Page 87 of Confounding Oaths
Miss Caesar turned away, crystal tears forming in her eyes. And Mr. Bygrave reached out and placed a hand to comfort her, not seeming to care about the razor leaves that sliced deep into his fingers.
“I have upset you,” he said with the typical perspicacity of an English gentleman.
“No.” Bewilderingly, Miss Caesar answered truthfully. Touched as she had been by my people, she had yet to acquire our taste for deception. We lie like we breathe. Which is, of course, never.
If I was bewildered by the lady’s reply, however, Mr. Bygrave was downright confounded by it. “I must have made some error—I wish only to please you and—”
“Don’t.”
Mrs. Bygrave and her other guests were watching this little vignette unfold with a mixture of fascination and apprehension. Of the three, it was the hostess who seemed to be handling matters best, but then she had a decade or so on the others and while that is little time in the overall scheme of things, I understand it makes a degree of difference to mortals.
“If you are attempting to say something,” Mrs. Bygrave observed, “you are making an ill job of it. Speak plainly, girl.”
Though her tears were falling freely now, and bestrewing the carpet like dry dew, Miss Caesar did her best to do as instructed. “I believe that it would be best to end our association.”
Neither fully enchanted nor fully free, Mr. Bygrave had little way to process this, and so he made no attempt. He just blinked like he’d been unexpectedly transformed into a rabbit and cast amongst wild dogs. Not that this is the sort of thing that happens to very many people. More’s the pity.
Seeking to cover for her son’s inarticulacy, Mrs. Bygrave fixed young Miss Caesar with a stern glare. “Would you be so good as to furnish us with a reason?”
“This isn’t my society,” the captain said, “but where I’m from a lady doesn’t have to.”
“She does nothaveto,” agreed Mrs. Bygrave. “But it is polite for her to do so. Especially when circumstances are so … peculiar.”
Still weeping glass, Miss Caesar made one more effort. “Itwould be best because … because this is not me.” She flourished her hand with a grace just this side of natural in a gesture that encompassed herself and her situation; light flowed within her as she moved, as if in illustration of the point. “This is an illusion made of stars and mirrors.”
A residual loyalty to my people prompts me to disagree with the lady here on behalf of that other Lady whose handiwork was being so disparaged. It was not that she waswrongprecisely. It could indeed be said with some accuracy that her new status was illusory. But she was making the typical mortal error of thinking illusions are theoppositeof reality, rather than just another facet of it.
Mr. Bygrave was still looking uncomprehending. “Mary,” he said, moved to informality by the intensity of the situation, “you shall break my heart.”
On that much, at least, all parties could agree. Miss Caesar gave a solemn nod. “I shall. That is why I must leave.”
There was little more to be said, and so the visitors made little effort to say it. Miss Caesar gave a last immaculate curtsey and Mrs. Bygrave, rising, walked the three visitors to the door.
“You never visited me,” she told Miss Caesar, only slightly pointedly. “Nor invited me to dine with your family. I confess I thought rather ill of you for that.”
With the whirlwind of it all, and the tiny little matter of being physically transformed into a mineral, the specific social niceties had rather slipped Miss Caesar’s mind. “I am truly sorry,” she said. “For that and—for any other distress I have caused you and yours.”
While she was not the one made of unliving matter, Mrs. Bygrave had a rigidity that came from quite a different source. “Thank you. Although given the circumstances I am sure you understand why I am not wholly disappointed at the ending of this connection.”
Miss Caesar understood entirely. Ill-chosen connections were preying increasingly on her mind.
The journey back was slightly less pleasant in theory and much less pleasant in practice than the walk over had been. The sun, however, remained bright, which meant that the way it danced through Miss Caesar’s body was utterly incongruous with her mood and left her looking a torrent of merry contradictions.
For a while, a pall—not a literal pall, bathed as they were in light and glory—hung over the assembly and they proceeded in silence. But at last Captain James inclined his head towards Miss Caesar the tiniest fraction of an inch and said, “You did well, miss.”
“I do not feel I did well.” She looked down and away, and the sun gleamed a moment from her eyelashes.
“Had to be done. You did it. And you did it to his face. I’m a simple man, miss, but I know courage.”
All in all Miss Caesar did not consider herself especially courageous, and she said as much. “It was fear, Captain. Fear and uncertainty and knowing I could not go on as I was.”
And at that, the captain nodded rather more solemnly. “Most courage is.”
That evening, Miss Caesar retired to her room early and sat on her bed sobbing. I took the shape of the loyal Ferdinand and curled up next to her and, to my intense chagrin, the Lady took the shape of a faint scent of blood and incense and watched from the shadows.
“You must admit,” she told me, knowing full well that I was incapable of replying without compromising my disguise, “she’s coming along rather well.”
I gave a low growl, which Miss Caesar incorrectly interpreted as addressing her.
