Chapter Seventeen

Two weeks surpassed us, but Narcissa and I scarcely had a moment alone except for small whispers passing one another in the corridor or on the stairs. Our parents worked as centurions, guarding every precious bit of spare time we had. I suspected this sudden turn of events; both our mothers were quite aware we spent copious amounts of time alone prior to now, so the shift was either done at the behest of one of our fathers or their visit to the village, and the privacy of conspiracy it afforded them, had led them to an ulterior motive.

After dinner on Thursday evening, I rose to my feet to retreat to the main room with the rest of our party, but my father silently laid his palm against my shoulder and shook his head. Mr. Black remained behind as well. I glanced toward the door at my mother, wishing to discern the meaning behind the gesture, but her arm was wrapped around Mrs. Black's, her back to me. I met the eyes of Narcissa, who shot a furtive glance at her father and dawdled at the doorway.

"Run along, Cissy," Mr. Black intoned, his voice echoing across the room in a deep baritone.

Her lips set in a firm, irritated line, she lifted her skirts and quit the room. I could tell she was stomping as she made her way to the parlour to take her place with the rest of the women, when she should like very much to have stayed with the gentlemen.

"We've a mind to sit outside and smoke," my father directed, gesturing toward the door, "I thought you might join us."

My throat was dry and my hands were clammy with nerves. I nodded consent, tasting the tart and slightly acrid taste of cherry wine on my tongue from dinner. I hoped I had not drunk so much to make a fool of myself, but I walked, albeit somewhat stiffly, across the dining room to the foyer. I opened the door for my father and Mr. Black and stepped out into the clear moonlit summer night.

We arranged ourselves at the chairs on the front porch facing the long slope of forest toward the lake. Mr. Black chose the chair in the far-left corner and my father was opposite of him, leaving me to a long bench pressed up against the house. The first time my father invited me into his study, full of men and swirls of hickory wood smoking in the fire and tobacco smoke, I had become so overwhelmed I left the room overheated and flushed. I remembered I escaped to my room, ripping at the cravat at my neck, feeling humiliated despite my saying or doing very little. These men had a way of making me feel small with and without meaning to. My father was a foreboding figure unless he was tackling the design of the drapery in the foyer with my mother—in fact, in most instances with my mother at his side, he was softened considerably. But amongst men such as Mr. Black, he was a shark circling prey for weakness.

Mr. Black chose a black pipe that was old, but must have been an heirloom, as it was of finery I knew he could not afford any longer and he had clearly cared for it in such a way that it was of importance to him. I wondered if he spent his entire life watching his father or grandfather smoking from it. Then, of course, I had to question whether he felt small standing in the shadows of these grand men, as I did now, shrunken straight to childhood with a simple look.

"These women are driving me mad with all these activities," Mr. Black complained, lighting the pipe with the tip of his wand, "Drue said there would be very little hiking to be had should my knee begin flaring up again, and yet there she was just last evening insisting we go on the picnic yesterday up to the falls…"

My father chuckled lightly and wordlessly, passed me one of the cigars from his silver case, which I had always seen on the edge of his desk.

"Ophelia was worried you would think we were not gracious enough hosts," he said, "She wanted to make Druella feel as welcome as any other guest we might host."

Mr. Black hemmed deep in his throat and exhaled a large plume of smoke. "Perhaps a very necessary gesture, you know how she gets on about being a social pariah—not being invited to this ball or that literary club. Ha! I've missed the company, but the chess game of social politics, eh, it's quite nice to be rid of most of the noise."

Cygnus Black being a judge, and therefore a highly important and influential figure in our community, I had no doubts that he waded through a great deal of delicate political matters. My father smiled and nodded. Before he could respond, the front door opened. Narcissa appeared in the thin slant of light holding a tray full of glass whisky decanters and four glasses.

"I thought you might like refreshments, gentlemen," she announced, flashing my father a bright smile.

I heard her father sigh. "Yes, yes, girl, put it down and go back inside. This is no business of yours."

But she procrastinated further by placing the tray onto the table in between both men and slowing pouring each three fingers of the brown lurid liquid, and with a sweet smile, she poured a glass for me and handed it to me. Her eyes trained on mine, narrowed and menacing, and then her fingers brushed against mine and she slipped away from us and went back inside obediently. I understood the message: I was to relay this conversation to her as soon as I could.

"Always meddling," Mr. Black remarked, and after a momentary pause, he chortled into his glass. "She gets that from her mother."

