Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(98)

But her movements were made slow by pain and the Change, and Mortmain was faster. Laughing, he snatched the papers out from under her hand and rose to his feet. “Very good,” he said. “Thank you, my little warlock girl. You have given me everything I need. Automatons, escort Miss Gray back to her room.”

A metal hand closed on the back of Tessa’s gown and lifted her to her feet. The world seemed to swing dizzily in front of her. She saw Mortmain reach down and lift up the gold watch that had fallen on the table.

He smiled at it, a feral, vicious smile. “I will make you proud, Father,” he said. “Never doubt it.”

Tessa, no longer able to bear watching, closed her eyes. What have I done? she thought as the automaton began to push her from the room. My God, what have I done?





17

ONLY NOBLE TO BE GOOD


Howe’er it be, it seems to me,

’Tis only noble to be good.

Kind hearts are more than coronets,

And simple faith than Norman blood.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Lady Clara Vere de Vere”



Charlotte’s dark head was bent over a letter when Gabriel came into the drawing room. It was chilly in the room, the fire dead in the grate. Gabriel wondered why Sophie had not built it up—too much time spent training. His father wouldn’t have had patience with that. He liked servants who were trained to fight, but he preferred them to acquire that knowledge before they entered his service.

Charlotte looked up. “Gabriel,” she said.

“You wanted to see me?” Gabriel did his best to keep his voice even. He couldn’t help the feeling that Charlotte’s dark eyes could see through him, as if he were made of glass. His eyes flicked toward the paper on her desk. “What is that?”

She hesitated. “A letter from the Consul.” Her mouth was twisted into a tight, unhappy line. She glanced down again and sighed. “All I ever wanted was to run this Institute as my father had. I never thought it would be quite so hard. I shall write to him again, but—” She broke off then, with a tight, false smile. “But I did not ask you here to talk about myself,” she said. “Gabriel, you have looked tired these past few days, and tense. I know we are all distressed, and I fear that in that distress your—situation—may have been forgotten.”

“My situation?”

“Your father,” she clarified, rising from her chair and approaching him. “You must be grieving him.”

“What of Gideon?” he said. “He was his father too.”

“Gideon grieved your father some time ago,” she said, and to his surprise she was standing at his elbow. “For you it must be new and raw. I did not want you to think I had forgotten.”

“After everything that’s happened,” he said, his throat starting to close with bewilderment—and something else, something he did not want to identify too closely—“after Jem, and Will, and Jessamine, and Tessa, after your household has been very nearly cut in half, you do not wish me to believe that you have forgotten me?”

She laid a hand on his arm. “Those losses do not make your loss nothing—”

“That cannot be it,” he said. “You cannot want to comfort me. You asked me to find out if my loyalty is still to my father, or to the Institute—”

“Gabriel, no. Nothing like that.”

“I can’t give you the answer you want,” Gabriel said. “I cannot forget that he stayed with me. My mother died—and Gideon left—and Tatiana is a useless fool—and there was never anyone else, never anyone else to bring me up, and I had nothing, just my father, just the two of us, and now you, you and Gideon, you expect me to despise him, but I can’t. He was my father, and I—” His voice broke.

“Loved him,” she said gently. “You know, I remember you when you were just a little boy, and I remember your mother. And I remember your brother, always standing next to you. And your father’s hand on your shoulder. If it matters, I do believe he loved you, too.”

“It doesn’t matter. Because I killed my father,” Gabriel said in a shaking voice. “I put an arrow through his eye—I spilled his blood. Patricide—”

“It was not patricide. He wasn’t your father anymore.”

“If that was not my father, if I did not end my father’s life, then where is he?” Gabriel whispered “Where is my father?” and felt Charlotte reach up to draw him down, to embrace him as a mother would, holding him as he choked dryly against her shoulder, tasting tears in his throat but unable to shed them. “Where is my father?” he said again, and when she tightened her hold on him, he felt the iron in her grip, the strength of her holding him up, and wondered how he had ever thought this small woman was weak.

To: Charlotte Branwell

From: Consul Josiah Wayland

My Dear Mrs. Branwell,

An informant whose name you cannot at this time disclose? I would venture a guess that there is no informant, and that this is all your own invention, a ploy to convince me of your rightness.

Pray cease your impression of a parrot witlessly repeating “March upon Cadair Idris at once” at all the hours of the day, and show me instead that you are performing your duties as leader of the London Institute. Otherwise I fear I must suppose that you are unfit to do so, and will be forced to relieve you of them at once.