The Unraveling, Volume One of The Luminated Threads: A Steampunk Fantasy Romance (22 page)

At this, Annmar threw her arms around Mary Clare. “Just as I hoped. Someone who knows about Knacks and what to try.”

“Ah, don’t squeeze so hard.” But Mary Clare laughed. “Come along now and maybe we’ll have time today.”

Walking to the end of the drive, Annmar ran her fingers over the coins in her waistband and recounted those in her satchel. Her prospects of staying looked better after speaking with Mistress Gere. She had to have these answers before she left. “Would it cost much to buy a pair of trousers?”

Mary Clare grinned. “Now you’re talking. Not much for a bib-and-brace. You’ve never worn trousers?” Annmar shook her head. “Then we have an additional stop, but luckily the shops are close.”

Annmar grinned back and matched Mary Clare’s increasing pace to the houses at the edge of Chapel Hollow. Shopping certainly wouldn’t take long in a town this small. The business district consisted of four crossing streets of double-story buildings with shops below and the owners’ residences above. It had no industrial district to speak of. No tram. No mechanized carts. Even carriages were rare. Instead, traffic took the form of wagons going to and fro, like the one the conductor had secured for her at the livery stable that pastured its horses out back.

A pasture, in the center of town. Annmar still couldn’t believe it, or the fenced yards containing chickens, though walking beneath the canopy of yellowing elm trees was pleasant. “How many residents are in Chapel Hollow?” she asked Mary Clare.

“Nine hundred.”

“So few?” Annmar said before thinking.

“The town serves the entire Farmlands shire. It’s large by Basin standards and carries anything a Basin resident desires. No need to go Outside,” Mary Clare said defensively. “You’ll see. We’re headed to Miss Lacey’s first.” She pointed to a crisp white shop with bay windows. They held displays of clothing, but as Annmar stepped closer, she saw other items between the fancy gowns and stopped.

Face heating, she backed from the front steps of Miss Lacey’s shop and its display of lady’s unmentionables—lace-edged, silky and colorful
—very
unmentionable, even to another girl. “I-I said trousers.”

“We’re here for what’s worn underneath. Davies’ sells the trousers and boots.”

“I don’t need undergarments,” she hissed at Mary Clare. “Especially not those.” A working-class girl didn’t wear silk embellished with lace. And the colors? “Oh, my Lord, what would Mother say?” she muttered, and at Mary Clare’s laugh, added, “What does
your
mother say?”

“
My
mother is the one who brought each of us here. The three oldest of us, that is. Mary Delia is hopeful each day that her monthlies will begin and she will be treated to a shopping excursion for real women’s wear.” Mary Clare’s green eyes sparkled in amusement. “Besides, your mother has passed on. You’re free to wear whatever you wish.”

“This is not funny. I never saw a display such as this in Derby, and I’m not about to shop among these wares in Chapel Hollow.” She turned on her heel and marched off.

Mary Clare dashed after her and planted herself in the way. “Problem is, Chapel Hollow has only two shops for ready-to-wear clothing. Davies’ Farm Trade and Miss Lacey’s. She sews plain undergarments, if that’s what you want. She just displays her fanciest wares in the window for all of us to drool over. It’s a business practice, just like the shop name. Ma grew up with Helen Birchwood, and when she took over the shop, she renamed it Miss Lacey’s, and everyone calls her that.”

Annmar pressed her lips together in her hot, hot face and resisted the urge to wipe her brow. “I have plenty of petticoats.”

“And ladies’ knickers?”

Heavens. Where was this going? She didn’t trust herself to ask, so shook her head.

“What do you wear under your skirt?”

Annmar averted her gaze, but it didn’t help. Her face heated again. She whispered, “Layers of petticoats. Drawers. That’s the norm in Derby.”

“The norm here is knickers.” Mary Clare petted her arm in the consoling manner one would use with a child. “In colder weather, flannel knickers under split skirts, trousers or bib-and-brace trousers. We are forward-thinking in our feminine outfitting, and it’d be good for you to adopt the Basin styles.”

