Page 55 of Confounding Oaths
In candour I could scarce believe it. He was a military man and, while he had seen no battle yet, was surely conscious that he would be sailing away to fight and perhaps die against the French. She, meanwhile, had lately been granted a supernatural capacity to sway the hearts of mortals and her entire body had been physiologically transfigured. Yet somehow they conspired to speak entirely of trivia. Of the weather, and the pretty way the light played on the water. Ofducks.I swear I have never heard anybody express so many thoughts about ducks. In other contexts, that would be perfectly acceptable—the Swan Queen and her courtiers are indeed fascinating people, and the intrigues that the Mallard Prince gets up to when mortals aren’t watching are scandalous to a level that human society would consider abominable. But they knew nothing of that, and so their remarks were restricted to such banalities as “Oh, look, that one’s dabbling” and “Do you think it too early in the year for ducklings?”
Dross.
But while it was torment itself for me to listen to, to Miss Caesar it was … something other. England is a banal country and English society is grounded in banality, and so to speak of nothing with a man who had little to no conversation, and not once to be asked if she might, perhaps, be prevailed upon to introduce anybody to her sister, was a kind of acceptance she had long yearned for.
“I have lately,” she attempted, once the weather and duck-related conversation had grown too circular even for her, “been readingThe Wanderer.”
Mr. Bygrave looked enraptured. “I’m not familiar with it. But may I say that the way the light shimmers from your eyes is the most remarkable thing I have ever beheld?”
With a shyness she did not even have to counterfeit, Miss Caesar looked down a moment. “You may say so,” she said, “and indeed I like your saying it very much.”
Propriety held that a lady should not promenade alone, but it held also that a lady should be cautious as to the amount of time she spent in the company of any gentleman to whom she was neither married nor related. But time, my friends, time is a slippery thing in the best of circumstances, and for those who have been touched by the powers of fairy kind it becomes positively liquid, pooling and swirling and running away from one in wholly unexpected ways.
The unutterable ennui of Miss Caesar and Mr. Bygrave’s conversation drove me back to the house where—now that both of the younger ladies had absented themselves—the matter of how to usean innocent girl to lure a creature of sapphire light and malice into an ambush was very much back on the table.
An hour or two after breakfast, the debate had been joined—if not necessarily enhanced—by the arrival of Miss Bickle, who had been making her rounds and, on finding the Caesar household overrun by common soldiers, decided that fashionable visiting could go hang.
It was at her suggestion that the party had sent for Miss Mitchelmore and Lady Georgiana, partly because Miss Bickle felt it would be—in her words—jollyand partly because they were the only people the Caesars knew who had any direct experience of thwarting supernatural malfeasance.
“Flattered as I am,” Lady Georgiana was saying, “you do recall that I am notactuallya witch, despite the rumours.”
“Yes,” conceded the elder Mr. Caesar, “but between you, you have defied a goddess. A fairy should be small challenge by comparison.”
Normally I would object to the slight against the prowess of my people, but we enjoy being underestimated, so I will let it slide. By all means, readers, continue to fear us less than you fear gods. Such complacency will in no way be your undoing. I guarantee it.
And while I personally chose to make no objection, Captain James had no such reservations. “First rule of war, no small challenges.”
“Thefirstrule of war,” Callaghan replied, “is wear comfortable boots. But no small challenges come soon after.”
Lady Mary, who had insisted on being part of the council if her husband was, had been listening to the conversation intently and was only now prepared to speak her misgivings. “I am still uncomfortable about two elements of the proposed strategy. Proceedingwithout Mary’s consent gives me pause, and sending a band of, well—”
“Armed bastards?” suggested Jackson, letting his face settle back into its natural smirk.
Lady Mary nodded. “Precisely. Sending a group of such people to a society event in the hope of incapacitating a guest seems extraordinarily likely to go wrong.”
“And if we had any other option,” Mr. Caesar told his mother, trying to sound authoritative and coming closer to success than I would have expected him to, “then we would surely take it. But there is one thing we have seen the Lady reveal herself for, and it is to bring Mary to a ball.”
Although her recent experiences had made her rather less concerned with appearances than once she was, Miss Mitchelmore could not help but consider the obvious complaint. “Will it not make rather a scene?”
Sal batted her eyelashes. “Oh no, not at all. Swift and silent. Like a wind at night.”
If she’d been at all intending to be taken seriously, the effect was rather spoiled by the captain’s laughter. “It’s a fight. There’ll be gunshots.”
“Gunshots,” the elder Mr. Caesar pointed out, “around my daughter who is currently made of glass.”
“The plan would be to lure the Lady away,” explained Jackson. “Though what would lure her, that’s another thing.”
At last, the discussion had moved to Miss Bickle’s area of expertise. Or at least to what Miss Bickle believed her area of expertise to be. “Oh, but that should be simple. The list of things fairies want is actually rather short when you start enumerating it. There’s saucers of milk. People’s firstborn children. Promises freely given.Things that you think are one thing but are actually a different thing and the thing it turns out to be is usually your”—she stopped and looked bemused—“actually, thinking about it, children come up rather a lot.”
Lady Georgiana, still standing, partly because the table was growing crowded and partly because it let her play her fingers through Miss Mitchelmore’s hair, frowned cautiously. “I should stress that I am notadvocatingsuch a course of action. But I believe that sourcing a disposable child would prove … not entirely impossible.”
“Sourcing from where?” asked Lady Mary, although my personal suspicion was that she either already knew the answer or did not want to know it.
“Desperate women?” Lady Georgiana’s tone was matter-of-fact. “Workhouses? It’s not a common practice, but it’s far from unheard of. You can buy a wife similarly if you’ve a fancy.”
The elder Mr. Caesar shook his head. “We are to buynobody.There is little I would not do to protect my daughter, but that is a line we do not cross.”
“Then I suppose,” said Miss Bickle after a short silence, “we are left with milk.”
