This was not that room. There were no cobwebs, no midwives, no empty cradle in the corner. She didn’t know this room at all. She flopped back, relieved, but her stomach was still apoplectic. She rolled slowly, then more urgently, scanning the floor for the inevitable chamber pot, found it, vomited.
Ye Saints, she’d been drunk. She had not quite achieved sobriety yet.
She rolled onto her back, wiping her mouth on a corner of the sheet, able to contemplate the cherubs with a bit more composure. They frolicked on puffy clouds, chasing each other. She scanned their faces again and again, until she realized she was looking for Dozerius. She wasn’t going to find him. She felt ashamed to have hoped.
In fact, she couldn’t remember what he’d looked like, exactly. Red. Squished. Like a wizened old man fashioned out of ham. These cherubs, insofar as they were babies at all, were much older, milk-plump and smiling, with curling hair. She despised them for it.
Tess rubbed her eyes hard with the heels of her hands until spots danced in her vision, and then she pried herself out of bed. She had the shadow of a headache, and it was going to get worse.
She used the chamber pot, feeling slightly sorry for whoever had to clean it later. For all she knew, it was her. She was in her linen chemise; her farthingale gown had been dumped unceremoniously on the floor beside the wardrobe. It was too complicated to put back on, and it was all full of regrets (she was slowly recollecting the pieces of these: Countess Margarethe, Heinrigh, and something else she couldn’t find yet). She opened the wardrobe and found nothing but a man’s short houppelande in brown. Good enough. It would cover what she wanted covered. She pulled it over her chemise as an improvised dressing gown, staggered across to the door of the room, and pulled it open.
She didn’t recognize the corridor. This was not Cragmarog Castle. This was nowhere she had ever been before.
As if on cue, a trickle of harpsichord notes reached her ears. It was like a trail of bread crumbs through the house, and she knew whom it must lead to. She followed the spidery music up the dim, carpeted hallway, down a curving stair, and into a high-ceilinged chamber with tall windows full of morning sun.
No, more like noonday sun.
Seraphina, in pale, loose morning robes, sat at the instrument with the bench well back to accommodate her belly. Her brown hair, darker than Tess’s, curled over her shoulder in a plait; her face, rounded with pregnancy weight, shone like the moon. She flicked her dark eyes toward Tess but did not break tempo. Closer to the empty fireplace was a round table with one dirty place setting and one clean, the remains of breakfast. Tess went straight over, poured herself a cup of tea, and gulped it down.
“Help yourself,” said Seraphina, too late. “If you want something hot, I’ll ring Anna.”
Tess’s tea was lukewarm and bitter. It might have set the tone for Tess’s reply: “Where are we, and why did you drag me here?”
“This is the Queen’s summer home, Ranleigh Cottage,” said Seraphina, pausing her playing to pick up a charcoal pencil and jot some notes on the page in front of her.
Summer home must be the royal family’s code for “place to hide pregnancies.” Tess had heard the name Ranleigh Cottage, anyway; Seraphina had been living here for two months and would stay on until she gave birth.
Tess glanced at the thick Zibou carpet, the satin drapes and ornate furnishings. Maybe it was a cottage by a queen’s standards, but not by anyone else’s.
“As for why,” Seraphina continued, letting the last word stretch as if she intended to let the question be her answer, “I’m going to guess you have some idea.”
The memories came flooding back to Tess in a rush: she’d broken Jacomo’s nose and ruined Jeanne’s wedding night. The blood rose in Tess’s face, and for a moment she couldn’t speak. Seraphina met her eye from across the room and seemed to glean the questions Tess couldn’t ask, for she folded her hands upon her stomach and said, “Jeanne is fine. She’s married. Your being a violent drunk didn’t nullify that.”
Tess exhaled and lowered herself shakily into a chair. Her headache was beginning to assert itself. “Am I to be charged with assault?”
Seraphina’s mouth crimped with amusement. “One would think you were a lawyer’s daughter.” She paused, as if waiting for Tess to laugh, but Tess didn’t find that funny. “It seems there are to be no charges. Lord Richard came vociferously to your defense, claiming Lord Jacomo provoked you. I can only assume he’s been wanting to pop his brother in the nose himself.”
It was a relief, but not enough of a relief. Tess glanced over the food on offer. Cold toast. Hothouse strawberries. It was all quease-inducing. She stuck with tea, although the second cup brought her to the dregs of the pot. She added milk and gulped it down. “Are Mama and Papa here?” said Tess, setting down her cup and glancing around apprehensively.
“No, it’s just us,” said her sister, running her fingers across the keyboard again. “I offered to take you on. Everyone else is too angry to speak to you right now.”
“I see,” said Tess, slouching aggressively and crossing her arms. Of course they’d fob her off on someone else, the way they had when she was pregnant. She was too awful to even look at. “?‘O miracle-mongering St. Seraphina, won’t you rid us of this troublesome Tess!’?”
Seraphina raised her head and stared with big-eyed incredulity. The twins had always called this her “baffled owl face,” not to be confused with her “cogitating owl face” or her “get-out-of-my-room-before-I-bite-you-with-my-terrible-beak owl face.” She was owlish to her core.
“You haven’t been yourself for some time, Sisi,” said Seraphina. Only Jeanne was allowed to use that name; Tess bristled. “You’ve been unhappy. Everyone is at their wits’ end trying to help you.”
“Oh, indeed, ‘everyone’ has been trying to help, have they? They’re worried I’m unhappy? They have a funny way of showing it.”
“They’ve tried to talk to you. If you can’t tell, that may be emblematic of the problem,” said Seraphina, infuriatingly calm as ever. She was half dragon, and it was easy to tell which half. “As soon as anyone brings up the past, you get defensive and shut them out.”
“What a load of self-serving nonsense!” cried Tess, leaping to her feet and pacing before the empty hearth. “I have set aside any hope or wish or ambition for myself, bent all my purpose toward securing Jeanne her damned husband—so Neddie and Paul might be educated—and in return I am to be packed off to a convent. But no, you say, they’ve been worried about my feelings and want to help. Cack on ice. They could help by giving me some other choice in life!”
“You had the option to stay on as governess, until you got drunk and punchy. I tried to give you another choice,” said Seraphina, cool as marble, “and you spit on it and sent it back.”
She meant Countess Margarethe. Tess’s headache seemed suddenly to extend to all her limbs. “I don’t want your pity,” said Tess contemptuously.
“Well, that’s fortunate, because you don’t have it,” said Seraphina. There was a tartness to her phrasing, but she smiled as she spoke, as if she found Tess’s tantrum vaguely amusing. “I don’t pity you at all.”
“Because I brought this all on myself?” Tess sneered.
“Because you’re not as bad off as you imagine,” said Seraphina, marking up her music sheets some more. “You’re seventeen. Your whole life is still before you.”
Tess wanted to shout at her sister again, wanted to rage and tempest and scream, but her throat had tightened. Her whole life still before her? That was such a lie.