The Hellion's Waltz Read online

  “You’re only one year older,” Sophie protested.

  “Precisely,” twelve-year-old Julia went on, undaunted. “And Father mentioned that music society you’ve joined, so we can definitely find enough musicians for a whole program.” She put away the last pair of stockings and nodded in satisfaction—then ruined it by immediately stripping out of her dress and leaving it in a heap on the floor. “You’ll still be the finale,” she said, clambering into bed in her chemise. “Because you’re undoubtedly the most impressive. But you don’t have to fill the whole evening yourself.”

  Sophie refused to pick the dress up for her. Absolutely refused. Definitely, positively—oh, why bother pretending? She shook Julia’s frock out and hung it up, then removed her own clothes and put them away as Julia wriggled against the wall to leave Sophie room on her preferred side of the bed. Sophie could only hope Julia took after her and their mother, rather than following in their father’s long and lanky footsteps. She missed being able to sprawl, particularly when she felt restless like this. “Carrisford is not London, but it’s not small, either. The Aeolian Club might have musicians much more talented than me—I haven’t heard them all play yet. I might not look so impressive, when it comes down to it.”

  “I can’t wait until you go to court,” Julia sighed, and jabbed at Sophie with her heels. “Just think of all the room I’ll have when you’re gone.”

  The news came across the sea, and spread swiftly on the tongues of the weavers and the lace makers and the merchants: Mr. Obeney’s utopia had failed. Apparently when they were assigning jobs to the assembled residents, in true egalitarian fashion, they had assumed the women would continue doing all the usual domestic work of keeping house, washing clothes, caring for children, mending, cooking, cleaning, and so on. On top of the duties women were assigned as full working members of the collective, of course. After all, they couldn’t ask the men to do such petty tasks, could they?

  The women had worked as hard as they could, but the strain had grown and grown until protests were voiced and arguments erupted and at last the entire experiment unraveled.

  And now Mr. Obeney was coming back to Carrisford.

  Maddie Crewe knew that meant one thing above all else: the Weavers’ Library was running out of time.

  The fire in the hearth of the Mulberry Tree’s private parlor had been stoked into blazing. The heat made sweat bead beneath her gown and droplets roll down the length of her spine. Mrs. Money had shed her fur cuffs and wool coat in favor of night-blue silk, the hem heavy with ribbon medallions like children’s pinwheels, and the sleeves artfully puffed.

  Maddie tugged at the neck of her gray wool and wished she’d worn something lighter. Between making the punch cards for the magic lanterns and rewarping her loom for the upcoming summer’s new ribbon designs, she felt as though she’d been sweating for days on end. “We’ll have to show Mr. Giles something soon,” she said.

  “We will,” Mrs. Money replied. “I’ve acquired a key to Mr. Obeney’s factory—don’t ask me how—and we can begin putting everything together as soon as the pieces are ready.”

  It would mean more late nights and extra work on top of their existing jobs. At times Maddie wanted to scream. She sighed instead. “Why is crime so often harder than honest labor?”

  “Because it has a chance of paying much better.” Mrs. Money reached out and patted her wrist. Her Limerick gloves were made of kid so fine you could store them inside a walnut shell, and they easily let the warmth of her touch come through. Maddie, sitting so close to the fire, didn’t need more heat—but she appreciated the comfort all the same.

  “My dear,” said Mrs. Money, “you’ve been so gallant through all this—steady and true as the North Star. But I wonder: Have you thought about what you’ll do afterward?”

  “You mean when we have all that money to rely on and the Combination Acts are repealed so we can agitate properly?” Maddie laughed. “Oh, Mrs. Money, believe me, I have grand plans.”

  “And what do you plan to do if Mr. Giles has you arrested?”

  Maddie shrugged. “He can try. But I’ll look like I was just as taken in by you as he was. He’ll have no proof.”

  “When has the truth ever stopped him before?”

  Maddie had to concede the point. Mr. Giles had one of the pettiest souls in England. He would not hesitate to lash out in anger and disappointment. And Maddie had always been a target for him—she’d draw his ire even more now.

