The Springsweet (2 page)

SITUATIONS OFFERED

Slowly, I sank into my seat, reading through the listings. Miners and land grabbers and cattlemen—they'd traveled west to find their fortunes but had to write back east to find their wives. So many asked for a cooing dove, a docile lamb, a darling kitten, that I wondered if I'd stumbled on inquiries for a zoo.

Mattie raised her cup. "Are you going to come?"

"Where?" I asked.

"The Sugarcane Ball," Mattie said. She gave a suffering sigh. "Are you paying attention at all?"

"I hardly am, I admit."

Victoria laughed under her breath, then closed her paper with a flourish. Propping elbows on the table, she shrugged. "It's all miners in this one."

"That won't do," I said.

"Why not?" Mattie opened her fan. She hid all but her eyes behind it, flapping it lazily. Then, with a snap, she closed it again. It was all practice for the ball, though she didn't need it. Her startling blue eyes needed no frame to improve them.

"Miners are dirty," Victoria said. She hesitated, then reached for the next paper. "And poor."

"They're
gold
miners, realize."

"It's gambling, realize."

"If it means a lovely house with running water upstairs and down,
and
a water closet,
and
a girl to come in every day, I have no philosophical objection to gambling," Mattie replied. She moved to snap her wrist, and I caught it. The rattle of fan bones had driven me to distraction.

"Just as like to end up in a shanty," I told her. "I'm looking for someone settled."

"Find someone here, at the
ball,
" Mattie said. She turned her eyes up at me, making no move to reclaim her hand. Distinctly doll-like, she slid to the edge of her chair to plead. "Everyone's leaving me. Can't you stay?"

A scold flew to my lips. Our dear friends hadn't
left
us. Thomas and Sarah weren't traveling on holiday; Amelia and Nathaniel weren't simply
away.
These separations couldn't be cured with cards and reunions—they were dead. All dead: Thomas bled and Sarah poisoned; Nathaniel burned and Amelia fevered.

It was the last that broke me irreparably. Attending funeral upon funeral, and Caleb's disappearance before trial, was more than I wanted to bear. But bear it I did, thinking Mama would soon relent and bring Amelia back home to Baltimore. Instead came a letter.

Three spare lines in an unfamiliar hand informed us that Amelia had taken a fever on returning to Maine and expired forthwith. Her brother sent no memento; I had nothing but memories and despair. Thus, I commended myself to madness.

Our sixteenth summer lay buried—how could Mattie be so frivolous? Honestly, how could I? My mood's delicate bubble burst. I turned to the papers still spread on the table.

"What good is any of this, I wonder?" I asked.

A sudden wind filled the room, cool and almost wet with its freshness. But it was no balm; I panicked when I felt it. My mother's errands hadn't lasted nearly as long as I expected.

"Hurry," I said, scrambling to hide my papers and catalogs. "Put the cups and pot back on the table!"

"God save us from sailors! The harbor's teeming with them. Can't hardly go a step without..." Fingers poised at her temples, smoothing back loose curls, Mama narrowed her eyes at us. "This seems too precious by half."

I lifted my teacup, sipping at cold, sugared dregs. "You sent them my card, Mama. Of course, I invited them in."

Gliding into the parlor, Mama eyed the table, then smiled at Mattie. "How do you do, dear?"

"Very well, thank you," Mattie said, folding her hands neatly as doves in her lap. "It's been a lovely tea. I've even convinced Zora to come to the Sugarcane Ball."

Through gritted teeth, I said, "We had only considered it, Mattie."

Mama ignored the tone of my voice, refusing to see the hard cut of my eyes and how stiffly I sat. She heard what she wished to hear: I'd be a good girl again, worried about dresses and dances, the darkness of last summer finally put aside.

"Oh, Zora," Mama said, engulfing me in a powdery hug, "I couldn't be happier!"

Over Mama's shoulder, I caught a glimpse of my oldest but least dear friend. Mattie shone with a silvery, pristine smile. She'd gotten her way. I'd come out of mourning at the Sugarcane Ball—that she'd forced me meant nothing.

Two

"I'll mind your dance card," Mattie said, and took it directly from my hand.

