She hung up her best dress and changed into a shapeless dropped-waist dress of dark wool, a pre-war hand-me-down a decade out of date and never in fashion to begin with. Changed her good stockings for a woolen pair she’d knit that winter while listening to the Norwood School girls recite poetry they didn’t understand or care to. The ribbed stockings were far too thick to be fashionable, but they were warm, a necessity in this house where the fires seemed few and far between. She put her few things in the drawers, checked her hair. The crimping had completely fallen out, of course. The white lock of hair was loose, torn free by him. She grabbed one of her predecessors’ hairpins and shoved it ruthlessly in place within the dark brown hair, the pin digging into her scalp. She nudged the leather straps that held her mask higher on her head, where they would start the long process of slowly dropping again.
Jane was used to adjusting the alignment of the mask without really looking at herself. It was not her disfigured side that made her throat clutch and her anger rise; it was her good side. The reminder of how she should look. If she turned her profile to the mirror she could imagine her face whole again, as she hadn’t seen it since sixteen, when her life was normal and full of possibility. But that luxury was too costly. The times she gave into those imaginings, she wept, after, and was unsettled and resentful for days.
So Jane glanced just enough to see that every bit of the scarring was hidden by the cold iron. Rage, she had told Mr. Rochart. Rage was her curse, and it coiled on her cheek, suffused her soul. But at least the iron stopped it from leaking to other people. She had not known that she was cursed, at first. There were so few survivors, and each of them stranded at different understaffed city hospitals, far from their country homes. Besides, when everyone was angry, afraid, miserable—who knew that the effects were emanating from these scarred people who refused to heal? So she hadn’t known, until an ironskin came through the hospitals, searching for people like her, and sent her to the foundry.
But she knew how she looked. She’d known that since the moment it happened.
Jane turned from the mirror and set off to find Dorie.
*
Jane found Dorie sitting on the kitchen floor. Oddly, there seemed to be more sunlight down here than in some of the upstairs rooms. In the edges of the ceiling there were skylights that let light in somehow—perhaps with mirrors? Jane seemed to recall that as a feature of fey building. Regardless, the thin sunlight was an improvement over blue-tinged chandeliers and sconces.
The cook was stirring a soup pot and flicking through an old magazine, clearly read many times. She was thick and sturdy, with reddened face and arms, and grey-blond hair that escaped in curling wisps from her faded cap. Her name was Creirwy, which is perhaps why she went by Cook.
Dorie was on the floor, tracing the square tiles with the palm of her hand. When Cook wasn’t watching, Dorie painted the tiles with patterns of light. When Cook caught the blue flash out of the corner of her eye, she said warningly, “Dorie…,” and the lights disappeared.
Cook looked up and caught Jane’s eye. “Oh, and you must be the new one,” she said. She left her soup long enough to clap Jane a friendly and floury pat on the shoulder. “I’m Cook.”
“I’m Jane. Jane Eliot.”
“Jay,” said Dorie, jumping up. Her white frock was smudged with jam.
“Miss Trouble is having that good of a day,” said Cook. “It’ll last a bit, if you’re clever with her. She got some lunch in her belly just now. I’ll be sending Martha with your tea in the late afters, but are you needing a bite now? Sure, and you haven’t had lunch, have you? Sit down, lass, and eat right now.”
Jane’s stomach was vast with hunger. The sunlight fell on a half-empty jar of sliced peaches on the sill, on a dented tray of buns cooling on the stone counter. Yeasty steam scented the air. She had been too nervous to eat when she left the city at dawn—though a half-awake Helen had tried to make her eat a toasted stale crumpet—and she wasn’t sure she could do much better now. Besides, she was clattery with anticipation to try working with Dorie straight off, to see what it was like, to see what her new life would be. “No thank you,” she said, resolutely turning away. “I’d rather get started with Dorie.”
She reached down for Dorie’s hand but Dorie eluded her, backing away and crossing her arms behind her back.
“Sure and she doesn’t like to be touched,” Cook said over her shoulder. “I’ll be sending buns up with you. Wouldn’t do anybody good to have you fainting.” She packed several buns in a little basket with a chunk of sausage and a wedge of white cheese.
Jane withdrew her hand and looked soberly at Dorie. Chalk up the first thing she wasn’t going to push on Day One. “Will you lead the way, then?” she said.