Chapter Thirty #2
it, trying to understand myself and the pull I felt to him.
The man was so bloody maddening—so utterly confounding. He was proud of his arrogance and vindictiveness, but hid or played down his good deeds, as if they spoke to some weakness.
As if an innate bent toward protection and kindness was only another failure.
“You are completely dicked in the nob, Viola Lockwood,” I muttered to myself, pressing a cold hand to my face.
After a while, I gave up on the pretense of sleep and relit the candle at my bedside.
I had brought William Rosebourne’s commonplace book up with me to look through, curious about why he’d gone to the trouble
of leaving it to anyone, but spite had overtaken me and I’d set it aside.
I glanced over at it now, trying to ignore the way the man’s essence clung to its weathered pages. It seemed unlikely to contain any reference to the nectar or Dobbin, but I had to look, even if it meant delving into a hateful man’s thoughts.
We had lost another day; now the King would have three, perhaps four left, if the King’s Blend was still having an ameliorating
effect.
I pushed back the covers and swung my legs around to feel for my slippers. But as I stood and retrieved the book, something
slipped out of it—a loose piece of foolscap. I turned, searching for it on the floor, then under the bed. Strange. I shook
my head, taking the candle, the journal, and my quizzing glass into the sitting area.
“All right,” I murmured, opening it to the first page. It was a hastily scrawled series of notes about daffodils from three
decades ago, musings on how to alter the formulation in the Treasury to better replicate the scent.
An entry from a decade ago recounting a discussion with one Lord F had me arching my brow. DeForest spies—Withers, Falconbridge, Moorings—takeover of business through purchase of shares funded by Gallian crown—acid
at no cost.
I’d no idea that the DeForests had tried to purchase the House of Rosebourne, but it cast their subsequent destruction at
William Rosebourne’s hands in a new light. Acid.
Page after page, I found notes on countless business meetings, abandoned ideas for perfumes, and drawings of elaborate flacons
that had later been put into production. A more recent entry caught my attention, given the familiar name.
Radcliffe Apothecary
Possibility of exclusive scent, bright floral, little musk—draw up contract within fortnight
Gloves, combs, same order
Son has interest in perfumery school
That had to be Oliver. We’d discussed the possibility, and he told me he’d decided against it, feeling self-study was better.
I looked for a date for the meeting, but there was none listed.
Encounter with hostile man—ask Lord F about placement—if man is related to DeForests—extended family Gallian?
I closed the book, letting it rest in my lap. Lord F, who made frequent appearances to request more King’s Blend, could only be the late Earl of Foxcourt. Hugh would find this interesting, wouldn’t he?
Donning my silk wrapper and slippers, I made my way downstairs before better sense could prevail. My braid swung determinedly
behind me, my heart skipping steps along with my feet.
The shadows of the house seemed to urge me on until I found the first hint of the study’s light spilling onto the checkered
marble tile of the entry. An enticing little mystery met me there, a curious perfume: the smell of coffee, fire smoke, old
books, wood, and . . . glue?
I slowed, smoothing a hand back over my hair, waiting for my breathing to settle before padding forward.
I’d expected Hugh to have shut and locked himself away in his prison of tortured solitude, but, to my surprise, he’d left
the door ajar. A tentative invitation, as if not daring to hope.
I drank in the sight of him in the firelight: his hair damp and gleaming in a nearby candle’s light. He wore only an emerald
silk dressing gown over a clean shirt and knee breeches. He might have looked like a gentleman at ease, if not for the deep
furrow of his brow.
He stood behind the room’s imposing desk again, a silver tray with a carafe of coffee to his left and the skeletal beginnings
of what looked to be a large estate house to his right. The latter had been erected solely with wood toothpicks.
Like most of the old doors in the house, the study’s squeaked as I pushed it open. I wondered, absently, if they’d been left
that way intentionally, to warn of anyone coming or going. As if to confirm the theory, Hugh’s gaze flicked up from the desk
to meet mine.
His fingers tightened around the small tweezers in his hand, his throat bobbing as he swallowed.
“So you’re the artist responsible for the palace upstairs,” I said, shutting the door behind me.
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “My first.”
I looked at him, astonished. “That was your first?”
“Well,” he amended, setting the instrument down to pour himself a cup of coffee, “the first I finished and didn’t destroy
in a fit of frustration—an excessively manly fit, of course.”
“Of course,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know how you can stand to do it. It seems more torturous than fun.”
