With a disgruntled sigh that didn’t hide the tilt at the corners of his lips, Hatta threw his heels back onto the tabletop and picked up his tea.
Catherine caught sight of Raven, still atop the clown’s bust, almost a part of the shadows. He angled his head to watch Jest’s parade across the table.
The room hushed. Anticipation scrambled up Catherine’s spine and she leaned forward, her fingers crushed together in her lap.
Stepping around the mess of dishes, Jest came to stand at the table’s center. He held the top hat so everyone could see. Then, with a twist of his wrists, he sent the hat into a blurring spin and dropped his hands away. The hat continued to levitate in the air.
Catherine bit her lip, hardly daring to blink.
Tapping his fist against his chest, Jest cleared his throat. Then, to Catherine’s surprise, he began to sing.
“Twinkle, twinkle … little bat.”
Her lips twitched at the familiar lullaby, though Jest had slowed down the cadence so the song was more like a serenade. His voice was confident, yet quiet. Strong, but not overpowering.
“How I wonder what you’re”—he tapped a finger onto the brim of the spinning hat so it flipped top to bottom—“at.”
A flurry of bats burst upward. Catherine ducked as they swarmed through the room. Their squeaks filled the shop with bedlam, their wings close enough to tease Cath’s hair without touching her skin.
Jest’s voice cut through the ruckus. “Up above the world, so high…”
The bats turned into a cyclone, encircling the room so the table was in the eye of a living storm. The cyclone began to tighten, closing in around Jest. Soon, he could no longer be seen beyond the mass of beating, squealing, pressing bodies. Tighter and tighter.
Catherine’s chest constricted as the tornado of bats turned as one and streamed toward an open window—leaving behind Hatta’s top hat sitting crookedly against a teapot, and no sign of Jest.
Her heart was pounding. Whispers began to pass up and down the table. Guests checked under the table and beneath the top hat and even in the teapots, but Jest had vanished.
“The nerve of him, to abandon you thus. At my mercy, no less.”
She glanced at Hatta.
Setting his teacup on its saucer, he winked at her. “Jest has always had a weakness for riddles.”
Brushing back the hair that had been tossed around by the bats, Cath did her best not to show how nervous the Hatter made her. “Have you known each other a long time?”
“Many years, love. I would try to count how many, but I’m so far into Time’s debt, I would doubtlessly count them wrong.”
She furrowed her brow. “Is that a riddle?”
“If you wish it to be.”
Unsure how to respond, Cath reached for a teacup, but found it filled with mother-of-pearl buttons. She set it back. “Jest told a riddle at the ball,” she said. “It was, ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’”
The Hatter guffawed, throwing his head back. “Not that one! Sometimes I wonder if he’s even trying.”
“I didn’t realize it was an old riddle. No one at the ball seemed to know it, and we were all amused by the answer.”
“With due respect, my lady, the gentry are not known for their inability to be amused.”
She supposed he was right—for the King most of all. But the way Hatta said it made it sound like a fault that should be shameful, and she wasn’t sure if she agreed.
“Tell me, which answer did he give?” asked Hatta.
“Pardon?”
“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”
“Oh—because they each produce a few notes, though they tend to be very flat.” She was proud of herself for remembering, so caught in the performance had she been. “He covered the ballroom in confetti. Little paper notes, all with charming designs.”
Hatta twirled the cane. “I always preferred the answer: because they both have quills dipped in ink.”
Cath was surprised to find that the riddle, which had seemed impossible to answer when she’d first heard it, could have two such fitting solutions. She glanced at Raven, who had buried his face beneath one black wing, apparently asleep.
“That answer would have made quite a mess of the ballroom,” she said.
Hatta stirred a spoonful of sugar into his cup, the spoon clinking loud against the ceramic. “I suppose you’re right. I’ve been working on a riddle myself of late. Would you like to hear it?”
“Very much so.”
He tapped the spoon on the cup’s rim and set it on the saucer. “When pleased, I beat like a drum. When sad, I break like glass. Once stolen, I can never be taken back. What am I?”
