A Restless Truth (The Last Binding #2)

Chapter 8

8

They found the Bernard family taking the air on the first-class promenade, which took up much of the sun deck. It was a fine, calm day. On most of the lower decks, one could forget entirely that the Lyric was anything but a hotel. That the hundreds of souls aboard her were suspended above the chilling depths of the ocean.

One remembered, up here. The breeze was brisk, and it parted the lips for the flirtation of salt. It plucked at loose hair and sent hat ribbons and feathers and wispy lace flapping. Groups and couples strolled past the canvas-covered lifeboats or sat in the elongated deck chairs and watched the unchanging view of the ocean.

Violet led Maud towards a small cluster of deck chairs, where Mrs. Bernard and her daughters were sitting. The younger one, Helen, eyed a nearby game of shuffleboard with restless longing.

“Good morning!” called Violet.

Mrs. Bernard’s eyebrows rose, but she lifted a hand in acknowledgement. Violet had taken her measure at dinner last night: a mixture of resentful knowledge that she and her daughters would never be considered the best society, and smugness that her husband’s money would go a long way to allowing people to overlook that.

Of all the people she’d met at the captain’s table, Violet calculated that the Bernards were the most likely to either not have heard about the strumpet business, or to be prepared to pretend they hadn’t.

Violet introduced Maud to Misses Rose and Helen Bernard. Rose sheltered beneath a parasol in addition to her wide-brimmed hat. She shook hands with Maud and then returned to low conversation with her mother. Helen, who couldn’t be eighteen yet, had a sprinkling of freckles and a friendly smile, and shifted on her deck chair so that Violet and Maud could sit along one side.

“We’ve been to the kitchens.” Violet indicated Maud’s basket. “Maud has taken ownership of her employer’s hungry parrot.”

Helen had spent fifteen minutes last night peppering the ship’s captain with questions about the varieties of monkeys he’d encountered when he sailed for a merchant trading company. She lit up at once.

“What sort of parrot? I don’t suppose he’s a macaw? I’m dying to see one.”

“A grey one,” said Maud. “Perhaps this big?”

“An African Grey, most likely.” Helen wasn’t beautiful—neither of the Bernard girls were—but money and taste had dressed her to make the best of her reddish hair and slim figure, and she had an intense, lively manner that reminded Violet of her sister Alice. “Queen Victoria had one. They’re supposed to be very clever at speaking. We have two white cockatoos in the aviary, but I haven’t managed to teach them anything.”

“Is it true, then? Violet told me that your father has a whole menagerie aboard!”

“Yes—it was to go ahead of us, but there was some delay with the paperwork, so most of the animals are also coming across on the Lyric .”

“I’m glad I only have one parrot to feed,” said Maud, and explained about the chef’s monkeys and tigers complaint.

Helen laughed. “Mr. Hewitt, Papa’s chief keeper, had to give them a list of how many pounds of meat would be required per day. There’s probably an entire extra ice room full of supplies for the animals. He feeds the whole lot of them at one o’clock. Would you— I don’t suppose you’d like to come with me and watch?” It was offered with shy eagerness, and Violet swal lowed a crow of triumph. Maud hadn’t even had to raise the idea herself.

“In the cargo hold? Are we permitted down there?”

“Mr. Hewitt knows I’m interested in the animals. He’ll take us along.”

After they bid the Americans farewell, Maud and Violet strolled towards the aftmost portion of the deck, where the railing allowed them to lean out and admire the Lyric ’s churning white wake. You could throw a stone down to the deck below, more thickly crowded with people, the main open-air space available to second and third class. Violet could see three card games, with men smoking and laughing as they tossed cards onto the pile, and an incipient hair-pulling fight among several children who were arguing over a single ragged kite.

The breeze was brisk. Violet inhaled deeply.

“I wanted to ask…” said Maud.

Violet waited. No more emerged. With the basket dangling from one arm, Maud’s hands were clasped together on the railing, tightly enough that the knuckles beneath must have been as white as the gloves.

“Yes?”

“Last night, you said that you fucked women more than men.” Maud’s voice dropped so low on the word fucked that it was nearly inaudible.