My mother had given her a wildly inflated sense of her importance—
Mind her and make sure she dances,
she'd told her. Now Mattie had her own card to fill, and mine as well, the gossamer cord looped around her wrist to secure it. As if I might decide to scrap with her about it; as if it might actually come to blows.

And then, briefly, I considered it, for what a pretty way that would be to ruin both this new season of mine and the candied sweetness of Evergreen House's first public social.

Like a confection, the Sugarcane Ball devoted itself entirely to indulgence. Organza shimmered over the windows and streamed from valance to valance, all shades of white and cream to match the ivory-coated chairs that lined the walls.

The floors had been dusted with flavored sugar. Specks of it still sparkled in the corners, traces left when our hosts brushed it up before opening the doors to us. Burnt sugar, vanilla cream—both scents hung in the air, and I tasted them when I licked my lips.

Leaning over Mattie's shoulder, I turned the card so I could consider the program. I could take refreshments during the lively numbers, for I had no intention of laughing and twirling with anyone through a schottische.

Touching the first waltz listed, I said, "Let's find Wills and Charlie."

Mattie narrowed her eyes and pulled the card from me. "We didn't come to dance with cousins."

"I think that's all I'm up to," I answered. I felt no need to embellish that; she saw my locket and knew me well enough. Digging in my heels didn't have to be a production for all to see.

"Once you get onto the floor, you'll enjoy it!"

I leaned my head against her shoulder. "I'm out of practice, Mattie."

"Let's get it over with, then." Distracted, she patted my hand as she peered into the growing crowd. "The first is the worst, I imagine."

There were familiar faces here—our cousins, our school friends, some already turning on the floor in a quadrille. They shone with a glittered pleasure, all the whiteness of the room giving the impression that we were meant to be dancing at a wedding.

Perhaps we were.

Touched with melancholy, I started to tell Mattie that I would just watch, but she clutched my hand. It amazed me, how tight her grip could be when she wished it.

"Do you see that one there?" she asked, all breathless delight. "I think he's coming for us."

I turned toward her nod and chilled.

That he came for us was a certainty—or, at least, that he came for me. His overlong hair swept back in dark waves, Poe's Visitor from the burying grounds strode toward us. Befitting the surroundings, his coat was a better cut than the one I'd seen him in before—this one buttoned, dark velvet that suited his complexion.

But either he owned just one shirt or he badly used all that he owned. When he offered his hand to Mattie, I couldn't help notice that these cuffs as well were freckled with ink.

"I apologize for introducing myself," he said, taking Mattie's hand with a slight nod before turning to me. "I didn't want to leave it to chance."

Disarmed before she could snap open her fan, Mattie used me to play shy. She turned toward me, casting a gaze at him over her shoulder. "You wicked, wicked creature."

"I may be wicked, but please, call me by my name," he said. Bowing to her, he elaborated, "Theo de la Croix."

"Matilda Corey," Mattie said, already giddy for him.

I prayed in that moment, prayed with fervor, that he would be enchanted by her. He should have been; Mattie was a confection. Clear skin, clear eyes, lovely mouth—she danced beautifully and flirted cleverly.
Please let her please him,
I begged.

But if she had, it didn't show.

"Zora Stewart." Pressing a flat smile to my lips out of courtesy, I offered my hand, though I didn't want to.

"A singular honor," Theo said. What a well-kept smile he had, measured in precise angles. His gaze lingered on me, but he turned his attention to Mattie. "May I write in your program, Miss Corey?"

Delight lifted Mattie's brows as she relinquished her dance card. Subtly, she shifted, brushing against his arm as she leaned to see where he'd scrawl his name. Sugared as the air, Mattie produced her fan and clutched it. "Oh, the polka. I do hope I can keep up."

He noted her charm long enough to be gracious, then turned dark eyes on me. "And your dance card, Miss Stewart?"

"I haven't got one," I said.

I tried not to be pleased with myself, truly I did. But when Mattie made a troubled sound, I had to fight back the urge to smile. To force me to dance, she'd have to relinquish
her
treat, and that—I knew quite plainly—would never happen.

Gently, I folded my hands together; gently, I smiled at Theo. Mattie clung to his arm like ivy. "Kindly excuse me. I could use some air."

