“So you’re still bringing the fireman?”
“If I do, are you going to hang yourself?”
He snorted a laugh, which made him look five years younger and a hundred times more attractive. For just a moment, Frannie tried to picture what her life would be like if she opened her heart to Casper and his high-flying world. Parties, fashionable dresses, glasses of champagne, the finest horseless carriages, and gloves made of actual silk. She could see herself, laughing, sparkling, being adored. Like a princess.
The image terrified her. Might as well put a crow in a bonnet and ask it to sing.
“Suicide? No. I favor longer, less dramatic methods of self-sabotage, darlin’. Enjoy the flowers. See you tomorrow night, and your little fireman, too.”
He gave her a last, long, smoldering look that told her plainly enough that he wasn’t giving up, and what’s more, he had something up his sleeve.
Fine. Let him play at courting. She might laugh, but as a savior of lost things, she sensed the recklessness within him. Reve was right. Casper was bad news—to himself, if no one else.
Frannie closed up shop early on Friday night. She’d gotten in a new shipment of parrots, and they were all crowded together in a traveling cage like old biddies on a train, frightened of foreigners. By the time they were all fed and soothed, she didn’t have the energy left to sell canaries to miners and parakeets to carriage drivers. As she flipped the sign to “Closed,” she realized that her hours had been more sporadic in the last week than in all of the previous year combined, and she didn’t know whether this was good or bad. She also had hope for the first time and a reason to wake up in the morning besides keeping the kittens alive. And she couldn’t deny, even to herself, that the pleasant flips in her stomach whenever Thom walked through the door weren’t something she was willing to give up just for the sake of regular work hours.
She had decided to live a quiet, comfortable, safe life. Whether she had been punishing herself for what had happened to Bertram or hiding from the future, she didn’t know. But excitement held a new appeal, now that she’d tasted it.
Her stomach felt fizzy with anticipation as she skipped upstairs to her room. The dress was there on its form, pressed and fluffed to the best of her ability. She decided right then that she would need to talk with Reve about her wardrobe, as the solid, serviceable tweed she’d inherited had begun to feel less like a comfort and more like a cage. She would never be an ornamental sort of girl, but at the very least, she could be presentable. Maybe Thom wouldn’t notice. Then again, maybe he would.
Button by button, she shucked off the tweed until she stood in just her petticoats and corset, once white but now faded to the color of cold tea. Ignoring the chill in her heart, she sought the full-length mirror in Bertram’s old room and dragged it into her own bedroom, settling it in the light of the new window. Standing before it, she took stock of herself for the first time in several years.
When Charles had first started hanging around with Bertram—that was when she had learned to curl her hair with tongs and tighten the middle bit of her corset on purpose. She had giggled with Reve and some of Maisie’s other girls, taking tips from the more worldly Parisian daimons on how to catch the eye of the debonair but ne’er-do-well Franchian lad with the curled mustache and high top hats. And caught his eye she had.
Look how that had turned out.
She shook her head. Things were different now. Not every man was Charles. Thank heavens.
As she passed in front of the window, the sunset stained her with a rainbow of light, and she smiled. She looked like a scarlet macaw for just a moment there, but even her fine new gown would make her more of a raven than a parrot. After carefully unbuttoning the skirt from her dress form, she stepped into it and admired the slick slide of taffeta up her stockings. The tweed kept her arms safe from avian talons, but it didn’t feel pretty, didn’t slither over her skin like the inky indigo of the unworn but long-kept dress.
The new style was different, too, with a separate skirt and bodice, which made it much easier to get dressed on one’s own. The last time she had preened, she’d missed her mother’s patient hands. And she missed her still, of course. But left all alone with herself and her shop, she was the captain of her ship, and there were certain perks to that. For example, her mother would have insisted that she wear her hair up tonight in a quiet chignon befitting a merchant lass. Instead, she made one long braid in the Franchian style, the tail falling over her shoulder. She could only hope that Casper wouldn’t make good on his promise about meeting the Magistrate. The farther Frannie flew under official notice, the better.
Thom’s knock was so tentative that she barely heard it, despite the fact that she was waiting for it. She smoothed her hair behind her ears once more and lifted her skirt to keep it from the dust of the shop. Thinking of the snake incident, she checked the peek hole to make sure it was him. She smiled when she saw him brushing the top of his hat, a move she had also employed earlier in the evening upon finding spider webs in her old bonnet.
With a deep breath, she opened the door. She only worried for a moment about how he would see her, as she was utterly arrested to see him wearing another kilt, albeit a dark and sober one pinned neatly and topped by a soft white bag with long tails. It was strange, to be sure, but she couldn’t imagine any other costume that would suit him more. The deep navy jacket fit snugly, showing the breadth of his shoulders, a gray vest peeking out underneath. Even his stockings looked tidy and formal, and his boots were neatly polished.