Annmar stared into her earnest green eyes. Mary Clare had done it again. She obviously knew Annmar’s feelings and her fears.

“You wanted something to wear in the fields, but also Market Day is tomorrow. If you show up in your prim Derby clothes, you’ll stand out like a cow in the pigpen. You don’t want people to take notice of you, right?”

Exactly the right examples and excuses. There was nothing to argue about. At that thought, the tension melted from her shoulders and Annmar drew a settling breath.

Mary Clare lifted a brow. “So we go into Miss Lacey’s?”

With a curt nod, she allowed Mary Clare to steer her back to the shop. “You are one pushy friend, Mary Clare.”

She sighed. “That’s what Rivley keeps telling me.” She mounted the steps and grasped the door latch.

“Does he also know about your Knack of reading others’ feelings?”

She flinched like the metal had stung her and whirled around, eyes wide and searching. “I-I didn’t think…”

“That I’d be able to tell?”

She blushed. “You’re from Outside.”

“You know too much about me, what I’m feeling, what will comfort me. Does anyone else know?”

She shook her head. “I’m more careful around them. Only Rivley started to figure it out, and I felt I had to confide in him once we’d had sex more than a few times.”

It was Annmar’s turn to blush and stare.

“Why are you going all bug-eyed at me…
ohhh
. You didn’t realize Rivley and I had—”

“I thought…I guessed, but…oh,
shh
.” Annmar put her hand to Mary Clare’s mouth. “We’re on the street, for heaven’s sake.”

Mary Clare snatched the hand away and drew Annmar close. “We’re on the street in Chapel Hollow,
for land’s sake
. There’s not a person within a hundred feet of us, and anyone that might be already knows I’ve had sex with some—”

“
Shh!
”

“—one. Great Creator, I’m eighteen, been on
Regulatia
for three years and bedded a variety of Basin male species. Enough to know my way around… Hold on a second here. Are you saying…have you not—”

Annmar wrenched her hand free and thrust it over Mary Clare’s mouth again. “Not here. Let’s just go inside and shop for undergarments.”

Mary Clare eyed her and nodded. Annmar slowly lowered her hand. Mary Clare grinned at her. “You’ve got some push in you as well, Annmar. You’ll do fine in the Basin.”

“Lord, help me.”

Mary Clare shook her head. “I don’t know about your Lord helping you, but I sure will. You’ve got a lot of learning ahead of you to fit in here, being a vir—”

“Don’t say it.” Annmar’s fingers darted to their now familiar place over Mary Clare’s lips. “Don’t tell another soul.”

Mary Clare puffed out her breath at the digits. “Don’t have to. Boys figure these things out faster than girls. At least the kind of boys we have. Mammals have that keen sense of smell. Someone like Daeryn—”

Annmar groaned and put a hand over her eyes.

“—probably knew from the moment he met you. Don’t fret so.” Mary Clare hugged her around the shoulders. “He likes you and you have helped him. He won’t tell.”

“Daeryn isn’t the mammal I’m worried about. Jac is.”

“Right. She does take some standing up to. Plus, her cousin Maraquin likes Daeryn, though the relationship never seems to go anywhere.”

It didn’t? She wouldn’t be the one to tell Mary Clare she’d seen them together. In bed.

“Ignoring them works fine. If it comes to it, then you’ll put on your big-girl knickers, or as the boys say, grow some bollocks for the job.” Annmar gasped, and Mary Clare grinned. “Some barn talk for you to practice. Just don’t let Mrs. Betsy hear it. Come on.” Mary Clare dragged her into the shop, and Annmar was sure her face was as red as the fancy corset in the window.

chapter twenty-four

At least no
other customers waited in Miss Lacey’s shop. Fine, Annmar would select a pair of ladies’ knickers and they’d leave. If she could find a plain one among the colorful materials of ready-to-wear items filling the shelves.