She thought for a long moment before venturing, “A heart?”
Hatta’s eyes warmed. “Very acute, Lady Pinkerton.”
“It’s very good,” she said, “although I wonder whether it wouldn’t be more accurate to say, ‘Once given, I can never be taken back.’”
“That would imply we give our hearts away willingly, and I am not sure that is the case. Perhaps we should ask Jest when he returns. I daresay he’s the expert.” He pulled a gold pocket watch from his waistcoat. “He doesn’t usually disappear this long. Perhaps he was already tired of your company.”
Cath bristled, sure now that he was trying to provoke her, though she couldn’t imagine why. Clenching her fists beneath the table, she scanned the guests again. Most had gone back to their conversations. “‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ is a lullaby,” she said. “Not a riddle.”
“How does it end? I can’t remember.”
She hummed through the song again. “… like a tea tray in the sky.”
Hatta snapped his fingers. “Haigha! Tea tray! Sky!”
The Hare, who had removed the floral bonnet, peeled back his enormous ears and gawked at Hatta. Then he hopped up from the table fast as a gunshot and grabbed a tea tray, dumping off a pile of crustless sandwiches, and rushed to an open window. Within moments, all the other guests—excepting Catherine and Hatta—had tossed aside their chairs and teacups to gather around him.
Catherine craned her head, thinking it wouldn’t be ladylike to be jostled in with all those strangers …
“Oh, hogswaddle,” she muttered, pushing away from the table and joining the crowd at the window.
Haigha tossed the tea tray—it spun out into the forest and disappeared into the night.
They waited.
Somewhere outside, they heard the clatter of the tea tray falling through tree boughs and thumping back down to the ground.
Breaths were held.
No one spoke.
The Dormouse yawned and shifted in the Lion’s mane, turning to curl up on his other side.
“What are you all looking for?”
Catherine spun back to the table.
Jest was sitting to Hatta’s right, holding a half-eaten biscuit in one hand and a teacup in the other.
The crowd cheered, whistles filling the shop.
With his gaze on Catherine, Jest smiled, and Cath’s heart joined it. She tried to keep the humor from her face as she planted her hands on her hips and faced him across the table. “Hatta was right,” she reprimanded. “It was terribly rude to abandon me so.”
Jest licked a crumb from the corner of his mouth. “I knew you’d figure it out.”
The Hatter grunted, taking his top hat back from the Boa Constrictor, who had fetched it from the table’s center. “Let’s not make a prodigy of the lady, when all she did was recite a child’s lullaby.” Grabbing his cane, he smacked it three times on the floor and yelled, “Who out of you lousy bunch wants to follow our joker? Move down!”
CHAPTER 19
THE HATTER’S TEA PARTY was not so much a tea party as a circus. Chairs were constantly swapped and shifted, and whichever guest ended up on Hatta’s right was deemed the next performer. In turn, each guest would stand up, select one of the vibrant headpieces from the surrounding walls, and proceed to entertain the ot
hers however they saw fit. The Parrot and the Cockatoo performed a comedy routine about a mime and a mimic. The Lion sang a perfect alto solo from a renowned opera. The gray-haired woman sat cross-legged on top of the table and drilled out an impressive drum solo using her knitting needles and an assortment of upturned dishes. The young Turtle recited a love sonnet with a warbling voice and shy, stammering words—once during his recitation, he glanced at Catherine and blushed deep green and was unable to look at her again for the rest of the night.
Maybe there was something in the tea—which she deemed the most delicious tea she’d ever tasted once she finally got a cup—because once Catherine relaxed, she found that she couldn’t stop laughing and cheering and tapping her toes beneath the table. She learned that Hatta was prone to ordering everyone around, though most of his guests paid his orders little attention. She learned that the Dormouse used to be the liveliest one of the group, but he’d gone into hibernation a year and a half ago and had yet to come out of it. She learned that Jest felt guilty about his bat trick tangling up her hair, he confessed as he soothed back a curl and sent goose bumps down her skin.
