Storm Glass (The Harbinger Series Book 1) Page 21

  “What if the rain gets worse? Shouldn’t we head back now?”

  “You’re not afraid of a little water are you, Midshipman Russell?”

  He didn’t look afraid. “My uniform will keep me warm and dry, Your Highness. You, on the other hand . . .” He gestured to the gown.

  “Sera? Sera?”

  It was Hugilde.

  “There’s a gazebo in the middle. Come!”

  They both moved as quietly as they could. Her shoes trod more softly than his sturdy boots, but the noise was minimal compared to the raging wind. More heavy drops of rain struck her in the face—a feeling she relished. She’d rarely felt so much energy, so much zest for life. Being indoors each day had starved her for nature. They were nearing the gazebo when suddenly Will caught her arm. His fingers were firm and strong.

  She turned, whirling around to look at him. He pressed a finger to his mouth. Then she heard it. The sound of a woman’s voice. It was coming from just ahead of them.

  Will leaned close and whispered in her ear. “Do you hear that? Someone’s talking.”

  It was not Hugilde. Scrunching her brow, Sera ventured a little closer to the sound, walking carefully and quietly.

  “Who is it?” Will whispered again, keeping close to her. He looked worried now.

  They were near the gazebo. She still couldn’t see it over the hedge tops, but she knew it was there. Sera didn’t recognize the sound of the voice. They were close enough now that she could begin to make out some of the words.

  “I wasn’t sure what to do with this information,” the woman said. “Naturally, I would like to avoid a scandal. I think you would as well.”

  A deeper voice muttered, “Yes,” the response too quick for her to make out the man’s voice. Sera’s eyes widened with fear.

  “I don’t know what Fitzroy learned in his interview with the soldier, but he’s a clever man. He may start putting the pieces together. The woman’s identity was never revealed. The soldier didn’t know her name. The fool got many details wrong, but if he learns that it was your . . . well, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this. I can see that you’re hurting.”

  “No, I’d rather know the truth. And you will keep it discreet? Can I trust you to?”

  It was her father. He was alone in the gazebo with a woman who was not her mother. This woman was telling him something about Vice Admiral Fitzroy. Sera’s mind raced with worry and concern. Her cheeks were heating up, and she had the urge to confront them.

  Will tugged on her arm and nodded toward the exit, but she could not leave before she heard more.

  “I cannot thank you enough, Lady Corinne,” her father said in a low, angry voice. “There is much . . . damage you could have done with this information.”

  “I don’t have all the facts, Prince Regent,” she said. “I don’t need to have them. Rumor has a thousand tongues. I’m just grateful that you heard it from me first. I am loyal to the empire. To you. The Ministry of War has been in power for too long. I had hoped that Fitzroy would have his turn.”

  “He would have if not for that abominable little girl,” Father spat. “Now . . . in light of what you’ve told me . . . this makes things worse. For everyone.”

  “I’m sorry, Prince Regent. You can be assured of my discretion. If I hear anyone else speak of it, I will let you know. It may come to light regardless. The truth will out, as they say.”

  “Maybe it needs to,” Father said with anger and resentment. “One good turn deserves another. I overheard it discussed that one of your neighbors in the north is practically bankrupt. The Hardings. Perhaps the news will be of use to your husband. Ah, it’s raining harder now. Come, let’s get back to the manor.”

  “Of course. One scandal is enough for a day.”

  The noise of their shoes gave them only a moment’s warning. Will looked frantic as he gripped Sera’s arm, and the two of them raced away from the gazebo. Sera no longer worried about finding Hugilde—she needed to escape before her father caught them. Suddenly, all the maze looked the same. She turned left, instead of right, and she and Will ended up in a dead end. Stamping her foot in frustration, she whirled and went back the way they had come.

  “Do you hear something?” the woman’s voice asked.

  “Someone’s here,” Father said angrily.

