The Sweetest Dark Read online

  “Yes, ma’am.” If you wish to call a pair of threadbare skirts and darned stockings presentable.

  “Students are permitted a single item of personal jewelry with the uniform. Something discreet, naturally. A cameo brooch. A filigree pin, a pearl. Possibly a small watch, should the chain drape well enough. Some of the girls have taken to wearing gold bangles. It’s a slightly vulgar fashion, I feel, but as long as it is only one bangle and you show it to me first so that I may be certain it is appropriate, that may suffice, as well.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Westcliffe,” I said gravely. “I shall show you any bangle I wish to wear first.”

  “Excellent. As tomorrow is Sunday, all that will be required of you is to attend services in the chapel. After that, you may explore the grounds at your leisure. It will give you time to learn the castle, as well.” She rose to her feet, and I did the same. “I feel we are to get on, Miss Jones. I hope I am not mistaken.”

  She stuck out her hand, surprising me—I thought I’d just get a royal dismissal. Her grip on my fingers was both chill and firm.

  “Almeda will show you to your room. Allow me to be the first to say welcome to you, Eleanore Jones. Welcome to Iverson.”

  • • •

  I learned that night that the loveliest, most lonely sound in the world is that of the sea striking the shore. It rocked me into slumber, echoing my drowsing pulse.

  The room assigned to me had clearly never been meant to serve as a bedchamber. It consisted of the upper floor of one of the towers, with a high ceiling and curved walls that made the bed jut out awkwardly no matter where I moved. There was no rug and no fireplace. Come winter, the tower would be an icebox, but at least there was a pile of quilts at the foot of the bed.

  I didn’t care. I could not recall a time in my life when I had slept in a room of my own; the cell at Moor Gate did not count. That I didn’t have to scrap for a better pillow or drawer space or a clean chamber pot seemed an indescribable luxury. Princesses, I thought, running my hand over a quilt, lived sovereign like this.

  The solitary window of my room once was probably little more than an arrow slit but at some point had been widened and glazed. The glass shone in a thousand diamond-bitty pieces, many of them splintered but all still in place. I’d shoved at the rusted hinges to open it, peering out at the view, and that was when I realized that the castle was on an island.

  We had crossed so many bridges in the carriage, I’d stopped counting them. Plus, I’d been fiercely focused on blocking Jesse’s music from my mind. But from my window I could see the bridge that connected us to the mainland, a slinky wooden track braced with pillars that sank into the waves, foam bursting silver against them. It looked to be nearly a mile long.

  A mile of sea from here to there. I don’t know why that thought seemed so pleasant.

  I was a princess in a very dark tower. I banged my shin twice against the bedpost, trying to maneuver to the bureau, and my hip once against the bureau, attempting to grope my way back to the bed. There was an armoire, too, but I didn’t feel up to wrangling with anything pointy like hangers or hooks.

  I’d found two candles but no matches, and knew better than to look for a light switch.

  “Castle’s not wired for the electrical,” Almeda had informed me as we climbed the tower stairs. She was heavyset and huffing for breath by the second landing, tackling each stair with a substantial stamp of her foot. By her apron and cap, I’d guessed she was the head maid or chatelaine, but she’d not volunteered the information, and I had not asked.

  “We make do with good old-fashioned means here,” she’d panted. “Coal and the like. Fine, traditional ways. You’ll get a filled lamp for your room and two candles per month. Don’t waste ’em, and don’t go asking for more than that, because you won’t get more, eh?”

  Eh, indeed.

  It happened that the lamp was missing—perhaps one of the less frugal girls had pinched it—and the candles, without matches, were useless. But after I had unpacked my case by touch and found my way into my nightgown and settled into the bed, the moon had risen just enough to pearl the window, and the diamond panes began a slow, dazzling show of light that made the darkness no longer matter.

  I fell asleep with my stomach growling and the sea beyond my tower striking the land, striking, striking, a giant’s hand against a huge hollow drum.

  But for a single passing dream of a caress to my forehead—a whisper of sensation, safe and gentle and then gone—I slept deep.

