Chain of Gold Page 4

  “I know, it absolutely is awful right now,” said Lucie, and Cordelia had the feeling she’d missed several moments of Lucie talking, “but I just know it will be over soon and your father will be back safely. And meanwhile you’ll be in London and you can train with me and—Oh!” Lucie took her arm out of Cordelia’s and dipped into her handbag. “I almost forgot. I have another installment of The Beautiful Cordelia for you to read.”

  Cordelia smiled and tried to put the situation with her father out of her mind. The Beautiful Cordelia was a novel that Lucie had begun when she was twelve. It had been intended to cheer Cordelia up during an extended stay in Switzerland. It chronicled the adventures of a young woman named Cordelia, devastatingly beautiful to all who beheld her, and the handsome man who adored her, Lord Hawke. Sadly they had been parted when the beautiful Cordelia had been kidnapped by pirates, and ever since then she had been trying to find her way back to him, though her journey was complicated by many adventures as well as so many other attractive men—who always fell in love with her and desired marriage—that the real Cordelia had lost count.

  Every month, faithfully, for four years, Lucie had mailed Cordelia a new chapter and Cordelia had curled up with her fictional counterpart’s romantic adventures and lost herself in fantasy for a while.

  “Wonderful,” she said, taking the sheets of paper. “I can hardly wait to see if Cordelia escapes from the wicked Bandit King!”

  “Well, as it turns out, the Bandit King isn’t entirely wicked. You see, he’s the youngest son of a duke who’s always been—sorry,” Lucie ended meekly at Cordelia’s glare. “I forgot how you hate to be told the story before you read it.”

  “I do.” Cordelia knocked her friend in the arm with the rolled-up manuscript. “But thank you, darling, I shall read it directly I have a moment.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Is it—I mean, I wish to chat alone with you, too, but are we being dreadfully rude asking your brother to walk behind us?”

  “Not a bit,” Lucie assured her. “Look at him. He’s quite distracted, reading.”

  And he was. Though James seemed entirely caught up in whatever he was perusing, he nevertheless skirted oncoming passersby, the occasional rock or fallen branch, and once even a small boy holding a hoop, with admirable grace. Cordelia suspected that if she had tried such a trick, she would have crashed into a tree.

  “You’re so lucky,” Cordelia said, still looking over her shoulder at James.

  “Why on earth?” Lucie looked at her with wide eyes. Where James’s eyes were amber, Lucie’s were pale blue, a few shades lighter than her father’s.

  Cordelia’s head snapped back around. “Oh, because—” Because you get to spend time with James every day? She doubted Lucie thought that was any special gift; one didn’t, when it was one’s family. “He’s such a good older brother. If I’d asked Alastair to walk ten paces behind me in a park, he would have made sure to stick by my side the entire time just to be annoying.”

  “Pfft!” Lucie exclaimed. “Of course I adore Jamie, but he’s been dreadful lately, ever since he fell in love.”

  She might as well have dropped an incendiary device on Cordelia’s head. Everything seemed to fly apart around her. “He what?”

  “Fell in love,” Lucie repeated, with the look of someone enjoying imparting a bit of gossip. “Oh, he won’t say with who, of course, because it’s Jamie and he never tells us anything. But Father’s diagnosed him and he says it’s definitely love.”

  “You make it sound like consumption.” Cordelia’s head was whirling with dismay. James in love? With who?

  “Well, it is a bit, isn’t it? He gets all pale and moody and stares off out of windows like Keats.”

  “Did Keats stare out of windows?” Sometimes keeping up with Lucie was difficult.

  Lucie plowed on, undeterred by the question of whether England’s foremost Romantic poet had or had not stared out of windows. “He won’t say anything to anyone but Matthew, and Matthew is a tomb where James is concerned. I heard a bit of their conversation this morning by accident, though—”

  “Accident?” Cordelia raised an eyebrow.

  “I may have been hiding beneath a table,” said Lucie, with dignity. “But it was only because I had lost an earring and was looking for it.”

  Cordelia suppressed a smile. “Go on.”

