Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 64357 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64357 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
The women are wild, charming, and witty. Some of them are matched and married, but there are plenty of noble-born ladies who were never selected by the Artifice to become mothers, and have pursued their own interests. They are colorful, strident, exciting characters with much to say, all of it scandalous. I think any of these women could hold their own against that terrible sex shop purveyor who made me blush and tremble at his inappropriate words.
Unfortunately, a great many of them feel quite comfortable commenting on me as if I am not in the room.
Emmaline introduces me around. Everybody is passingly polite, with the exception of a duchess who clearly had designs on my husband for herself. I am beginning to understand that Arthur was very much the prize of New Boston society before my arrival.
“So this is who the Artifice chose for Arthur. Fascinating,” Duchess Bouquet says. She is a very beautiful woman whose dress shimmers with wonderful radiance. Maraline would love her, I think. They both have a tendency toward heavy makeup.
“She’s very young,” she continues, talking to nobody in particular and everybody at the same time. “Are you old enough to be married?”
“I am nineteen,” I say.
“Nineteen! Well, the Artifice must be well pleased with Arthur Darken indeed. No self-possessed girl in her twenties who knows her mind for him. No, he’s been given a little country lamb. I imagine he has enjoyed you greatly.”
The woman is trying to shame me, I think. She is making crude references to the bedroom, implying that I am some prize because of my youth and innocence. It is not a compliment. If anything, it dismisses who I am.
I look her dead in the eye, and I answer simply, “Yes, he has. And I he.”
A raucous laugh goes up around the room. Emmaline squeezes my hand and smiles at me warmly. “You are going to fit in very well here,” she says.
The conversation is more genuinely polite and welcoming from that point onward, though there are still some scandalous moments.
“Do you want to bear a baby?” One of them asks me the question. I consider it briefly, though not too deeply, because I know it’s not really an option. I will bear a baby eventually. Several, probably. It’s what I was put here to do.
“I don’t know,” I say, more confused by the question than anything.
“She’s just a child,” Emmaline says, apparently having reached the end of some invisible tether. “It’s a shameful match. Shouldn’t be allowed! I don’t see why the Artifice couldn’t wait to match her.”
The women do not hide their questioning of the Artifice the way the men do. There’s a ripple of agreement in the crowd. Quite scandalous, really.
“I, er, I thought you weren’t allowed to say that the Artifice could be wrong?” I ask the question with as much tact as I can muster.
Emmaline gives me a slow, catlike smile. Her magnetic personality makes it possible for her to say anything she likes and for it to be received well.
“The rules about never questioning the Artifice are for two groups of people—our husbands and the poor. We are well-to-do women, and women have always borne the true responsibility of society. The Artifice is… well, a distraction. You will learn that soon enough.”
I cannot believe what I am hearing. It’s blasphemy. It’s seditious. It’s dangerous talk—and I have to admit, it is rather thrilling to be around.
“Here,” the grand lady says casually. “Sniff this.”
She hands me a little powder pot. I assume she wants me to smell it and compliment it. Perhaps it is a perfume of some kind. I want very much to fit in here, so I do as I am told without a second thought. The second I inhale, I know I have made a mistake. I feel a fizzy tingling in my nose, and taste a slight metallic tang in my mouth. A moment later, it is like a bomb has gone off in my brain. There is light and there is joy. I feel better than I ever have. I feel better than I knew it was possible to feel. I feel like singing and dancing. I giggle a little, and then I laugh a lot. I laugh more and longer than I ever have in my life.
Arthur
The evening is progressing how these evenings tend to progress. There has been some brief mentioning of my marriage, but for the most part we are swapping the same war stories we have exchanged for years, while anticipating new ones.
Lance is holding court.
“These rebels need to be rooted out,” he says. “The ideology is starting to spread through the commoners, and once it takes hold there, nothing short of a massacre will stop it.”
I know him well enough to be aware of the fact that it has simply been a long time since he has had the excuse to kill anybody, and he is missing it. The smell of blood, the act of ultimate conquest in dealing death, becomes addictive to some.