Page 59 of The Scarlet Ball

“But the store takes a percentage too, doesn’t it?”

“You know it does. I want this in cash.”

“You know, women in New York have had the right to their own bank accounts since I was a young girl,” she said as if she were merely passing the time. “We are also able to inherit property and to collect rents on real estate. I had thought that women had that ability in France as well.”

“White women. Rich women. I never found a bank that would give me anything but firm directions to the door. It’s the same as it is here, it’s for white women.”

“You look like a white woman to me.”

The stitches underneath my chin suddenly stung with reproach. Mielle had remarked that the skin where she anchored her stitches was growing tougher. I couldn’t see any sign of that when I examined myself in the mirror, but when I touched with my fingertips, I could feel it, a tiny ridge of skin rising up from the rest, almost insensible by now to Mielle’s sharp needle.

“I hardly think that you’ll give me this face to take with me—”

“I am not offering you a face. I’m offering you something far better.”

“And what is that?”

In response, she slid a velvet box across the table. It seemed to me that there was something unwholesome about it for all that it looked exactly like the ones I had been given throughout the season. I looked at it suspiciously, and then because there was never a box sitting in front of me that I could bear to leave closed, I opened it.

Inside was a new key, the handle an extravagant cutout made to resemble an open fan. I picked it up curiously, feeling its cool weight in my hand. Mrs. Howard watched me with an odd expression on her face.

“That’s the key to the house,” she said, and abruptly she looked more tired than I had ever seen her. She looked as if the only thing that was keeping her sitting so straight in her chair was the fear that someone might catch her slouching.

“Tell me what this means,” I said, putting the key down on the table. Suddenly it came to me how modest the house in Boston sounded. It was the house of a respectable woman, that was true, but God did it sound humble in the description, mince stuffed in a cold roll when I had become used to terrapin soup and fruit at every meal.

“Contrary to what you think, I am not a stupid woman nor a particularly blind one. I must face the reality that I believe you have guessed, that my granddaughter is nowhere to be found.”

Her throat worked for a moment, and she waited until she had command of her voice before she continued.

“I do not know where she is, or if I will see her again in this life. What I do know is that without her, I have no legacy. I have no heir, and I find that that is intolerable to me.”

“The Howards—”

“The Howards adopted a wildfire into their midst and gave him the name and face of a young man who could not be kept from the gaming tables. As great as their fortune was, it would have taken him years to spend it, but he had those years. The Howards read the signs early, and they lured in a fire to burn out what was disagreeable about him and to inhabit the rest.”

“Mr. Howard.”

“Yes. My Henry. He was a good son to them. He took care of them until the day they died because he honored the contract he made through his marriage to me. They were better off with him than they would have been taking a chance on a young drunkard and wastrel changing his ways.”

I thought of Mrs. Rowe. Had she found any advantage in her new son? Would she find something to love there, or would his existence, like so many things, simply have to be borne until the day she died?

“I was a good daughter-in-law to the Howards. I found after two years that my husband, for all his fire, wasn’t the sort who could sire children. Some of them can, most can’t. It is an advantage, in that it prevents bastards, but an inconvenience when one has a legacy to secure and a family name to carry on. I chose a man who looked a great deal like Henry, and there was no trouble.”

I didn’t need to wonder what had happened to that man who had looked so much like Mr. Howard. I read it in the lack of concern in Mrs. Howard’s face.

“Scylla was a marvel, the sweetest little girl. Bright, you know, and ambitious. I told her stories about the White Ball, the Rose Ball, and the Scarlet Ball, told her how beautiful she would be, and how powerful. She would have ruled over them all with a demon lord beside her. Then of course she met John Marshall, our solicitor’s son, for sweet Christ’s sake. She didn’t bother asking for my blessing, and was gone four weeks before she was meant to dance the White Ball. She sent me letters from Philadelphia: they were happy, he treated her well. Then she was with child, and then she was gone. It was only Iphigenia left, a week old, motherless, and fatherless too after I gave Marshall enough money to go west. I told myself I would not make the same mistakes with her.”

“Instead you made different mistakes.”

It popped out before I could think better of it. It was cruel even for me, but Mrs. Howard granted me a grim smile.

“I imagine you know plenty about poor choices. But you might as well try to call the sun back from setting as change the past. No, Iphigenia was meant to carry on my legacy, the research I have done, the empire I have built with her grandfather in harness. I wanted someone to carry that forward, and perhaps I was vain to think she might love me for giving it to her.

“At the end of that day and at the beginning of this one, I need an heir, and I wish it to be you.”

I laughed outright. It was a good thing I hadn’t asked for tea because I would have sprayed it all over her.

“With my past. With my face.”