She was surprised by their appearance and not—fangs had appeared in her mouth almost a mouth ago while she and her family were still attending summer soirees in Sommerville.
Nobody knew about the fangs. Aubrey was supposed to be “cured.”
The summer before, she had drunk a bad philter at a Sommerville ball. She knew from whispers and questions that she’d become a cat. But the Academy had found her and brought her home. And now she was better. Everything was back to normal.
That’s what people said: Everything is back to normal. That’s what Mother said—incessantly. Except Aubrey’s coming-out, planned for the fall before, had been quietly removed from the social calendar. Now that the family was in Kingston, Aubrey would accompany Mother to balls and fetes like any young lady, only without the usual introduction undergone by most debutantes. But then, most debutantes were lily-white innocents (socially speaking). Aubrey wasn’t anymore, not entirely.
She’d learned not to ask the reason for her ambiguous position: Did the Academy find her with degenerates? In a gambling den or brothel? Did she couple with a tomcat in Lady Bradford’s parlor?
She knew better than to tell anyone she had fangs and now claws.
She sheathed the claws, breathed deeply, and unsheathed them again. Send the signal--brain to hands. In. Out. In.
She had to learn control. She didn’t want them popping out unexpectedly. She could control her fangs now, but she'd spent more than a few Sommerville fetes with a closed-lips smile plastered on her face.
Satisfied that the claws would not flick out and tip over the milk jug, she made her way downstairs to the dining room where breakfast waited. In Kingston, her family rented a house rather than apartments or lodgings. The house this year was nicer than usual; Sir James from the Academy had found them a good deal.
“Oh, Aubrey,” Mother said as she slid into her seat. “It is so good to be able to look across the table and see your face.”
Mother had been saying the same thing for the last five months. Aubrey was beginning to wonder if it was true. She barely remembered her homecoming although Sir James himself had carted her to her family’s lodgings in Rostand (“We couldn’t go on to Sommerville until we could take you with us!” Mother would exclaim.) She had an image of herself standing in the hallway, wrapped in a brown, mid-length coat. Mother cried. Andrew hugged her. Richard thanked Sir James.
The morning after her return was clearer. She’d stood at the landing window looking out at Rostand’s stone-lined waterfront, the gray crashing waves, then gone downstairs to the private dining room where Mother had said . . .
Nobody would tell her more except—You were bespelled; you were rescued; it’s over; let’s move on.
Sometimes, Aubrey wondered if life for her family would have been easier if she'd stayed lost.
Even now, Mother was worrying about the decrease in invitations from last year. Of course, Mother worried every year that the invitations were decreasing. But this year—
“We had dozens last fall when you were still missing, Aubrey. Of course, I didn’t accept all of them. I was prostrate half the time. So many kind people came to visit—”
To collect information, Aubrey guessed.
Imagine what they would say if they saw my claws.
Andrew said, “You’ll have dozens now, Mum. Everyone will want to see that Aubrey is really human.”
“We would rather they forgot the incident,” Richard said brusquely, and Andrew flushed.
“They didn’t forget to give you a government post,” he muttered.
“The Academy has been supportive. But support doesn’t last forever. Aubrey would be best served if people thought of her as just another nice girl.”
Aubrey wasn’t sure she was just another nice girl.
As Andrew argued the merits of notoriety, Aubrey pulled The Morning Times over to her side of the table. She scanned the first pages, pausing at an editorial about shameful Academy influence on government departments, then skipped down to the police news. She liked to read about their investigations: a murder in Residence; a burglary in Shops. The police were clever, resourceful, commonsensical, not matter how socially objectionable.
Like me.
Truth, Aubrey wasn’t sure what she was. To Mother, she was an element in Mother’s ongoing narrative How I Bolster My Family; to Andrew, the Rescued sister; to society—but Richard was the best touchstone for society’s opinion; Aubrey glanced at him.
She found him studying her.
“Would you come to my study, Aubrey?” Richard said as breakfast ended.
Mother said, “Don’t keep her long, Richard. Lord Ives has agreed to take us for a ride along the Boulevard.”
“I’m shopping with Olivia Clyndale today, Mama,” Aubrey said, knowing Mother would approve that outing: the Clyndales mingled in the best circles, and Mama would prefer to have Lord Ives to herself.
She followed Richard to his study on a wave of Mother’s cheerful consent.
“Do you think she’ll bring Lord Ives up to scratch?” Aubrey said as the study door closed.
“You shouldn’t speculate about such things,” Richard said.
“Everyone else does,” Aubrey said, sitting in the armchair opposite Richard’s desk.
He strolled to the window and looked out on the tidy patch of grass before the iron railing that edged the pavement.
He said, “Now that I have a government post, we could buy a permanent residence in Kingston.”
“Mother would like that.”
“Things are going well for us. Sir Prescott will likely offer Andrew a scholarship to Bailey College.”
Aubrey nodded.
“The Academy is quite contrite about the events of last summer.”
“Did they cause them?”
“Not directly. But they took responsibility anyway. Our job, Aubrey, is to gracefully accept their help and get on with our lives.”
“I have,” Aubrey said.
I’ve hid my fangs, my claws. What more do you want?
“You are rather obsessed with the police.”
“Why would that matter?”
She saw Richard blink, reassess her, the conversation, his own thoughts.
“I don’t remember you showing so much interest in them before.”
“I always read the police columns.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Ah.”
“Were police involved in my disappearance?”
“I think it’s best to forget—”
Aubrey snorted, and Richard amended:
“Set the past aside.”
“You’re the one who brought it up.”
Richard sighed.
He said, “You can have a normal life, Aubrey. You’re only nineteen. A suitable marriage is not out of the question.”
“To one of Sir James’s nephews?”
