cower, day after day, with the talismanic comfort of her husband’s glass eye.
The servants catered to the siblings’ every whim, not only because they were generously paid and enjoyed unprecedented liberty, but also because of the awe with which they viewed Nicholas, whose cunning had toppled Wickware. Meals were lavish and expensive, shared by everyone alike. Newton performed his basic duties but spent vast stretches of the day educating himself—he wished to become a lawyer—and modeling the latest fashions in the full-length mirror in his chamber. The maids did the minimum of necessary work, sending laundry out and leaving rooms, and even themselves, in luxurious disarray until the house, strewn with empty glasses and half-dressed servants, resembled the home of a libertine rather than that of a lord.
For all the apparent profligacy, Nicholas kept impeccable records of the household’s finances. No expense or line of credit went unpaid, and by selling valuable items—mostly Lord Bell’s—and lending money at interest to prodigal young gentlemen of Umber, he had actually increased the available funds while the rest of the city, including the gentry, felt the worsening pinch of an economy strained by a year of failing crops and the spectacular expense of the protracted overseas conflict.
Bruntland had finally won the war in Floria, thanks in large degree to their father’s pivotal victories over the Rouge at Godshorn and Fort Pine. The swiftly promoted General Bell had written a letter—delivered by packet ship the previous week—informing Molly and Nicholas that much remained to be done before his return to Umber, and that given the peril of ocean travel in autumn, they were unlikely to see him home before the New Year. “What will you tell him when he learns that most of his best possessions have been sold?” Molly had asked Nicholas one day, as he was locking up the proceeds from several pounds of silverware.
“I have sold only a fraction of his things,” Nicholas told her. “Most of them are pawned in Mrs. Wickware’s name. The servants will corroborate our story that she acted out of drunkenness. The rest of the missing items will be hung upon Jeremy, who is already wanted for theft. We have the constable’s report to verify the facts. When Father finds us as we are, he will admit his own folly in trusting us to Mrs. Wickware’s care and will, I suspect, summon Frances home directly. I would summon her myself, but it must be Father’s choice.”
Molly didn’t miss the discipline and bleedings, but she couldn’t make peace, as Nicholas had done, with Mrs. Wickware’s terror and debasement. She had visited the garret a number of times, hoping to alleviate the governess’s loneliness, but Molly’s appearance at the door had the opposite effect, convincing Mrs. Wickware that even the garret wasn’t sacrosanct and might, at any time, be threatened.
“We have treated her abominably,” Molly said as she cleared the barrel of the gun.
Nicholas sat before the harpsichord, its open lid exquisitely painted with a twilit sky. He had a thin dark beard and looked reasonably strong, having restored himself to something like his normal state of illness. He improvised a fugue, playing gently as he spoke.
“We claimed our natural right.”
“Home,” Molly sighed.
“Advantage,” Nicholas said. “All my life, I have thought myself strong but feared myself weak. Illness, doubt, our father’s and Mrs. Wickware’s tyrannical rule—I have suffered and survived them, and have vowed not to suffer disadvantage again. Strength isn’t granted. It is seized by the horns.”
Molly faced him with the gun, inadvertently aiming at his thigh, wrist, and neck as the barrel bobbed around and signaled her annoyance.
“You sound like Father.”
“Father lacks conviction,” Nicholas said. “He acts but then he hesitates, preoccupied with rightness. He beat the Rouge in Floria because, for once in his life, he shuffled right and wrong aside and trusted in his strength. Please lower the gun. Waving it about is gravely impolite.”
Molly kept it raised a moment longer in response.
Nicholas rounded out the fugue, its closing notes as chilly as a knife touching crystal. When the harpsichord was silent and the heat felt thick, Molly laid the pistol in front of Mrs. Wickware’s former mirror, where the gun and its reflection leveled up as if to duel.
She studied herself in the glass. More than ever, her resemblance to her mother was remarkable, and yet the contrasts were every bit as striking. They had the same small nose and asymmetrical eyes, the same black hair and clear white skin. But her mother