  “He is definitely in love, and Matthew thinks he is being foolish. It is a girl who does not live in London, but she is about to arrive here for an extended stay. Matthew does not approve of her—” Lucie broke off suddenly and clutched at Cordelia’s wrist. “Oh!”

  “Ouch! Lucie—”

  “A lovely young lady about to arrive in London! Oh, I am a goose! Of course it’s clear who he meant!”

  “Is it?” Cordelia said. They were nearing the famous Long Water; she could see the sun sparkling off the surface.

  “He meant you,” Lucie breathed. “Oh, how lovely! Imagine if you got married! We could be sisters in truth!”

  “Lucie!” Cordelia dropped her voice to a whisper. “We’ve no proof he meant me.”

  “Well, he’d be mad not to be in love with you,” said Lucie. “You’re terribly pretty, and just as Matthew said, you’ve just arrived in London for an extended stay. Who else could it be? The Enclave simply isn’t that large. No, it must be you.”

  “I don’t know—”

  Lucie’s eyes rounded. “Is it that you don’t care for him? Well, you can’t be expected to, yet. I mean you’ve known him all your life, so I imagine he isn’t that impressive, but I am quite sure you could get used to his face. He doesn’t snore or make rude jokes. Really, he isn’t bad at all,” she added judiciously. “Just consider it? Dance one dance with him tomorrow. You do have a dress, don’t you? You must have a lovely dress, if he is to be properly stunned by you.”

  “I do have a dress,” Cordelia hastened to reassure her, though she knew it was far from lovely.

  “Once you have stunned him,” Lucie went on, “he will propose. Then we shall decide whether you will accept and if you do, if you will have a long engagement. It might be better if you did, so that we can complete our parabatai training.”

  “Lucie, you are making me dizzy!” Cordelia said, and cast a worried look over her shoulder. Had James heard any of what they had said? No, it didn’t seem so: he was still wandering along, reading.

  A betraying hope swelled in her heart, and for a moment she allowed herself to imagine being engaged to James, being welcomed into Lucie’s family. Lucie, her sister in the eyes of the law now, carrying a sheaf of flowers at her wedding. Their friends—they would certainly have friends—exclaiming, Oh, you two make a perfect couple—

  She frowned suddenly. “Why does Matthew not approve of me?” she asked, and then cleared her throat. “I mean, if I was the girl they were talking about, which I am sure I was not.”

  Lucie waved her hand airily. “He did not think the girl in question cared for James. But as we have already ascertained, you can fall in love with him quite easily, if you put a bit of effort into it. Matthew is overly protective of Jamie, but he is nothing to fear. He may not like many people, but he’s very kind to the ones he does like.”

  Cordelia thought of Matthew, James’s parabatai. Matthew had hardly left James’s side since they had both been in school in Idris, and she had met him now and then at social events. Matthew was all gold hair and smiles, but she suspected there might be a lion under the kitty cat if hurting James was involved.

  But she would never hurt James. She loved him. She had loved him all her life.

  And tomorrow she would get the chance to tell him so. She had no doubt that would give her the confidence to approach the Consul and present her father’s case for leniency, perhaps with James by her side.

  Cordelia raised her chin. Yes, after the ball tomorrow, her life would be very different.

  DAYS PAST: IDRIS, 1899

  Every year for as long as James could remember, he and his family had
gone to Idris to spend the summer at Herondale Manor. It was a large edifice of golden-yellow stone, its gardens sloping down to the enchanted green space of Brocelind Forest, a high wall separating it from the manor of the Blackthorn family next door.

  James and Lucie would spend the days playing on the outskirts of the dark forest, swimming and fishing in the nearby river, and riding horses over the green fields. Sometimes they would try to peep over the wall of the Blackthorn house, but the walls were choked with thorny vines. Razor-tipped briars wrapped around the gates as if Blackthorn Manor had been long abandoned and overgrown, and though they knew that Tatiana Blackthorn lived there, they had only seen her carriage going in and out from a distance, the doors and windows firmly shut.