My father crossed one leg over the other while looking at me. Narcissa's appearance alerted my quiet ghosting on the edge of the conversation, having made a good conscious effort to blend behind the conversation as well as I could.

"My wife and son have always shared a special bond," he remarked, swirling the whisky glass in his hand, "Haven't you, Lucius? You have her hair. Her face. But you've my eyes, my hands and frame. I have always wondered…how much of me do you perceive in yourself?"

When I thought of my father, I considered the sharpness which he spoke. The impatience he had with servants or myself. The quick snap of his fingers to hurry the nervous pattering of my mind along when I did not answer him quickly enough. The languid nature of his icy drawl, both silencing and infuriating me across the dinner table. But other than his actions toward me, my father was a perfect stranger. I had no notions of what his ethics were or what he valued. I knew he inserted himself into the household duties traditionally belonging to a wife, but I had very little sense of him. He was a man behind a shut door, the cracks of light visible in the corridor long after everyone should have gone to sleep.

"I am not certain, sir," I remarked, and then my mind flittered back to a moment in his study, my fingers outstretched toward a battered copy of The Great Gatsby.

"Are you not drinking, young man?" Mr. Black interrupted, coughing from the spice of the whisky.

"It's a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people," I retorted, the quote coming out of me before I meant it, dripping off my tongue like ochre.

The quote was, of course, from The Great Gatsby. My father was well-practiced in retaining his emotions just beneath the surface, but he took a long, speculative drag from his cigar and tapped his fingers against his glass.

"Perhaps more like me than I would have thought," he mused.

"Aye, your father is a lightweight," Mr. Black responded with a low, teasing grumble, not understanding the deeper meaning, "Never could stand his whisky. He prefers his flowery French wine."

"To French wine," my father said, lifting his glass to his friend, "And to French women, and to the stars."

I lifted my glass silently and took a small sip. Mr. Black drained his glass and turned to the decanter to reapply the glass. My father seemed amused, rather than alarmed, by this action. Thus far, I had not seen him indulge so heartily. I wondered if he was in pain, from the knee he had complained about earlier.

Once settled, Mr. Black began, "I can pinpoint precisely what features my daughters inherited from me. Of course, most of these are wasted attributes as none of them thought it prudent to be born boys. My eldest two have very little good sense, as you've known, Abraxas, but Cissy is different. A solid mind."

"The mind of a logician," my father agreed, "Just the other morning, she challenged me to several riddles of her own design. I never could solve them."

"That she does," Mr. Black agreed, "And Bellatrix's mind is a steel trap, sprung open and waiting for prey. She's a tongue and a wand for sparring foes."

Yes, of course her mind was a steel trap, I thought blithely, she murdered Mr. Selwyn or was at least an accomplice to it.

"Andromeda?" my father poised the question curiously, but quiet enough Mr. Black could have pretended not to hear him if he wished.

"She inherited my utter lack of social grace," he replied, with a wide, Cheshire-cat grin.

"And which inherited your pointed sense of humour?" my father remarked, laughing haughtily.

"Aye, the youngest," he said, "Though all three have a flair for dramatics, that would be Drue's mother in them."

It never occurred to me that fathers discussed their children. I suspected there were far too many important things for them to consider or do.

"Lucius acquired many of the affinities my wife possesses," my father admitted, pursing his lips, "Oh, he's so much like her. A natural botanist and gifted with languages."

Ordinarily, it annoyed me that my father spoke about me like I was not in the room, but the conversation transfixed me so much I could not issue complaint. I watched him settle his legs flat to ash the cigar into the glass tray next to his whisky glass, which he had scarcely touched, and as soon as he was settled again, his right knee went over his left, and he idly swung his leg.

"Of course," he said slowly, "I believe the rebellious streak I sense in him is mine."

"Rebellious," Mr. Black barked, "The things you got up to at Hogwarts, Abraxas, should have been criminal."

He launched into a story about my father in his sixth year. He was a Prefect and a favourite student of the potions master and Head of Slytherin, which naturally allowed him the privilege of an insurmountable amount of mischief. He found a bit of magic in the restricted section that allowed him to transfix the common room upside down. He transfigured the Gryffindor Quidditch team into hairless cats, which took three weeks to undo, so that by the end of the year, Slytherin won both cups for the year. No one suspected him of these incidents, because he was practically a role model for good behaviour.

"And do not fret, young Lucius," Mr. Black concluded, "He was quite popular with the lasses as well."

