“Then you have attended births!” I said, surprised.
“Of course,” she said mildly.
I looked at her fastidious outfit, which was very unlike the practical clothing of our Meryton midwife. “I thought you… read books for him, or something.”
Mary gave me a level glance over the gold rims of her spectacles. “Books aid diagnosis, but they do not turn a foot-first baby.”
“Well!” I exclaimed. Mary resumed reading. Apparently, astonishment did not merit a reply.
I watched her turn a ponderous page and considered mentioning my queasy stomach. But for all that I respected Mary’s knowledge, Jane and I had always been first to share intimacies, usually whispered under our quilt at Longbourn. That ritual of sisterhood was lost to marriage, but I would see Jane soon, and the thought of telling her made me glow.
Mary slammed her book, scowling. “I cannot read today.”
“Perhaps a thicker book?” I suggested.
Mary peered at the massive spine, then shot me a sharp glance as she recognized the joke. “The binding is not the issue. I am worried. A woman has been missing for a week. Wait, let me show you something.”
She left and returned with a handful of the advertising fliers that endlessly cluttered London. “This is her.” She smoothed a sheet on the table: “Miss Joane Rees. MISSING. CASH REWARD.”
The drawing was a girl around twenty with a heart-shaped face and a slightly bony nose. She was smiling and very fashionable. And missing. “How sad.”
Mary lined up four more fliers on the table. The size and printing differed. One was crumpled, another rain stained. Each showed a different young lady.
“It is more than sad,” she said. “It is peculiar. These are four months’ worth. The others are strangers, so I did not notice the pattern until Joane vanished. Joane is one of…” Mary plucked irritably at her black dress. One of the Marys, the ladies who marched at Mary’s protests and, to her frustration, obsessively copied her fashion.
“Have you asked the constables?” I suggested.
“Her family has. The constables searched. It istheRees family.”
I looked again and saw the resemblance to her mother. Mrs. Rees was a society gadfly, pleasant if a little trivial. She had bound a lindworm which afforded modest prestige.
“All the missing women are gentry,” Mary continued. “All unmarried. Every family has a history of strong binding. It makes me think of the wyfe who died on the river.”
“She was married and bound,” I pointed out. Mary shook her head, dissatisfied, and I added, “It may be less sinister than that. Girls of good family regularly elope from London.”
Mary smoothed the drawing of Miss Rees. “There was no hint of a romance. She was always wanting to talk to me. Chirping trivial gossip. On a good day, I would mutter a syllable back. But she still attended every march, rain or muck.” Mary fiddled with her gold rims. “I was annoyed because she enjoyed the protests. She had money. It was like her hobby.”
“We have money, now. Even if you never spend it.”
Mary sighed. “I know.” She tugged the sleeve of her dress. “What color should I wear to the ball?”
I eyed her layers of black fabric. “Is that a trick question?”
“I do not want to vanish into the shadows. People vanish too easily.”
19
BENEATH THE ICE
LIZZY
The boathouse repairsfinished the next day. That night, I lay awake listening to Darcy’s deep breaths and feeling Yuánchi sweep toward the city. When he was near, I stole out alone under a sky of black clouds, the silver-edged rifts agleam with stars.
Yuánchi settled on the icy shore and slipped neatly into the boathouse. I closed the river gate behind us, then walked past his curled tail, crouched flank, and folded wing, resisting the urge to run my fingers along his side. The scales cut if you rubbed against the grain. He had arrived lazy and garrulous, his belly filled, and he told me a bloodthirsty story of crashing through winter-bare oaks to catch the deer hiding beneath. The lamplight reflected from his flexing scales and cast chevrons on the walls that jumped like fleeing whitetails.
Late the next afternoon, after a bleary morning at the school due to lack of sleep, I went with Lucy to the sitting room to meet Mr. Needham, the school’s instructor for harness making. He had brought two hand-picked students, older girls of fifteen or sixteen.
Mr. Needham was slightly wary amid Chathford’s gilt and polish, but the girls’ eyes were wide as saucers. Even though we met daily, they curtsied to me far too deeply, then to Lucy as well, which made her eyebrows shoot up.
