When he left, Jeanne turned toward her twin. Tess’s smile froze when she realized her sister’s eyes had filled with tears.
“Dear heart, those are tears of joy, I hope?” said Tess softly, holding out her hand.
Jeanne flopped onto the couch and laid her head on Tess’s shoulder, where she began to weep in earnest.
Tess set her sewing aside and put her arms around her sister, saying, “No, no, why are you sad? If you dislike Lord Richard, we will find you someone else. Never mind the money, never mind how long it takes. Papa and Mama will find a way to send Paul to school. Seraphina will swoop in and fix everything—” She wouldn’t, in fact, because she couldn’t, and Jeanne knew this as well as Tess did, but Tess felt it incumbent upon herself to keep her mouth moving, to keep her sister’s spirits up. “Something will come through for us. It always does.”
Jeanne drew her handkerchief out of her bodice and held it to her streaming nose. “That’s not it, Sisi. I’m happy to marry Richard. I believe I may be a bit in love with him.”
Tess drew herself up a little, taken aback. “Whatever is the matter, then?”
Jeanne’s cheeks were speckled like a rosy quail egg, her eyes rimmed in pink. “I can’t help remembering that you’re older than me, whatever we may pretend to the world. I don’t deserve this honor and happiness, not when they should have been yours.”
Tess’s heart contracted, wringing out the unselfish joy she’d felt earlier. Wasn’t this typical, though? Not only did Tess not get what should have been hers by birth, but now she had to comfort dear, tenderhearted Jeanne, who was upset by the unfairness of it. Tess did not often feel true resentment toward her sister, but in this moment she did. Soothing Jeanne’s guilt, on top of everything else, seemed a bit much to ask.
“There, there,” she said, patting her sister’s back mechanically. “We both know I’ve gotten what I deserved. If I had really valued any of these things, surely I’d have had the good sense not to throw them away.”
Jeanne sniffled and nodded. Tess turned her face away, unwilling to let her sister glimpse any anger in her eyes. It wasn’t Jeanne’s fault; every ounce of blame could be ascribed to Tess herself. Could be and should be. She ascribed it with all her might.
Only an ungrateful bitch of a sister could feel angry at dear, gentle Jeanne.
Tess walked through the rest of her day, waiting on Lady Farquist, laughing at gentlemen’s jokes during dinner, steering Jeanne’s footsteps toward the obligatory soiree. Jeanne and Richard exchanged lingering glances across the room but said no more than a coy word to each other. Tess didn’t care what they did; she was marking time until she could finally be alone.
Around midnight, Tess closed the door to her little room, which was technically a walk-in closet; her “elder” sister got the suite’s main boudoir. She fished around behind Jeanne’s hanging gowns and three pairs of shoes and drew out a little bottle of plum brandy, which she’d won off Lady Morena. She rationed the stuff religiously, because one never knew when it would be possible to obtain another, but tonight she filled her little glass three times. The fumes streaked painfully up her nose (plum brandy was not as delicious as it sounded), making her cough every time she exhaled, but she didn’t mind. She flopped onto her cot, pleasantly dizzy, and joy was finally able to rise up in her again, a single bubble of hope.
After two years at court, diligently securing her sister’s future, Tessie would be free.
* * *
She trotted down the hill into Lavondaville the next day to tell Mama about the engagement. Jeanne couldn’t go herself; she’d been promoted to maid of honor, which meant that while Tess had merely to dress Lady Farquist (and Jeanne), Jeanne had to accompany Lady Farquist around the court and be an amicable companion to the old woman. Jeanne’s promotion was perfectly acceptable to Tess, as it showcased Jeanne to the court while Tess worked behind the scenes. It also enabled Tess to steal some time for herself without being missed.
Not that she often wandered into town. Once burned, thrice shy. She knew better than to go coursing after her own selfish interests. Telling Mama the good news, however, wasn’t…
Yes, it was. Tess would be the one to make Mama smile, not Jeanne. She never seemed able to escape her own selfishness completely, whatever she did.
She was so bursting with news that she went to the wrong house first, to her childhood home near the shrine of St. Siucre, and knocked upon the door. She realized her mistake, and before the servant could answer, Tess beat a hasty retreat, leaving incriminating footprints in the snow.
Papa’s first marriage, to a dragon in human form, had been illegal five times over; there could be no mistaking Goreddi law on this point. That he was a lawyer and had been deceived only made it the more embarrassing. Queen Glisselda, thanks to her friendship with Seraphina, had pardoned him and saved his life, but even she couldn’t prevent the lawyers’ guild from revoking his license and stripping him of his practice. He consulted on the Queen’s new dragon treaty, but in this time of peace, that was hardly full-time work. He taught classes at the seminary on an irregular and adjunct basis, and sometimes—holding his nose—he advised his Belgioso in-laws in their business ventures.
Alas, the family had been quietly creeping into debt ever since Seraphina’s scales came in, as Papa tried to placate a hurt, angry wife with clothes and servants and fine porcelain. The wife was not placated, and the house was mortgaged to the eaves. Everything still might have come out all right if the money he’d expected upon the death of his mother had come through.
He had gotten nothing but a letter from his elder brother, Jean-Philippe, Baronet Dombegh, saying, The house in town was your inheritance, you idiot. Did you think she’d relent and write you back into her will? By the end, the old buzzard couldn’t even remember your name.
Tess kissed a knuckle toward Heaven for her grandmother. Uncle Jean-Philippe wasn’t worth a flea on one of the “old buzzard’s” tail feathers.
The house in town had been sold a year ago, after Tess and Jeanne had already gone to court. Half the proceeds had trickled into the gaping sinkhole of debt, and three-quarters of the rest was reserved for Jeanne’s dowry, as the investment most likely to yield a strong return.
The new flat was only a few streets over; Tess took the back way, up alleys and through St. Brandoll’s Church. The flat was on the other side of the close, above a mapmaker’s, accessible via an outdoor flight of slick, rickety stairs festooned with icicles. Tess ran her finger along the wooden railing, sending a rain of ice shattering onto the flagstones below.
This door required no knocking. It didn’t even lock properly. She let herself into the parlor-kitchen-dining room, where her mother was simultaneously kneading bread and tutoring Tess’s younger brothers in arithmetic. There was a common misapprehension that a Goreddi housewife wouldn’t know her sums, but any city-born woman knew how to keep an accounts book, and Anne-Marie was not just city-born but Belgioso, a surname synonymous with business. A merchant would be the first to tell you: the wife who could add and subtract—as well as multiply—was a credit to her house indeed.