  James had once asked his parents why they never socialized with the woman who lived next door, especially since Tatiana was related to James’s uncles, Gideon and Gabriel Lightwood. Tessa explained diplomatically that there had been bad blood between their families since Tatiana’s father had been cursed and they’d been unable to save him. Her father and her husband had died that day, and her son, Jesse, had died in the years since. She blamed Will and her brothers for her losses. “People become locked in bitterness sometimes,” Tessa said, “and they wish to find someone, anyone, to blame for their grief. It is a shame, for Will and your uncles would have helped her if they could.”

  James had not given much more thought to Tatiana: a strange woman who hated his father unreasonably was not someone he wished to know. Then, the summer James turned thirteen years old, a message came from London to tell Will that Edmund and Linette Herondale, James’s grandparents, had died of influenza.

  If Will had not been so distracted by his loss, perhaps things would have gone differently.

  But he was, and they didn’t.

  The night after they learned of Linette’s and Edmund’s deaths, Will had been sitting on the floor in the drawing room, Tessa in the overstuffed armchair behind him, and Lucie and James had been stretched upon the fireplace rug. Will’s back had been against Tessa’s legs as he stared unseeing into the fire. They had all heard the front doors open; Will had looked up when Jem came in, and Jem, in his Silent Brother robes, went over to Will and sat down beside him. He drew Will’s head against his shoulder, and Will held the front of Jem’s robes in his fists and he cried. Tessa bowed her head over both of them, and the three were united in adult grief, a sphere James could not yet touch. It was the first time it had ever occurred to James that his father might cry about anything.

  Lucie and James escaped to the kitchen. That was where Tatiana Blackthorn found them—sitting at a table while their cook, Bridget, fed them pudding for dinner—when she arrived to ask James to cut the briars.

  She looked like a gray crow, out of place in their bright kitchen. Her dress was worn serge, ragged at the hems and cuffs, and a dirty hat with a beady-eyed stuffed bird on it was tilted sideways on her head. Her hair was gray, her skin was gray, and her eyes were dull green, as if misery and anger had sucked all the color out of her.

  “Boy,” she said, looking at James. “My manor gates are stuck fast by overgrowth. I need someone to cut the briars. Will you do it?”

  Maybe if things had been different, if James had not already been feeling restless with the desire to help his father but no idea how to do so, he might have said no. He might have wondered why Mrs. Blackthorn didn’t simply ask whoever had been doing the briar cutting for her all these years, or why she suddenly needed this task accomplished in the evening.

  But he didn’t. He stood up from the table and followed Tatiana out into the falling night. Sunset had begun, and the trees of Brocelind Forest seemed to flame at the tops as she strode across the grounds between their two houses, up to the front gates of Blackthorn Manor. They were black and twisted iron, with an arch at the top that spelled out words in Latin: LEX MALLA, LEX NULLA.

  A bad law is no law.

  She bent down among the drifting leaves and stood up, holding an enormous knife. It had clearly once been sharp, but now the blade was such a dark brown with rust it looked almost black. For a moment James had the fantasy that Tatiana Blackthorn had brought him here to kill him. She would cut out his heart and leave him lying where his blood ran out across the ground.

  Instead she shoved the knife into his hands. “There you go, boy,” she said. “Take your time.”

  He thought for a moment that she smiled, but it might have been a trick of the light. She was gone in a rustle of dry grass, leaving James standing before the gates, rusty blade in hand, like Sleeping Beauty’s least successful suitor. With a sigh, he began to cut.

  Or at least, he began to try. The dull blade sliced nothing, and the briars were as thick as the bars on the gates. More than once he was stuck sharply by the wicked points of the thorns.

  His aching arms soon felt like lead, and his white shirt was spotted with blood. This was ridiculous, he told himself. Surely this went beyond the obligation to help a neighbor. Surely his parents would understand if he tossed the knife aside and went home. Surely—

  A pair of hands, white as lilies, suddenly fluttered between the vines. “Herondale boy,” whispered a voice. “Let me help you.”

  He stared in astonishment as a few of the vines fell away. A moment later a girl’s face appeared in the gap, pale and small. “Herondale boy,” she said again. “Have you a voice?”