  Sera took the right way just before they turned the corner and then collided into Hugilde. She would have fallen on her backside if Will hadn’t smashed into her from behind.

  Hugilde’s hair was damp, and she looked furious at having been eluded for so long. “Young lady!” she gasped with outrage.

  “Father!” Sera squeaked.

  Hugilde’s eyes widened with shock.

  “What’s the meaning of this!” Father shouted from behind them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY–FOUR

  VENGEFUL PRINCE

  Sera normally was ready with an excuse for any occasion, but in that moment, words failed her. Her foolishness had led to this—she’d been caught by her father, and caught with Will Russell no less. She looked at her father’s angry, accusing face, and her courage wilted.

  Hugilde, unfortunately, didn’t seem to know what to say either.

  “Forgive me, Prince Regent,” the governess panted. “Seraphin slipped into the hedge maze, and I’ve been trying to catch her.”

  “But why isn’t she having her lessons? Who is this young man?” The look of anger was growing steadily hotter.

  “William Russell, my lord,” the young man said, his voice tightening with humiliation and dread.

  The prince regent said nothing more. He gave Hugilde a withering look and curtly jerked his head, dismissing them all. The rain was coming down in earnest now, and Sera felt everything crumbling around her. She knew she was in disgrace, and her stomach twisted into queasy knots as she marched, head bowed, out of the hedge maze. Will said nothing. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes sparking with anger, his mouth turned down with dread.

  Commander Falking was waiting for them outside the maze, and he scowled with anger at her, adding to the horrible emotions seething in her breast. He’d found his hat, at least, but the memory of him chasing after it didn’t seem funny anymore. She couldn’t remember a time when she had felt so terrible.

  Commander Falking and Will slunk away to their sky ship, and Hugilde took Sera back to her room to change her from her wet dress to a dry one. The governess toweled Sera’s hair vigorously, her lips pressed into a thin line.

  “The letter!” Sera gasped, remembering it all at once. “Did you give it to Commander Falking?”

  “How can you think of that at such a moment?” Hugilde hissed.

  “But it was the last letter I was going to give him,” Sera said, her voice quavering.

  Hugilde slammed the brush on the table and covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders were trembling.

  “Hugilde—what’s wrong?”

  The governess’s eyes were full of despair as she lowered her hands. “I know your father, Sera. He has changed for the worse since acquiring his new position. He’s going to dismiss me. Commander Falking will be dismissed as your tutor as well. Your father can be a vengeful man.”

  “But it’s not your fault,” Sera said in confusion. “It’s my fault. I’m the one who ran away.”

  “He won’t see it like that,” Hugilde moaned. “I have nothing else, nowhere to go. Without a good reference, I’ll never get another post as governess.”

  Sera stared at her in growing horror. “No, Hugilde! I won’t let him!”

  Tears started streaming down the governess’s cheeks. “You don’t have the power to stop him,” she whispered morosely.

  Sera was fired up with indignation. With her hair half-tangled, she pushed away from the vanity desk and barreled out of her room. The servants knew that a storm was raging inside the manor, and no one would meet her eyes. As she marched down the hall, her newfound courage began to waver. But, no, she would not lose Hugilde. She would not be the
cause of Commander Falking’s failed career or any harm to Will.

  She heard the shouting before she reached her mother’s room. Instinctively, she had gone to her mother first in the hopes of pleading for her to intervene. Her father’s valet was standing in front of the door, his face somber. A dark mood hung in the air. Tension was etched on the man’s face. Clearly he could hear every word from inside. He gripped the door handles firmly behind his back.

  “Let me in, Charles,” Sera demanded.

  He shook his head no. “Sorry, my lady.”

  Sera squeezed her hands into fists. “Open the door, or I will scream.”

  Charles’s eyes widened with astonishment. She’d never threatened him before. He was clearly uncomfortable and in distress. Everyone in the manor seemed to fear for their jobs at the moment.

