The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)(51)
She looked at her reflection in the mirror one afternoon. “You,” she told herself, “are an idiot.”
Her gray eyes looked back at her solemnly.
He had sent over a message. His cousin was delivering a penny reading that evening for the Leicester Mechanical Society and he’d asked her to come.
Minnie suspected that she shouldn’t go. The stupidity of what she wanted was evident just from her own mirror. She wore a plain blue gown, one he’d seen twice already. It was severe and high-necked, the sleeves long but unadorned. There was scarcely a hint of a bustle, and her skirt sported no flounces, no cunning knots. Fabric was dear, ribbons dearer. It was simple logic to dress like this when there was so little extra money. Garbed like this, nobody would look at her. She didn’t want people to look at her.
But she wanted to make him smile.
“Oh, Minnie,” she said in despair. “Really. Him? Could you be any more hopeless?”
He was a duke. She was…
“Look, damn you,” she said. And she forced herself to look in the mirror. Not to focus on the pleasant parts—the curve of her bosom, or her waist—but to really look at who she was. To look at that scar on her cheek. That wasn’t just skin-deep. It was etched on her soul. Wilhelmina Pursling was dried-up, severe, quiet, mousy.
“Miss Pursling,” Minnie enunciated very slowly, “is a nobody. By design.”
But those were still her eyes looking out at her. And no matter what she told herself, no matter how many times she named herself a fool, that wild, untamed want welled up in her.
“You,” she repeated, stabbing her finger at the mirror, “are an idiot.”
Still, if she was going to be an idiot, she might as well be one in style. And so she went downstairs and out into the fallow fields. She tromped up one hill and down another, searching the sheltered south sides until she found what she was looking for—a patch of late yellow pansies, hidden in the cornstalks.
And she harvested them all.
IF ANY STARS SHONE BEHIND THE THICK BLANKET OF FOG AND SMOKE, Robert couldn’t see them. He descended from the carriage and then turned to help Violet out. The streetlamps let out a dull and heavy illumination, enough to show a gathered mass of people waiting on the front steps of New Hall. In the night, all the clothing looked black, and the effect was almost funereal. It would have been, had they not been chanting.
“Ah, good,” Sebastian said at his side. “There’s a crowd.”
“A mob,” Robert said.
Sebastian simply rubbed his hands together in glee. “When I speak, it’s usually the same thing. Are those things goats?”
They were. In the market square outside the hall, someone had set up two temporary enclosures. There were placards tied to both, but he couldn’t read them in the dark. Still, one of those pens was filled with goats—nearly a dozen of the beasts, milling about and bleating.
The other enclosure, oddly enough, was filled with children. Small children, more of them than there were goats. Robert frowned as he drew closer. The tallest of the children would scarcely have reached his waist; the youngest was barely walking, stumbling after the others in grim determination. None of the shouts came from the children; all that tumultuous yelling came from the surrounding adults.
As they came abreast of the enclosures, Robert could finally read the signs.
THESE ARE ANIMALS, proclaimed one grim placard that graced the goat enclosure. The sign over the pen that held the children read: THESE ARE NOT.
Robert glanced at Sebastian. His cousin was still smiling—he’d always enjoyed stirring matters to boiling—but there was an edge to his smile. Sebastian took a few steps forward until he faced the children.
The children were far more confused than the goats. One small boy had his hands on the middle rail of the fence. He wore only a light coat and thin gloves. If he’d had a cap, it had fallen off. His eyes seemed luminous in the cold of the night; his breath made puffs of cold air.
Sebastian bent down, and the shouts redoubled. “We are not animals!” a woman was saying. “We are not animals!”
They weren’t shouting at Sebastian; nobody chanting recognized him. To their eye, he was just another gentleman taking in the spectacle. Just another reason to hear their own voices. Slowly, Sebastian unwound his scarf from his neck. Without saying a word, he set it around the small boy’s neck. The addition of the oversized scarf made the child look even smaller. Sebastian nodded wordlessly and then turned to go.
“What do you think you’re doing?” a nearby woman screeched. “That’s my son. We don’t need your charity.”
Sebastian kept walking.
“If you listen to that madman lecturing tonight,” the woman yelled at his retreating back, “you stand to lose your immortal soul. We want none of the devil’s teachings here.”
Sebastian didn’t look back; the woman watched him leave, setting her hands on her hips. Her lips pursed; her fingers tapped in impatience. Finally, she turned to her son. “What were you doing, sitting there like a lump, then?” She took hold of one end of Sebastian’s scarf and gave it a yank. “I told you to chant. I want to hear you chant. Try it now: ‘I’m not—’” She stopped mid-sentence, on the verge of pulling off Sebastian’s scarf, as Robert came to stand by her. She looked at his boots, then followed them up his trousers, his waistcoat, until she saw his face.