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 from.”
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 somelargemechanical 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.”
