Mama blinked, once, as if it pained her.
Catherine lifted her chin, but she did not seem triumphant, only determined. “Why should Anna have Freddy, then? By your logic, I should marry him.” Her chin lowered, her teeth flashed white in a smile. “You see, Freddy kissed me first.”
Following Catherine’s shocking declaration, Mama wept, Papa shouted, and Catherine stood straight and unmoved. She did not once look at me, though I could see in the stiff line of her jaw what she was thinking: You took from me what I wanted most. Now I will do the same to you. It did not matter to Catherine, particularly, whom she married so long as he supported her study of magic and her position in society. Freddy would do nicely.
I said nothing and let the tempest rage around me. In the end, Mama decided Papa must speak with Freddy, offering him first Catherine and then me. One of us should marry him.
I slipped from the room when the talk turned to logistics: when and where and how. I stumbled upstairs to find James in the corridor by my room with a book of poetry.
“Hello, Jamie, my love.” I tugged at one of the dark curls tumbling into his eyes.
He batted my hand away. “What happened last night? Everything feels off today.”
I tried to laugh, to lighten James’s worry, but the sound caught in my throat. “I snuck downstairs to see the charm-casting and got caught. Mama was quite angry. And then this morning I went for a walk without permission—all the way to Speakers’ Corner.” I pushed my smile wide, hoping James would think it was all a lark.
A smile finally glimmered on his thin face. “I should have liked to see the charm-casting. What was it like?”
I thought of the shattered roses and the strange shadowy creature. Freddy kissed me first. Had he kissed her, I wondered, while they practiced for Catherine’s spells? “Being Catherine, the spells were of course flawless.”
“What were her illusions like?”
“Roses. The Sleeping Beauty.”
James wrinkled his nose. “Typical. But none of that explains why Catherine acts as though her favorite dog died.” He lifted an eyebrow at me. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I hesitated, wrapping my arms around my middle. I got caught kissing Freddy. Catherine kissed Freddy. I fainted in Hyde Park. A revolutionary brought me home. The chilly April air hugged the walls of the corridor.
“I’m not a child,” James insisted. “You don’t have to protect me.”
But I did. I had failed to protect him once, when I had let that magical fire from my Confirmation wash over him, and I would live with that failure all my life.
His health had declined after our collision: already small and thin, he had become what Mama called “fragile,” prone to chest complaints and weeks where he could not rouse himself from bed. Even the best Animanti healers could not seem to help him. When James was eight, his Confirmation had been prefaced by a private consultation in Papa’s library at Arden Hall. James told me later that the Circle member had not wanted to Confirm him at all, saying it would be dangerous to give such a frail child magic. But Mama, her Coremancer gifts heightened by concern for her only son, had insisted. A compromise was struck, and James was Confirmed, but granted access to such a limited amount of power through the Binding that his spells were virtually nonexistent.
Mama had not said, in so many words, that James’s sham Confirmation was a judgment on my disgrace, but I knew. My heart pinged. My fault.
“I broke her spells,” I said, coming back to the present. My words dropped in the air like stones.
His eyes widened, the pupils narrowing to tiny dots. “What will happen to you? Will Mama send you away? Will the Circle punish you?”
I ground my teeth in vexation. I should not have told him anything. I should have known this truth would only make his anxiety spiral higher. “Nothing will happen. The Circle has already spoken with me. And, as you see, I am still here. Would you like something to eat? I was about to ask Ginny to fetch a tray.”
“No, thank you. I must get my studying done this morning. Papa’s promised to take me to the menagerie this afternoon.” But his eyes, when they met mine, were full of misgivings and not anticipation for the promised outing.
I wished Papa were not so set on sending James to Eton in the fall, believing invigorating studies would compensate for James’s limited magic. But though James was nearly as passionate about classics as Papa was about Luminate history, Papa had forgotten how cruel boys could be to those who were different. Freddy might laugh and insist the ritual humiliation of new students toughened them, but such treatment would destroy James. I knew firsthand how a weak Luminate fared in a world that revered power above all. And I was protected some, because I was a girl and not so much was expected of me.
“James,” I said, “you don’t have to go to Eton. Mama would hire a tutor, if you asked.”
“Papa wants me to go. And I cannot stay here forever.” His knuckles were white on the spine of the book.
“But it would be safer—”
James cut me off. “Safe? Maybe you want that—to stay forever at home, trapped with Mama. But I want more than that. I want to learn things. I want to meet new people, see new places. I can’t do that if I don’t at least try.”
“I don’t want that either,” I said softly, but James was already shuffling away. As I watched him go, Catherine’s smug declaration slithered snakelike through my thoughts: Freddy kissed me first.
How could I shield James from heartbreak when I could not even protect myself?
If I had thought much about it, I should have supposed my first proposal would be a romantic thing: whispered words spoken in a garden, or, more formally, an offer delivered on bent knee in a sunny drawing room.
I would not have expected it to include nearly my entire family.
We were all assembled in the Grand Salon—me, Mama, Papa, Catherine, Grandmama, Freddy. The salon was my least favorite of all the rooms in our London town house, barring only the austere chapel: the white walls with silver trim, the fussy statuary on the marble mantel over the fire, the stiff chairs meant to encourage good posture and discourage comfort. Mama sat ramrod-straight beside me on the cream chaise longue, as though determined to enforce my good behavior through her own rectitude. Catherine sat primly on her other side.
At Mama’s orders, I was arrayed in a gauzy white muslin dress, though whether as a prospective bride or virginal sacrifice, I had not yet determined. Papa faced us, as did Freddy. Grandmama sat just beyond me, in a chair near the low fire. I suppose Mama thought it would be more difficult for Freddy to wriggle out of his obligations if there were witnesses.