“Father said a lot of things,” Jack muttered.
A woman of similar age to Thompson, wearing a simple gray dress and white smock, appeared bearing a tray.
“Where would you like to take your tea, Mr. Jack?”
“Hello, Mrs. Blake.” Jack passed a hand over his face as he greeted her. “I trust you’re well.”
“Nothing to complain about,” Mrs. Blake answered. “How nice it is to see you home.”
Jack nodded. “We’ll take our tea here. You can put the service on the bench.”
Mrs. Blake prepared to pour the tea, but Jack said, “Don’t worry over that. I can serve the tea.”
“As you like, Mr. Jack.”
“Mother, do you still take two sugars?” Jack asked.
“Bah, no tea,” Lady Winter replied. “Mary, bring me another glass, if you will.”
“Yes, Lady Winter,” said Mrs. Blake, gathering up the tray beside the chaise.
“Mother.” Jack let the sugar spoon go, and it clattered onto the bench. “Take some tea.”
Mrs. Blake hesitated, glancing nervously from son to mother.
“I don’t want tea.” Lady Winter propped herself up on one elbow and glared at Mrs. Blake. “What are you gaping at, you old mare? Another glass, I said.”
Mrs. Blake curtsied and hurried off.
“Mother”—Jack snarled the word—“don’t speak to Mrs. Blake that way.”
“Don’t speak to your mother that way!” Lady Winter spat. Her lip began to tremble, and before Charlotte knew what had happened, Jack’s mother was weeping.
With a sigh, Jack knelt beside Lady Winter. “It’s all right. Don’t cry.”
“You don’t know how hard it is,” Lady Winter gasped between her sobs. “I’m so lonely.”
“When was Father last home?” Jack asked.
“It’s been sixteen months this time. He was supposed to come for the summer,” Lady Winter told him, “but he sent a letter. It arrived a few days ago.”
“And he’s not coming,” Jack finished.
Lady Winter began to cry again, and Mrs. Blake reappeared with a glass of sherry.
“Here it is.” Mrs. Blake placed the delicate glass into Lady Winter’s hand.
“Oh, thank you, Mary.” She turned her tearstained face up to look at Mrs. Blake. “You must forgive my ill temper. I forget myself.”
“No harm done, my lady. You’ve tired yourself, that’s all.” Mrs. Blake gave Jack a meaningful look. “Perhaps you’d prefer to have your tea in the parlor?”
“Yes.” Jack stood and watched his mother drain her glass in two swallows.
Mrs. Blake collected the tea service and exited the courtyard. Charlotte wondered if she should follow, but her attention was snared by a strange, high-pitched cry. She turned to see a marvelous bird calling toward the sky.
Charlotte couldn’t help but stare. The peacock was vibrant; its cobalt chest and jade neck were unlike any of the small forest birds she knew. Their advantage was camouflage, whereas this creature lived to be seen. Taking notice of her gaze, the peacock preened and fanned out its enormous tail. As the feathers spread, a strange clicking noise reached Charlotte’s ears. Her admiration coiled into revulsion. The bird’s tail had been reinforced with metal framework, and the many eyes of its feathers did not simply boast gemlike tones, but had been embellished with real jewels. Emeralds and sapphires flashed in the sunlight as the peacock strutted past her.
“Stunning, isn’t he?” Lady Winter said, noting Charlotte’s gaze. “And very difficult to obtain. My husband, the admiral, had it shipped to me from India. The trick is that the metal grafted onto the feathers must be hollow so the bird doesn’t tip over.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Charlotte managed, utterly horrified by the bird. Rebuilding a creature to save its life, as Birch had in the case of Moses, was one thing. This bejeweled peacock struck Charlotte as grotesque in its excess.
Lady Winter gave a snort as she lay against the chaise, saying, “Of course you haven’t.”
“Mother, you’ve just apologized to Mrs. Blake,” Jack chided. “Have a care or you’ll have to beg Char—Miss Marshall’s pardon as well.”
“Mmm-hmmmm.” Lady Winter’s eyes were closed. A minute later she was snoring.
