Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(35)

“I am, quite,” Jem said. “The Silent Brothers were of great assistance.” He reached to pour himself a cup of tea, and Tessa watched the bones and tendons move in his thin wrist, distressingly visible. When he set the pot down, she reached for his hand beneath the table, and he clasped it. His slim fingers wound about hers reassuringly.

Bridget’s voice floated out from the kitchen.

“Cold blows the wind tonight, sweetheart,

Cold are the drops of rain;

The very first love that ever I had

In greenwood he was slain.

I’ll do as much for my sweetheart

As any young woman may;

I’ll sit and mourn at his graveside

A twelve-month and a day.”

“By the Angel, she’s depressing,” said Henry, setting down his newspaper directly on his plate and causing the edge to soak through with egg yolk. Charlotte opened her mouth as if to object, and closed it again. “It’s all heartbreak, death, and unrequited love.”

“Well, that is what most songs are about,” said Will. “Requited love is ideal but doesn’t make much of a ballad.”

Jem looked up, but before he could say anything, a great reverberation sounded through the Institute. Tessa was familiar enough with her London home now to know it as the sound of the doorbell. They all looked down the table at the same time at Charlotte, as if their heads were mounted on springs.

Charlotte, looking startled, put down her fork. “Oh, dear,” she said. “There is something I had meant to tell you all, but—”

“Ma’am?” It was Sophie, drifting into the room with a salver in one hand. Tessa could not help but notice that though Gideon was staring at her, she seemed to be deliberately avoiding his gaze, her cheeks pinking slightly. “Consul Wayland is downstairs requesting to speak with you.”

Charlotte took the folded paper off the salver, gazed at it, sighed, and said, “Very well. Send him up.”

Sophie vanished in a swirl of skirts.

“Charlotte?” Henry sounded puzzled. “What is going on?”

“Indeed.” Will let his cutlery clatter onto his plate. “The Consul? Breaking up our breakfast time? Whatever next? The Inquisitor over for tea? Picnics with the Silent Brothers?”

“Duck pies in the park,” said Jem under his breath, and he and Will smiled at each other, just a flash, before the door opened and the Consul swept it.

Consul Wayland was a big man, broad-chested and thick-armed, and the robes of the Consul’s status always seemed to hang a bit awkwardly from his wide shoulders. He was blond bearded like a Viking, and at the moment his expression was stormy. “Charlotte,” he said without preamble. “I am here to talk to you about Benedict Lightwood.”

There was a faint rustling; Gabriel’s fingers had clenched on the tablecloth. Gideon put a hand lightly over his brother’s wrist, stilling him, but the Consul was already looking at them. “Gabriel,” he said. “I had rather thought you might go to the Blackthorns’ with your sister.”

Gabriel’s fingers tightened on the handle of his teacup. “They are quite overset in their grief for Rupert,” he said. “I did not think now was the time to intrude.”

“Well, you are grieving your father, are you not?” said the Consul. “Grief shared is grief lessened, they say.”

“Consul—,” Gideon began, shooting a worried look at his brother.

“Though perhaps it might be rather awkward to lodge with your sister, considering that she has brought a complaint against you for murder.”

Gabriel made a noise as if someone had spilled boiling water over him. Gideon threw his napkin down and stood up.

“Tatiana did what?” he demanded.

“You heard me,” the Consul said.

“It was not murder,” said Jem.

“As you say,” said the Consul. “I was informed that it was.”

“Were you also informed that Benedict had turned into a gigantic worm?” Will inquired, and Gabriel looked at him in surprise, as if he had not expected to be defended by Will.

“Will, please,” Charlotte said. “Consul, I notified you yesterday that Benedict Lightwood had been discovered to be in the last stages of astriola—”

“You told me there was a battle, and he was killed,” the Consul replied. “But what I am hearing reported is that he was ill with the pox, and that as a result he was hunted down and killed despite offering no resistance.”

Will, his eyes suspiciously bright, opened his mouth. Jem reached out and clapped a hand over it. “I cannot understand,” Jem said, talking over Will’s muffled protests, “how you could know that Benedict Lightwood is dead but not the manner of his death. If there was no body to find, it was because he had become more demon than human, and had vanished when slain, as demons do. But the missing servants—the death of Tatiana’s own husband—”

The Consul looked weary. “Tatiana Blackthorn says that a group of Shadowhunters from the Institute murdered her father and that Rupert was killed in the brawl.”

“Did she mention that her father had eaten her husband?” Henry inquired, finally looking up from his newspaper. “Oh, yes. Ate him. Left his bloody boot in the garden for us to find. There were teeth marks. Love to know how that could have been an accident.”