  Before he could answer, the handles jerked, and Charles spun away in surprise. Her father’s butler, Mr. Case, strode out of the bedroom, his face livid. He snapped his fingers, and Charles fell in tow next to him, leaving the door ajar.

  A feeling of blackness emanated from the room. Sera could hear her mother sobbing. It stole Sera’s courage and made her feel weak and scared. The mood had never been starker in their unhappy home, and the tension was unbearable. Sera’s breath came in rapid gasps. She trembled from head to foot. Every instinct warned her to flee, to find a sofa to hide under until the storm had passed. But if she did that without first making a case for herself, she was afraid of what she might lose.

  Sera pushed the door open and strode inside.

  “I will show you once and for all, woman,” Father said in a low, dangerous tone of voice, “that I am the master of my own house.”

  He turned to leave and saw Sera standing meekly in the doorway. The look in his eyes hardened at the sight of her. While he’d never been an overly affectionate father, something inside of him truly had changed. This was a different look. A hateful look. She had never seen him look at her this way before.

  There were things she had wanted to say. Demands, really. But his expression silenced her. She stared at him as he strode out of the room, not giving her another glance.

  Mother was sobbing on a sofa, unable to speak. Sera went to her and held her. And she wished she had never been born.

  It took some time to coax answers from her mother, and they were mostly unintelligible. Father had demanded to know if she had been unfaithful to him. She had tried to defend herself, to deny the accusation, but he had clearly not believed her. Sera thought about the woman whom Father had spoken to in the hedge maze, the one who had given him the strange story. Not only did this affect Mother’s emotional state, it affected Sera’s future as well. If there was any shade of doubt that she was a true Fitzempress, it would affect every aspect of her life.

  One of Mother’s ladies-in-waiting hurried into the room in distress. “My lady, the prince regent has ordered the butler’s staff to ransack your private rooms! They are spilling out every drawer. What are they looking for?”

  Mother’s tear-blotched face quivered with emotion. “What they will not find.” She hung her head and began crying again. Sera stayed behind to comfort her, although it felt strange to be doing so. Normally it was her mother who tried to soothe her tempers, to coax her into being good. She had witnessed her parents fighting before. But something between them had changed. Something irrevocable.

  Bursts of noise came through the manor. She heard a few shouted commands—her father’s—and soon everything went chillingly quiet. Sera’s mother had fallen into an uneasy sleep, and Sera rose from the couch and walked back to her room in a daze.

  The door was open, and she saw her father standing inside alone. It felt like hours had passed since the fateful walk in the garden.

  Father was pacing, holding up a couple of folded sheets of paper. Sera’s heart plunged even lower. Father was reading Will’s letters to her. The rest of them were heaped on the desk. Every one of them was precious to her.

  Anger pulsed through her, awakening her. She strode forward. “Those are mine.”

  The look he gave her stopped her in her tracks. “Well, at least I see now how my expenditures on your education are being put to use. Encouraging the advances of a lowly midshipman.” He chuffed. “As they say, the apple does not fall far from the tree.”

  “What does that mean?” Sera asked hotly. Her cheeks were burning.

  “You are too young to understand,” he replied. He tapped the current letter against his open palm and then gathered them all up. “Well, this ends Falking’s career, too. I thought he was a man of better sense.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Sera protested.

  Father raised an eyebrow. “There is plenty of fault to go around, young lady. I hired your tutors to discipline you. Not to become a slave to your whims. In what sort of world do you think it would be proper to encourage such advances?”

  “I’m lonely, Father,” she said, trying to muster more courage. “They weren’t advances. Mr. Russell is my friend.”

  Her use of the parental title made him flinch. “Leadership is loneliness,” he said after a pause. “You had no right to encourage this young man. And you’ve ruined his career as well. He was going to leave for school, I understand.” His eyes flashed with vindictiveness. “Not anymore.”

  “No!” Sera said, shaking her head. “You cannot do this. It is unfair.”

