Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(16)

“I thought you looked beautiful.” His voice was soft.

Tessa laid her head against his shoulder. “There will be another time,” she said. “Another day, another dress. A time when you are well and everything is perfect.”

His voice was still gentle, but it held a terrible weariness. “There is no such thing as perfect, Tessa.”

Sophie was standing at the window of her small bedroom, the curtain drawn back, her eyes fixed on the courtyard. It had been hours since the carriages had gone rattling away, and she was meant to be sweeping out the grates, but the brush and bucket were motionless at her feet.

She could hear Bridget’s voice drifting softly up from the kitchen below:

“Earl Richard had a daughter;

A comely maid was she.

And she laid her love on Sweet William,

Though not of his degree.”

Sometimes, when Bridget was in a particularly melodious mood, Sophie thought about stalking downstairs and pushing her into the oven like the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.” But Charlotte would certainly not approve. Even if Bridget were singing about forbidden love between the social classes just at the same moment that Sophie was cursing herself for clutching the curtain fabric tightly in her hand, seeing gray-green eyes in her mind as she wondered and worried—Would Gideon be all right? Was he hurt? Could he fight his father? And how dreadful if he had to—

The gates of the Institute creaked open, and a carriage rattled inside; Will was driving. Sophie recognized him, hatless, his black hair wild in the wind. He leaped down from the driver’s seat and came around to help Tessa out of the carriage—even at this distance Sophie could see that a bleak wreck had been made of her golden gown—and then Jem, leaning heavily on his parabatai’s shoulder.

Sophie sucked in her breath. Though she no longer fancied herself in love with Jem, she still cared for him a great deal. It was hard not to, considering his openheartedness, his sweetness and graciousness. He had never been anything but exquisitely kind to her. She had been relieved over the past months that he had not had one of his “bad spells,” as Charlotte called them—that though happiness had not healed him, he had seemed to be stronger, better….

The threesome had disappeared inside the Institute. Cyril had come from the stables and was dealing with the whickering Balios and Xanthos. Sophie took a deep breath and let the curtain fall away from her hand. Charlotte might need her, want her, to assist with Jem. If there was anything she could do … She pulled herself away from the window and hurried out into the corridor and down the narrow servants’ stairs.

In the hall downstairs she met Tessa, ashen and pinched-looking, hesitating just outside Jem’s bedroom. Through the partly open door Sophie could see Charlotte bending over Jem, who was sitting on the bed; Will leaned by the fireplace, his arms crossed, tension clear in every line of his body. Tessa raised her head as she saw Sophie, a little of the color coming back into her face. “Sophie,” she cried softly. “Sophie, Jem isn’t well. He’s had another … another bout of illness.”

“It will be all right, Miss Tessa. I’ve seen him very ill before, and he always comes through it, right as rain.”

Tessa closed her eyes. The shadows beneath them were gray. She did not need to say what they were both thinking, that one day there would be a time when he would have an attack and he would not come through it.

“I ought to be fetching hot water,” Sophie added, “and cloths—”

“I should be fetching those things,” said Tessa. “And I would, but Charlotte says that I must change out of this dress, that demon blood can be dangerous if it too greatly encounters the skin. She sent Bridget for cloths and poultices, and Brother Enoch will arrive at any moment. And Jem will not hear otherwise, but—”

“That is enough,” Sophie said firmly. “You will do him no good at all if you let yourself become ill as well. I will help you with the dress. Come, let us manage it, and quickly.”

Tessa’s eyes fluttered open. “Dear sensible Sophie. Of course you are right.” She began to move across the corridor, toward her room. At the door she paused, and turned to look at Sophie. Her wide gray eyes searched the other girl’s face, and she seemed to nod to herself, as if she had been proved right in a guess. “He is all right, you know. Not hurt at all.”

“Master Jem?”

Tessa shook her head. “Gideon Lightwood.”

Sophie blushed.

Gabriel wasn’t sure quite why he was in the Institute’s drawing room, except that his brother had told him to come here and wait, and even after everything that had happened, he was still used to doing what Gideon said. He was surprised at how plain the room was, nothing like the grand drawing rooms in either the Lightwoods’ Pimlico house or the one in Chiswick. The walls were papered with a faded print of cabbage roses, the surface of the desk stained with ink and scarred with the marks of letter openers and pen nibs, and the grate was sooty. Over the fireplace hung a water-blotched mirror, framed in gilt.

Gabriel glanced at his own reflection. His gear was torn at the neck, and there was a red mark on his jaw where a long graze was in the process of healing. There was blood all over his gear—Your own blood, or your father’s blood?

He pushed the thought away quickly. It was odd, he thought, how he was the one who looked like their mother, Barbara. She had been tall and inclined toward slenderness, with curling brown hair and eyes he remembered as the purest green, like the grass that sloped down toward the river behind the house. Gideon looked like their father: broad and stocky, with eyes more gray than green. Which was ironic, because Gabriel was the one who had inherited their father’s temperament: headstrong and quick to anger, slow to forgive. Gideon and Barbara were more peacemakers, quiet and steady, faithful in their beliefs. They were both much more like—