“I’ll go.”
I hurried upstairs to find hats and veils. By the time I was downstairs and outside, she was already halfway down the street, and by the time I caught up to her, I’d lost half my breath.
“Rose … wait,” I said, holding her hat in front of her.
She stopped and snatched it from me. I glimpsed tears on her cheeks for a second before they were covered by fine netting. “Thank you,” she mumbled.
I put my hat and veil on and took her arm. We walked in silence while my breath and her tears slowed.
The ground was dusty and the buildings drab, but the streets were filled with life. Energetic men unloading carts and women leaning out the windows, collecting their hanging laundry. Flower girls and newspaper boys off to ply their wares. A few children seemed to be playing a game of tag down one alleyway, and I could have sworn I heard one of them declare themselves Sebastian Braddock.
I cleared my throat as we turned a corner. “You should know I don’t like the idea, either. Catching Society members and charming them to help us. I think it’d be too slow.”
Rose didn’t say anything.
“So don’t feel obligated to do something you don’t want to do. I know you don’t want to use your power on anyone. No one is going to force you. Did you see how quickly Catherine spoke up?”
“I did. That’s the problem,” she mumbled, not looking at me.
So there it was. Catherine had been right to be concerned. “What happened? I thought you felt better around Catherine because she didn’t have a power. Why do you keep avoiding her?”
“I’m not avoiding her!” Rose flashed me a look full of pain, and I patted her arm, holding it more securely.
“Just because you have a power, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a friend. I would have thought you would get along.…”
“We do!”
“But you act so oddly with her … different than with anyone else here.…” Rose looked so panicked and miserable I stopped. “Darling, I am not trying to force you to be friends with her. It is perfectly all right if you do not like her; I just don’t want you to worry about your power so much—”
Rose stopped and looked at me full-on. “The problem is that I do like her, Evelyn. I like her too much. I like her more than anyone I’ve ever met.” She refused to drop her eyes as my mind went blank, her response so unexpected.
“Oh.…”
“Yes.” Rose’s firm nod and terrified expression confirmed what had never occurred to me. It wasn’t a friendship with Catherine that concerned my sister. It was a romance.
“I—uh—since … when?” I managed.
“Since the first time I met her.”
“I … see. I don’t remember.…”
Rose’s thin shoulders dropped along with all her defenses, and she shrugged, laughing a little, sounding ever so slightly hysterical. “That morning after the two of you went to Haymarket to see The Valkyrie during your Season. You came back to the drawing room, and when she looked at me I had to hide behind my book. There was something about her eyes.… I wanted to stare at her forever, but I felt like she could suddenly see everything about me and it was terrifying and wonderful. She kept on saying brilliant things about Wagner, and I didn’t know anything about opera, so I couldn’t decide whether to stay quiet and look foolish or say something and sound foolish. And then you turned the topic to the singer’s voice and anatomy, and thank goodness you did for I finally had something interesting to contribute.”
“I … don’t remember any of this.”
“Of course not. It was a perfectly normal day for you,” Rose said. “It was … a revelation for me.”
I couldn’t help but think back to the night Rose was taken from Bramhurst. When I had been completely wrong about her feelings about our neighbor Robert. When she didn’t even want to think about marriage. Had I been equally as unobservant about Catherine? Memories of all my outings with Catherine flooded my mind, but she was always the one needling me about suitors. I never managed to turn it around on her. She was friendly with everyone but never paid anyone particular attention. At least not until this past week with Rose.
Rose leaned her head in closely, trying to read my expression through our veils.
“Does it make you uncomfortable? I know she’s your best friend.”
“No, no—not at all. I always knew you would like her,” I said. “I just … wondered … do you know if Catherine feels the same?”
Rose’s gaze turned to the ground. “I used to hope so. I used to even think it might have been. But that was before I knew about these powers. So it doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters,” I insisted.
She shook her head, her voice thick. “Not if I want her to have a choice. I don’t want to put her under a spell.”
“As hard as it is to believe, there are people who love you for reasons other than your power.”
“There’s no way of knowing for certain,” Rose replied. “Not for anyone I’ve met in the last two years.”
“But it’s not as if you chose this, either,” I said. “None of us did. How is it different from every suitor simply falling in love with your beauty?”
“It’s different,” she insisted. “It’s very different.”
“These powers are as much a part of us as anything else.”
“Then Mr. Braddock should simply let everyone near him die because it’s a part of him?”
I opened my mouth. And closed it. I knew when to concede a point.
“But there are ways of controlling it,” I said.
“They clearly aren’t working fast enough,” Rose said. “Catherine is more protective than she was even a few days ago. And it’s going to take me years to get it right. Unless Captain Goode offers to help.”
We turned another corner, circling back toward the boarding house.
“I don’t mean controlling it that way,” I said. “You should keep training, but there are other things Sebastian did. He found out how his power worked. How close someone had to be to be affected, how long the sickness lasted. Granted, it was from horrible experiments with Dr. Beck but…” I trailed off, a spark sending my mind whirling too fast for my mouth.
“Ev?” Rose asked. “But what?”
After that awful night I lost Rose, Dr. Beck’s words had burned themselves into my brain. I replayed our conversation, hating myself for remembering it all so well. Now I almost wanted to thank him.
“Dr. Beck’s experiments,” I said. “I’m sorry to bring this up but … he—he hurt you because he wanted to find your healing power. Despite your charm.”
Rose’s voice went very quiet. “He apologized a lot.”
“But he still did it,” I said. “Even horrible people like Mr. Hale and Camille did everything to keep you from getting hurt. What did he do differently?”
“I don’t know. I don’t like to think about it.”
“I know. You don’t have to. Just remember that there’s an exception. Maybe we need to ask Mr. Adeoti what he knows about your power’s specifics. Or we’ll have to find a way to do research in the Society of Aberrations library one day. And if there’s nothing useful there, then we’ll have to observe how it works ourselves. In any case, there has to be a reason and it has to be deducible.”
“Evelyn, be careful. You’re starting to sound like a scientist.”
“I know, it’s disconcerting. So disconcerting that I’ve decided to retire. Please continue my work.”
“Thank you,” she said, hugging me as we walked. “I will.”
Our final turn brought us back to the front of the boarding house, where Mr. Kent was trying to drag a large trunk from the sidewalk.
“Did you … have an enjoyable vacation?” I asked him, lifting my veil.
“Indeed, I saw some wonderful sights and brought all of you some lovely souvenirs,” he said.
I gripped the other end of the trunk, and it took nearly all of my strength to lift it up a mere few inches off the ground. “Good Lord, what’s in here? A dead body?”