  He arched his eyebrows. “I cannot? You forget my rank. Why is it that I am afforded more respect outside my own manor than I am within the walls of it? That I am treated with dignity and accommodation everywhere else? No, it is time that my household learned proper respect. If there is insufficient penalty for disobedience, then the situation will remain unchecked. I’m grateful that I discovered your little secret today, Seraphin. I assume, judging by the contents in these letters, that you have written to this stripling as well?”

  She swallowed and nodded curtly.

  “Well, you will write to him one last time and demand that he return all of your letters. Every single one. If he refuses, I will make his life so miserable he will wish to flee to the Fells. Hugilde said he was a promising young officer. Thanks to you, he will rise no higher.”

  Sera trembled with outrage. “Why are you punishing him for my misdeeds? It was all my fault!”

  “Don’t take that tone of voice with me, young lady. I cannot expect someone so young to exercise good judgment. Which is why I’ve dismissed your governess as well. I expected better from one of her maturity. She confessed to being a willing accomplice. So you see, little Seraphin, it is not all your fault.”

  He arranged the letters into a neat, little pile.

  “As of now, I am also canceling your other tutors. Their reports have been highly disappointing anyway. You’ve made so little progress in the Mysteries, I’ve been told, that it’s really quite hopeless. I’m suspending your education. I’ll not waste another farthing on it while you daydream.” His words cut her to the quick. Yes, something inside him had changed. Something terrible.

  “Am I to have a governess at all?” Sera gasped.

  He pursed his lips. “I don’t see the purpose. You’re ungovernable. No, I will assign you a maidservant. Someone of my choosing.”

  His words were beating her down. Everything familiar and comfortable was being stripped away from her. Her privacy—once her only solace—was forfeit, and though she had found the classes tedious and pointless, she was desperate to cling to them now that they were being ripped away.

  “Please don’t send Hugilde away,” Sera begged, tears coming to her eyes. She wrung her hands. “I’ll accept anything else that you do to me. Just don’t send her away. She’s the only one . . .” She could hardly speak through her emotions. “She’s the only one who truly loves me.”

  Maybe something in her plea touched a chord deep inside him, for he frowned, and the heat of his temper dulled slightly. He still looked altered, but there was a gradual softening.

  “You�
��re in no position to make demands of me,” he said firmly, but in a hesitant tone that gave her hope.

  “I know,” Sera said. He was hungering for something. Respect? Deference? “I’ve been a horrible daughter. I’ve disappointed you over and over. But please don’t take Hugilde away from me. Don’t make her suffer for my sins.”

  Father pursed his lips again. “I’ll reconsider it. I don’t think you can change, Seraphin. You haven’t shown a willingness to work hard and stick to a task. Perhaps that’s not your fault. Perhaps you were born this way.” He grunted. “Show me that you can be obedient. And I may bring her back to my household.”

  There was nothing certain in his choice of words.

  But it was all Sera had to cling to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY–FIVE

  LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR

  Sera knew of the land-dwellers’ superstitions about ghosts. There were not such stories in the sky above, of course, and Sera had never met anyone who claimed to have encountered one. But according to gossip she had heard from Hugilde, the spirits who were trapped down below often attempted to influence the living in malevolent ways. They had the power to turn someone’s heart cold. To change someone’s personality in short order. Even, in some cases, to drive the life out of the living. Hugilde had told her there were carnivals in the City where strange women attempted to make contact with the dead through glass orbs and other such nonsense. It was frowned upon by high society, of course.

  Sera felt that her father had been touched by a ghost or that she herself was becoming one.

  Even the servants avoided meeting her eyes as she wandered disconsolately down the corridors of the mansion. She was dreadfully lonely without Hugilde, and it only took thinking about her dismissed governess to make her burst into tears. There were no more tutoring lessons to attend, and she worried that she might retreat so deeply into her reveries that she would no longer be able to find her way out. One of her favorite daydreams was imagining Father getting shoved out of a hurricane and plummeting into the Fells.