Violet put a hand to her hat to check its security, then took a moment. She had no fear that she was about to be lectured about morality.

“Yes,” she said eventually. “And you didn’t know such a thing was possible.”

“I’m sure you think me frightfully naive. But it hadn’t occurred to me. I know that there are some men who—prefer the company of other men.”

Violet nodded. It had shone between Maud’s words whenever she talked about her brother, Robin, and Edwin Courcey.

Maud said decidedly, “So. You prefer women? But… Lord Hawthorn.”

Violet’s cunt gave a wistful squeeze around phantom fingers. Ah, Lord Hawthorn.

“Some people have no preference either way.” Including Lord Hawthorn. But that wasn’t Violet’s to give away, if Maud didn’t know.

“How did you… realise?”

Well, it wasn’t as if Violet hadn’t guessed where this was going. She swallowed a burst of hilarity that she of all people was being put in the position of mentor . Her own first encounter with another woman had been one of tipsy and enthusiastic mutual discovery with a girl called Florence, whose family owned the pawnshop two doors down from the Penumbra. By that time, Violet had been in the Bowery long enough for her eyes to be opened to the wide range of the things that people might enjoy doing with and to one another. She hadn’t needed to be walked carefully up to the idea like a skittish horse.

She shrugged. “All the things you think of when you look at a man—how you might want to reach out and touch him, or have him touch you . Do you ever have those thoughts about women?”

Maud’s brow puckered and she turned back to the horizon. “I don’t know. I mean—I do know how things work. Between a man and a woman, that is. And it’s not as though there are educational tracts on the subject.” She sounded put out. “Society never wants girls to learn anything real. ”

“Well,” Violet said lightly, “in some ways it’s easier for women inclined to their own sex than it is for men, because women can be companions . Or dear friends, who never marry and choose to share a house. Affection is expected of girls. Nobody will blink if I take your arm, like this.” She did so. “Or slide an arm around your waist, like this. And kiss your cheek.”

It was an impulsive tease of a kiss. The skin of Maud’s cheek smelled of honey, and her breath hitched as Violet drew back. Her pupils were dark. Her body swayed against Violet, who had kept her arm in place.

With no effort, Violet could move her hand down a few inches onto the warm curve of Maud’s hip. Maud’s face was uplifted to hers and it was, Violet thought abruptly, like something from a story. A perfect sprite encountered by a questing hero, temptation made flesh, ready to melt into nectar against the lips and leave the arms empty and coldly aching.

Violet pulled her arm back. “I don’t think the Bernards are magical, if you were wondering.”

Maud took the change of direction with grace. “And I can’t imagine them killing anyone, either, but— Oh, this is hopeless.” She slapped her hands against the railing. “Nobody marches around looking like a murderer, do they? We’re no closer to narrowing things down than we were. We’ll have to search every cabin at this rate. I wish… I wish Robin were here to tell me what to do. He’d find that very amusing. I spend so much time informing him that he can’t tell me what to do.”

“At least you have a gift for getting information out of people,” Violet said.

She’d meant it as encouragement of sorts. And a warning to herself. To her surprise, Maud’s expression clouded.

“It’s not a gift. It’s something I learned from watching my mother. I—I haven’t lied, not to anyone.” Said like someone defiantly waving a banner. And when Violet thought about it, she was right. Maud had asked questions, widened her eyes, wheedled and worried. Not a single untruth had actually passed her lips. “My mother would. She’d do anything to get what she wanted out of someone. Flatter, if they’d respond to it, and lie if they wouldn’t. Spread a story about them, to weaken their standing in society, and then swoop in while they were at their lowest, all commiserations and promises to help.”

“Charming.”

“Oh, yes,” said Maud bitterly. “She was.”

Violet had met women like that. In her experience, they couldn’t help but shape their children in their own image. She wondered what sort of odd familial crucible had created instead this shining moral stubbornness. Maud had sat there in Hawthorn’s room and said I care about what’s right, and she hadn’t needed a candle. The truth of it had burned in every inch of her.

It didn’t make her safe, Violet thought, looking down at the deck. The opposite, in fact.