“Good morning,” sang out a woman, her sweet, bubbly voice followed a moment later by the middle-aged woman herself, cutting quite a figure in her formfitting blue day suit.

My clothes are no more prim than this,
Annmar wanted to whisper and elbow Mary Clare. But she didn’t, because the unusual fabric shimmered as the dressmaker strolled across the carpet. Satin, a shiny material neither colored pencils nor watercolors could capture. Oils, though messy, would be best.

“Good morning, Miss Lacey,” Mary Clare said. “May I introduce Wellspring’s new employee, Annmar Masterson?”

The shopkeeper’s hand felt cool and smooth in Annmar’s, then a ripple passed over the woman’s skin, shifting the color from pinkish to pale lavender and back again.

Annmar blinked. A play of subtle color and movement coursed over the woman’s face, neck and hands.
Am I the only one seeing this?
Mary Clare didn’t act surprised. Until she could ask, Annmar forced her gaze to the shelves of unmentionables, now a lesser danger.

At her side, Mary Clare said, “Annmar needs the appropriate undergarments before we head to Davies’ to outfit her with trousers and boots for work on a farm.”

Miss Lacey nodded and stood back to appraise Annmar head to toe. Loose strands from her elegant upswept sand-colored hair fluttered, though there was no breeze. “Ladies’ knickers and camisoles, one light and several heavier for winter, and wool stockings to wear with boots,” she said.

“Exactly,” Mary Clare said.

Annmar shook herself back to the conversation. “Only the knickers. And stockings.”

Miss Lacey looked from one to the other and smiled. A brighter light flickered across her. “I’ll take some measurements and bring a selection of garments.” She ushered them to the changing room and indicated one of the screens partitioning off sections of the room. “Just down to your corset and under petticoat for now, dear. That’s a close enough measure that I can select something to fit before you finish undressing.”

Annmar removed her outer garments and smoothed her middle, her fingers sliding to her stays. Her corset was confining, but kept her posture when seated on the backless drafting stools. Most important, it maintained her modesty. She’d try the camisole, but it’d be real cheek to think of going out in it. She stood for the measurements.

After the dressmaker left, Mary Clare called from her seat on the other side of the screen, “I’ve always wanted to try a corset.”

“You’ve never worn one?” Annmar expelled her breath and unfastened the first of the long line of hooks down the front of her corset, something she could do in the dark.

“Ma is dead set against them. She thinks they’ll ruin your rib cage. But I should have one when I go Outside to visit my sister. Would it be too forward of me to ask to try yours sometime?”

“Don’t you even think of it.” Miss Lacey breezed in with an armful of clothing. “You are an entirely different shape than this girl.”

Annmar peered around the screen. “You do have to be measured to secure the proper fit.”

“A service I can certainly provide,” Miss Lacey said, “as well as construct the correct corset for your nice bosom.”

Mary Clare jumped up. “Now? I have some savings and can add tomorrow’s pay. I must have one before Mary Alice’s letter arrives saying I can visit.”

Miss Lacey named a price, and Mary Clare scooted over to another screen, throwing a grin to Annmar. The dressmaker passed Annmar the clothing. “Try these, dear, so I can check the fit.” Her face flickered from lilac to greenish-blue.

Miss Lacey left. Annmar leaned toward Mary Clare and whispered, “Is it just me, or do you also see something different about her complexion?”

Mary Clare giggled, then covered her mouth. “After years of coming here, Mary Ellen, my thirteen-year-old sister who acts twenty, asked and got the whole story. Miss Lacey has a water Knack from both of her parents. They’re from some little stream in the mountains where the trees overhang the water and it runs in bubbly ripples over the rocks. Shopping is double fun watching her brighten and flip through her colors.”

“I’m so relieved. I’ve seen”—she couldn’t bring up the feathers again—“Jac’s wolf teeth, Daeryn’s face growing dark.”

“’Cambires do that when their instincts are up, some more than others. That’s just bits of their Knacks showing through.”

Miss Lacey returned, her cheeks the green-blue now, and measured Mary Clare.

