Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

blame—aside from the fact that man assured his employer that he did not do it, when having done so would have meant cash in hand. Moreover, how would he have known when to find his victim in that vulnerable period after undergoing the Process? He would not. That information was known to a select—a very select—few.” She nodded to Xonck’s bandaged arm and scoffed. “Is that the work of an elegant schemer?”

Xonck did not respond.

After a pause, Roger Bascombe cleared his throat and wondered aloud mildly, “Perhaps the Major is overdue for the Process himself.”

“Do you trust Lorenz to have everything aboard?” asked Xonck, to the Comte. “The deadline was severe—the large quantities—”

“Of course,” the Comte replied gruffly.

“As you know,” continued Xonck, “the invitations have been sent.”

“With the wording we agreed upon?” asked the Contessa.

“Of course. Menacing enough to command attendance…but if we do not have the leverage from our harvest in the country—”

“I have no doubts.” The Contessa chuckled. “If Elspeth Poole is with him, Doctor Lorenz will strive mightily.”

“In exchange for her joining him in strenuous effort!” Xonck cackled. “I am sure the transaction appeals to his mathematical mind—sines and tangents and bisected spheres, don’t you know.”

“And what about our little magpie?” asked Xonck, leaning forward and cocking his head to look into Miss Temple’s face. “Is she worthy of the Process? Is she worthy of a book? Something else entirely? Or perhaps she cannot be swayed?”

“Anyone can be swayed,” said the Comte. Xonck paid no attention, reaching forward to flick one of Miss Temple’s curls.

“Perhaps…something else will happen…” He turned to the Comte. “I’ve read the back of each painting, you know. I know what you’re aiming at—what you were trying with your Asiatic whore.” The Comte said nothing and Xonck laughed, taking the silence as an acknowledgment of his guess. “That is the trick of banding with clever folk, Monsieur le Comte—so many people are not clever, those who are sometimes grow into the habit of assuming no one else will ever divine their minds.”

“That is enough,” said the Contessa. “Celeste has done damage to me, and so—by all our agreements—she is indisputably mine.” She reached up and touched the tip of Miss Temple’s bullet-scar with a finger. “I assure you…no one will be disappointed.”

The coach clattered onto the cobblestone plaza in front of Harschmort House and Miss Temple heard the calls of the driver to his team, pulling them to a halt. The door was opened and she was handed down to a pair of black-liveried footmen, the cobbles cold and hard beneath her feet. Before Miss Temple had scarcely registered where she was—from the second coach she saw the Prince and his party descending, Miss Vandaariff’s expression a shifting series of furtive smiles and frowns—the Comte’s iron grasp directed her toward a knot of figures near the great front entrance. Without any ceremony—and without even a glance to see if the others were following—she was conveyed roughly along, doing her best to avoid a stubbed toe on the uneven stones, only coming to a stop when the Comte acknowledged the greetings of a man and woman stepping out from the larger group (a mixture of servants, black-uniformed soldiers of Macklenburg, and red-coated Dragoons). The man was tall and broad, with grizzled and distressingly thick side whiskers and a balding pate that caught the torchlight and made his entire face seem like a primitive mask. He bowed formally to the Comte. The woman wore a simple dark dress that was nevertheless quite flattering, and her affable face bore the recognizable scars around her eyes. Her hair was brown and plainly curled and gathered behind her head with black ribbon. She nodded at Miss Temple and then smiled up at the Comte.

“Welcome back to Harschmort, Monsieur,” she said. “Lord Vandaariff is in his study.”

The Comte nodded and turned to the man. “Blenheim?”

“Everything as ordered, Monsieur.”

“Attend to the Prince. Mrs. Stearne, please escort Miss Vandaariff to her rooms. Miss Temple here will join you. The Contessa will collect both ladies when it is time.”

The man nodded sharply and the woman bobbed into a curtsey. The Comte drew Miss Temple forward and shoved her in the direction of the door. She looked behind her to see the woman—Mrs. Stearne—dipping again before the Contessa and Miss Vandaariff, rising to kiss each of the younger woman’s cheeks and then take her hand. The Comte released Miss Temple from his grip—his attention turned to the words passing between Xonck, Blach, and Blenheim—as Mrs. Stearne took up her hand, Lydia Vandaariff stepping into place on the woman’s other side. The three of them walked—with four liveried footmen falling in place behind them—into the house.

Miss Temple glanced once at Mrs. Stearne, sure that she had finally located the fourth woman from her first coach ride to Harschmort. This was the pirate, who had undergone the Process in the medical theatre, screaming before the audience dressed in their finery. Mrs. Stearne caught her look and smiled, squeezing Miss Temple’s hand.

Lydia Vandaariff’s rooms overlooked a massive formal garden in the rear of the house, what Miss Temple assumed was once the prison’s parade ground. The entire idea of living in such a place struck her as morbid, if not ridiculously affected, all the more when the rooms one lived in were so covered in lace as to seem one great over- flounced pillow. Lydia immediately retreated to an inner closet with two of her maids to change clothes, muttering at them crossly and tossing her head. Miss Temple was installed on a wide lace-fringed settee. This had served to expose her filthy feet, prompting Mrs. Stearne to call for another maid with a basin and a cloth. The girl knelt and washed Miss Temple’s feet carefully one at a time, drying them on a soft towel. Throughout, Miss Temple remained silent, her thoughts still a-swim at her situation, her heart alternating between anger and despondence. She had committed their path from the front door to Lydia’s apartments to memory as best she could, but with only the barest hope of escape for that way was lined with servants and soldiers, as if the entire mansion had become an armed camp. Miss Temple could not but notice that nowhere around her was a single thing—a nail file, a crystal dish for sweets, a letter opener, a candlestick—she might have snatched up for a weapon.

When the girl had finished, collecting her things and nodding first to Miss Temple and then Mrs. Stearne before backing from the room, the two remained for a moment in silence—or near silence, the hectoring comments of Miss Vandaariff to her maids reaching them despite the distance and closed doors.

“You were in the coach,” Miss Temple said at last. “The pirate.”

“I was.”

“I did not know your name. I have since met Mrs. Marchmoor, and heard others speak of Miss Poole—”

“You must call me Caroline,” said Mrs. Stearne. “Stearne is my husband’s name—my husband is dead and not missed. Of course, I did not know your name either—I knew no one’s name, though I think we each assumed the others were old hands. Perhaps Mrs. Marchmoor was an old hand, but I am sure she was as frightened—and thrilled—as the rest of us.”

“I doubt she would admit it,” replied Miss Temple.

“So do I.” Caroline smiled. “I still do not know how you came to be in our coach—it shows a boldness, to be sure. And what you must have done since…I can only guess how hard it was.”

Miss Temple shrugged.

“Of course.” Caroline nodded. “What choice did you have? Yet, to most people, your path would have been plagued with choice—while to you it seems inexorable—quite like my own. However much our characters may be fixed, they are only revealed to us one test at a time. And so we are here together after all, with perhaps more in common than any of us would care to admit—though only a fool does not admit the truth once it is plain to her.”

The woman’s dress was simpler than Mrs. Marchmoor’s, less ostentatious—less like an actor’s idea of how the wealthy dressed, she realized—and she was pained that her heart’s impulse was to think of her captor kindly (this being rare enough in Miss Temple’s life to be a surprise in itself, captor or no). No doubt the woman had been placed for that very purpose, for a natural sympathy that had somehow survived the Process or could at least be