Artlessness loosened tongues as effectively as the colder forms of manipulation, and Violet hated the sensation of being loosened. She could tease Maud and open locks for her—and even talk her through some light self-discovery—but she wouldn’t be enticed into more. Violet wasn’t a mystery to be solved by deadly truthfulness and beautiful, seeking eyes.

“Maud,” she said suddenly. “Look down there. That’s Lord Albert.”

“Who? Where?”

Violet pointed. “I met him at dinner last night. His back’s to us, and he’s walking, but watch his shoulder—there.” A quick twitch, the left shoulder giving a jerky shrug. It had happened a few times the previous night, though everyone at the captain’s table had been far too polite to either comment or stare. A group of small children down on the deck felt no such constraints; one of them began to ape the motion before he was dragged aside and delivered a smack by his father.

“Is he the marquess’s son? What’s he doing down there?” said Maud. As Violet had hoped, the clouds in her face had cleared at the prospect of some officially suspicious behaviour to investigate.

“Shall we ask him?”

Maud turned in a whirl and stepped promptly into the path of someone not much taller than herself. When they’d extricated themselves, the other party turned out to be an olive-skinned young man with the kind of soulfully flawless good looks that made one want to rake one’s fingernails across his cheek. He was Romeo. He was the helpful young page who in the third act would be proved a prince in disguise.

He was also holding a notebook and was dressed down compared to most of the gentlemen on the deck: trousers shiny with wear, the strap of a messenger bag crossing his waistcoat and shirtsleeves, and a soft cap atop his black curls.

“I do apologise,” Maud was saying. “My fault, I’m sure.”

The young man didn’t hasten to claim responsibility. He flicked a razor gaze back and forth between Maud and Violet that calculated, Violet was quite sure, the cost of their ornaments and the cadence of Maud’s speech. Only then did he smile and touch his cap. A pencil appeared from behind his ear.

“Ladies, I’m sorry to trouble you. Alan Ross. I’ve been employed by the White Star Line to work on their next set of advertisements. Might I ask you some questions about how you’re finding the voyage so far?”

It was a London clerk’s voice: literate, but not lofty. Maud breathlessly expressed her admiration of the Lyric ’s amenities, with special mention made of the Café Marseille and Miss Broadley’s performance at dinner. Ross’s pencil moved busily.

“But you must be able to go anywhere on board, Mr. Ross,” Maud added, as if it had just occurred to her. “What are the dining rooms like in second and third class? Oh, have you seen the engines ?”

Mr. Ross admitted that he had not thought to go and inspect the Lyric ’s engines.

Violet caught the man’s eye, pretended to stretch her gloved fingers, and rapidly formed an obvious cradle for fire. There were various ways by which a magician could make themselves known to any other magicians in company. The easiest and commonest, for those trained in any of the traditions either British or British-derived, was to perform a well-known cradle without putting any magic into it.

Ross didn’t react. Not even a flicker of his eyelids.

Maud dimpled. “The run of the entire ship and a license to ask questions? Perhaps we should be applying to you for the latest gossip.”

Ross tucked his pencil back behind his ear, where the inky curls swallowed most of it. “I’m also writing an article on the voyage for a London society magazine. Can’t give away all the best gossip for free. I suppose you know that there was a death on board yesterday?”

“And we have a jewel thief,” said Violet.

Fingers twitched towards the pencil again. “I did hear that. Can you tell me anything more? I hope neither of you were among the unlucky victims.”

“Goodness, no. Does a thief count as an amenity?” mused Maud. “I suppose it does add to the excitement.”

“I don’t imagine the theft of its passengers’ jewels is quite what will best advertise the White Star Line to the public,” said Violet.

“I’ll leave it out of the copy.” Ross touched his cap again in farewell and took his notebook off to accost a middle-aged couple nearby.

“All the society gossip,” sighed Maud. “What do you suppose he was writing? Miss Cutler, at first glance, doesn’t look like the kind of fast young woman one associates with debauchery —”

Violet laughed and tucked Maud’s arm through her own. “But you’re not really Miss Cutler, so that’s all right. Besides—nobody’s the kind of person they look like at first glance.”