“Yes, Silas, be a good sport,” Captain Burr said. “I heard that Lord Harrow fed the royal family to his hounds and made the whole city watch. Wasn’t your mother a princess of some sort?”
Silas glanced at Elswyth, sitting next to him. Then he looked away, taking a drink of absinthe. “We are in the company of the more delicate sex, gentlemen. Perhaps we will continue this conversation over cigars.”
Captain Burr looked at Elswyth and frowned. “Of course. Apologies, Miss Elderwood.”
“Do not censor yourself on my account,” she said. “I am not naïve to abuses in the colonies.”
Mr. Plum stopped chewing, surprised. He cast a look to Captain Burr, who cocked his head and folded his arms across hischest. “Abuses, Miss Elderwood? I hear you are a scholar. Is it colonial politics that you study?”
“No. It is botany. Although there is a fair bit of overlap between the subjects. Whole colonies exist to extract botanical resources, after all. Tea, opium, rubber, sugarcane. Why, even after a fungus destroyed most of Ireland’s potato crop, we here in London still took what was left.”
It was too bold a thing for a lady to say, and she realized it the moment the words left her mouth. He was a decorated military man. She might be noble, yes, but she had no title of her own, and more than that, she was a woman. Expected to be as beautiful and silent as the flowers on the table.
Burr smiled thinly. “Perhaps. And yet how bountiful would their harvests be, without our steel and steam?”
“I suppose now we will never know,” Elswyth said.
Under the table, Silas nudged her leg with his. The firmness of it sent a chill up her spine.
Burr took a sip of his wine, evidently ready to be finished with their conversation. “Yes, well. Good luck with your studies, Miss Elderwood. I see they’re teaching you ladies all kinds of fascinating and useful things in schools these days.”
Elswyth bristled. Her next words came out of her in a flurry. “They do, Captain Burr. For example, did you know that the Irish potato blight came from abroad? It landed on their shores and spread across the entire island. Then it ate what the people grew until they starved. But I do not think anyone would call the potato blight an empire. We call it a parasite. And the thing about parasites is that they die with their hosts.”
A silence fell over the room. Glasses stopped clinking; servants stalled as they fabricated spices onto food. At the other end of thetable, Lord Forscythe loomed, silver-haired, his golden medals decorating the lapel of his coat. He wiped some of the bloody beef from his lower lip with a napkin and then waved away another pour of wine. He said nothing, but his steely eyes lingered on her. Next to him, Percival sat with his arms extended as though interrupted in the middle of a story. His face had gone pale, a worried frown barely visible beneath his beard. He stared at Elswyth with frantic eyes.
“Your words come dangerously close to treason, Miss Elderwood,” Captain Burr said. He spoke slowly. “I would refrain from such speech in the company of the queen’s men.”
Heat rose in Elswyth’s cheeks. She thought of Mrs. Rose hovering behind her, begging her to keep quiet. If she alienated these people, she would not find a husband, and she would certainly never find her sister.
To her right, Silas raised his glass, breaking the silence. “Indeed. Long live the queen!”
The partygoers raised their glasses in return, grateful for the distraction. “Long live the queen!” they replied in chorus.
Silas turned to the servant behind him. “Let us switch to wine, please, and three brandies for the gentlemen.” The servant—the woman fabricating pomegranates—nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. The rest of the table resumed their conversation, and a steady hum of merriment filled the hall.
Elswyth inclined her head to Captain Burr, speaking quietly. “Perhaps I spoke out of turn.”
He smiled thinly. “No apology is necessary, Miss Elderwood. I understand that hysteria in times of grief is rather common. My condolences for your dear sister.” He held her gaze for a moment and smiled again. Something in his eyes when he mentioned Persephone made her skin crawl.
Then he turned to Mr. Plum and whispered just loud enough for Elswyth to hear him. “I swear, Lignus, women get bolder every day in this country. It’s this exact kind of unruliness that leads to societal decay. We need strong men, or soon we’ll be no better than the aboriginals with their matriarchs and mother trees. Mark my words, if these conversations about women’s suffrage continue, soon we’ll be the colony.”
“Indeed, Captain,” Mr. Plum said. The two men stood, crossing the dining room to look at Lord Forscythe’s case of cigars. More servants poured from the kitchens carrying plates of lotus flowers crystallized in sugar.
Elswyth clenched her jaw and focused on her plate. She picked a few petals of the lotus flower, but the sweetness sickened her. Their conversation stalled, but eyes seemed to linger on her long after she’d faded into the background. How badly she’d wanted to say what she really felt—but how could she when her future depended on some man’s approval of her?
When Mr. Plum and Captain Burr had gone, Silas turned to her. “Quite the performance,” he said, keeping his voice low.
Elswyth dabbed her lips with a napkin and then cleared her throat. She assumed he meant last week’s tableau vivant. They hadn’t spoken of it since. “Yes, well, thank you for volunteering. I didn’t think anyone would, for a moment.”
“I don’t mean the tableau vivant,” he said. “I meant your performance just now. You were foolish to speak about such things.”
“I only spoke the truth.”
“Look around you, Elderwood. Do you think these people care for the truth, if it interrupts their dinner?” His expression had grown dark, and his voice was hardly a whisper.
“I suppose… I suppose that your opinions of the colonies are complicated. Given your ancestry.”
“I think you will find them remarkably uncomplicated,” Silas said flatly. “Although I do not have the privilege to speak them so freely. What I don’t understand is whyyouare so critical.”