Flustered, she batted him away.
Each time they moved, Jest stayed at Cath’s side, helping her navigate around the flurry of activity, coaxing her away from the performer’s chair. It was a relief to not be forced into the center of attention, yet Catherine couldn’t help racking her brain for some talent she could impress them with. A fantasy crept into her head of wowing them all, of being even more awe-inspiring than Jest with his illusions and tricks. But how? She could not sing or dance or juggle. She was not an entertainer. She was only a lady.
When everyone had performed and Hatta again commanded them to move down, Jest was first to move toward the performance seat and keep Catherine free of it.
Before he could sit, though, Hatta smacked his cane over the chair’s arms. “Patience, my friend. I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of seeing anything from your lady yet.” Hatta slid his haughty gaze to Catherine.
Jest nudged the cane away. “She’s here to enjoy our hospitality, not have you turn her into a spectacle.”
Catherine held Hatta’s look, refusing to fidget.
Jest rolled his eyes and turned back to Catherine. “Don’t let him bully you. I’m happy to perform in your stead if you’d like.”
“It’s only a little stingy,” Hatta interrupted. “To take and take for your own entertainment, and offer none of yourself.” His words dripped with disapproval.
Jest glared at Hatta, then turned back to her and whispered, “It isn’t like that. There’s no shame in asking someone else to perform for you, especially at your first tea party.” He held out his hand.
She knew he was trying to alleviate the pressure Hatta was putting on her, but she felt a bit of a sting. Right or not, how could he be so sure that she had nothing to contribute?
She studied his hand, slender fingers that weren’t as smooth as hers, yet not as rough as a gardener’s or servant’s, either. She liked the way he had called it her first tea party, insinuating there might be more to come.
“I’ll do it,” she heard herself saying, from very far away.
A grin spread over Hatta’s face, but she couldn’t tell whether it was encouraging or taunting. “The lady is next!” he bellowed before she could change her mind, then swept his hand toward the hats on the wall. “Choose a hat, my lady. You’ll find that it helps.”
“Helps how?” She tried to look casual as she strolled down the wall of bonnets and top hats, netted veils and silk turbans.
“Think of it like wearing a costume. Or … perhaps to you, a very fine gown.” Hatta ran his fingers along the brim of his own top hat. “A finely crafted hat makes a person … bolder.”
Cath wasn’t sure she agreed. Her very fine gowns had done little to make her feel any bolder in the past, but everyone else had worn a hat while they performed, so who was she to argue? The crowd waited to see what she would choose, but Cath knew she was only stalling for time as she fingered a gold clasp here and an ostrich plume there.
She must have some talent. Any talent that wouldn’t embarrass her.
Most of the hats were far more extravagant than those she was used to. Her favorite so far had been a breathtaking pink-and-green-striped carousel, complete with nickering ponies that galloped around and around. But it had been worn by the Lion during his operatic performance, and she noticed with some disappointment that he had yet to take it off.
“Might I suggest one of the red ones?” said Hatta.
She startled and looked back at him. “Why red?”
He gave her a one-shouldered shrug. “It would suit your skin tone, beloved. How about that one, there?”
She followed his gesture to a wide-brimmed flop hat, its multitude of frills and gathers done in wine-red silk and ornamented with sprigs of white and yellow poppies. Cath wrinkled her nose. It was a beautiful hat, but not at all what she would choose for herself.
However, beside it was a white cooking bonnet tied with a wide black ribbon. Catherine snatched it off its wooden peg and put it on her head before she could second-guess herself.
“Ah, a hat for making unconventional decisions.” Hatta narrowed his eyes. “Interesting choice.”
When she dared to look at Jest, he seemed indifferent to the hat. He again offered her a hand.
Cath tightened the black ribbon beneath her chin and accepted his assistance as she stepped onto a chair, then up onto the table.