  It would get in the way of the work, and just at the moment when they could least afford entanglements.

  Another bead of sweat bloomed and fell, beneath her clothes.

  Mrs. Money saw her grim face and pressed her argument. “I know you have goals for the Weavers’ Library—but you might consider letting the other girls take over for a time. You might consider leaving Carrisford altogether.”

  Maddie’s laugh sounded rusty even to her own ears. “And go where? Everyone I know is here. Except my father. And who knows where he’s run off to.”

  “You could come with me.”

  Maddie stared.

  Mrs. Money’s expression was uncharacteristically nervous. “I have more than enough to support us both for as long as you care to stay.”

  So she’d explained, when she’d first come back to Carrisford. She had, she said, arrived in Australia a convict and married a ship’s officer—James Money, instead of the poor fictional Horace. Her husband turned merchant and built up a neat little empire before dying a neat little death. Finally free and wealthy enough to do what she pleased, Mrs. Money had outfitted herself as befit a wealthy widow, stepped onto an England-bound ship, imitated the other wealthy wives in secret until she had the high-born accent pitch-perfect, and come back to Carrisford to see if her beloved Marguerite still remembered her.

  Maddie had reassured her: Marguerite hadn’t forgotten her at all. But Maddie had also lied to Mrs. Money, by omission. Marguerite hadn’t forgotten her beloved, it’s true—but neither had she waited to be rescued.

  Marguerite Crewe had been busy trying to rescue everybody else. Maddie liked to think she took after her mother in this more than anything else.

  Mrs. Money sighed, and her years seemed all at once to press more heavily on her. They creased her face and grayed the thick strands of her hair. “I was too late for your mother. Let me at least protect her daughter.”

  Maddie’s temper flared up like a match struck against flint. “My mother would not thank me to abandon the work she devoted years to. She died for this. She fought because she believed she could make life better for girls like me, in towns like Carrisford. And everywhere else besides.” She folded her arms. “I’ve been jailed before. I can accept the consequences if it means the others will be safe.”

  Mrs. Money’s mouth was a harsh line. “You may have spent a few days in an English jail, my dear: so have I. Believe me when I tell you you have no conception of what transportation is like. Of what it will cost you.”

  Maddie wouldn’t let herself imagine what lay behind Mrs. Money’s bleak tone. It would only frighten her into cowardice. “I won’t leave until I have no other choice. The Weavers’ Library is all I have. They need me. How can I abandon them to save my own skin?”

  Mrs. Money’s voice turned sharp. “If the work cannot go forward without you,” she countered, “then it is doomed to fail. You cannot base a collective on the effort of a single person. No matter how dedicated that one person may be.”

  Maddie’s rebellious soul flared again—and then her wiser self took over. With an effort, she choked back her temper. “You’re right,” she said more softly. “I know you’re right. Mr. Giles will want all of us arrested or worse, for taking his thousand pounds.” She stared grimly into the fire. “We have to find a way to make him leave.”

  Mrs. Money’s gloved fingers tapped on the arm of the sofa. Her voice was slow, wary. “That’s a different project than simply fleecing a man. You have to give him something to run away fro
m.”

  Maddie gazed into the dancing flames on the hearth. “If I have to, I’ll burn his whole world to the ground.”

  “It will have to be public. Very public. Mr. Giles has done so many terrible things in Carrisford—but he’s always been careful how he is perceived among a certain class of men.” She leaned back, gloved hands tapping on the back of the sofa. “You need to embarrass him, at the very least. Better still, destroy his reputation so thoroughly that even the most determinedly self-deluding optimist would know there is nothing left for him here.”

  Maddie growled. “Sometimes I think it would be easier to kill him.”

  Mrs. Money nodded. “It would.”

  Maddie kept her eyes on the fire for a long, long moment. Coals smoldered in the depths, and red tongues licked hungrily. “It would be easier—but it wouldn’t be better.”

  “Well,” Mrs. Money said agreeably, “you don’t get the money if you kill him.”

