But that just recalled the incident in the studio, a week ago. Awake now, Jane writhed under her quilts, tormented by jabs of humiliation. Why had she thought she could be his equal? The entire time he let her try out her silly flirtation, he had that woman in the back room. He knew that she liked him, knew why she turned her face away. He probably thought she was standing that way in the sunlight, in that dress, to do … what Alistair had suggested.
She thumped her pillow angrily and rolled over. She would not let her thoughts turn inward. She would resist. She didn’t like him, she wasn’t that foolish, and she wasn’t here for that. She was here to help Dorie, and that was it. She did not expect anything else.
Did not, did not. Did not … but why did that redhead in his studio look so familiar? Someone Jane had seen at her sister’s wedding? No, it was mostly the name that was familiar. Jane’s eyes flew open. Of course! The woman who had come on Jane’s first day. Her name was Miss Ingel—Blanche Ingel. She even looked like this one, as near as a charcoal sketch looked like an oil painting. That Miss Ingel had had the same red hair, true, but had not been beautiful in the slightest. The two might be cousins, she supposed.
Odd, but explicable. Why did it make her so uneasy? Her damn cheek, that’s why. It was unnerving her, and she couldn’t trust her reactions. As if in response, it fired again. She pressed the back of her cold hand to it and thought of standing at the window in his studio, watching the woods and imagining him studying the shape of her blue dress. Shame tormented her belly like cold claws scuttling through her gut.
Nothing. She expected nothing. He wasn’t even avoiding her—he simply didn’t care. He hadn’t even noticed that he hadn’t seen her for a week. Maybe she was worth speaking to when she stood there, but when she was gone? Then, she was like the book she had taken from the library and still not returned. Because would you notice if Ilhronian History of the 16th Century was missing from a shelf? Not very likely. It was the sort of book you wouldn’t even remember owning, seeing, or reading. And it certainly wouldn’t lure you with a pretty blue spine, not when its contents were so unspeakably dull.
She was going back to sleep now.
Think of nothing.
The quilts strangled her with their heat, and the nose-tickling scent of the jar of iron-flecked tar was intolerable at this hour of night. Jane kicked the quilts off one by one, twisting her bare feet into the cooler air of the room. It was too warm for a night in April.
At last she untangled herself from the bedclothes and padded in bare feet to the window.
She thumbed on the fey-tech light and unfolded the most recent letter from Helen in its faint blue glow. She had started out hoarding its mini-bluepack, but when it winked out recently, surprise, surprise, Martha had produced another. “Aren’t out yet,” is all the maid would say, curtly, and so Jane thought: Fine. If they won’t tell me, then I’ll use as much damn light as I please.
She had been interrupted somewhere toward the end of the party description by Dorie waking up from a nap. Now she skimmed the repetitive descriptions of dresses and flirtations until she found her place.
“But enough of my popularity,” Helen wrote. “What is merely good is short of perfect, you know, and Alistair reminds me that we had a setback to a proper upbringing. We are so good for one another, Jane. He has promised me that he will give up gambling at horses with that rough set, and for my part, he is finishing me off to perfection and you would be so delighted to see how I take to it. I work every day with the skin scrubs and the creams, and am performing the newfangled calisthenics to stay fit for my lovely slinky dresses. There is alas nothing I can do about the bump on my nose, but Alistair assures me he has a plan in mind, and he is quite clever.”
What bump? thought Jane.
“The endless round of parties, dinners, &c I have just described for you seems less droll lately. I suppose the amount of catch-up I have to do fatigues me, for I am always treading on someone’s toes, and then Alistair takes me to task, as if I were not more cognizant of it than he himself! You have little experience of masses of women friends, but I tell you it is quite shocking the way they can cut you down with a word or a lowering of the eyelids. How pleasant to be you in your solitude, I am sure!”
Jane snorted. She pressed the soles of her feet to the painted wood table legs, cooling them.
“I am trapped between two worlds, Jane, do you know what that’s like? Perhaps you made the right decision to stay humbly in our place after all. And yet—no. No, I would not return to governessing for the most beautiful face in the city.
“You must come soon. Ironskin or no, I miss my strong-hearted sister more each day. Lock yourself in with me and we will face the world down together.