  Chapter 6

  Here is the list of weapons I counted in the headmistress’s serene golden chamber:

  The candles from the chandelier.

  The poker and its stand by the fireplace.

  The pink-daisied porcelain lamps, which had been unlit, on the secrétaire and side cabinet and reading table.

  Every single oil painting, remarkably flammable.

  The curtains.

  The crystal vases.

  The bronze-framed mirror.

  The glass face of the clock.

  The inkwell.

  And, of course, the letter opener on her desk, made of hard, sharp bone.

  Hattie Boyd once held a letter opener she’d snatched from a nurse’s hand to the jugular vein of Mrs. Buckler, the most vicious matron in Moor Gate. She held it there until she was promised one of the beef-and-potato pasties being served to the staff for supper. It cost her a blackened eye and two entire months in the isolation cell in the basement.

  A few days before they managed to kill her for good, Hattie confided to me that that pasty was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted.

  Chapter 7

  My eyes opened the next morning to a prism of sunlight stretched across my face and down my pillow. I groaned and rolled away from it, smelling feathers and brine. And … something fruity. Oranges?

  I sat up, caught in that hazy state of not-yet-ready-to-be-awake, but the sun was bright, and about a second later there was a tapping on my door, which creaked open to reveal a housemaid.

  “Good morning, miss. I’m Gladys. I’ve brought your fresh water.”

  And so she had, carrying a filled pitcher up what had to be at least three flights of stairs. She moved to the bureau and set it there by the basin, then turned to me, still bundled in my quilt.

  I swiped a mess of hair from my lashes and smiled at her tentatively. No one had ever brought me an entire pitcher of water before.

  She was older than I, about twenty I would guess, with a skinny, angular frame and an apron so severely starched it looked like the edges could slice cheese. She did not smile back.

  “Food’s not allowed in the students’ rooms, miss.” Gladys aimed her gaze pointedly at something by my side.

  I looked down. There was an orange—a real one, fat and colorful—nestled right up against my pillow.

  It had not been there last night. It had not. I would have felt it, smelled it. Certainly it hadn’t come with me from Blisshaven. I’d emptied my case down to the stitches.

  Yet in an act of inexplicable sorcery, the orange was here now.

  I remembered abruptly my dream, that touch to my face, how it had seemed so pleasurable and so real … like a gift.

  “I—” I glanced up again at the maid; there was no mistaking now the rancor behind her eyes. Here was someone who was not especially pleased to consider me her peer. “I must have unpacked it last night and forgotten about it,” I lied. “So sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  She returned to the door. “Breakfast begins in a half hour. I’m to show you the way, so I’ll be back before then.”

  “Right. Thank you.”

  The door clicked shut without a response.

  I sat there for a moment, then picked up the orange, rolling it between my palms. Never once had any form of my madness produced food from empty air; someone had given me this. Last night. As I slept. And even though I hadn’t dreamed of music, there was no question in my mind about who it had been.

  T
he tower door had no lock, no bolt. If Jesse worked for the school, as I suspected, he probably knew the castle like the back of his hand. But why would he risk such a thing? I could only imagine what Mrs. Westcliffe would do were she to come across her coachman sneaking into pupils’ rooms.

  My room, rather. I’d likely set an Iverson record for Most Hastily Arranged Expulsion.

  If it had been Jesse. If my mind hadn’t snapped, and I hadn’t carried the orange with me from London after all. In the clear light of day, it was difficult to envision even the mysterious Jesse venturing all the way up here just to leave me fruit.

  An odd bit of folklore rose to the surface of my thoughts, something I’d read years ago in a battered, dusty book I discovered tucked in a cupboard at the Home. I’d always read every book I could find, and this one was about monsters, so old the pages had crumbled against my fingers:

  Do not Eat the Food of the Fay. Do not Drink their Wine. You give Yourself to Them with every Sip, every Swallow. They shall Darken your Blood until you Desire only Dark. Only what Pleasures They may Bestow.

