Chapter 23
“I remained, lost in oblivion; My face I reclined on the Beloved. All ceased and I abandoned myself, Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.”
―John of the Cross
If our days are numbered, then we must make every moment count for all it can. I love you, Perry, with all that I have, Charity’s voice whispered in his thoughts.
Pain and nausea spiked through Peregrine like a fever. He was wraith-ridden by the sound of a woman in his head who might never wake. Now his wits scattered in a hundred directions as he and Hodges rode for the Pulteney like the devil himself was at their heels.
It had been difficult to tear himself from Charity’s side, but for the moment, she seemed stable. It lent credence to the idea that his mother might be trying to force his hand. To blackmail him and make him do something against his will.
So he had left Charity in the care of Sir Nathaniel and his butler, ordering them to keep watch over both her and the physician who had arrived while they were saddling the horses.
He had given Thorne a list of treatments that Peregrine wouldn’t permit.
Bleeding and antimony would simply weaken Charity more.
His mother—damn the woman—was waiting for him in the lobby of the hotel with a cat’s paw smile. “My son,” she murmured, inclining her head and turning to walk up the stairs, not even looking to see if he followed.
He followed, soul deadened, in his mother’s wake as she brought him back to her private chambers. Swanning into the room without a backward glance, she left the door ajar.
A dare. Would Peregrine enter her lair alone?
He would, because he knew her mind. There was a game afoot, and while Charity’s life was at stake, his own was safe. Killing him now would ruin her sport.
Peregrine shut the door behind him, straightening in front of it now that it was just the two of them. Marian turned, then, the ravening beast staring from behind her eyes as she dropped all her pretensions, shedding them like one would drop a cloak upon the floor.
“I am sorry you decided not to bring the duchess with you. Is she not feeling well?” his mother asked, her eyes glittering with madness.
“You know very well how she is. Was that your only reason for coming to the estate this morning?” Perry’s hands curled into fists of their own accord. “To punish me by harming Charity?”
The corners of his mother’s lips twisted. “Why could it not be about the duchess herself? You are so very wrapped up in yourself, Perry.”
“I wonder why!” he hissed. “It seems that defying your will was what put us on this path to begin with. Well, here I am. You have my undivided attention, Mother.”
Peregrine spread his arms, inviting his mother to move. To strike him down. But Marian calmly observed her son as if he were nothing more than an irritation, tugging at the edges of a pair of gloves she had not been wearing earlier.
“Well? What will you?” he goaded her. “You threaten the lives of my friends. You have poisoned a woman whom I care for. And now here I stand before you. Unarmed. Alone. You can do anything you like. Stab me, why don’t you?
Feed me some poison. Punish me, Mother. This war is between the two of us; leave the others alone. ”
Perry did not realise tears were streaking his cheeks until his mother swept towards him, her face a strange caricature of fury and curiosity as she roughly drew a finger through the moisture. If she hadn’t been wearing gloves, Peregrine would have been scored by her fingernails.
“What do you want of me, Marian Fitzroy?” he asked her, ignoring his stinging cheek. “What must I trade for the duchess’s life?”
His mother’s eyes flicked up to his. “So certain there is a treatment, are you?”
“Of course I am. You would not have told me where to find you again if you did not expect I would come here to bargain. You cannot dangle her life as bait if Charity will die.”
His suffering gratified her. Peregrine could see the satisfaction in her, that he was humbled and desolate.
She would abuse that, forcing him to debase himself.
But he would do it without hesitation if it restored Charity to him.
He would give up his wealth and title. Exile himself from England. Crawl on his knees.
He might even give her Lark. Lark would be a Queen, after all; she didn’t need his protection.
“You’re right, of course. This particular poison does have a treatment.” Calmly, Marian paced in a small circle around Peregrine.
“I have to thank you, really. If it hadn’t been for the necessity of leaving England, I would never have gone to Russia and met Lizaveta,” his mother continued.
“She is quite brilliant, actually. Most poisons have to achieve only a single aim—kill the person who consumes it. No subtlety is required whatsoever. But Lizaveta made some fascinating mixtures that could achieve other effects. Her personal favourite paralyses and then rots the limbs, leaving one’s mind free to contemplate its demise.
I cannot help but think about how I could have made a fortune blackmailing people if I had half of Liza’s acumen. Ah well, that is all in the past now.”
Leave it to his mother to form an acquaintance with someone more vicious and mad than she was. “But that’s not what this one is,” he said, certain of his deduction.
“No. The rotting poison requires the victim to be dosed at regular intervals,” Marian agreed. “But Liza’s sleeping sickness—the one I gave to your duchess—requires only one. Duchess Atholl will not die of it. Not right away, at any rate.”
Peregrine’s thoughts were a perfect, white-hot cauldron of rage. “What do you want?” he gritted out. “My life? I would gladly make that trade.”
His mother contemplated his expression, reading him with uncanny thoroughness. “Of course you would, my son. Which is why I would not accept that bargain.”
“Then what!” he barked harshly.
Marian stepped closer into his space. “We should trade a life for a life, Peregrine. I have a thought. You should tell the Lord-Chancellor about Lord Ravenscroft’s unnatural acts with his valet.”
Perry froze, ice tracing a path down his spine.
He had been afraid that Ravenscroft would rise to the top of his mother’s black list if the magpie delivered his note.