“What a beautiful wee thing you are,” he said softly, and she felt herself flush with pleasure.
“You cut a fine figure yourself.”
“I hope ye don’t mind the kilt.” He looked down self-consciously. “I haven’t any fine trousers, and I haven’t worn this kilt in years, but it’s the best I could do. I know I’m not verra dashing, but . . .”
“Hush, now. I’m smiling, aren’t I?”
He looked up and mirrored her grin. “That ye are, lass. At least, I washed the soot out of my hair, eh? Now, shall I call a conveyance, or would ye care to walk?”
“Let’s walk, please,” she answered quickly. The last time she’d been in a conveyance of any sort was on the way to Bertram’s funeral, riding beside his casket.
As she locked the door on the way out, Frannie couldn’t help seeing the world in a new light. Just as the new window changed her room completely, so did the lens of a new dress and a sturdy arm under her glove change her outlook on the only city she’d ever known. The beggars, the buskers, the Coppers on their frothing bludmares, the wrappy sellers with their steaming carts. There was a certain picturesque beauty there. Usually, she hurried from place to place, trying to avoid anyone’s notice. Even before Charles, she hadn’t been a showy thing, which was maybe why she had been so bewitched by his exotic, debonair ways. For a brief period of time, he had shown her the world. And then he’d torn it all down.
“So what are we seeing?” Thom asked, grinning down at her.
“My mother always told me that the fun part of shows was seeing people and being seen.”
She felt his laugh through his arm, a warm rumble in his chest. “It’s that bad, is it?”
Frannie sighed. “It’s my lodger. The fellow in the frilly shirt.”
“He’s a clown, is he?”
They hit High Street, which was filled with bodies and conveyances, all fighting toward a tall building dramatically lit by gaslights. The marquee shone like the sun in the darkness, the calligraphed words still wet from the artist’s foot-wide brush:
TONIGHT ONLY! MAESTRO CASPER STERLING
And underneath, in much smaller letters:
Vs. Edwin Kind, a Duel by Piano.
A paper drawing of Casper rippled lightly in the wind, the cocky grin and dimples ten times larger than life.
“He’s apparently rather famous,” Frannie said weakly.
Thom made a noise deep in his throat. “I never trust a man in a frilly shirt” was all he said.
10
The plush velvet was almost too soft, the lights far too warm—at least, until they dimmed. The box went dark until Frannie could see nothing but the stage just below, almost close enough for her to jump down. Or to take a rose, had the star musician attempted to hand her one of the many thrown by the adoring crowd. She shuddered at the thought and hoped Casper was self-involved enough never to consider it.
He had promised her the best seat in the house, and now that she was there, she would have preferred to be anywhere else, even down below in the pit, where whores and chimney sweeps shouldered one another cheerfully, with toothless smiles and spoiled cabbages in hand.
Thom shifted beside her as if he, too, couldn’t get comfortable in the squishy seats. Whenever she looked at him nervously, he smiled in reassurance, but it was clear that they didn’t belong there, in the posh box made for men like the Magistrate or maybe like the queenly dame in the hoop skirts directly opposite them, who couldn’t put down her opera glasses or make her mouth turn up at the corners. Still, Frannie was all too aware of the kilt-clad knee mere inches away from hers and the broad hand on the armrest, fidgeting in a new kidskin glove.
After a few moments of near darkness, Frannie’s lodger appeared in a spotlight, standing tall before the newfangled sort of harpsichord she’d heard of but never seen in person. A piano, they called it, and a very grand one indeed, all shiny black and dramatically curved. Clad in a royal-blue coat spangled with gold stars, Casper bowed, and the crowd went mad. Looking down, Frannie saw women of all castes fanning themselves and reaching for him. But Casper looked up at her, just her, and winked. She understood the words he mouthed at her, even if she couldn’t hear them over the screams.
“I told you so.”
His spotlight winked out suddenly, bathing the room in darkness pierced only by the most expensive sort of opera glasses. The screeching stopped, replaced by whispers and one long, slow hiss like an uneasy snake. The spotlight lit the other side of the stage, falling on an identical piano and a man who seemed a joke in comparison with Casper. Where Casper was tall, broad-shouldered, gorgeous, and perfectly put together, this fellow was short, spindly, and ungainly, despite his fine gold-trimmed suit. His attempted smile seemed a crooked sneer. The crowd booed, and a single cabbage exploded against the second piano, a bit of filth splattering the man’s mauve coat before the light winked out again.