Benjamin was such a passionate man that she had faded into his shadow during their years of marriage. It was only when she wore men’s breeches that she was able to parry and fence with a person like Strange. Normally someone so beautiful would make her tongue-tied. He would look at her with indifference, and she would mumble and walk away.
It was only in breeches and stockings, with her legs exposed for the whole world to see, that she had courage.
A passion…
Beyond a passion for wearing breeches.
The word slid into her mind with the cool sound of steel. If I were allowed to have any passion I wished, Harriet thought, I would have one for the art of the rapier. Jem had started her lessons in order, he said, to give her a weapon, to make her a man.
It worked. She felt powerful with that thin, dangerous blade in hand. She felt like the kind of person who should be listened to. Her blood sang with the beauty of matching her opponent’s swirling movements with her own. It was a complex sort of mathematical thinking that she understood.
She got up and grabbed her rapier again, exhaustion forgotten. Pushing aside the chair so she had a good space, she began to practice the moves he taught her. Attack, parry, feint, thrust. Jem’s voice sounded in her head. The straightest path between two points is with your tip, not the side of your blade. She pretended she had an opponent opposite her, coming in with a swirling keen blade. She practiced her move against him over and over and over again. Watching the silver gleam of his blade, seeing it cut the air, bringing her own up to meet it.
Blocking is a move of last resort. Evade the blade.
She practiced that, over and over, imagining the angle of the blade, the position of the body, jumping to the side so that his invisible rapier slashed through space rather than her body.
By the time she bent over, clutching a stitch in her side, panting, sweat dripping from her brow, the house was deadly quiet. It had to be the middle of the night.
Yet somewhere she could hear—
Could it be a cat calling? It sounded like a cry. Harriet wiped her face and put down her rapier. Her shirt was a bit damp around the collar.
It was extraordinary how different it was to be a man rather than a woman. She never sweated in her woman’s clothes. Now her heart was thumping, and her blood was racing. It made her want to laugh.
Without bothering to pull her boots back on, she opened the door so she could hear the noise more clearly. That was no cat. She started running.
Eugenia, the third floor, the locked door.
Harriet flew up the stairs, came to the huge oak door that barred Eugenia’s wing from the rest of the house.
She could hear her clearly now, little thumps from her fists beating on the door, and calls drowned by sobs.
“Eugenia!” she called. “It’s Harry. What’s the matter?”
There was a rush of words, but she couldn’t understand. So she raised her voice to a shriek. “Is there a fire?”
A little voice said, close to the keyhole. “There’s a fire in my bedchamber.”
“Oh my God,” Harriet said, her head starting to swim. “Where’s the footman? Where is he?”
She heard sobs. “I don’t know where he is. I’ve been hammering for ages and no one came, and it’s cold and dark, and my governess…” She couldn’t hear the rest.
“Is there a lot of smoke?” Harriet asked in her sternest voice.
She only heard sobs and something she couldn’t understand.
“Eugenia, I need you to listen to me. Put your ear to the keyhole. Is there smoke in the corridor?”
Silence. Then: “No.”
“Excellent,” Harriet said, her mind racing. “Now, did you pull the bell cord in your chamber?”