  Maddie snorted.

  Something public, she thought. But a certain flavor of public. Not merely an ordinary afternoon. Something celebratory. But St. Hunger’s Day had passed and the Oyster Feast was not until September.

  They couldn’t wait that long.

  “If only I could invent a holiday,” Maddie said to Sophie later that evening, as they walked along the riverbank that evening. “And get enough people excited about it. A certain kind of people, I mean—the merchants and their wives, the gentry with their shiny titles and matched horses and well-fed families. The kind of people who go to balls and soirées and all that rot—but only when the invitations come on thick, perfect paper, written in golden ink.”

  “Golden ink?” Sophie laughed.

  “Oh, who even knows? I’ve made finery for the rich folk all my life—but I can’t say as I’ve ever really talked to them.”

  Sophie watched anxiously as Maddie kicked at a clod of dirt in the path. They were out by the north bridge. In springtime, Maddie had said, this stretch of the river would be crowded with people enjoying the wary return of the sun. For now, it was only the two of them, with nobody else around to overhear. The wind off the water had a bite like a wolf; it howled along the channel below and stirred up icy waves like tufts of fur.

  Maddie tucked Sophie’s arm in hers, and led her downstream toward the ruins of Carrisford Castle.

  “I’m worried things are getting out of hand,” she said, her voice barely audible over the rush of water and the calls of gulls and diving birds. “First the plan was a simple set of lies with some small mechanical tricks—then some large mechanical tricks—and now it’s verging on a performance, in three acts, with an interval of dancing bears and flying pigs.” She kicked again at a second stone; it bounced, veering off the bank and into the current rushing by. Barely a ripple rose to mark where it vanished.

  They’d reached the castle ramparts and the outer bailey: decades ago some enterprising council member had filled the ditch with earth and turned the ramparts into gardens. But right now, beneath the frosty sky, their original purpose rang true: the sloping earth looked defensive and forbidding, built to make any attacker despair.

  Maddie switched sides with Sophie, so her taller body shielded Sophie from the brunt of the wind.

  Sophie instantly felt warmer. She lifted her eyes gratefully—but Maddie’s gaze was fixed on the tumult of the River Ethel, the swell and the current threatening to carry away anything light or delicate that happened to fall within its grasp. There was a bleak set to her mouth and a hopeless crease between her brows, as if her worries were rushing over her as coldly and inexorably as the chilly water below.

  Maddie was trying to protect everyone else—Sophie would have to be the one to protect Maddie.

  But how? She was no soldier, no knight. She had precisely one talent, suitable only for parlors or—

  A performance, Maddie had said, in three acts. And: if only I could invent a holiday.

  Sophie halted so abruptly that Maddie was jolted out of her trance. She turned and blinked down at Sophie.

  Well, Sophie thought, as she pulled in a long breath, you said you wanted to surprise her.

  “What you need,” she said, very deliberately, “is a concert.”

  “But something like that would . . .” Maddie stopped, and stared, and started again, echoing Sophie’s careful tone. “That would be very complicated to arrange.”

  Sophie smiled a little. “Not if you’re a Roseingrave. My parents and now my younger sister have been making very determined arguments,” she went on. “My siblings want a chance to show off, and my father has mentioned wanting to do something to show our family is a part of this town, and wish the best for the people here. And now it seems that giving a concert would help you out a great deal, as well.”

  Still Maddie hesitated, her reaction a far cry from the joy and relief Sophie had hoped to evoke.

  A small note of alarm rang through her. “If it’s not what you want, we can find something else.”

  Maddie shook her head solemnly. “It’s perfect. A concert would draw in the kind of wealthy and important audience that you need for this next step.” She bent closer, her mouth almost kissing Sophie’s ear. Her voice was an oar, cutting through the murmur of the water. “I would rather let the whole scheme come to nothing than give you an ounce more of the hurt you’ve been healing from.”

  Sophie’s mouth dropped open. She hadn’t expected this. “Your friends are your family,” she said simply. “And they’re depending on you.”