While she had been making her decision, the hat shop had fallen quiet, a stark difference from the chaos she’d grown used to. The guests watched her, hushed in curiosity.
Cath was curious herself. Her hands had begun to tremble.
She found a spot amid the chipped saucers and overturned biscuits and inhaled a long breath, glancing around at the waiting faces. Slitted snake eyes and double-lidded lizard eyes and bulging fish eyes all stared back at her. The hem of her skirt collected spilled tea and crumbs.
“Sing a song, lovely lady!” suggested the Lion, as the carousel ponies pranced above his mane. “Sing us a ballad of old!”
“No, dance for us. Perhaps a ballet?”
“Can she serve tea like a geisha?”
“Paint with her toes?”
“Do a cartwheel?”
“Tell our fortunes?”
“Tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue?”
“Don’t be a ninny—that’s impossible!”
“Catherine.”
She turned and realized she was still holding Jest’s hand. He smiled, but it carried some concern. “You don’t have to do this.”
She wondered whether he was embarrassed for her, or for himself—for bringing her. A lady. A member of the gentry. Someone with soft hands and a head full of emptiness. Someone who was not mad enough to belong at the Hatter’s tea parties.
She yanked her hand away and faced the Hatter. His heels were on the table again, his fingers fiddling with his cravat.
Her father was known throughout Hearts as a great storyteller, a gift that had been passed down through her family over generations and yet had somehow skipped her over. Now Catherine struggled to remember one of his tales. The ones that could enchant a school of wayward fish. The ones that could make the clouds cry and bring mountains to their knees.
“Once … once upon a time…,” she started, but had to stop when the words caught in her throat.
She rubbed her damp palms on her skirt—and discovered a crackling lump in her pocket.
Her heart flipped.
“There was … there was a girl. She was the daughter of a marquess.”
The corners of Hatta’s mouth tilted downward.
“Though she was raised to be a lady,” Cath said, turning away and scanning the enraptured guests—or at least, guests who were waiting and willing to be enraptured, “and taught all the things a lady ought to be taught, she was only good at one thing. It was not a big thing, o
r an important thing, or even a ladylike thing, but it was what she really loved to do.”
She slid her hand into her pocket and pulled out the package of macarons. The wax paper had crinkled throughout the day, though the twine bow securing it had held. Around the table, the guests tilted forward.
“I…” She hesitated. “I make confections, you see.”
“Did she say confessions?” the old lady murmured. “Oh dear. I fear I have done a lot worth confessing this year.”
Cath smiled. “No, confections.” She opened the wax paper, revealing five rose macarons, a little crumbled around the edges, but otherwise intact.
A silence descended onto the table.
“Unconventional indeed,” Hatta drawled, brow drawn with suspicion. “But what do they do?”
Catherine didn’t retract her hand. “They don’t do anything. They won’t make you smaller, or larger. But … I do hope they might make you happier. These were meant to be a gift for the King himself, but I … I was distracted today. I forgot to give them to him.”
She dared not look at Jest.
“A gift for the King?” Hatta said. “That does sound promising.” He waved his cane at Haigha, who reached up and took the macarons out of Cath’s palm. Her breath left her in a rush, relieved to have them gone. She was still shaking with nerves.
Haigha laid the macarons out on a plate and, one by one, cut the sandwiched meringues as neatly as he could. They crumbled and squished under the knife. The crowd gathered close, watching as the buttercream filling oozed and stuck to the paper.
Feeling a tug at her skirt, Catherine turned to see Jest holding his hand toward her again. She allowed him to pull her down from the table.
“You made those?” he whispered.
“Of course I did,” she said, and couldn’t help adding, “and as you’ll see, Hatta isn’t the only one here who can make marvelous things.”
His lips quirked. His eyes had a new intensity, like he was trying to figure out a riddle.
The pieces of macaron were passed around the table, and even offered to Raven sitting darkly on his bust, though he huffed and turned his head away. Catherine and Jest were given the last two bites, leaving a pool of flaky almond meringue crumbs and smeared buttercream behind.