Jack gazed down at his mother for another moment before shaking his head and turning away. He walked back to the interior doors, leaving Charlotte to trail after him awkwardly. She followed him all the way to the parlor, where Mrs. Blake had left the tea service.
Pouring two cups of tea, Jack added milk and sugar to one cup before handing it to Charlotte with a saucer. He put one spoonful of sugar into his cup. Charlotte sat in a high-backed chair. Jack remained standing, his gaze fixed on Charlotte.
“Well?” he asked.
Charlotte sipped her tea. “Well, what?”
“You don’t have anything to say?” Jack’s voice was brittle.
“It’s not my place,” Charlotte told him.
Jack laughed, and tea sloshed over the rim of his cup. “Not your place. By Hephaestus, Charlotte, you already sound like you belong here.”
He was baiting Charlotte, but she knew that her words weren’t what had provoked his anger.
“I just meant that I don’t know your mother,” Charlotte said, frowning. “And I wouldn’t presume to pass judgment.”
“By all means, judge freely,” Jack snapped. “Judge everything you see in this house, this city.”
“Jack.” Charlotte spoke his name softly. She hadn’t forgotten how angry she was about the previous night, but she couldn’t ignore his pain now.
When she didn’t speak again, Jack put his teacup aside, dropped onto a leather sofa and buried his face in his hands.
After a while, Charlotte heard Jack’s voice, still muffled by his hands. “She wasn’t always like this.”
Charlotte rose and went to sit beside him. She wanted to ask if Lady Winter was ill, but feared that if it turned out that Jack’s mother was simply an intolerable snob, her question would only make Jack feel worse. So Charlotte did the other thing that came to mind. She gently pulled Jack’s hands away from his face and held them in her own.
“I didn’t want to come back here.” Jack clung to her fingers, but he stared at the floor when he spoke. “I never wanted to come back.”
16.
MUCH LATER, AFTER Mrs. Blake had retrieved Charlotte from the parlor and had the other housemaids draw Charlotte what proved to be a rather marvelous bath, Meg shooed Mrs. Blake’s girls away with the pronouncement that only she would be needed to assist Charlotte in dressing for the evening. Charlotte had presumed they would be dining with Lady Winter, but Meg informed her that they would be going out.
“Is Lady Winter unhappy that we’re here?” Charlotte asked Meg.
“I doubt Lady Winter remembers that we arrived today,” Meg said as she buttoned Charlotte’s gown.
“She’s ill, isn’t she?” Charlotte met Meg’s gaze in the mirror.
Meg nodded. “Admiral Winter is rarely at home, and over the years, Lady Winter has developed a nervous constitution and is given to bouts of melancholia.”
Nerves and sadness? Charlotte couldn’t put together how that diagnosis could explain Lady Winter’s strange behavior—excepting the fit of weeping.
Noting Charlotte’s furrowed brow, Meg added, “She treats her maladies with liberal doses of laudanum. Jack told Ashley that his mother has been unable to tolerate even a day without several glasses of laudanum-laced sherry for several years now.”
“Oh,” Charlotte said, twisting her fingers as Meg fetched a jacket to pair with Charlotte’s gown. “Why does Admiral Winter stay away from home for so long? Doesn’t he care that it makes his wife so miserable?”
“It seems he married for duty, not love,” Meg ans
wered. “He prefers to spend his life serving the Empire in the company of his fellow officers and has little interest in overseeing his household.”
“But he has two children,” Charlotte protested.
Meg helped Charlotte into a spencer of pale green silk. “And he cared enough to ensure that his sons attended the best military academies and received officer commissions befitting their stations when they finished school. That was as far as Admiral Winter’s penchant for fatherhood extended.”
Jack must despise his father, Charlotte thought. But of course he does. Why else would he betray the very thing his father loves to a fault, to the demise of his own family?
Shrugging away those somber thoughts, Charlotte asked Meg, “Where are we going tonight?”
“To see about Grave,” Meg answered.
A jolt of anticipation coursed through Charlotte. A clandestine expedition into the city, no matter the danger, held much more appeal than staying within this house full of sorrowful phantoms.
