glamour, but as it stood, everything had to be removed by hand. Now that the room was clear, Jane could finally anticipate the coming day’s work with pleasure. It would be their first opportunity to lay in new glamour, and the start of a project always excited her with its possibilities.
As they prepared to leave home, Jane had to restrain herself from skipping with the basket of their nuncheon to the front door, where Vincent waited for her.
On the way out, she observed Melody sitting by the window in the parlour, staring out at the snow. She had a book in her lap, but it lay neglected against the fabric of her dress.
Vincent tilted his head, studying Jane’s sister as though he were going to draw her. Flexing his hands, he said, “We are not in such a hurry.”
“Thank you.” Jane entered the parlour as though to ascertain the weather. Pausing by her sister, she looked out at the snow drifting down. “What are you reading?”
Melody jumped, only now seeming conscious that Jane had approached. She picked up the book as though she did not know it. “
St. Irvyne,
by … oh. By a ‘Gentleman of the University of Oxford.’ How odd. At any rate, it is quite engrossing.”
“I have not had the pleasure yet. What is it about?”
“Oh…” Melody turned the pages, frowning. “A young woman. No. A man. Well, it starts with a violent storm and … la! I can barely do it justice. Perhaps you should read it when I am through.”
“On your recommendation, certainly.” Jane stared out at the snow, though she really watched Melody’s reflection in the window. “Are you well? Your eyes seem a bit reddened.”
“They are only tired.” Melody glanced across the room to where Vincent waited in the doorway. “You should go.”
Jane hesitated until Melody lifted her book again and began to read. Across the room, Vincent raised his eyebrows in question, clearly asking if she had any success with Melody. Jane shook her head, thankful that her husband could read her silent moods so well. He compressed his lips and nodded with understanding. With the snow, Melody had been cooped up, and any plans to go exploring had come to nothing. Perhaps Jane should have brought her mother to London after all, so that Melody would have some company while they worked. It seemed clear that they had left her too long alone.
Vincent tucked his chin in as he did when he was thinking. She tilted her head toward Melody, asking if it were all right to invite her, and he gave a bare nod. Jane suspected that if he were closer she might hear his little whine of protest, but he had not raised an objection.
“Would you like to come with us today?”
“Oh!” Melody sat up, almost dropping her book. “Truly? I will not be in the way, I promise, and if you need me to do anything or to run any errands, you have only to ask.”
“Yes, truly. It might be dull, but it will at least be a different sort of dull.”
“Let me get my pelisse and bonnet, then.” Melody bounded to her feet. She glanced again at Vincent standing in the door. Lowering her voice, she leaned closer to Jane. “Are you certain that Vincent will not mind? I know he prefers not to have spectators when he works.”
“It was his idea.” Or close to it, at any rate. This half-truth was enough to set Melody’s mind at ease, though she needed little persuasion.
In a matter of minutes Melody returned, pulling her warm pelisse over her dress to ward off the cold outside. Somehow she managed to make the long outer coat seem fluid and graceful as she skipped down the stairs and to the waiting hack that they had hired.
Jane would rather have walked to the Baron’s, but the snow formed a slushy blanket on the foot-paths. The streets had turned into grey quagmires of melted snow and other, less agreeable, liquids. Even with the carriage, the passage through the streets was slow and unpleasant as the horse started and stopped frequently to accommodate the uncertain foot traffic. Most of the walkers picked their way through the streets on tall metal pattens that clinked against the pavement. Those less fortunate had their mouths squeezed with distaste as they walked through the slush. Even the tradesmen looked annoyed by the weather. She kept an eye out for William, but saw no signs of him or any other coldmonger.
The walk in front of Stratton House had, thankfully, been swept clear of the ice and snow, but Jane still had to hold up the hem of her dress to keep it from dragging on the damp pavement as they went inside. Even the stout brown wool of her work dress would show this amount of dirt.
The butler only raised his eyebrows a fraction at the addition of a third member to their party, but that did not slow the readiness with which they were greeted and shown to the ballroom.
Vincent paused only long enough to remove his greatcoat and hat before setting to work. He strode to the far end of the ballroom, where the musicians’ gallery now stood fully revealed, and vanished up the stairs.
Jane set her basket on the floor by the entry and pulled off her gloves. She would leave her pelisse on until she had warmed up a bit with activity. “We shall spend most of our time neglecting you, I am afraid.” Jane pulled her apron on over the pelisse.
“Oh, I am not afraid of that.” Melody looked around the room and frowned. “Where shall I sit?”
