I remained silent as we returned to dinner. When I chanced a look in her direction, Ma’s eyes skewered me. She shook her head, and I understood it was only because of Uncle Bolaji that she wasn’t lighting into me right now.
Markos dropped back. Under the clamor of the dining room, he whispered, “Was that him?” He jerked his head toward the front door. “The man who just left?”
“You’ve never seen him before?” I asked.
“Of course not. Should I have?”
I whispered, “Then why did he look like he recognized you?”
“You’re seeing monsters everywhere, Caro. He’s Akhaian. I’m Akhaian. That’s likely all it was.”
I didn’t think so. I had never met the Margravina, but Pa had a miniature of her in his desk, a souvenir of her golden jubilee. A man from Akhaia would know what his Emparch looked like, and Markos had already told me he resembled his father.
Uncle Bolaji turned. Realizing Markos’s head was bent scandalously close to mine, I stepped away. “Go with my uncle,” I said under my breath.
“How are we getting out of here?”
“I’m working on it,” I muttered.
Perhaps Markos was right. I was seeing monsters and pirates and drakons everywhere. I heard them in the screech of the fiddle as a man took it from a velvet case and tuned it. Panic caught in my throat. The sense of merry warmth and safety in the dining room was an illusion. Outside, danger scratched at the windows of the house.
My cousins’ table was deserted, scattered with empty glasses. I spotted Jacaranda dancing with a young man, but Kenté was nowhere to be seen. At the head table, Uncle Bolaji was deep in conversation with Markos. I could tell Ma was listening, but she twisted the stem of her goblet around in her hands and did not speak. I snagged a glass of port off a servant’s tray and sidestepped closer, pretending to watch the dancers.
Markos leaned over, addressing my uncle. “I should very much like to beg the privilege of a dance with your daughter.”
Uncle Bolaji laughed. “She’s a bit old for the likes of you, isn’t she?” Which was true. His daughter was over thirty.
“Ah. I meant the young lady I met at the door.”
“Oh, you mean Caro? She is a daughter of this house,” Uncle Bolaji said, “although not my daughter.” He nodded at me. “By all means, you may ask her.”
That was smart of Markos, to mistake my identity on purpose. It never occurred to my uncle that we had met before tonight. Plucking the glass from my hand, he bowed politely and led me onto the floor.
I set one hand on the shoulder of his new coat. He was probably the tallest boy I’d ever danced with. As he curved his hand around my waist, above where my skirts billowed out, my breath felt strangled. I reminded myself it was just a dance. Perfectly respectable. Markos waited, counting the beats, then swirled us expertly into the pattern of dancing couples.
“I wish you had told me yourself.” His fingers tightened on mine, but not in a romantic way. In an annoyed way. “You let me believe you were a common wherryman’s daughter, when in truth you belong to a great merchant family.”
“I am a common wherryman’s daughter.” I hurled the words sarcastically back.
He’d never heard the condescending way some of the family spoke to my father. Or how they smiled indulgently at Cormorant’s chipped paint. No matter how much I enjoyed visiting, I wasn’t certain I would ever truly belong in this house.
“The Bollards don’t approve of Pa, you know,” I said under my breath. “Or me.”
“That’s not what I see. Not at all.”
“They like who they want me to be,” I countered. “They like my mother’s daughter, the one who wears dresses and talks proper. But that’s not really me. I’m a smuggler. And a sailor.”
“Our family name is who we are.” His shoulder went rigid under my hand, and I wondered if he was thinking of that jewel in his ear. He swallowed. “It means everything.”
Maybe that was true for him. But he would never know what it was like to be torn between two families. Two futures. I bristled at the speculative way he was looking at me. I guess he’d revised his opinion of me, now that I was descended from someone famous. Good for him. But nothing about me had changed. Not one gods-damned thing.
“I like my pa’s name fine,” I said. “I live with him because that was the agreement they made.”
Easier than admitting my mother had been more interested in shipping contracts than little girls. She was so often out of town, negotiating deals for the family. Ma had pushed for me to be raised at Bollard House, but Pa put his foot down. Despite their differences, you had only to meet my parents for five minutes to know there was a mighty spark between the two of them. They just couldn’t live with each other on a very small wherry.
“What man lets his wife leave his home to go work in trade?” Markos asked.
“This house was built on trade,” I reminded him. Because lashing out any other way would’ve made people stare, I squeezed his fingers until he winced. “Anyway, what makes you think they’re married?”
“Oh.” His cheeks colored.
“For eight generations the Oresteias have plied their trade on these rivers,” I snapped, anger and pride boiling inside me. “They been working wherries since long before anyone ever heard of Jacari Bollard. So you riddle me this: What makes the Bollards great and the Oresteias common?”
Of course I already knew the answer. It was money.
“I’ve upset you. But Caroline,” he said, rolling the r with his accent, “I didn’t mean to insult your father’s family, and you practically bit my head off just now. Don’t you think—perhaps—it’s possible you took it that way because of certain unresolved feelings on your part?”
“Stop it.” I let go of his hand and stepped back, awash with conflicting emotions. It was happening again, as it always did. Bollard House twisted things up. “I didn’t sign on to be picked apart like a beetle under a glass. Not by the likes of you.”
Great-Grandma Oresteia, who once smuggled rum right through the harbor master’s garden, would not have let him needle her like that. But things were so muddled right now. Markos didn’t realize his words had tweaked all my doubts, bringing them to the surface to float around me like laughing ghosts. I had never felt less like an Oresteia. And yet calling myself a Bollard would’ve felt like a betrayal of my father.
Across the room, Uncle Bolaji and Ma were in deep conference with the other people at their table. They weren’t looking at us. “Come on.” I tugged Markos out by the sleeve. “We’re going.”
In the quiet hall, the lamps flickered in their sconces. A lone parlor maid carrying a basket of rags scurried along the carpeted runner. She barely glanced our way.
I fetched Markos’s hat from the rack and shoved it into his hands. “Follow the edge of the house to the left until you come to an alley. At the end of it, you’ll find a garden. Hide there.” I pushed him out the front door. “I’ll meet you just as soon as I can grab my things and get away.”