Annmar slipped into the strangely cozy knickers and buttoned the camisole. The sleeveless blouse fit as tight as a corset. “I think I need a larger top.”

Miss Lacey tilted her head. “The new style, my dear. I’d hazard a guess you haven’t shopped in a few years. Undergarments are only copying what goes over top. Everything is fitted. See?” She smoothed her hands along her sides to where the snug suit top met her skirt. “You want a flattering fit.” She mimicked the outline of Annmar’s slight curves in the air.

Flattering? The cloth hugged her like a glove and showed everything. Everything she didn’t have. Daeryn, er, no suitor would look twice once he compared this figure to the well-rounded Jac or Maraquin. She turned to hide the heat of her face. The soft garments were comfortable…and she so wanted to do this right. “I’ll take one set for now and decide.”

When they left, Mary Clare had ordered her corset and Annmar wore her new undergarments
.
She carried a paper-wrapped package containing her old clothes and one with a pair of thick woolen stockings to wear for fitting boots. The first touch of a fall breeze whisking down the street cut right through Annmar’s thinner upper layers with a cooling tingle. “Oh, my—”

“What?”

“Um, it’s chillier without my corset.”

“You won’t feel it once you buy a heavier shirt.”

“It’s strange,” Annmar muttered to Mary Clare. “I feel naked.”

She laughed. “You’re definitely not.”

“I have no shape.”

“You do. Yours. Take Miss Lacey’s advice and buy a fitted blouse. You won’t need it for everyday, but on occasion Basin clients come to Wellspring and Miz Gere may want them to meet you. Not to mention, you may garner some work on the side. You’d want to dress for that.”

Annmar already had proper clothing for selling her work, and despite Mistress Gere’s suggestion her portraits might attract buyers, she’d rather not disclose her ability to draw people until she had proper control of her Knack. To direct Mary Clare’s idea elsewhere, she said, “Country scenes have great appeal to town dwellers, that’s why Mistress Gere is depicting them on labels. Similar drawings would definitely sell in Derby. With my pay from Wellspring, I can open a shop stocked with images I do on my off time here.”

Mary Clare frowned. “They’d sell here, too. You could stay and sell at Market Day.”

Annmar sighed. “Mother and I always planned to open a shop. One amid Derby’s milliners, dressmakers and jewelers, where the wealthy spend their days strolling and picking up little items they fancy. Matrons, who don’t have to worry about the cost of a painting, because their hats cost three times as much. Gentlemen looking to divert their wives from how much they lost at the tables. Young suitors buying a memento for their girls on a whim and then coming back to sit for portraits because they have warm feelings of their courting days. That’s the location I need to be in, with steady visibility and return customers.”

It was Mary Clare’s turn to sigh. “You have it all planned.”

“We…I do.”
And I can’t lose our dream because some beautiful boy who sleeps with a wolf girl makes my innards topsy-turvy.
Even though she wasn’t a girl, really. And neither was he a boy. “Lord, this is confusing.”

“It doesn’t have to be. Ask me.”

Annmar looked at her in surprise.

“You did say that out loud.” Mary Clare smiled hesitantly. “Even though I can feel you’re upset, I don’t know what it’s about. You could be thinking anything. I’ll be happy to help, especially if it makes you consider staying with us. You’re the first human girl, besides my sisters, who I am sick of, to come work at the farm.”

Annmar glanced up and down the quiet street, then pulled Mary Clare behind a large tree. “Are you sure you don’t read minds, because that’s exactly what I don’t understand. The
girl
thing.” Mary Clare laughed, and Annmar shook her head. “Not
that
girl thing. The species one. In England, what you call Outside, we only have people. Of the non-transforming-into-animals variety.”

Mary Clare nodded. “Miz Gere said your mother never told you, so I’m sure this is hard to take in.”

It was, but… “It’s becoming easier. What do you call the animacambires? Rivley told me the wolves are called, uh…” She couldn’t say the word.