  I shivered in the morning sunlight. I brought the orange to my lips in a deliberate hard kiss, meant to hurt. The rind hinted of bitter but the scent was still sweet.

  “What am I to make of you?” I muttered into it. “Are you Dark?”

  I will be delicious, was all the orange seemed to reply.

  Dark or not, I was starving. But I didn’t own a clock or a watch, and I didn’t know how long a half hour might truly be. Gladys seemed like the kind of person who’d be delighted to tell anyone she could about how she’d discovered the new scholarship girl half dressed, with orange juice dribbling down her chin.

  I stored the orange in the depths of the bureau, then opened the drawers containing my two clean outfits brought from the orphanage and sighed, wondering which would embarrass me less.

  I decided on the one without the rip in its skirt. It was Sunday, after all.

  There was a small looking glass upon the bureau, pushed off to the side by the stack of textbooks and papers I hadn’t yet examined. I was accustomed to slipping in and out my clothes without being able to see myself. We’d had a standing mirror in the dorm of the Home, but with fifty girls to a room, all of us bound to the same schedule, good ruddy luck getting in front of it to dress.

  I honestly wasn’t used to seeing my own reflection. It was with a little jolt of surprise that, when I bent my neck to stick another pin into my hair, I saw a corner of a girl doing the same nearby.

  I dropped my hands, curious, and picked up the frame. Yes, there I was. Hair of indeterminate color—but at least I’d gotten it up into its roll—eyes of indeterminate color. Eyelashes, eyebrows, reddish lips. Complexion, not the perfect peachy silk of a debutante but something more like … like stone, really. I tipped my head this way and that, critical. My complexion was probably my best feature, I decided, mostly because my skin was unblemished and uniformly marble pale.

  I returned the glass to its place. I looked exactly like what I was, a slum girl from the city, where hearty meals were rare and the sun was a stranger.

  I was ready when Gladys gave her next knock. I smoothed my hands along my hair one last time and followed her down the stairs.

  • • •

  I heard them before I saw them: high, chattering voices swelling and fading above the unmistakable clatter of flatware against china. The doors to the dining hall were open as we approached. I glimpsed a space deep and wide with pastel plastered walls and yellow spears of sunlight falling in precise angles from windows unseen. Chandeliers glittered with crystal. Tables gleamed with food. And girls in gowns of every hue were seated in chairs along the tables, rows and rows of rainbow girls, some beaded, some ruffled, gobs of lace.

  As Gladys led me closer to the entrance, the vivid colors and increasing noise reminded me of nothing so much as a flock of parrots, swept into the castle to dine upon kippers and tea.

  I would learn later that this confusion of colors was unique to the weekends at Iverson. For every other day of the week, we all wore the same uniform in the same style, crisp white shirtwaists paired with long, straight, dark-plum skirts and black-buttoned shoes. No doubt then we resembled a rather stilted colony of penguins, milling here and there in our ladylike shortened steps.

  Gladys paused by the doors, and so did I. She seemed disinclined to take me forward, and as I wasn’t particularly inclined to go forward I merely stood there, allowing the voices and the delirious aroma of hot fresh breakfast to wash over me, looking at all those elite-of-the-empire girls and wishing I was anywhere, anywhere, else on earth. Even Moor Gate.

  I dropped my gaze to the folds of my skirt. I’d accidently chosen the one with the rip in it, after all. They were both plain brown twill; we’d all worn brown at the orphanage, because it didn’t show dirt.

  The toes of my boots stuck out, light and dark with scuffs.

  “Miss Jones,” said a voice right in front of me.

  Mrs. Westcliffe. No tear in her gown. The tips of her black leather pumps shone like glass against a discreet pleated hem.

  I lifted my eyes.

  “Late again,” the headmistress noted, with that pinch to her mouth.

  I glanced back quickly at Gladys, but she’d vanished without a word.

  Thanks ever so much. You bony cow.

  “I beg your pardon,” I mumbled. I had the dismal feeling I was going to be using that phrase quite a lot in my time here.