After Charlotte was sufficiently dressed and coiffed, she and Meg descended the mansion’s grand staircase to meet Ash, Grave, and Jack in the foyer. Jack still wore military dress, but had donned a fresh uniform. Ash and Grave had similarly exchanged their rumpled travel clothes for crisp, starched servants’ garb.
Jack didn’t bother with formal greetings, instead saying, “We’ll take the trolley to the Market Platform and board the Great Wheel there. It will be a good hour before we reach the Commons.”
“Isn’t there a faster way to reach the ground?” Ash complained.
“Not without drawing attention to ourselves,” Jack answered, heading for the door. “You have to remember that residents of the Floating City are meant to be unfettered by the harried life of a worker. That’s a key marker of the difference between living up here instead of in the Hive or at the Foundry. The elevators at the back of the platforms were designed strictly for official use or emergencies.”
Ash pointed at Jack’s uniform. “You look official enough.”
“But the rest of you don’t,” Jack replied. “It’s expected enough for Charlotte to have an officer escorting her to the city, but ladies and their servants don’t go up and down the elevators.”
Gazing up at the wheel, Ash pressed, “This is really how people come and go from the platform?”
“You’re assuming people come and go frequently.” Jack spared Ash a thin smile. “Most residents of the Floating City prefer not to leave the upper echelons of New York except by dirigible when they’re traveling to their country houses.”
“What about people from the Commons who want to come up?” Charlotte asked.
“Another service the Great Wheel provides,” Jack told her. “By Imperial law, any citizen is free to enter the Floating City. But getting to the platforms is hardly free. Most workers can’t afford to pay the fare. It’s a fine system the city officials have concocted to keep the rabble out.”
Ash was still grumbling under his breath when they boarded the trolley. Sliding into a seat beside the window, Charlotte expected Meg to join her, but it was Jack who sat with her on the trolley bench. Without saying anything, Jack slipped his hand over hers, threading their fingers and keeping their hands low, out of their companions’ view. Charlotte threw a questioning glance at Jack, but his eyes were ahead as the trolley whisked them away from the House of Winter.
As the cable car collected more passengers, the mood in the trolley grew festive. They sped along tracks, passing the Arts and Military platforms, but Charlotte barely noticed her surroundings. She was far too distracted by the feeling of Jack’s hand holding hers. She finally looked up when a cheer sounded through the now-crowded trolley.
The car slowed as it approached an enormous wheel. From frame to axle to spokes, the entirety of the wheel was lit. Turning perpetually, it glittered in gold and bronze, its glass-enclosed carriages hanging like baubles around its circumference.
When the trolley stopped, its passengers emptied out, streaming toward the line to board the Wheel. Though the line was long, they progressed steadily forward with the constant movement of the Wheel. Charlotte watched women draped in silks and velvet come and go from the carriages, accompanied by men dressed in tailcoats and top hats, their faces graced with neatly trimmed sideburns. Their laughter and gaiety suffused the evening air and left Charlotte feeling confused.
“Why do they need carriages when the trolley services all the platforms?” Charlotte asked Jack.
“While it’s deemed acceptable to ride the trolley, it’s much more fashionable to travel by private means,” Jack replied. “The carriages are just another way for the city’s elite to display their wealth.”
Didn’t they know they were at war? Charlotte stood in line beside these Imperial citizens, who would cast glances at her and presume she was one of their own, and the sweet twilight air developed a bitter flavor. How many years had she lived in hiding, surviving only by wit and will, and waiting for the day when she would take up arms against the military behemoth behind which the Floating City hid?
Charlotte doubted a single one of these giggling girls around her would know what to do in a fight. She looked at Ashley and noticed that although her brother’s expression was calm, his fists were clenched. That he shared her distaste for this spectacle took the edge off Charlotte’s mood.
