Page 54 of Confounding Oaths
“I’m wondering,” offered Callaghan, “if you might not be so well as you think you are.”
A staunch adherent to the doctrine of me against my sister; me and my sister against my cousin; me, my sister, and my cousin against every other bastard, Miss Anne glared at the infantryman. “What Marymeans,” she said, “is that whatever fine words Papa might say, it does not help us secure our futures.”
“Your future,” replied Lady Mary firmly, “is secure. Neither your brother nor your grandfather will see you starve, even if you do not marry.”
“Grandpapa will have no say in matters once Uncle Richardinherits,” pointed out Miss Anne with a shrewdness born of self-interest. “And John will have a lawyer’s salary, not a gentleman’s income.”
“Andnot starvingis a rather poor standard to wish for one’s daughters,” added Miss Caesar, insensible of the irony of the complaint now that she was beyond biological nutrition.
Captain James gave her a quiet smile. “With respect, lady, for some it’s the most they can hope for.”
If Miss Caesar was mollified by this, it was impossible to tell owing to her—for want of a better word—glassy demeanour. Miss Anne, however, was most certainly not. “You see, Papa, how low we are sinking. We are eating breakfast with the sort of people who think starvation to be an ordinary thing.”
The elder Mr. Caesar folded his hands tightly together in front of him. “Anne, go to my study and wait.”
“But—”
“Go to my study,” he repeated. “And wait.”
Although Miss Anne could be wilful, much of her wilfulness was grounded in a set of social expectations that also included obedience. So she rose, shot one last, poisonous glance at the insufficiently ranked soldiery, and departed, taking a defiant slice of toast with her.
“Now,” the elder Mr. Caesar continued, turning to his other daughter, “we still need to discuss your situation.”
“There is nosituation,Papa,” insisted Miss Caesar. “I have made a bargain and I am satisfied with it.”
A coffee cup gripped delicately between her fingers, Lady Mary gave Miss Caesar a cool look. “You are not of age to marry without your parents’ approval, child. Why on earth do you think yourself able to consent to a pact with an otherworldly potentate?”
“There is no age limit on wishes,” Miss Caesar retorted, only a little stubbornly.
Jackson, who had not eaten, choosing instead to sustain himself on a single cup of very strong coffee, shot a calculating glance over the table. “No age limit on making them, no legal protection for taking them away. You think my sort are untrustworthy, miss, but I’ll tell you we’ve nothing on the good folk.”
His use of our polite name aside, this was slander.
“Whether you will it or no,” the younger Mr. Caesar said, although both of his parents and most of the soldiers wished he hadn’t—no persuasive argument beginswhether you will it or no,“we shall find a way to disentangle you from this.”
Sunlight, streaming now through the window, sparkled in the razor roses that wound through Miss Caesar’s hair. “I donotwill it. And I shall be no part of whatever schemes you might be hatching.”
Before Mr. Caesar could respond, or before anybody else could tell him quite how badly he’d ballsed up, his sister turned on her heel, called for Nancy to get the door, and swept out into the London morning.
And suspecting that hers would be the more entertaining venture, I followed.
It was, in theory, unseemly for a young woman to be walking unescorted in London, but between a parlour full of soldiers and her physical transformation into colourless mineral, seemliness was rather less of a priority for Miss Caesar than once it was.
So with the spring sunlight shining past, upon, and through her, Miss Caesar made her way to Hyde Park. It was somewhat earlierthan the fashionable hour for promenading, but that was not any great impediment in itself—she was there for the air rather than the company, and given her new status as a one-girl spectacle of the age, an excess of solitude was never going to be a concern for her.
Indeed she found herself attracting quite a following as she made her way along the banks of the Serpentine. The swans on the lake, most of whom really were just swans and not supernatural beings cunningly transfigured into a guise pleasing to mortals, drifted along in pace with her, and those walkers who had chosen to brave the early morning (or at least the early morning by the standards of that particular set, which was to say anytime more than an hour before noon) found themselves gathering behind her in an enraptured crowd.
When she stopped by the water’s edge, flocks of swimming birds hopped out to gather around her, as though she were casting them bread. A not-terribly-discreet distance away, the crowd gathered, and gossiped, and wondered. But, if we’re being honest, mostly gossiped.
Kneeling down with that eerily fluid grace she had possessed since her transformation, Miss Caesar gazed into the water and found her reflection broken and unfamiliar. She dipped her fingertips into the water and watched her face vanish into ripples. It felt appropriate somehow. The whole experience felt so much like nothing. Neither the cool of the water nor the warmth of the sun moved her as they once might have. Each was information without context. Sound without sense. Light without colour. Had she not firmly made up her mind to be satisfied, she would have been otherwise.
“Are you all right?” asked a voice behind her.
Rising and turning, she saw Mr. Bygrave. He looked a littleflushed, either from the exertion of the walk or the complexities of approaching an unescorted gentlewoman. “Quite all right,” she said at once, not bothering to actually interrogate her own subjective all-rightness. “It is a beautiful day, is it not?”
Mr. Bygrave nodded his agreement and once their consensus on the beauty of the day had been established, he made the slightly bolder suggestion that Miss Caesar might like to be accompanied on her perambulations. This she felt she would like very much, and so they progressed in company around the Serpentine, conversing as they went.
I would recount a little of their conversation for you, reader, but while I am bound to recount my observations honestly (well, honestly-ish) I am also sensible of my need for your good approval. And believe me when I say that you wouldnotthank me for sharing the details of that stultifying dialogue with you.