“It gives my hands something to do while I think,” he insisted. “And tonight requires a fair bit of thinking.”
He didn’t need to specify about what. Glenmoor. The missing nectar. Eleanor. The King having only days left. There was a host
of terrors to plague him.
“If you intend to work, I can bring your oils into the study,” he offered, then added a touch awkwardly, “Unless, of course,
you prefer to work in the still room, which I’m sure you do. I can bring in some additional light—”
I held up a hand, quieting him. “There’s little work left to do until we have the nectar.”
He drew a hand back through his hair roughly. “Of course.”
I stepped closer, peering through the study’s relative darkness. “Is that the old temple? The Crown Court?”
He scratched at his jaw and seemed to admit, rather than explain, “Glenmoor Manor. I’m testing my memory . . . it’s been quite
some time since I’ve seen it.”
Since you were a boy, I thought, and you vanished from it.
“No pitying looks or prying questions,” he ordered.
I pretended to lock my mouth and toss away the key, earning a wry look from him.
“There’s nothing sentimental about this,” he insisted. “It’s not as though I miss the old crumbling pile.”
But, of course, it was possible not to miss a place and still be haunted by it. To return to it in dreams and memory, as if
there were a way to change what had happened there. As if it were possible to reclaim the version of yourself you’d been forced
to leave behind.
Hugh gestured toward the second, empty cup on the tray. “Would you like some?”
“No thank you,” I told him. “I’m still hoping to keep sleep as an option for my evening. You might consider doing the same.”
The hint of darkness beneath his eyes concurred.
Hugh waved a dismissive hand, swallowing another fortifying gulp. “I’ll rest when I’m in hell.”
I shook my head, but his words tweaked my heart. “What makes you believe you’re bound for hell?”
He arched an ironic brow. “What, in the entirety of our acquaintance, has made you believe I’m not?”
I began a leisurely perusal of the study’s many bookshelves, only partly absorbing the titles that passed. “I think you’re far kinder than you’d have others believe.”
He made a noise of offense. “Take that back, madam.”
“And,” I added, “contrary to what you believe, I think your conscience rules you more than your logic.”
Hugh scoffed. “Tell that to the Earl of Wincaster.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Another schoolmate?”
“No,” he said, resuming his work on the structure. “Just an enemy I’ve enjoyed cultivating.”
I remembered all at once. “He wrote that rather mean-spirited letter to the editor about Eleanor not being fit for the throne
a year ago.”
“He did indeed.” One side of his mouth curled in a telling smirk. “He should have ensured that he owned all of the land surrounding his estate before he wrote a word of it.”
“You purchased it?” I surmised.
“And sold it,” Hugh said. “As it would happen, his estate in Broadshire sits near the intended path of the new Hilton railway
line that will begin construction in a few years. They were all too eager to take that land off my hands to lay their track
there instead. Fleet House was likewise interested in the land between the coast and his seaside estate for the purpose of
a new lighthouse, which will be just large enough to ruin his much-vaunted view of the Narrow Sea.”
“That is utterly fiendish,” I said. “But you still did it to avenge the good name of a friend.”
“Did I?” he challenged. “Or do I just despise the way the air wheezes from his nose when he breathes in my presence?” Hugh
carefully placed his next toothpick. “The difference between you and me is that you feel sympathy for someone’s plight, but
I see only opportunity.”
He certainly wanted to believe that about himself, but the evidence did not bear out.
“Is that why you found Arabella and ensured she was given safe work?” I asked.
A rare uncertainty settled over his fine features—as though he hadn’t ever expected to find himself caught there, in the glare
of exposure. He rarely was, if I had to guess. And now, as he set his tweezers down once more, he seemed to brace for my reaction
at what he’d done.
What he’d done for me.
“You needn’t make more of it than it is,” he said carefully, after he’d no doubt rehearsed it in his mind. “I was simply . . . attempting to remove a distraction, so you could focus solely on Immortal Rose.”
A rather weak effort from him, that.
I gave him an ironic look of my own. “Yes, and you simply forgot to tell me, I’m sure. That is obviously why you decided to
help all the other women with her.” He opened his mouth, but I held up a finger. “Your diabolical plan to assist women in
need didn’t account for her bringing a delivery to the house this evening.”
Hugh scowled, coming around the desk to sit on the edge of it, as he had done the other night. He assumed a posture of nonchalance,