No, Aubrey interpreted Richard’s hesitation.
“To someone suitable,” he said.
The whole idea seemed entirely fuzzy to Aubrey, but she nodded, and Richard looked relieved.
Aubrey went upstairs to prepare for Olivia, slipping on a long overcoat with deep cuffs before adding a blue-trimmed bonnet. Before she left the room, she went to the wardrobe and studied the mid-length brown coat that hung at its back.
She’d been wearing it when Sir James brought her home. The lodgings’ maid had cleaned and return it to Aubrey's room; Aubrey had buried it among her dresses. It was a tradesman’s coat—possibly a policeman’s.
Police appeared often in her dreams, but she couldn’t imagine a connection between the police and her bespelling by Academy students; Academy magicians were notoriously unsupportive of police interference.
Perhaps the police represented Aubrey’s desire to know, to investigate, to have someone tell her exactly what happened during the almost-year she was . . . not with her family.
Did the police find me?
Olivia would sometimes answer questions, and Aubrey went downstairs to linger on the front stoop just as Olivia arrived in a smart little chariot that she drove herself. They headed up Kell Boulevard to the posh end of Shops; Olivia needed to fetch a hat from Madame Merviole’s; then she and Aubrey would visit Plimsoll’s bookshop (Aubrey’s request), followed by Suvaginne Perfumers. They would end their excursion at Beesee’s Sweets.
“How is your family?” Olivia said as they swept to a stop in front of Merviole’s. The groom jumped off the chariot’s back and went to stand at the horse’s head.
Aubrey considered. Olivia wasn’t precisely a gossip, wasn’t precisely not. She didn’t keep secrets, but she also wasn’t malicious. Anything Aubrey said would be repeated in a public venue in some form.
“Lord Ives is taking Mother for a ride along the Boulevard.”
Mother would like people knowing about Lord Ives’s attentions, and Olivia said, “How nice for her” in a tone that indicated that Olivia knew precisely what that ride meant in the world of suitable attachments. Aubrey could never keep straight the subtle distinctions that set Lord Ives slightly further up the social scale than, say, Sir Promfret but not as far up as Sir James.
Speaking of—
“Did I meet policemen when I was bespelled?” Aubrey said.
“Police? I don’t think so. Sir James brought you to Rostand, didn’t he?” Olivia lingered on Merviole’s front step, “There was a rumor that you left a police station in Sir James’s carriage, even—” Olivia leaned closer, voice dropping, “that you attacked someone. But I figured that was just fudge.” She leaned back. “Besides, Sir James says you were under Academy protection the entire time, and he should know.”
She gave Aubrey a speculative glance, and Aubrey sighed, sounding like Richard. Olivia seemed convinced that Aubrey knew all kinds of exciting details about her lost months and only wouldn’t share out of misguided prudishness.
“If I ever remember, I’ll tell you everything,” Aubrey said.
Not likely, but Olivia looked pleased and swept into the shop.
Aubrey followed, noting the racks of bonnets, the starched assistants at the long counter, and a few customers. Those ladies greeted Olivia with almost as much obsequiousness as did the assistants—“Miss Clyndale, how well you look! How is your mother?”—and fell to whispering when they spotted Aubrey.
“St. Clair girl—”
“Supposedly bespelled—”
“Sir James’s patronage—”
“Family certainly benefited—”
Aubrey had heard some of the whispers in Sommerville although Lady Bradford had personally extended her patronage, including Aubrey and her family in all her summer festivities. No one had cut Aubrey—or her family—not yet; the ladies in Merviole’s even gave Aubrey cool nods (though they didn’t stop whispering).
Of course, Aubrey was with Olivia, and Olivia was far enough up the social hierarchy not to be hurt by a little scandal. But even the Clyndales wouldn’t allow Olivia to spend time with fallen debutantes. The whispers all related to Aubrey’s ambivalent status: a debutante who nevertheless would not be treated like a debutante but rather like one of the older girls with more experience.
How much experience?
Was Aubrey really as blameless as her Mother claimed? Or were people like Sir James and the Clyndales pretending she was, la-la-la-ing their way past her possible indiscretions? Did their tolerance stem from the same guilt Aubrey had sensed in Lady Bradford, the sense that she had been let down by people who should have protected her?
Aubrey couldn’t argue with their guilt—she would never voluntarily have drunk that potion—she just wished she knew what she had needed protection from. Being a cat? Or worse?
At the counter, Olivia gushed, “I adore those burgundy ribbons, but with my coloring—”
Aubrey studied a rack of bonnets, half-listening to the whispers at her back.
“—spent days with Academy students—”
“—Lord Simon—”
“—the police—”
A mutual clucking of tongues.
The police.
Aubrey waited for the ladies to complete their purchases and sweep out of the shop. She approached the counter.
Olivia said, “Oh, there you are, Aubrey. What do you think of this pink ribbon?”
Aubrey applauded the pink ribbon, then—
“I need some air,” she said.
“Oh, dear, you do look a trifle pallid.”
Do I? Aubrey could never decide if Olivia was easily suggestible or simply responded to appropriate verbal cues.
She went out. Olivia’s groom lounged beside the chariot, one hip cocked. He wasn’t precisely insolent, more like a natural reflection of Olivia’s personality.
“Where’s the nearest police station?” Aubrey asked him.
He pushed his cap up with one finger and eyed her. And, Of course, Aubrey realized, he’s heard as much gossip about me as everyone else.
She kept her chin lifted and her eyes calm. She didn’t ask again.
“End of the street,” he said finally. “Across from Belemont Park.”
“Thank you,” Aubrey said. “Tell Miss Clyndale, I won’t be long.”
Continued in Chapter 11 "Anamnesis" on October 25, 2013 . . .
© Katherine Woodbury
