judgment that was falling from above. Once the drink had taken hold and he was confident he wouldn’t vomit, Bell returned upstairs, groaning as he climbed, to govern as he must before the home came to ruin.
Most of the servants hadn’t left the third-floor hall. He directed them in turn and off they hurried, comforted as children with clear-cut tasks, to resecure the house against the storm, carry his wife’s body to an adjoining room, prepare a late meal, burn the mattress and the linens, and go about their business as they would have done on any other evening. He spoke with the doctor, who had spent the last twenty minutes confirming Catherine’s death but hadn’t done a thing to ease the baby’s cries, which had grown, like Nicholas’s cool black stare, to seem a challenge—an affront—to Lord Bell’s authority.
Frances sat apart and rocked the child gently, whispering and making little noises to console her. The girl was black of hair, wrinkled and misshapen, and the earlier blue of her skin had turned incendiary red.
“Has she suffered—”
“She is perfect head to foot,” Frances said, speaking with a tone as soothing as her coos.
“A wet nurse—”
“Newton,” Frances said, referring to the footman, “is bringing back two in case the first doesn’t satisfy.”
“Good. Very good,” Bell said. “The child’s cries—”
“Aren’t they wonderful,” she said. “And see the way her mouth is like m’lady’s—”
“Why is she crying?”
Frances gawked at him, amazed. “Her mother gone and strangers all about,” she began. “The strangling and the slaps … she is only now alive!”
“Give her to me,” Bell said.
Frances leaned away and held the baby closer. Bell forced his hands under the bundle and she was forced to let go, much to her distress. He held the baby awkwardly and Frances stood to follow, but he ordered her to stay and meet the nurses when they came. She looked as if he’d kidnapped her own precious daughter.
He carried the baby through the house, away from everyone until they seemed the only two people in the home, her cries and his rigidity the only two forces in the world. He came to Nicholas’s room, balanced the baby in the crook of his elbow, and opened the door without knocking.
The boy stood in the dark, silhouetted at the window, and didn’t move until his father beckoned him to come.
“Hold out your arms,” Bell said.
He placed the girl firmly into Nicholas’s hands. Right away the boy’s hold seemed entirely assured and Bell stepped back, confident his daughter wouldn’t fall but anxious—he could not have said why—to see them there together, son and daughter, as a pair.
“Your sister,” he declared.
“Molly,” Nicholas said, and suddenly the baby fell silent and relaxed, her color flowing out and into her brother’s cheeks, until they both looked healthy—she less inflamed, he less anemic—and Lord Bell observed them from the door, disregarded, thinking of his wife and powerfully alone.
Chapter Five
“Molly,” Frances said, pausing in the garden with her tusk-handled pruning knife. “If you cannot leave that spider alone, I will serve it up for supper.”
For six years, Frances had attempted all manner of correction with Molly, who thought of her governess’s reprimands, exasperations, and emotional entreaties not only as variations on a game, but as constant reassurances of Frances’s devotion. They were together in the courtyard behind the house, a thickly gardened refuge with high stone walls that almost made the bustle of the world disappear.
Umber was a compact, overpeopled city. Most of its central buildings were constructed of ghostly pale lunarite, a native stone of Bruntland, which gave the capital both the beauty and echoing hardness of an open-air cathedral. From the garden, Molly could see the neighboring mansions of Worthington Square and the tower of Elmcross Church, the latter’s white belfry glaring in the sun, but with the burstwoods and roses clustering around her, it was easy to imagine they were deep within the countryside.
Molly put the ripe purple spider in her mouth.
Frances shrieked and rushed forward, only to snag her skirts upon the rosebush thorns. The spider struggled in Molly’s mouth, dancing on her tongue and almost scrambling down her throat. She puffed her cheeks to give it room, surprised a thing so colorful had no distinguishing flavor. But neither did a grape, Molly thought, until you chewed it …
“Spit it out, spit it out!” Frances said, tearing free of the bush and opening Molly’s mouth. Out the spider came, tumbling off her lip and landing in the moss—a vibrant combination to