Reaching the front of the line, Jack paid their fare. They were shuttled into one of the carriages with half a dozen other passengers, and the long descent began. After a few minutes, Charlotte wanted to echo Ash’s frustration with this method of travel. The wheel turned at an interminably slow pace. A butler—apparently one was assigned to each carriage—offered flutes of champagne to the other finely dressed passengers and Jack and Charlotte (though not to Ash, Meg, or Grave), and the sound of clinking glass and toasts soon filled the air. Raising her glass for show whenever a stranger called out another foolish “huzzah!” Charlotte sipped at the bubbling wine and waited for the ride to be over.
Nearly three-quarters of an hour passed before the carriage leveled out and they were ushered out the door so that ascending passengers could take their places. When she stepped from the carriage, Charlotte’s senses were assaulted by sound and light. The tumbling of water that powered the Great Wheel roared in her ears, and behind that explosion of sound came a cacophony of organ pipes, chimes, and blaring brass.
Not to be outdone by the audacious noise that welcomed her to the Commons, bright lights flared all around her. Iron rods, twice as tall as the tallest man among them, topped with spinning pinwheels shot out streams of sparks that met sizzling ends in the pools below the waterfalls. The pinwheels lined the path from the carriage, down a long staircase that ended in a broad pedestrian thoroughfare.
Nearly all Charlotte’s fellow passengers laughed and jostled each other as they hurried eastward. Peering after them, she saw the pennants and jewel tones of the tents and pavilions that crowded the Tinkers’ Faire. Only two passengers—both men, Charlotte noted—ducked their heads and turned westward onto the pathway.
Since she was already holding on to Jack’s arm, Charlotte tugged him closer and, indicating the direction with a slight lift of her chin, asked, “What’s that way?”
“The Iron Forest,” Jack answered. “It began as a goodwill effort to give a cultural lift to the Commons. The forest was crafted from scrap metals, and it was meant to emulate the union between nature and machine, art and industry—the beloved aims of our divine patrons, Athene and Hephaestus.”
“And now?” Charlotte looked down the westerly path. The two men she’d seen traverse that way had disappeared, their figures engulfed by shadow, though they could hardly have gotten far from the arrival platform.
“The crown financed the creation of the Iron Forest, but didn’t offer any means to maintain it—handing over its upkeep to the colonial governor. Given that the forest was i
ntended for the benefit of the Commons, the governor saw no need to pay for a ‘frivolous’ spectacle that wasn’t enjoyed by his peers in the Floating City. It’s a haven for cutpurses, assassins, and other sordid types. The city is like a piece of fruit. Up there, on the platforms, it appears to be ripe, juicy, and perfect, but down here you’ll discover its true, rotten core.”
“But the Tinkers’ Faire?” Charlotte cast her glance at the carnivalesque silks and banners that shone brightly even after dusk. “Why isn’t it sullied like the Iron Forest? It doesn’t look like a rotten core to me.”
Even now Jack was steering her to the east, after the bulk of the other passengers.
“Don’t be fooled. The fair is sullied. It’s just painted over in thousands of bright colors to hide the dirt. Many denizens of the Floating City love to spend their coins on the delights and scandals of the Tinkers’ Faire. It provides entertainment and is constantly changing, whereas the Iron Forest was built and left to founder. Plus, the tinkers themselves fund the upkeep of their market. They have no need of backing from the Empire.”
A blush heated Charlotte’s neck, creeping toward her cheeks. “Delights and scandals?”
Jack raised an eyebrow at her. “I can trust you to avoid any mischief, can’t I, Charlotte?”
“I don’t know. Since you’re supposed to be my escort, isn’t that your responsibility?” Charlotte laughed, flashing him an impish smile.
Her heart fluttered when Jack bent close, his lips brushing her ear. “Then I shan’t take my eyes off you. Nor let you go.” Jack turned his hand so he could reach around her wrist. He slipped his fingers into the gap between her the sleeve of her spencer and gloves, stroking her skin. The shudder that rushed through Charlotte’s limbs almost made her lose her footing.
Charlotte let herself begin to melt against Jack, feeling his breath warm her temple, wondering at the sensation evoked by his caresses on such a small patch of bare skin. I can’t kiss you.
But in the next moment, Charlotte recalled other words, spoken by Lady Winter: Have you brought Eleanor to see me?