  “Breakfast begins at precisely eight-thirty every morning. Do make a note of it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Westcliffe sighed. “Very well. Let’s find your table, shall we? Seating is assigned for all meals, barring teas. Follow me.”

  I did. And as soon as I took my very first step into the hall, all the girlish, parroty chatter choked into absolute silence. I suppose that was the moment the other students realized I wasn’t merely some disgraced scullery maid popped out of uniform, but instead someone who was going to be seated at a table, which meant—horrors!—one of them.

  By my fifth step, a new sound had taken over the hall: the hiss of a hundred whispers escaping cupped hands, punctuated with giggles. It rose with every group we passed, heads turning, and by then Mrs. Westcliffe had apparently recognized her mistake, for her back grew very stiff and her heels began to strike the floor as hard as castanets.

  I weighed at least three tons. Three tons of sluggish lead and shame clunking step by step in my scruffy orphan boots into the sumptuously decorated hell that was this dining hall, and what a terrible wonder that the ground did not crack apart and swallow me whole.

  We ended up before a table that had a conspicuously empty chair at the far end. The students filling all the other seats gazed up at us with sparkling, hungry eyes.

  “Good morning, ladies. May I introduce to you Miss Eleanore Jones, late of London. She will be in your tenth-year classes with you. I trust you will all bid her a very gracious Iverson welcome and will do your best to ensure that she feels quite at home with us.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Westcliffe,” they chorused as one, sweet as sugar.

  There were seven of them. They smiled seven identical smiles, and the message behind each was identical, as well. It read: bloodbath.

  The giggling at a table of younger girls across the chamber sharpened into laughter. The headmistress threw them a frowning look.

  “Lady Sophia. I will leave it to you to make the round of introductions.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Westcliffe,” responded a flaxen-haired, glacier-eyed young woman who clearly was used to being cast in the lead. She stood, revealing a frock of rose chiffon that matched the color in her cheeks to an uncanny degree. She aimed her frightening smile straight at me. I bared my teeth back at her.

  Lady Sophia knew her game. Her lashes lowered, demure. “You may rely on me, Headmistress.”

  “So I presumed. Enjoy your breakfasts. Oh, and, Lady Sophia, may I ask also that you escort Miss J
ones to the chapel when the meal is concluded? She is unfamiliar as yet with the school grounds.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Westcliffe.”

  “Thank you.” She gave a nod to the table. “Ladies.”

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Westcliffe,” chirped the chorus, precisely on cue.

  We all watched as she clipped toward the laughing table. As soon as she was out of hearing range, I felt Sophia’s ice-blue gaze return to me.

  “Eleanore, is it? That’s quite a mouthful of a name for someone so …”

  “Plain,” sniggered the girl in the chair next to her, round-faced and bug-eyed, with oily, wavy black hair escaping its bun.

  “I was going to say penniless,” countered Lady Sophia smoothly. “But as you like, Mittie. Oh, Eleanore, this is the Honourable Mittie Bashier, of the Doyden Bashiers, of course. And on down the table we have Lady Caroline Chiswick, Lillian St. Clair, Beatrice Hart-Stewart—the Hart-Stewarts, undoubtedly you’ve heard of them—Stella Campbell, and Malinda Ashland. Ladies, Eleanore … dear me. It appears I’ve forgotten your surname already. Smith, or something like that?”

  “Call me anything you like,” I answered, pulling out my chair. “I certainly understand how someone with such an abnormally tiny head would struggle to remember even the most undemanding facts. It must be quite a burden for you.”

  There was a collective intake of breath. I reached for the platter of bacon and toast nearest me. My fingers trembled only a little as I picked up the silver serving tongs.

  Bitch, snarled the beast in my heart, and it might have meant me.

  “My,” breathed Lady Sophia, after only the barest moment of suspension. She sank gracefully back into her seat. “How nearly effortlessly you managed that. Hardly any spittle! Let us beware, girls. It appears the mudlark has claws.”

  I swallowed my bite of buttery toast. “Claws, and more.”