Chapter Eight #3
“It’s only, I wonder . . . how slow will it be?” the princess continued softly, disarming my temper and Foxcourt’s dark mood in an instant. The severity of the earl’s stance eased, and something like concern stole into his expression.
“You can tell me the truth, Miss Lockwood. I assure you, I can handle the knowing of it.” A small, pained smile touched Eleanor’s
lips. “I am quite adept at receiving bad news, you see.”
I hesitated then, not because I didn’t believe her, but because I did. She had lost both of her parents before her fifth birthday,
had seen the late Queen—by all accounts a second mother to her—stolen by her tenth.
I had grown up in the gutters of Riverside, and she had flourished like a hothouse flower within the glittering halls of this
palace, but I saw myself in her then. The way she had set her shoulders back, her hands gripping each other as if she might
have a hope of bracing herself. I saw the girl I had been at sixteen, asked to face a terrible truth, to accept and endure
it with a stoicism that had aged me far beyond my years. Her courage broke my heart.
“I believe it may be similar to one known to the Rosebournes as the Gravekeeper,” I said into the silence. “The darkened fingernails
are the most telling side effect. And if I’m correct—if they are similar—and it’s already been five days since the poisoning, there is only a week left before he is beyond saving.”
I had anticipated the silence that followed. The salty kiss of desperation. Leathery shock. Even the wintry brush of despair.
Vernon’s distress was so palpable, it was as if another soul were in the room with us, writhing in the throes of horror.
“But,” I added quickly, “the King’s Blend may give us more time. It’s difficult to tell.”
Certainly the last person who’d suffered the poison had been far worse at this point; the King seemed almost in decent health
by comparison.
But as Eleanor turned her huge eyes toward Foxcourt, it was none of those emotions that played out across her face or layered
into her essence.
It was fear.
“It will be all right,” Foxcourt told her, with a gentleness I would never have thought him capable of. “That is more than
enough time.”
“But—” Eleanor choked out, silenced by the clatter of horse hooves and rattling carriage wheels in the courtyard beyond the
window.
“Who could it be at this hour?” Vernon asked.
Foxcourt was at the curtains at once, edging the tasseled fringe back just enough to glimpse the new arrival. He swore under
his breath.
“My lord!” Vernon chastised. “There are ladies present.”
“Not for long,” Foxcourt said, coming around to my side. Before I could lodge a protest, he had my arm in hand, and I was
rising from the couch. The heat of his body radiated against mine as he drew me toward him.
“Wait here with Vernon until you hear the carriage depart,” Foxcourt said gently to Eleanor. “Lock the door behind us.”
She nodded, her fingers curling like claws against the velvet settee. It was enough to put me on guard, even before her pleasant
essence was tainted with the scent of mulled wine.
Hatred. No—loathing.
Before I could ask why, Foxcourt had dragged me to the entrance. I cast one last bewildered glance back at a shocked Vernon,
who dutifully shut the door behind us.
“What the bloody hell—?” I began.
Foxcourt hushed me, continuing our purposeful stride through the darkened servants’ corridor at a near run. My narrow skirt
strained against my legs, but he didn’t relent, not for a moment. We made a left, heading the opposite way we’d gone to see
the King.
His expression stilled my tongue—the tension there he couldn’t disguise. The steadiness of his grip, his unerring focus, was
enough to tell me that we were fleeing not for his sake but for mine.
My pulse rose as the tinge of a new scent sharpened from possibility into reality behind us. I craned my head around, searching
for its source.
A tall man, dressed resplendently in a powder-blue striped silk waistcoat and matching tailcoat, appeared at the juncture
of the two halls, humming softly to himself as he turned to head in the opposite direction, either to retrace our path to
see the King or to head deeper into the palace.
Despite the growing dark gulf of distance between us, the man’s smug essence flooded the corridor: cold crystal, raw silk,
the pipe smoke of a gentleman’s club, and leather that suggested a whip rather than reins. I couldn’t decide if the sharp
bite of bergamot was an expensive perfume or merely his unyielding confidence, but, in truth, I didn’t want to linger to find
out.
In that sliver of a moment, just before I turned around, our gazes clashed. His top lip curled disapprovingly, as if disgusted I had dared to appear in his presence.
There was something unsettlingly lionlike about his face, the way his long nose balanced the sharply defined bow of his lips.
His blond brows were a shade darker than his hair and sat flat across eyes that were small but a bright shade of turquoise.
As that mesmerizing gaze flicked away, I had the unnerving feeling of having been summarily devoured and my bones spat back
up.
“Who was that?” I gasped.
Foxcourt’s face was shadowed. “God willing, you’ll never find out.”