Mary Clare shook her head. “I know. That’s ’cambire talk and not for us. I stick with beasts.” She tucked her arm into Annmar’s and started walking toward the center of town. “Really, you needn’t worry about the Basin species. No one will notice if you use girl, boy, female, male. Even for the plantas.” At Annmar’s raised brow, she laughed. “You haven’t been here long enough to tell that many of Wellspring’s growers are plantas.”

Pat, the peach tree, must be a planta. But in her vision, Annmar had seen both together. “Do the plantas change into plants?”

“Not that I’ve ever heard. They have some connection with the plants that lets them know the growing needs. I’ve heard it’s stronger than what the human growers have, which is just a Knack for plants or soils or ripeness, farm things like that. A grower Knack-bearer, like my sister Mary Beth, knows more about the difference.”

Annmar leaned close to whisper, “These species are common throughout the Basin?”

“No one knows for sure. In most parts of Blighted Basin, the species keep to themselves,” Mary Clare said. “My granny says some, like the fungals, died out because they did stay separate and lost their livelihood and lines. You’ve got to have some connection to others to make it, she says, like Market Day. Granny says the market trades have always been part of the old-time Creator worship and held at the stone chapels.”

She pointed to the square stone tower rising above the houses.

“Ours is the original one. It’s the oldest building in Chapel Hollow and Blighted Basin, and every Saturday gathers one of the largest Market Days. People flood in from the countryside. Everyone is civil, and they cooperate so they can trade, like the Creator said they should to live peacefully in this valley.”

That explained the farmworkers saying
Great Creator
, rather than honoring God. Did they even recognize the Church of England here? “What religion was it?”

Mary Clare shrugged. “Old. Like from the land. It doesn’t have a name, and when I say chapel, I mean it in the loosest way. More like a stone pavilion. There are preserved ones and ruins all over the Basin, each a little different, but all made of the same rock, a purplish-blue-and-yellow-striped one. Granny says when people came together, truces formed on those neutral chapel grounds. The faith made people fear being cursed for fighting. But that sure doesn’t stop them on other Basin land.”

“Does that belief in curses have anything to do with the name Blighted Basin? It’s an odd sort of reference to disease and decay, yet this area ships the finest produce in Derbyshire.”

“Because we supposedly have the most fertile soil in all of the Peaks,” Mary Clare said. “Soil is about the only blessing the Creator bestowed on us. Some feel Knacks are a curse. Staying hidden, the competition for resources, the controls the Elders impose on Outside travel and commerce. The rules are restricting, and everyone argues over them.”

Annmar had never thought of the valley’s seclusion this way. Perhaps because she hadn’t spent her life here. “But the rules keep Basin residents safe so they can live freely and use their Knacks.”

“I’m just repeating what I’ve heard.” Mary Clare blew out a breath. “So, apparently the land wasn’t as productive when Granny’s ma was growing up. You’d have to ask her if she remembers talk of blights. When Granny was little, trading grew. They learned from each other, and their farming methods improved. People settled in and built shops, bringing the most congenial of the groups together to provide services and run businesses. Townspeople are open-minded, unlike the rest of the Basin. If you travel into the rural areas, associating with someone from a different group is forbidden.”

“The constable would be called?”

“No, it’s not Basin law.” Mary Clare shook her head. “Just the law of the land. Rural dwellers won’t put up with it. If you’re a planta and you tried courting a beast, the family would come after you. Both families would. You’d start a feud and leave half the beings dead before it was over. Same if either tried courting a human, Knack or no. It’s just not done.”

Annmar’s heart sunk. Being interested in Daeryn, or anyone at the farm, wasn’t possible.

Mary Clare patted her arm. “Are you thinking it’s pointless to court any of the boys you’re meeting?” Annmar nodded. “Don’t. If something serious develops”—she shrugged—“you just can’t live in some shires. The people who mix between species always find a place in a town. Mary Beth hasn’t had a problem with her different beaus, but of course she hasn’t really settled down.”