She glanced from Ysbeta’s dark gaze to Ianthe’s merry-eyed humor—he meant for his compromise to be fulfilled. Beatrice sorted through a mental selection of her day gowns. Would they suffice for such company?
This was no time to worry about gowns. She had to tread this situation carefully. She offered the volume to Ysbeta. Once in her hands, Ysbeta offered her only smile, betraying slightly crooked lower front teeth.
“Thank you,” she said. “Excuse me for a moment.”
They left her standing in the stacks. Ianthe left for the carriage as Ysbeta signed a chit guaranteeing payment on billing, then marched straight for the exit. The bell rang behind her.
Ysbeta had no intention of giving Beatrice an invitation card.
Beatrice had been robbed.
Off in the distance a turquoise enameled landau turned a corner, and as it vanished from sight, the rippling sense of the grimoire faded.
Lost. Stolen! Oh, she would never trust the word of a gentleman again! She had found her chance to be free—drat politeness! She should have refused. She should have said no!
A pair of women stepped around her with clucking tongues. Beatrice hastily moved to the edge of the promenade. She couldn’t have said no. That would have gone badly for her family. She was already planning to tarnish the respectable name of the Clayborns with her plans to remain unmarried. That was trouble enough. She couldn’t bring more—there was Harriet to think of, after all.
Beatrice’s younger sister drew pictures of herself in the green gowns of wedding ceremonies. She read all the novels of women navigating the bargaining season, set in a world that was positively overrun by ministers and earls who fell in love with merchants’ daughters—Harriet wanted her fate. Beatrice couldn’t destroy her sister’s chances.
But the book! How would she find another?
She waited at a street corner for the signal-boy to stop carriage traffic and joined the throng of pedestrians crossing to Silk Row. Large shopwindows featured gowns mounted on dress dummies, wigs on painted wooden heads. Heeled slippers suspended on wires mimicked dancing. She walked past displays and stopped at Tarden and Wallace Modiste.
Tarden and Wallace was the most fashionable modiste in Bendleton, led by its Llanandari proprietress. Its design magazines were printed, bound, and sold to young women who sighed over illustrations of gowns that maximized the beauty of the wearer, with nipped-in waists, low, curving necklines, and luxurious imported fabrics. This shop was the most expensive, and Father had paid for her wardrobe without a murmur.
Beatrice caught herself chewing on her lip. Father would have chosen another modiste if he couldn’t pay for this one. He would have.
She pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Everyone turned their attention to her entrance, took in her windblown hair, her dusty hems, and her gloveless hands. Two women, sisters by their identical floral-printed cotton gowns, glanced at each other and covered their mouths, giggling.
Beatrice’s face went hot. She hadn’t stayed in the carriage, and now she showed the signs of walking along the common promenades. The weight of A Lady’s Book of Manners and Style balanced invisibly on her head, correcting her posture. She fought the urge to bat dust off her plain tea-dyed skirts.
Clara emerged from a dressing room and smiled. “You’ll love everything, Miss Beatrice. Tonight’s gown is ready, and I have ordered four more—”
An assistant followed Clara out of the dressing room, carrying a half-finished green gown in her arms, and Beatrice swallowed. That was meant to be her wedding dress. She was supposed to wear it to a temple and be bound in marriage to a moneyed young sorcerer, losing her magic for decades. She averted her gaze and caught Miss Tarden herself staring at the same garment with a sour pinch to her full mouth.
“Miss Beatrice? Did you want to try on your gown?” Miss Tarden asked, her accent rich with cultured Llanandari.
Beatrice stared at the wedding gown with her heart in her throat. “I have another engagement, I’m afraid.”
Clara gestured toward the fitting room. “We’ll be cutting it close, but we can take a few minutes to—”
“No, that’s all right,” Beatrice said. “Tell me all about the new gowns on the way to the chapterhouse tearoom.”
The sisters glanced at each other in surprise. Beatrice ignored them.
Clara bobbed her knees, hoisting the case in one hand. “It wouldn’t do to be late.”
Beatrice led the way out of the shop. Clara swung the case as she boarded the fiacre Father had hired for Beatrice. “You didn’t buy any books.”
Beatrice watched a herd of gentlemen on leggy, long-maned horses ride past, laughing and shouting at one another. They wore embroidery and fine leather riding boots, but no aura shone from their heads. Just young men, then, and not magicians. “The volume I wished to purchase was taken by someone else.”
“Oh, Miss Beatrice. I am sorry. I know how you love old books,” Clara touched Beatrice’s arm, a delicate gesture of comfort. “It’ll turn up again. We can write to all the booksellers asking after it, if you like.”
Clara didn’t understand, of course. Beatrice couldn’t tell her maid the truth, no matter how much she liked the slightly older woman. She couldn’t tell anyone the truth. Drat Ysbeta Lavan! Couldn’t she have turned up just five minutes later?
She had to get that book back in her hands. She had to!
“But now you have tea with your father to look forward to,” Clara offered, “and meeting your first young man. Do you suppose Danton Maisonette is handsome?”
Beatrice shrugged. “With a title and the controlling interest in Valserre’s biggest capital investment firm, he doesn’t have to be.”
“Oh, Miss Beatrice. I know you’re not concerned with the weight of his pockets! Leave that to Mr. Clayborn. It’s his worry, after all. Now, what do you hope? That he’s handsome? That he’s intelligent?”
“That he’s honest.”
Clara considered this with a thoughtful frown. “Sometimes honesty is a knife, Miss Beatrice. But here we are!”
Beatrice had been trying to ignore their approach to the chapterhouse. The carriage stopped in front of the building that dominated the south end of the square it presided over, its shadow cast over the street.
The Bendleton chapterhouse was the newest one built in Chasland, with a soaring bell tower and matching spires. Its face was polished gray stone. The windows sparkled with colored glass. Beatrice stood on the promenade, glaring at the building as if it were her nemesis.
She glared at the heart of social life and education for mages all over the world, the exclusive center of men’s power and men’s influence denied to women like her. Even when she was finally permitted to practice magic in her advanced years, the chapterhouse had no place for her. She was permitted—when escorted by a man who was a member—to enter the gallery and the teahouse, and no farther.
Boys aged ten to eighteen sheltered within, learning mathematics and history alongside ritual procedure and sorcerous technique. Full members shared trade secrets with their brothers, decided laws before they even reached the Ministry, and improved their lot through their magical skill and fraternal vows.
The chapterhouse held facilities for crafting and artificing, suitably appointed ritual rooms, even apartments where brothers of the chapter could claim hospitality. Thousands of books of magic rested in the scriptorium, written in Mizunh, the secret language of spirits. Centuries of tradition, of restriction, of exclusion were built into the very stones of this building—Beatrice stared at her nemesis, indeed.