  “Yes, and a name,” he said. “It’s James.”

  Her face disappeared from the gap in the vines. There was a rattling sound, and a moment later a pair of briar cutters—perhaps not entirely new but certainly serviceable—emerged beneath the gates. James bent to seize them.

  He was straightening up when he heard his name called: it was his mother’s voice.

  “I must go,” he said. “But thank you, Grace. You are Grace, aren’t you? Grace Blackthorn?”

  He heard what sounded like a gasp, and she appeared again at the gap in the vines. “Oh, do please come back,” Grace said. “If you come back tomorrow night, I shall sneak down to the gates here and talk with you while you cut. It has been so long since I spoke with anyone but Mama.”

  Her hand reached out through the bars, and he saw red lines on her skin where the thorns had torn her—James raised his own hand and for a moment, their fingers brushed. “I promise,” he found himself saying. “I will come back.”

  2 ASHES OF ROSES

  Though one were fair as roses,

  His beauty clouds and closes;

  And well though love reposes,

  In the end it is not well.

  —Algernon Charles Swinburne, “The Garden of Proserpine”

  “Matthew,” said James. “Matthew, I know you’re under there. Come out, or I swear on the Angel I will pith you like a frog.”

  James was lying atop the billiard table in the Institute’s games room, glaring down over the side.

  The ball had been going on for at least half an hour, and no one had been able to find Matthew. James was the one who’d guessed his parabatai was hiding in here: it was one of their favorite rooms, comfortable and handsomely decorated by Tessa. It was papered up to the dado rail with gray and black stripes, and painted gray above that. There were framed portraits and family trees on the walls, and a gathering of comfortable, well-worn sofas and wing chairs. A beautifully polished chess set glowed like a jewel box atop a Dunhill cigar humidor. There was also the massive billiard table that Matthew was currently hiding under.

  There was a clatter, and Matthew’s blond head appeared beneath the table. He blinked green eyes up at James. “Jamie, Jamie,” he said, with mock sorrow. “Why must you chivvy a fellow so? I was peacefully napping.”

  “Well, wake up. You’re needed in the ballroom to make up the numbers,” said James. “There are a shocking number of girls out there.”

  “Damn the ballroom,” said Matthew, scooting out from under the table. He was splendidly turned out in dove gray, with a pale green carnation in his buttonhole
. In one hand he clutched a cut-glass decanter. “Bother the dancing. I intend to remain in here and get thoroughly foxed.” He glanced at the decanter and then hopefully up at James. “You can join me if you want.”

  “That’s my father’s port,” said James. It was strong stuff, he knew, and very sweet. “You’ll be vilely ill in the morning.”

  “Carpe decanter,” said Matthew. “It’s good port. I’ve always admired your father, you know. Planned to be like him one day. Though I once knew a warlock who had three arms. He could duel with one hand, shuffle a deck of cards with the next, and untie a lady’s corset with the third, all at the same time. Now there was a chap to emulate.”

  “You’re already foxed,” said James disapprovingly, and reached down to seize the decanter out of Matthew’s hand. Matthew was too quick for him, though, and swung it out of reach while rising up to clasp James’s arm. He yanked him off the table, and in a moment they were rolling on the carpet like puppies, Matthew laughing uncontrollably, James trying to wrestle the bottle away from him.

  “Get—off—me!” Matthew wheezed, and let go. James fell backward with such force that the top of the decanter flew off. Port splashed over his clothes.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” he lamented, using his pocket handkerchief to do what he could to mop up the scarlet stain spreading across his shirtfront. “I smell like a brewer and I look like a butcher.”

  “Piffle,” said Matthew. “None of the girls care about your clothes anyhow. They’re all too busy gazing into your great big golden eyes.” He widened his eyes at James until he looked as if he were going mad. Then he crossed them.

  James just frowned. His eyes were large, black-fringed, and the color of pale gold tea, but he’d been tormented too many times at school about his unusual eyes to find any pleasure in their uniqueness.

  Matthew held out his hands. “Pax,” he said wheedlingly. “Let it be peace between us. You can pour the rest of the port on my head.”