Tess, who’d failed to understand most of that admonishment, nodded gravely. She would learn those words; she would understand what Mama wanted and live up to it, if only Mama would stop being sad. “I won’t go near any boys,” she said. “Only Kenneth is my uncle, so…”
Mama rolled her eyes. “I’ll talk to Kenneth. Of course you may still play together—you’re family!—but there is to be no kissing. No…explorations.”
No explorations seemed a bit harsh. What was Dozerius if not an explorer? Still, Tessie agreed to it—she’d have agreed to almost anything to see Mama smile—although a mote of bitterness niggled at her, the knowledge that Kenneth would not be spanked for his part in this.
Then again, he hadn’t wanted to play along. She’d done all the kissing.
Mama had not laid it out explicitly, but she didn’t have to, not when years of spankings had done the work for her: there was something particularly bad about Tess. She was singularly and spectacularly flawed, subject to sins a normal girl should never have been prone to. It was going to take far more work for her to get into Heaven than someone like Jeanne, whose goodness seemed to flow effortlessly from some deep inner well of virtue.
Tess was determined to make it, though. Jeanne wouldn’t want to go without her.
* * *
The twins were in the habit of creeping into each other’s beds for what they called their “midnight conference.” The night after the faux wedding and epic spanking, Tessie wept in her sister’s arms.
“W-why is she never happy, Nee?” Tess sobbed. “W-why do I always make it worse?”
“We’ll find the way to help her,” said Jeanne, stroking Tessie’s dark hair. “I think she’s unfair to you sometimes. She’s mad at Papa, but it’s easier to take it out on you.”
This only made Tessie cry the harder. Jeanne held her sister’s face in her hands and said, “You’ve got me, Sisi. We’ve got each other. It’s us against the world.”
“Us against the world,” Tess repeated in a sopping sob voice. But there was strength in those words and in Jeanne’s hands. She felt it. Little by little she calmed, until she found the road toward sleep, whereupon she dreamed of pirates and woke refreshed and ready to get in trouble all over again.
The twins had taken their morning stitchery to the Tapestry Salon, one of the less fashionable sitting rooms in the palace. Jeanne liked the quiet, and Tess the tapestries, which depicted a seagoing adventure involving serpents and icebergs and flying fish. A younger Tess might have gone in search of the weavers to ask them what legend they (or their forebears) had been trying to depict; she might have scoured the library for references or asked Pathka the quigutl, who knew an awful lot about serpents of every sort.
Tess the lady-in-waiting, however, sadder and sixteen, had no time for such involved and esoteric interests. Who would have dressed old Lady Farquist if Tess was selfishly haring off after her personal curiosity? More important: who would put Jeanne forward in the world and find her a husband?
Jeanne, embroidering at the other end of the couch, was too sweet and mild to do it herself. If she were left to her own devices, no one would have noticed her at all.
“Lady Eglantine’s soiree is tonight,” Tess was saying as she basted a new sash onto Jeanne’s blue satin gown. She’d add mother-of-pearl beads, too—she’d gleaned some off Lady Mayberry in exchange for a particularly succulent bit of gossip—and no one would recognize the dress when she was done. The Dombegh twins couldn’t afford many new clothes, so Tess, the stronger seamstress, had learned to be resourceful.
“Couldn’t we stay in for once?” said Jeanne, leaning her blond head against the back of the velveteen couch and gazing out the window at the snowy courtyard. “I’m tired of all this.”
Jeanne was tired? Imagine the tiredness of the person who dressed her, altered her clothes, and carried her messages. The one who vetted eligible bachelors and navigated the treacherous web of palace politics with no thought for herself, doing everything for Jeanne’s happiness and that their family might be saved. That person must be bloody exhausted.
Tess basted fiercely, stabbing the needle in and out, and kept her mouth clamped shut.
The twins had no option but to attend every soiree until Jeanne’s future was settled. Tess frowned over her work, trying to find the words that would best persuade her sister. “I’ve heard a certain someone is going to be there,” she said, tilting her head and batting her eyelashes.
Jeanne knew whom Tess meant, and blushed, but still she opened her mouth to protest.
And that was when the miracle happened: the door of the salon flew open and there stood a strapping young man of twenty-two, Lord Richard Pfanzlig, the exact same “certain someone” Tess had alluded to.
Tess hadn’t planned this meeting; the spooky timeliness of his appearance raised the hairs on her arms. He looked windblown, flakes of snow glistening in his thick dark hair; his commanding nose shone red from the cold, and his cloak swirled dramatically around him.
Tess’s heart quickened, though he wasn’t here for her. She didn’t want him for herself or envy Jeanne (more than usual), but he cut a romantic figure, and Tess was not immune to romance, in spite of everything.
He whipped off his cloak, tossed it toward a chair, and missed, but no matter. All eyes were upon his finely fitted maroon-and-gold doublet, his trunk hose, and his shiny, shiny boots. Or maybe his eyes, which smoldered at Jeanne from across the room.
Jeanne couldn’t bear it. She squeaked and grew intent upon the shepherdess in her embroidery hoop. Tess sighed inwardly, praying her shy sister wouldn’t spoil this opportunity.
“I heard Lord Chauncerat intended to ask for your hand,” cried Lord Richard, clasping a fist to his chest. “Am I too late?”
So that was why he’d come. Tess resumed her stitching with some satisfaction. Lord Chauncerat, of course, had made no proposal; he was a Daanite, uninterested in women, but he kept it secret. Tess had found out, or more accurately, something in his gaze had reminded her of Cousin Kenneth and she’d guessed. For her silence, Lord Chauncerat had permitted her to take his name in vain and start the tiniest rumor that he might have a modicum of interest in Jeanne.
That was all it took at court. You put a copper coin in the gossip engine, every tongue polished it up, and it came out unrecognizably golden. By the time the rumor reached Lord Richard’s ears, it would’ve been inflated to ridiculous proportions. He’d burst in as if expecting to interrupt the wedding itself.
Jeanne wasn’t finding her voice. Tess bailed her out: “Indeed, Lord Richard, you have arrived just in time.”
His face lit up as if Jeanne herself had spoken, and not Jeanne’s oracle at the other end of the couch. Tess didn’t mind. She’d have plunged her hand into her sister’s back and moved her mouth like a ventriloquist’s dummy’s if that would have helped.
Lord Richard crossed the room in three strides and dropped to one knee before Jeanne. The embroidery stand was in his way; Tess edged over and hooked it with her foot. Jeanne’s eyes widened as the frame drifted away, leaving her no choice but to meet Lord Richard’s eyes.
She looked at her hands. Tess cursed silently.
It wasn’t that Jeanne didn’t like this suitor; the problem was entirely that she did, rather a lot, and that she’d been raised on the strictures of St. Vitt to keep her desires severely under wraps. It was devilishly hard to encompass both.
Tess felt for her, but this was important.
Lord Richard took Jeanne’s hands—clever Richard!—and Jeanne looked up at last, flushing pink all over. She was beautiful even pink, Tess noted with some satisfaction. Richard seemed to think so, too, because he pressed her knuckles to his lips.