There was more to Edward's concession, of course, than the goading of his friend or the unnerving presence of a marble bust—which, in itself, wasn't unnerving to him at all. It was more what the bust stood for—the fate that loomed before him. The fate he had unwittingly assumed one sweltering day in Georgia eight years past that had left him the eldest—no, only—heir to the Gracey fortune. That had commenced with a string of private tutors, intensive instruction in history and literature and foreign languages, fencing lessons, and how to conduct oneself as a gentleman. That would continue in the fall when he was shipped off on a northbound steam train to Milton, all the way through to some respectable university that would ensure him a respectable career. That in turn would, if his father had his way, place the name Gracey on everyone's lips from East Coast to West.
Which was a perfectly fine fate…for someone else's son.
In theory, Edward had no quarrel with his father's carefully mapped-out plan for his future. After all, he didn't aspire to become some carefree gadabout sponging off the family fortune—the subject of a sermon Father had been particularly fond of delivering to his sons on more than one occasion. Though Edward had gotten the point (and then some) when he'd brought out Hogarth's A Rake's Progress to serve as a visual aid.
But while his father dreamed of him leading a state or even a nation, Edward's own dreams of his future were a little more romantic and a little less respectable. A lot less lucrative, to be sure. He imagined himself, as a newly minted graduate, traveling through Europe, seeing with his own eyes all those places that only existed in books and paintings—windswept moors, hallowed cathedrals, ancient temples adorned with the smashed remains of forgotten gods. All the while scribbling down what would eventually become his own published masterwork.
That wouldn't happen, of course. No son of George Gracey would grow up to become some daydreaming dilettante. Nor would they dare stand up to him and protest the tragic plight of the postbellum bourgeoisie to his face.
So Edward decided to rebel in a quieter fashion, by casting aside duty and decorum for the afternoon and following the stablehand's son to a dodgy-looking ring of circus tents set up a mile from the Mississippi.
It was a small if futile step, but it was something.
He wasn't entirely sure that Ezra had believed him when he'd insisted that Father had granted him permission to go, as a one-time reward for being ahead of his studies. The driver had fixed a suspicious eye on him for an agonizingly long moment, scratching the rapidly balding pate beneath his shabby bowler hat while Edward squirmed. Then, he'd merely shrugged and tugged on the reins, maybe not convinced, but at least absolved of any responsibility in Edward's rule-breaking.
It had been remarkably easy to slip out. Father had locked himself in his office hours ago with his shipping contracts, assuring that he wouldn't emerge until suppertime, and Ramsley had been busy conducting interviews for new household staff—a direct result, Edward thought with a regretful chuckle, of the mausoleum incident. At least his part in the affair had been limited to showing Asa and Phineas the secret passage; the rest had been all their doing. He never would have condoned showing the laundresses down there, let alone "accidentally" locking the door behind them. The cemetery behind Gracey Manor sparked no fear in his heart; he'd spent entirely too much time there, at the graves of his grandparents, or his mother, or Charles and Alice, to feel anything but a dull ache, a pang of emptiness as he passed amongst the headstones. But he could understand their panic, left alone with a pile of mouldering bones and their own runaway imaginations.
He recalled feeling it himself once upon a time, when his mother had been alive and that gypsy woman had come to call at the oddest hours. The séance room had been off-limits, but curious six-year-old boys often found a way when they had a mind to disobey, and he'd wandered in once when she'd been by herself. He could recall it in flashes—the pungent smell of garlic mingled with incense, the woman's wild graying hair undulating about her face, hands fluttering over a crystal orb while muttering strange words—the only one he'd understood had been "baron." There had been an eerily realistic wooden doll, maybe two feet tall, seated in a chair at her side, that at the time he was certain was looking directly at him.
Foolishness, he told himself, just as his father had told him on the morning of his mother's funeral, when the gypsy woman—Leota, he recalled—had been dragged forcibly from the house in front of a gaggle of horrified mourners, screaming all the while about a curse upon those who bore the Gracey name. Foolishness, his father had said, ordering Ramsley to never allow the woman within a mile of the Manor again, and to have the séance room sealed off permanently the following day.
He shivered, despite the humid Louisiana air. Why now did that inspire uneasy prickles at the back of his neck, when he'd pushed it from his mind all these years? Surely the afternoon's reading hadn't helped matters any. Briefly, an image flashed before his mind of Gracey Manor, darkened by overgrowth and decay, suddenly buckling under its own weight, collapsing into a landslide of wrought iron and marble…with him still inside…
"Edward. Edward!"
His head snapped up to attention. Asa was staring at him, as was Prudence, Ezra's moon-faced daughter, in that peculiar blank way of hers that gave the impression no one was home behind the milky gray eyes. It took a moment for him to register that the cart beneath them had ceased its hypnotic swaying, and another moment for his face to register the appropriate level of embarrassment.
"You kids plan on getting out anytime soon?" Ezra cast them a backwards glance. One of the horses, Widowmaker, stomped and whinned impatiently.
"C'mon, wake up," snorted Phineas, a stablehand who had three years and easily a hundred pounds on Edward, as he unceremoniously grabbed him by the lapel and tossed him out of the cart. Phineas had no bones about mishandling the young lord of the manor, figuring that Edward would be too afraid of further physical retribution if he told. Phineas was, for the most part, correct in this assessment.
"Where've you been?" whispered Asa, offering him a hand up. "Look, quit worrying about it. Let's go get the tickets." He gestured toward a red ticket wagon with the words Elias Bros. Circus arcing over the window in graceful gold letters. A sea of sagging striped tents rose out of the marshy earth behind it.
Edward nodded absently, brushing dead grass from his sleeve as he followed Asa, while Prudence lingered behind. He needed the distraction, for neither the sun nor the sweltering humidity outside could quell the chill that had so suddenly seized his bones.