He was right, of course. Effy drew back, letting out her breath. She pulled the green dress out of the closet and laid it flat on the bed so that it looked like a headless, limbless body.
“Then I suppose we should get ready.”
The dining room was bleary with the light of at least a hundred candles, and glutted with guests. The women moved about, graceful in their candy-colored dresses, taffeta skirts rustling like wind through river rushes. Their hands and forearms were consumed by long white gloves, graceful as the necks of swans. They knit themselves to the men’s sides, their gloved arms curling through their husbands’， which were blocky and stiff with black wool. When they laughed, they put their white hands up decorously to cover their mouths.
Effy had been to fancy parties like this before, with her grandparents, but only as a child in white stockings and patent leather shoes, pouting on couches and picking at the unappealing adult food. She felt equally out of place now, certain that every eye in the room would look at her and see that she was too young, that she did not belong.
Clouds of cigarette smoke ghosted through the air. The buffet table appeared refreshed; the domestics had succeeded in making it appear as if it had not been picked over by two oblivious guests earlier in the day. She looked for Blackmar’s servants now and found them, still and silent, in each of the four corners of the room, like out-of-date family heirlooms you felt guiltily compelled to keep.
She was wearing the green dress. Blackmar’s daughter’s dress. It fit her perfectly, its sweetheart neckline dipping daringly low, cap sleeves tight against her shoulders without digging into her skin. In this light the color was more muted—forest green rather than emerald, like moss and earth and leaves.
She could have been one of the Green Men—not fairies, but something less sentient, more primal—who drifted through the forests of the Bottom Hundred with waterweed braided in their beards.
She could, Effy thought with no small amount of alarm, have been Angharad herself, dressed in the Fairy King’s adornments.
No, she told herself with resolve. The Fairy King would not appear to her in this house. Penrhos was a place anchored firmly in the real world. The Fairy King’s world was lying dormant, like a fallow field. She had not seen him since she’d left Hiraeth, and last night, sleeping beside Preston, she had not even dreamed of him. She had woken up feeling refreshed and safe, for the first time that she could remember. She hadn’t needed the sleeping pills at all.
But the silk dress seemed like such a flimsy layer to put between her body and the world. She sometimes felt like her skin had been rubbed raw; whenever she exposed herself to the air, it stung and ached. And the dress, though lovely, was decades out of date. Surely she would be noticed, sneered at—Effy began to shrink within the crowd, voices running around her like water, her heart rising by increments into her throat.
Preston ducked his head to whisper to her. “Are you all right?”
He was wearing one of Blackmar’s suits, again slightly too short in the arms and legs, but otherwise well fitting. He had forgone a tie, leaving the collar of his shirt open, and Effy was fascinated by the two leaves of white linen that unfolded to bare his throat to her, pulse throbbing in the candlelight.
There she was again: yearning miserably as if she were in some sort of Romance novel, with a capital R. Something Preston would probably also call pedestrian.
“Yes,” she said finally, shaking the thoughts loose. “I’m fine.”
“Good. Then let’s find the man from Greenebough and get out of here.”
Blackmar found them first, shouldering his way through the crowd, occasionally prodding someone rudely with his cane. He looked absurd in his expensive suit. It was as if someone had put a tie and jacket on a rotting pumpkin.
“Euphemia,” he said, grinning widely to show his gold teeth. “Preston. I’m so glad you could join us.”
“Of course,” Effy replied. She raised her voice over the sound of the record player and added, “Thank you for inviting us. We’re sorry about eating your food earlier. Would you please introduce us to Greenebough’s editor in chief?”
She knew she was being a bit rude, but she didn’t care. The grandfather clock in the corner had just ticked past six. They had to leave within the hour or they would never make it back to Hiraeth before midnight.
“In just a moment,” Blackmar said. He looked her up and down, the wrinkled corners of his eyes wrinkling further. “My daughter’s dress suits you well.”