"Ophelia had no qualms on our wedding night," my father quipped.

I shifted my leg over my knee uncomfortably and ashed out my cigar. This was uncharted territory. I knew nothing of my father's life and having a window into it was unnerving. It was not the banter, sexual natures about my mother or not, it was that there was another person who did not live in the same house, share his name or his eyes, knew him better than me. I would never know him as Mr. Black did.

"I believe that is what you and Lucius share," Mr. Black surmised, "I've never seen Lucius without an entourage of mostly women at parties, though perhaps for different reasons?"

My cheeks flushed red in the dark. Mr. Black was suggesting that, rather than attaching myself to women as conquests, I preferred the company of women because I was like them, that I perhaps would be inclined toward a husband than a wife. Such conditions were not expressly tolerated in our society. Men of course could not marry other men, as the match would not result in offspring to further the line, but I knew of several men in my generation who took other men as their lovers. It was easy to discern when one woke up in a dorm room to hear or see the sounds from a few beds down. While I had little issue with such matters, it was not simple to navigate in society. Especially, I thought idly, when sitting across from a man who, even ruined, wielded more power than I would have in a lifetime.

"I doubt it," my father cut through my thoughts dryly, "Lucius, do end these petty rumours Cygnus is entertaining. You've an appetite for women?"

"Yes," I replied curtly.

Mr. Black swung his arm wide open, nearly dropping his whisky glass into my father's lap. "I never said he couldn't! But he's always trailing behind one of the women in the house, carrying their blankets and trinkets, helping them set the table. Women's work. Even you have to admit it is suspicious."

"Not suspicious," my father said coolly, "Just polite. And it's the mark of a strategist—ah, what better way to a woman's heart than through kindness? If you understand women and the nature of their work, would it not be beneficial?"

Mr. Black huffed. "This again. Separation and distance in a marriage is key to success. I worry very little about my wife's little social meetings, which are meant for nothing more than a gathering of hens to gossip about as they sew or read things only they find value in. My wife does her job and I do mine. We raised three daughters together and we did a fine job with one of them!"

I stifled a laugh by turning my cheek away and pretending to cough.

"Marriage is like a courtroom," Mr. Black declared, sloshing whisky onto the front of his robes, "If I spent all my hours in great intimacy in the goings-on of my wife and understood her, I could not make impartial judgment. When she is coddling the children too much, who can be there to correct such behaviour? Who could make decisions for her without being separated from the situation? I want facts and investigation, not feelings."

I knew from conversations with Narcissa that he was spewing nonsense. She ascertained him being a devoted and informed father, one who took a deep interest in his children and nurtured them. That he trusted his daughter to be at Mr. Selwyn's house was proof enough he went beyond the role of impartial judge with his daughters. Narcissa was like him. No less, I knew she must revere him to some degree, with her hovering at the light on the edges of the room like a moth, wishing she was welcome to join him.

But this was the sort of conversation I knew two very old friends could not broach in my presence, because of course, it was more important to impart the wisdom that would make me acceptable in society rather a pariah. Mr. Black and my father presented opposite spectrums of an argument, assuming I would fall somewhere in an acceptable middle. But I knew that this too was something my father and I shared.

"It is growing late," my father finally announced, one hand raised to place his glass on the table.

It was a slight of trick hand movement I noticed. His right placed the glass onto the table, and his left held his wand and vanished the whisky from the decanter, obscured beneath his sleeves.

"You should finish the last dredges and turn in to our wives before they venture out here in full concern," he added.

Of course, Mr. Black found the decanter to be empty and had little to protest but to agree to my father's terms to turn inside. Mr. Black rose up, stumbling a bit, but he was a large man capable of holding his liquor, and once righted he found it easy to walk. I swept up behind him. I felt my father's cool palm against my shoulder again, but instead of holding me back, he left it there as we went through the door.

Mr. Black bellowed out greetings to the women in the parlour and walked to the parlour.

"Your mother is pressuring me to convince Cygnus to allow his family to rejoin society," my father murmured low, pretending to smooth the front of my clothing against my shoulders and chest, "And I understand you have a close relationship with his daughter."

"I—yes," I replied hastily, my eyes narrowed in distrust.

He briefly touched his chin, looking down the hall toward the open parlour door. We could not linger long.

"How close?" he asked.

I froze instinctively, feeling the rigidness of my jaw and fingers. My father caught this pause and my expression and chuckled. His pale, thin hand went down roughly at my chest as he clapped me.

"You are mine then, where it counts," he remarked.

