This wrung a soggy giggle out of Jeanne; Lord Thorsten was sixty and bandy-legged like a beetle.
They lay a bit longer in silence, Tess drifting in and out of memories and dreams. The memories were of Will, mostly—the big hands, the small humiliations—but also the birth of Dozerius. The dreams…well, surely she dreamed that Jeanne muttered their old watchword, “Us against the world,” and kissed her cheek.
Tess awoke hours later to the cacophony of country birds jeering at the dawn. Jeanne was long gone, her side of the bed grown cold.
* * *
Tess had been dressing her sister all week, but on the wedding day Duchess Elga insisted upon letting Jeanne use her own dressing room and her own lady’s maid. Tess did not object; it would have been futile, and she had enough to do getting herself ready. The duchess had provided both Jeanne and Tess with gowns, which seemed generous on the surface of things, but Tess knew it wouldn’t do to let the bride’s sister look shabby. The other noble guests would talk.
Tess’s revised theory, as she maneuvered herself into her farthingale—an imported Ninysh petticoat with willow hoops sewn in—was that the duchess was trying to torture her. The architectural underthings gave dressmakers an excuse to add an extra foot of fabric to the hem and an extra twenty pounds of beads, buttons, and embroidery to everything else. All that weight converged right at the middle; she felt crushed whenever anything bumped her perimeter, and she was bumping everything. She couldn’t get used to how wide she was.
Tess wound her brown braids around her head and frowned at herself in the glass, knowing she ought to do her face but feeling exhausted by the notion. When she made up Jeanne’s face, it was a hopeful, anticipatory act, but to do her own seemed to underscore the futility of everything. She powdered her cheeks (which were unexpectedly damp) and reddened her lips and called it good enough.
She sat on the edge of her bed, a difficult trick in a farthingale, and had another crème de menthe, staring out the window at the tidy topiary hedges. She had a second glass. She might have had more than that; it was a small glass and she was very far away. Her hands and mouth had come to some kind of understanding with each other and left her out of it.
She smudged off half her lip rouge onto the edge of the glass. She didn’t care.
The service was to start at noon, Samsamese-style. Tess met Paul and Ned at their room and herded them down the curving central stair into the magnificent foyer, where a hundred or more newly arrived guests were milling around. She paused on the landing overlooking the room and let her brothers go down without her. It was a colorful crowd, mostly other landed gentry, but the magistrates of nearby Trowebridge had also been invited, along with some of the more prominent merchants.
That kind of social blending was still rare, but it would have been utterly unheard of just six years ago, before St. Jannoula’s War. A lot had changed since then.
A trumpeter rushed in from outdoors and blared a lively fanfare, the new one, composed by Seraphina in honor of the Queen. The mob of wedding guests parted seamlessly down the middle and oriented themselves to face the door. Queen Glisselda, in a farthingale gown of evening-blue silk sprinkled with constellations of pearls, entered upon the arm of Prince Consort Lucian Kiggs. Tess’s half sister, Seraphina, in an outdated maroon houppelande, walked several paces behind them, trying to be unobtrusive.
One good thing about Seraphina’s houppelande was that it made her belly ambiguous. Was she or wasn’t she? It might just be the hang of the robe.
Tess longed to tell someone, anyone, that Seraphina, so-called Saint, was no better than she should be. Would it have been a treasonous embarrassment of the Queen, though, to imply that her husband was unfaithful? For the baby must surely be Prince Lucian’s. Of course, for all Tess knew, he’d had Queen Glisselda’s blessing. Seraphina was so tight-lipped about the royal cousins that Tess could only speculate.
But then, they could do whatever they wanted. People might mutter, but no one would try to stop them. It must be nice.
Beside Seraphina walked a plump woman wearing a fabulously plumed hat and a red-and-green gown, its skirt cut so daringly short that her boots showed. This was Countess Margarethe of Mardou, the famous explorer; Tess had heard her speak once at St. Bert’s. The countess had her Porphyrian mother’s dark complexion but was clearly Ninysh in her flamboyant dress and carriage. Goreddis, down to the Queen herself, were finally adopting the farthingale, and here the Ninysh had already moved on to calf-length skirts, raised square collars, and shiny, authoritative boots. There was no keeping up with them.
Seraphina’s ploy to remain unobtrusive by entering behind the Queen and beside the most fashionable woman in the room wasn’t working out for her. She was mobbed by wedding guests, ostensibly wanting to say hello but really wanting to shake her hand so they could later tell their friends and relations, “I know she claims not to be a Saint, but I swear I felt the grace of Heaven in her palm.”
Seraphina, reserved by nature, tolerated it as best she could, but Prince Lucian was, even now, working his way back through the crowd to extricate her.
Tess clucked her tongue, refusing to feel sorry for Seraphina. She didn’t have it so tough; she’d always been the special one. The smart one. Jeanne was prettiest and sweetest. That hadn’t left much scope for Tess beyond “the one most likely to get spanked.”
A momentary glimpse of a face in the crowd—blue eyes, cocky grin—caught Tess’s attention, and her heart nearly stopped. Had William of Affle been invited to this wedding?
The face was gone. She forced herself to resume breathing, and with breath came reason. It was impossible; the Duke and Duchess of Ducana wouldn’t associate with a poor student like him. Where would they have run into each other? And Will was surely off on some expedition or other, anyway. The opportunity of a lifetime must have come up—that’s what she’d told herself for the last two years. It was the only excuse she could almost accept.
Will had left her, for who knew where or what, and she’d banished him from her heart and mind. He was not welcome back. If he were to show up out of the blue, Tess wasn’t sure how she’d react. It would be like seeing a ghost.
She suspected she’d cry, actually. That only made her angry.
A light touch on her shoulder made her jump. It was merely Mama, who had a talent for sneaking up on people. “I was up at your room,” she said, her ice-blue eyes accusatory, as if Tess had put her to a lot of trouble.
“I don’t see why,” said Tess, turning back toward the sea of guests. “I brought Ned and Paul down, like you asked me to. If you’d been here, you would have seen—”
“I found something very concerning behind your window curtain,” said her mother.