“What if I don’t want to become pregnant?”
Ven Hjalmar paused with his hand on the door handle. “I really don’t think you ought to trouble yourself with such unrealistic fantasies,” he said.
“But, what if?” Miriam called to him. Her fingernails bit into her palms hard enough to draw blood.
“Prozac,” said ven Hjalmar, as he opened the door.
Three days after Dr. ven Hjalmar’s humiliating interrogation, Miriam was beginning to wish she’d taken him up on the offer of antidepressants when the ferret knocked on the door.
“What is it?” she asked, looking up from her book.
“You have an invitation,” he said in hochsprache. He’d taken to using it almost all the time, except when she was obviously floundering. As ever, her jailer’s expression was unreadable. “The baron says you may accept it if you wish.” He repeated himself in English, just in case she hadn’t got the message.
“An invitation.” Where to? Her imagination whirled like a hamster on a wheeclass="underline" Not the royal court, obviously, or it would be compulsory . . .
“From the honorable Duchess Patricia voh Hjorth d’Wu ab Thorold. Your mother. She begs your forgiveness for not writing and invites the honorable Countess Helge voh Thorold d’Hjorth to visit with her for lunch tomorrow.”
“Tell her I’d, I’d—” Miriam licked her lips. “Of course I’ll go.”
“I shall tell her.” The ferret began to withdraw. “I shall make arrangements. You will be ready to travel by eleven and you will be back here no later than five of the afternoon.”
“Wait!” Miriam stood up. “Can I see Olga Thorold Arnesen?”
“No.” He began to close the door.
“Or Lady Brilliana d’Ost?”
The ferret stopped and stared at her. “If you continue to pester me I will hurt you.” Then he shut the door.
Miriam paced back and forth across the reception room in a blind panic, stir-crazy from confinement but apprehensive about whatever Iris would say to her. Of course Henryk will have told her, she thought. But blood was thicker than water, and surely Iris wouldn’t side with him against her—or would she? She’s been so distant and cold since she rejoined the Clan. The change in her mood had been like a safety curtain dropping across the stage at the end of a play, locking in the warmth and the light. Mom’s got her own problems. She said so. Like her own mother, the poisonous dowager Hildegarde. The old women’s plot. She crossed her arms. Henryk must have told her, or she wouldn’t have known where to send the invitation, she thought. If I can persuade her to give me a locket I could make a clean break for it—
But a cold, cynical thought still nagged at her. What if Mom wants me to marry Prince Stupid? She wouldn’t do that . . . would she?
The ruthless reproductive realpolitik within the Clan had made an early victim of Patricia voh Hjorth: her own mother had forced her into marriage to a violent sociopath. The scars had taken a long time to scab over, even after Patricia had made her run to the other world and settled down to life as Iris Beckstein for nearly a third of a century. Iris wouldn’t have dreamed of forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage of convenience. But now she was back in the suffocating bosom of the Clan, which way would Patricia jump—especially if her own skin was at stake?
Back home in Cambridge, Miriam’s mother had never made a big thing about wanting grandchildren. But that was then.
They took Miriam to visit her mother for lunch in a sealed sedan chair carried by two strapping porters. It was a hot day, but there were no windows, just a wooden grille behind her head. It was impossible to see out of. She protested when she saw it, but the ferret just stared at her. “Do you want to attend the duchess, or not?” he asked. Miriam gave in, willing to accept one more indignity if it gave her a chance to talk to Iris. Maybe she’ll be able to get me out of this, she told herself grimly.
The box swayed like a ship on choppy water. It seemed to take forever to make its way across town. By the time the porters planted it with a bone-jarring thump, Miriam had gone from being off her appetite to the first green-cheeked anticipation of full-blown nausea: she welcomed the rattle of chains and the opening of the door like a galley slave released from belowdecks, blinking and gasping. “Are we there?”
“Momentarily.” The ferret was as imperturbable as ever. “This way.” Another closed courtyard with barred windows. Miriam’s spirit fell. They’re just shuffling me between prisons, she realized. I’m surprised he didn’t handcuff me to the chair.
Now the nerves took over. “Where is—she isn’t under arrest too, is she?”
Unexpectedly, the ferret chuckled. “No, not exactly.”
“Oh.” Miriam followed him, two paces ahead of the guards he’d brought along. She glanced at the walls to either side, half-wishing she could make a break for freedom. A couple of gulls squawked raucous abuse from the roofline. She envied them their insolent disdain for terrestrial boundaries.
They came to a solid door in one wall, where a liveried servant exchanged words with the ferret, then produced a key. The door opened on a walled garden. There was a gazebo against the far wall, glass windows—expensively imported, a hallmark of a Clan property—propped open to allow the breeze in. “Go right in,” said the ferret. “I believe you are expected. I will collect you later.”
“What? Aren’t you coming in with me? I thought you were supposed to be watching me at all times?”
The ferret snorted. “Not here.” Then he stepped back through the gate and closed it with a solid click.
Wow. Miriam narrowed her eyes as she looked at the gazebo. Mom’s got clout, then? She marched up to the door. “Hello?” she asked.
“Come right in, dear.”
Her mother watched her from a nest of cushions piled on top of a broad-winged armchair. She looked more frail than ever, wearing a black velvet gown with more ruffles and bows than a lace factory. “Has someone died?” Miriam asked, stepping into the shadow of the gazebo.
“Sit down, make yourself comfortable. No one’s died yet, but I’m told it was a close-run thing.”
Miriam sat in the only other chair, next to the circular cast-iron table. Iris watched her: she returned her mother’s gaze nervously. After a while she cleared her throat. “How much has Henryk told you?”
“Enough.”
Another silence.
“I know I shouldn’t have done it,” Miriam said, when she couldn’t take it anymore. “But I was being deliberately cut out of my own affairs. And they’ve been trying to set me up—”
“It’s too late for excuses, kid.” Miriam stared. Her mother didn’t look angry. She didn’t look sad, but she didn’t look pleased to see her, either. The silence stretched out until finally Iris sighed and shuffled against her cushions, sitting up. “I wanted to look at you.”
“What?”
“I wanted to look at you again,” said Iris. “One last time. You know they’re going to try to break you?”
“I don’t break easily.” Miriam knew it was false bravado even as the words left her mouth. The great hollow fear congealing inside her gave the lie away. But what else could she say?
Her mother glanced away evasively. “We don’t bend.” She shook her head. “None of us does—not me, not you, not even your grandmother. But sooner or later we break. Thirty-three years is what it took, kid, but look at me now. One of the old bitches already.”