I interrupted him tersely, "You will not use me for whatever political or business scheme you may have."

He laughed at me again as if I could not be further from the truth. "I've no scheme but to please your mother," he admitted.

He placed his hand on the back of my neck and pulled me into him, laughing, as we stepped into the parlour. The grimace on my face told anyone that only my father was amused by whatever transpired behind us, but even I was unsure of which of my many secrets I had revealed to him that night.

I stood by the fireplace, leaning against the mantle with my arms crossed, worrying over my father and barely speaking. The Blacks and my parents scarcely noticed but my mother, who shot several concerned glances my way but could say nothing amid an enthralling game of whist. Narcissa sat toward the back of the room at a desk writing a letter by the candlelight with her back to mine, which I thought might have been pointed.

"Lucius," my father called, "Open the window a bit on the south end, it's grown too warm from the hearth."

Reluctantly, I lifted myself from the wall and sidled across the room. The window he requested was positioned by Narcissa, who did not look up from her scribbling as I approached. The window had a lever which could be turned and opened at an angle, but it was secured thus between desk and a bookcase, so I had to squeeze between them, leaving me narrowly close to Narcissa.

I had lingered too long. The window was open and so I turned away, taking another opportunity to inspect the volumes of books in the stacks.

"Meet me in the woods," she said, "At midnight. By the willow."

My father was watching me as I moved back across the room. Above the heads of our guests, he looked at Narcissa for a long moment and back at me. Brazenly, he winked at me, as if this was his intention all along. I had often felt my father was several paces ahead of everyone and perhaps this was just one more instance of that. Had he cleverly understood Narcissa's persistent curiosity? It might have been easy to conclude she possessed it. Yet I had the feeling my father had other, better plans than simply allowing Narcissa and I chance moments alone with one another.

The crunch of pines and the quiet of the woods increased my anxiety over the situation. By luck or design, I met no obstacles as I snuck out of the house a quarter to midnight and no doubt Narcissa found little resistance if she had gone before me. My father, who was usually up late into the night, was asleep in his bed before eleven and promptly turned in with my mother, something I do not believe he had done since I was a child.

A crescent moon was visible above the murky silver pools of light between the leaves, shrouding everything in shadows. Seeking the ledge first where I found her, I used this to trace the steps it took to find the willow. I found it after ten or so minutes and swept the branches to the side to see if Narcissa was hiding beneath its canopy, but she had not yet arrived. I twisted around, my eyes darting in every direction of the darkness. I shivered in the cool night beneath the thin jacket I wore; I lost my cloak in the woods somewhere the last time I was here.

Footsteps and a glimmer of candle light began in front of me. Narcissa swung into view as she came up the small hill toward me and walked expertly on the path to the willow, as if she had memorized the path. I noticed at once she was wearing a white dressing gown and her silver Moonflower cloak. She was ghostly in the shadows, a searing brightness against the impending shadows.

She closed the distance between us quickly and stopped some seven or eight feet from me. I could see her chest heaving and her fingers trembling as she held the delicate candle holder.

"Narcissa?" I asked.

She blew on the candle and it transfigured into a shatter of light, thousands of tiny candles blinking through the dark forest around us. It illuminated everything around us, casting dancing figures along the knotted tree trunks in the copse of trees. The moon showed above us, the clouds breaking serenely.

"I'm impulsive," she announced, "And I am ambitious and vengeful, should need arise, and as you might have guessed. I can be dangerous and selfish. And our friendship offers you nothing, but takes a great deal."

I swallowed hard, my eyes dancing from candle to candle in frantic steps, almost panicked. They looked like stars, I realized. As if she had pulled them from the night sky herself.

"I cannot hold this inside of me anymore," Narcissa said, dropping her arms to her side, "I have loved you so much my chest hurts from the ache of it. I'm driven mad by dreams of you and I together. I thought, when we were here last, I could take you inside of myself and accept that nothing would come of it, that it was all I was destined for and certainly more than I deserved."

In the small section of pause she needed to take a breath, I interjected with, "Narcissa, you were forgiven a very long time ago."

"I love you, Lucius," she said, shakily, taking tentative steps toward me. I gestured for her to come as close she wished. "And so, I want to know, if after everything you have seen and gone through with me, if you will marry me."

"Yes," I whispered, "Stubborn woman, yes."

I enveloped her in my arms, my hands cupping her jawline. Our lips met in a tangle of fire and our bodies slipped beneath the willow tree.