The butler’s bright eyes flicked to Jane’s veil, glimmered with interested that Jane could not parse. She tapped her fingers on her bristly chin, grinned with sharp teeth. “An’ ye be human, enter,” the butler said formally, and so Jane crossed the iron threshold and entered the manor.
It was darker inside than out. The round foyer had six exits. The front door and the wide stairs opposite made up two. The other four were archways hung with heavy velvet curtains in dark colors: garnet and sapphire on the left, forest green and mahogany on the right. Worn tapestries hung on the stone walls between the curtains, dampening the thin blue of a fey-lit chandelier. Fey technology had mostly disappeared from the city as the lights and bluepacks winked out one by one and could not be replaced. It was back to candles and horses—though some who were both wealthy and brave were trying the new gaslights and steam-cars. Some who were merely brave were attempting to retrofit the bluepack motorcars with large devices that burned oil and let off a terrible smell—like the car that had brought her from the station. The housekeeper must have husbanded the chandelier lights carefully to make it last so long, when all fey trade had vanished.
“I’ll take your coat. That way for the artist,” said the little butler, and she gestured at the first doorway on the left, the garnet-red curtains.
“No, I’ve come for the governess position,” said Jane, but the butler was already retreating through the sapphire curtains with Jane’s coat and pasteboard suitcase, grey braid swinging. In that padded room her words died the second they fell from her lips.
Her steps made no noise as she walked over to draw back the curtain. It was not a hallway, but a small chamber, papered in the same deep garnet and lit with one flickering candle.
On the walls were rows of masks.
Jane stared. The masks were as grotesque as the doorknocker. Each was uniquely hideous, and yet there was a certain similarity in the way the glistening skin fell in bags and folds. Clearly they were all made by the same artist, but what sort of man would create these monstrosities—and who would buy them? They would fit a person, but surely no one would wear them, even for a whimsy like that masked cocktail party Helen had attended. In the flickering oil light they looked hyper-real, alive. Like something fey from the old days, before trade had given way to war. She lifted her veil to see more clearly, reached up to touch one sagging cheek.
“Do you like my collection?”
Jane jumped back, wrapping her veil close.
A man stood in the curtained entrance. The garnet folds swung around him as he stepped inside, stared down at her. He was very close and very tall in that narrow room, and his eyes were in shadow.
“Do people actually buy these?” she said, and was aghast at having blurted out something so rude.
But he didn’t look offended. “You’d be surprised,” he said, still studying her. He was not handsome, not as Helen would describe it—not soft and small-nosed, no ruddy cheeks and chin. He was all angles, the bones of his cheek and jaw plainly visible, and his hair leaped skyward as if it would not stay flat.
Jane tugged on the corner of the veil. She knew how much the gauze did and didn’t cover. The folds of the white veil obscured the details of her iron half-mask, but they didn’t hide that it existed. She caught them all looking, men, women, children. They stared into her veil, fascinated, appalled, trying not to get caught.
But he was staring into her eyes.
Jane marshaled her thoughts. “I’m here from the city,” she said. “I need a job.” She had not planned to state it so baldly, but he and his leering masks threw her from her stride, and now the words were confused. They stumbled from her tongue, and she felt awkward and stupidly young, though she had been making her own living for nearly five years.
She especially felt foolish when he nodded and said, “I know. I bargained with old Peter to pick you up. Only reliable chap in town, when it comes to venturing out to Silver Birch.”
“Oh,” she said. Her driver. Of course. “Yes, thank you.”
“I would’ve sent the motorcar, but we’re down to the last full-size bluepack, and after that…” He shrugged.
“No horses?”
“They don’t take to this house very well. The forest makes them skittish.” He crossed his arms, his sleeve brushing her bare elbow. She had put on her best dress—a patterned navy one with short ruffled sleeves, though she had regretted it frequently in the cold and again now. Almost spring was the worst—the last cold and wet of winter when you were dying for bare arms and sunshine. “Tell me about yourself.”
“I’ve been working as a teacher,” she said, “and before that I was a governess. My strength is literature and composition, but I’ve taught all subjects. I speak three languages and I know how to help your—”