Discomfited, Jane could only stare at the room. They had removed all the furniture so that it did not interfere with their work. Quite a few random pieces of glamour had been obscured by chairs, making Vincent’s mutterings change to swears every time they found another loose thread. She had forgotten that there was nowhere to sit in the ballroom. “I will ask if they can bring you a chair.”
Before she could do more than turn toward the door, Vincent reappeared from the stairs. He had a folding chair from the musicians’ gallery under one arm. “Will this do?”
“Thank you, yes.” Melody skipped down the length of the ballroom to meet him. “Where shall I sit so that I am not in the way?”
“Anywhere.” Vincent set the chair in the middle of the floor. “So long as you do not mind moving if we require it.”
“Not at all.” Melody sat in the chair and pulled a book from her reticule. Studiously, she opened it and began to read, as if to show that she intended to be no trouble.
Smiling to herself, Jane joined Vincent as he climbed the stairs to the musicians’ gallery. “That was very nice of you, love.”
He grunted in answer and Jane laughed outright at him. Vincent stopped on the stairs and turned in the narrow space. Even in the dim light filtering from the door, his eyes twinkled. “Muse, you must know that I would do anything to make you happy.”
“Anything?” She ran her finger along the ribbon of his pocket watch, coming dangerously close to other delicate areas.
He caught her hand and raised it to his lips. “Anything—after our work is finished.”
“Then let us work swiftly.”
* * *
When Melody sighed for
the third time in as many minutes, Jane carefully tied off the fold of glamour that she was stretching along the wall. It would serve as an undercoat of pale gold to brighten the darker weaves she would place over it later.
“Is something the matter?”
“Oh, no.” Melody shifted in her seat. “I was merely thinking.”
She had long since laid her book aside, saying that it made her head ache. It was becoming clear that she regretted her decision to accompany them. At least at home, she could move from room to room when a sense of ennui struck her. Here, she was limited to the ballroom while the Vincents worked, and Jane had run out of activities for Melody.
“Would you like to draw?”
Melody rolled her eyes. “I am not a child that you need to amuse. I merely sighed.”
“All right.” Jane held up her hands in surrender and returned to work. Melody could suffer ennui if she liked. It was the affliction of the fashionable, after all.
At the other end of the room, Vincent had his feet spread wide in his operating stance. He had greater stamina and reach than she did, so he was placing the glamour along the ceiling. To someone whose eyes were only adjusted to the visible world, Vincent appeared to be waving his hands at random while washes of colour came into view overhead. When Jane let her vision expand to include the ether, his real work became apparent. Vincent pulled skeins of pure glamour and folded their light to his whims. Almost like a puppet showman working a marionette upside down, he wove a pattern on the ceiling with the folds.
Scholars of glamour found that it had properties resembling textile, water, and light. The nature of glamour caused it to want to sink toward the earth once it was brought out of the ether. A glamourist who wanted to work at a distance had to think of it as a jet of water, diffusing and curling toward the earth. This made distance work doubly hard, due to the effort of supporting it while attempting to work with any degree of precision.
Though the room had the bite of winter still, Vincent had removed his coat and worked only in his waistcoat and shirt sleeves so he did not overheat with the effort of working across so great a distance. Jane paused to make certain that he was not breathing overquickly. Like any activity, glamour required energy to manage, and Vincent had been known to work past his limits.
Satisfied that he was not straining himself, Jane began to work again. Scarcely had she pulled a new fold from the ether when the door to the ballroom opened. Lord Stratton entered with a footman bearing a small tray of comestibles.
“I thought you might need some refreshments.”
Jane released her fold without troubling to tie it off. “Thank you, my lord.”
Likewise, Vincent stepped back from the work he was doing and rolled his shirt sleeves down. “That is very kind, sir.”
The Baron glanced at Melody and raised a brow in question. Jane stepped forward beckoning Melody, who rose. “May I present my sister, Miss Ellsworth.”
“Ah, they had mentioned you had a companion, but not how lovely.” He bowed very correctly over Melody’s hand. “Are you also a glamourist?”
Melody shook her head. “No, alas. I confess that I came to escape our house. The weather, you know.”
“Quite understandable.” He hesitated, then said, “If you would like to use our music room, you are more than welcome.”
“That would be very—” Melody broke off and glanced to Jane, seeming to recognise that this was not a social call. “That is, if it would not be any bother, I should be grateful.”
“None at all.” He bowed to Jane. “If it will not deprive Lady Vincent of your company, that is.”
Jane managed to reassure him that Melody was welcome to go, without making it sound like she was eager for her sister’s absence. But in truth, once Melody left the room with Lord Stratton, Jane was significantly more comfortable concentrating on her work.