  “You are my family, too,” Maddie insisted. “You more than anyone.”

  “Then let me help.” Sophie took Maddie’s hands, tucking those blue mittens against her heart. “If I were able to offer you a ring and a lifetime’s vow, I’d be asking you right now. But I can’t—so let me do something else instead, to show you how much I—how much I care.”

  Maddie shook her head—not refusing, Sophie knew, but simply disbelieving.

  But Sophie’s stubborn Roseingrave mind—and her heart—had already decided. “For most of this year, I’ve been trying to hide myself away from the world,” she said. “I thought if I were quiet enough, I would feel stronger. Instead I only felt small, and ignored, and lonelier than ever. Until you. I think it’s time I stopped making a habit of silence. I think it’s time I stood up—on a stage—and made people listen.”

  “Aren’t you afraid?” Maddie asked.

  Sophie gave a helpless little laugh. “Terrified. But what if I do it anyway?”

  And there it was—that spark of hope, bright and clear, lighting up Maddie’s face like a sunrise coming over the horizon. Maddie’s eyes dipped down to Sophie’s mouth and then up; Sophie felt the ghost of that kiss, a promise to be fulfilled as soon as they were alone and safe.

  “So now you’re an accomplice,” Maddie murmured, and on her tongue it became the sweetest of endearments. “Tell me: How much time do you need?”

  Sophie pulled in a breath of cold, bracing air. “One month.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next morning, Sophie had screwed up her courage and told her family she agreed to a concert in one month—provided all the Roseingrave children would perform, not only herself. Mrs. Roseingrave looked satisfied and Julia smug; the boys were either thrilled (Freddie), terrified (Robbie), or overflowing with questions (Jasper, to whom Julia had apparently revealed nothing).

  Her father’s face had the sort of intense euphoria she’d only ever seen when he’d worked out something clever to try with a piano action.

  She squirmed, knowing that they would all be much less happy—and Jasper would probably have even more questions—if they knew the concert was also a ruse to cover an elaborate criminal scheme. Mr. Roseingrave clearly took Sophie’s fidgeting as a sign that her nerves were still getting the better of her. “Practice, my dear,” he said. “You’ll feel much more up to it once you get a little more practice in.”

  Unfortunately, the next morning, Mrs. Muchelney came into the sto
re and bought the Dewhurst and Ffolkes.

  “Harriet’s gone about as far as she can on our small instrument,” she said, beaming at Sophie. “Your instruction has given her so much encouragement, Miss Roseingrave. I want to see how much further she can go with a proper piano to practice on.”

  “A very proper piano,” Sophie said, stroking one hand over the beloved cherry case. Some part of her had known she would have to part with it eventually—her father had repaired it specifically to sell it, after all—but her first impulse was still a wild urge to fling herself over the instrument like a soldier defending his queen from an assassin’s blow.

  At least she would get to visit it when she gave Harriet her lessons. It might sting a little at first, but the thought of Harriet’s face lighting up when she realized she had this wonderful instrument for her very own . . . Well, that was going to be worth seeing.

  As Mrs. Muchelney arranged for the delivery of the instrument, Sophie asked, “Mrs. Muchelney, do you think your daughter might perform in a concert we are planning?”

  “A concert?” The woman blinked rapidly, clearly taken aback. “But she has only just started learning!”

  “It’s a family concert,” Mr. Roseingrave put in. “There will be players of all abilities—Sophie, of course, my younger children, and possibly a few ladies and gentlemen from the Aeolian Club.”

  The mention of ladies and gentlemen had the intended effect of softening Mrs. Muchelney’s expression. “I shall have to ask Harriet—but I would be very proud if it were something she wished to do.” The widow made her farewells and departed for home. Within the hour, the cart and footmen had come and loaded away the Dewhurst and Ffolkes.

  Sophie ached at the absence of the piano in the shop as though a tooth had been pulled from her jaw.

  Her father patted her arm. “Come, my dear—there’s something I’ve been meaning to show you.”