And I did not turn back, ignoring two protests as easily as one. Instead, I glided through the crowd, through tall, arched doors to the brick portico in back. Lawns and rose gardens spread into the distance, and I gathered my shawl round my shoulders. I'd been warned all my life of the sicknesses carried by the night air, but I walked into the dark fearlessly.

Music played on behind me, richer as it stretched into the night. I followed the terrace down, winding through the spindly attentions of new rose vines.

Away from the ballroom, artifice and sugar faded and I found myself gazing into a pool of water stirred by an automatic fountain. It was a novelty to see water run without a pump or tap.

I tucked my gloves away. Gingerly, I reached out to feel the stream cascade over my palm. How pure and clean and cold it ran! I marveled at the sudden ache in my bones.

Get in,
my thoughts urged—a perverse imp I hadn't heard in well over a year. I thought it had died entirely. And yet it sprang to life, daring me. I stole a look over my shoulder.

Pretty shadows danced through the windows, framed in marble. None, not one of those figures, turned to regard me. I could have been the last to walk the earth, down in this garden. Surrounded so, by a black band of sky and the strains of a distant violin, I thought that I truly might
be
the last.

Whim clicked in me, like the pin in a door finally catching. Raising my skirts, I stepped onto the fountain's wide, low wall and closed my eyes. The water sang now, breathing soft against my face.

A thousand icy pinpoints touched my cheeks, the well-deep chill streaming over me in waves. To the strains of a waltz, I walked the edge of the fountain.
No peeking,
my imp insisted. My chest felt full of bees, all buzzing wildly as I covered my eyes with my hand.

One step, and then a second. The little danger thrilled me and my senses turned keen. Intimately, I knew the water, the sureness of the stone—I wouldn't fall in, I couldn't—

I did, when Theo de la Croix called out to me.

Deceptively deep, the fountain swallowed me entirely. My beaded gown dragged me into the depths, and night, so appealing in the air, seemed a dark cap when filtered through icy water.

And yet, I felt peace. The cold, so sudden, the loss of breath, so complete—I struggled just once against it, then sank in grace.

Hard hands found me. They pulled me from the water that seemed not so much cold as tight around me. It was leaving it that racked me with a shuddering convulsion.

Laid on the lawn, rolled on my side, I felt very much a rag doll and coughed helplessly when the water drained from my nose and mouth.

"Miss Stewart!" Theo peered into my face. His breath felt of flame, touching my cheeks. "Are you hurt?"

I jerked when he clapped a hand against my cheek. I had frozen so completely that any touch came as pain. Struggling to sit, I shook my head and searched for my tongue, for anything at all to say.

But I suppose an unexpected dive into an unexpectedly deep fountain caused a commotion. How could it not, with the splashing and heroics. My end of the garden wasn't so distant from the party after all. Before I could find a thing to say, voices cried out and Theo and I turned toward them.

A clutch of dancers, fresh in their whites and their suits, slowed to stop, their faces matching shades of shock. They stared, and shouldn't they stare, to see me lying beneath such a handsome boy, breathless and clinging?

A fresh lightness spilled through my veins when I realized my escape. "Not hurt, only ruined," I said.

"I haven't..."

"I'm sorry," I said, and pulled him into a kiss.

***

Stripped to my chemise, I perched by the stove. Clasping a cup of hot ginger tea and lemon, I warmed myself with sips of it. As pleasant heat filled me, it distracted me from the itch of the blanket draped over my shoulders.

Mama worried the floorboards bare as she paced the kitchen. "I expected Mattie to watch you a bit better than this."

"Mattie's not to blame," I said. I pulled my stool closer to the hot side of the stove, drinking up that warmth too. A disheveled mess, my hair clung to my face, some curls drying on my skin, most of the rest still heavy and damp from my swim.

A tempest, Mama whirled through the kitchen and stopped at the door to listen to my father. I had embarrassed him terribly, for one of his partners had been at the dance. Though Mr. Clare hadn't personally witnessed my disgrace, he
had
seen fit to bring me home.

"Out of deference to your father," Mr. Clare had told me sternly, urging the horses on. "For he's a good man who deserves better."

I'd considered leaping from his gig. I hadn't, because it would've been unfair to make him deliver to my parents news of my untimely demise rather than notice of my unseemly social death.