They took my shyness, my privacy, for weakness. I gulped down my embarrassment, a bitter pill. “Captain Marshall, I fully intend—”
But once he’d gotten rolling, Marshall was loath to stop. “England abandoned Potomac because their empire grew weak at the fringes.” He eyed me sternly, as though I were a soldier who’d shown up for inspection in a wrinkled uniform. “But we survived their abandonment because our ancestors did what they must. And now, so must you.”
I knew our history as well as I knew my duty. But duty had felt different when it had looked like Peter.
I sensed clouds gathering overhead, vultures circling close. But I couldn’t read what they foretold.
Something was coming. I knew it. I just couldn’t make sense of the omens.
Once upon a time, Godmother Althea had told me, the Old World sought out the New, poachers and pilgrims and adventurers and conquerors pursuing glory and gold and space to breathe. And they had found some of what they wanted. But they hadn’t stayed forever.
The future does not roll in great waves, she’d said. It comes in a thousand tiny moments, turns on hinges too small to see, follows a winding path carved by yeses and nos that change the world.
Europe taxed and took what it wanted, retreating from the New World only after the Old claimed all its attention—when Bharat, far away in Southeast Asia, began to press back against the men who came first for commerce and coercion and then to outright conquer. When distance and cost made us more trouble than we were worth.
A thousand tiny moments. A winding path of yeses and nos.
I wondered how different my life would be if the New World colonies had pushed back instead of being squeezed thin in Europe’s grip. If we had been the ones to revolt instead of Bharat. If, when abandoned by English overlords cheerfully declaring our “independence,” someone other than my ancestor had been the one to save our starving, depleted colony and become our first seneschal.
I wondered how different my future might look if Peter had said yes tonight instead of no.
Bharat’s revolt had meant the beginning of the end of the British Empire—and, for a time, of all empires. After England’s resources were decimated in Bharat’s war for independence, Europe’s enterprising crowns abandoned their imperial pursuits in the New World and the Old, determined to stay within their borders and stay afloat.
But Britain was not the last empire to seek to cover the earth. If the reports were right, the Imperiya Yotne—the endless swaths of land conquered by the country of Yotunkheym—was a gaping mouth and a bottomless stomach, swallowing more territory in Europe every year.
I shook myself, tried to focus.
I wanted to serve Potomac. I wanted to marry.
But the tides of history weren’t mine to command. And neither was my own heart. Or anyone else’s.
“Bharat, al-Maghreb, and Masr balance the Imperiya for now. But we cannot perpetually count on great foreign powers to slap the tsarytsya’s wrist away, should she reach beyond Europe’s shores,” Marshall finished. “Who will you choose, Seneschal-elect?”
“There’s no one else,” I said, staring at the Council table, my voice barely above a whisper. “There was only Peter.”
I lifted my gaze and met the eyes of the third stranger.
The last and youngest of the trio sat the tallest of the group. His tanned face was smooth and unwrinkled, set with an upturned nose and bowed lips. No silver threaded his dark hair, but his expression was grave, better suited for a much older man.
His thick-lashed dark eyes were a little dismayed, studying me as I studied him. I glanced away.
“Give her time,” my father said quietly. “And, in time, perhaps we can look elsewhere.”
Daddy smiled, and I imagined the day he’d met my mother. A stranger who’d become his wife.
Perhaps I could do the same. Given time.
“But, Jeremiah, we need to address this now. After tonight’s events, Selah’s reputation will only suffer the longer she continues without a fiancé.” Alessandra’s face lit up, her smile so bright and beautiful and filled with concern it almost stung my eyes to look at. “Besides, our Selah is lovely, cultured, accomplished. She’s a very productive seneschal-elect, and she did so well in school.”
I froze.
I’d often wondered what Peter and the court and everyone thought, when they looked at Daddy and me next to Alessandra. But my stepmother had never left her feelings for me in any doubt.
She disdained me in every way.
Suddenly, I was very, very afraid.
“Really, Selah’s predicament is an opportunity in disguise.” Alessandra’s tone was broad and sincere; but I read an almost manic tension in the furrow of her brow and the press of her palms on her stomach. “In times like these, we need good friends and long arms. Since our search in Potomac has failed, I suggest our seneschal-elect cross the Atlantic in search of her groom.”
5
I waited for the punch line to her hideous joke. But Alessandra didn’t laugh. Secretary Gidcumb stared at me across the table, his high forehead smooth, his dark brown face carefully expressionless behind his glasses. I could read nothing in the press of his broad lips.
My vision clouded as I slipped into a daze; my thoughts grew fuzzy, as though my brain had fallen asleep the way my arms and legs sometimes did.
Across the Atlantic? The Atlantic Ocean?
Daddy’s brows pinched together. “Alessandra, that kind of planning would take ages. We’d have to dig up protocol officers, pick her out a team of advisers, commission a ship—the whole affair could cost us years. And I don’t want her going so far.”
My heart rate steadied. O ye, of little faith, I reprimanded myself.
Alessandra shook her head. “Jeremiah, don’t be offended, but I’m afraid I foresaw this, and I’m glad I did, because I’ve saved us a wait. Boys like Peter . . . Well, he’s extremely well-liked; he’s handsome; he comes from a good family. You may be seneschal-elect, but Peter has options.” My stepmother reviewed me with a quick glance, shrugging as if to say, You should’ve known.
You should’ve known he wouldn’t choose you.
The oldest stranger narrowed his gray eyes.
Daddy shook his head unhappily, but my smother waved a hand. “Several courts have very graciously agreed to receive our daughter.”
Our daughter. She never called me that.
“In light of her situation, we should be counting our blessings,” Alessandra added. Captain Marshall bobbed his head, eyebrows arched in obsequious agreement. “A fine group of young men from respectable houses have agreed to court Selah. After what happened tonight, what are her chances of finding a husband at home, even should she wish to?” She waved an elegant hand, the other still pressed protectively to her stomach.
My father stared at the table, not speaking. The room seemed to hold its breath. Or perhaps it was just me.
I counted the seconds as they passed. Everything in me strained across the table toward my father. I wanted to shake him, to make him meet my eyes. To make him make Alessandra explain herself.
When Daddy lifted his head, looking resigned, I knew I was lost.
“I want to personally approve her team,” he said. “I remember what it was like to choose Violet, and you, too, for that matter. Whole committees scrutinized you both, helped me deliberate.”