It seemed that he was right. “You would have me condemn a man in exchange for Charity’s life?
Sodomy is a crime that would see him hanged. ”
“Two men. Guilty ones, at that,” his mother murmured, smirking. “You care for the duchess, do you not? This should be a simple choice, to discard men like Ravenscroft for a woman you would devote yourself to. The law would be on your side.”
It would be. But regardless of what the law said, their crimes were borne of love. He would not treat Ravenscroft and Antoine like currency, and he would not send them to the gallows for their love.
If he crossed this line, then he would be no better than his mother.
“I will not trade their lives for hers,” he growled, ignoring the panic crawling up his throat.
His choice was an illusion. Charity would never forgive him for sacrificing the two men. And the alternative was to do nothing, letting Charity lie in a sleep like death, hoping her body would be able to fight the poison itself, given time.
Some flicker of his thoughts must have passed over his face, because his mother shook her head knowingly.
“Stall for time, if you like. The duchess will not suffocate or expire in the meantime.
But she will also not overcome the poison.
That is not the way this one works, Peregrine.
She will die when you find yourself unable to sustain her needs.
Marian ran her finger down his cheek again, lighter this time, her face mocking.
“She may choke to death if you try to feed her. Or inhale it and drown. Of course, that may be a kindness, because any little sustenance you might be able to force into her body will only prolong her death. If you do nothing, she will linger long enough to die of thirst and starvation. I understand it is a terrible way to die.”
Perry’s breath sawed painfully past the lump in his throat, his mind spinning in tight, useless circles.
“Not that I care how Ravenscroft whiles away his private hours, but since he saw fit to meddle in my affairs, turnabout is fair play. So show me that you are in earnest, Peregrine. Lay information with the justices and denounce him. See that done, and I will give you the panacea for the sleeping poison. The Duchess Atholl will despise you for your decision… but at least she will live to do so, my love.”
Peregrine was struck by the last time he had seen madness dancing in her eyes this way. Peregrine’s love—his loyalty—his life. It is mine to break or burn, as I see fit, she had told Charity.
And his mother was doing exactly that. Punishing Ravenscroft was an afterthought. His mother was punishing him for giving away what she considered hers. Marian intended to force him to sacrifice his friendship with the magpie, and Charity’s love for him. One way or another.
She was determined to extinguish the light in his darkness, so he would have nothing left. Nothing, except her.
I understand what it’s like to live this haunted life, the ghost of his wife whispered in his ear, curling her hand around his heart. It hurts to keep fighting, to keep believing that we can persevere when it seems like everything is against us. Sometimes I wonder if we will ever have peace.
Charity would be disappointed. There would never be peace.
Peregrine blinked and found himself abruptly in the daylight, outside of the Pulteney, astride his own horse, and with no real memory of how he had got there. Hodges was staring at him as if uncertain he was fit to ride, and he couldn’t even blame the man. The world was greying at the edges.
“What happened?” Hodges asked him. “I assume the harpy’s still breathin’.”
If only he were sure of that. But his hands were clean, and he was unrumpled. “My mother offered me the cure for Charity if I agreed to denounce Ravenscroft,” he said shortly, unable to dredge up any memory of what had happened in those last minutes of horror.
Hodges gave him a wary, uncertain look. “And will ye?”
Peregrine did not even have to consider the answer as he kicked the horse into motion. “No.”
The man who had endured the Nive with him had no reply to that one. Some conundrums had no answer. Not beyond doing what was necessary to survive.
“You all right?” Hodges hesitated, clearly groping for the words. “You don’t seem yourself, Lord Fitzroy. Your ma could poison two as easily as one.”
“She didn’t poison me,” he said flatly.
“And how d’you know that, then?”
That was easy to understand, if one understood how his mother acted. So he told Hodges what he had heard his mother tell Charity a year ago. “Because I cannot suffer if I’m dead.”
He fell silent for the ride back to the manor, lost in thought. Lost in memory. Simply lost.
His mother had won. It was really as simple as that. Killing his mother wouldn’t save Charity’s life. All it could do now would be to rob him of whatever short time they had left together.
People waited at the door for him. Quinn and Croft.
Jack too. But in a haze, Peregrine went straight past them all, climbing the stairs to reach his wife’s bedroom.
He had nothing helpful to say, so he said nothing.
All he wanted to do was find Charity and reassure himself that, for now, she was still alive.
The maid must have gone back to his sister straightaway, because it was Sir Nathaniel sitting at Charity’s bedside, and Charity’s hair was still pinned up.
Thorne quickly vacated the bedside chair for Peregrine, but Perry ignored it. He gently rolled his wife onto her side, pulling the pins holding up her hair one by one, laying them in a small pile and loosening her hair so she would be comfortable.
“Fitzroy.” The way Sir Nathaniel said his name said everything. He saw Perry and knew there was little hope.
“If you do not mind, Sir Nathaniel,” Peregrine said quietly to him as he finished taking her hair down, “I would like to spend some time alone with my wife.”
Thorne said something—Peregrine did not have the focus to make sense of the words. But he retreated, as Perry had requested.
Once her golden locks lay in a loose mass behind her, he retrieved his comb and sat on the mattress beside her, combing it into a straight, shining cable.
It filled his hand with its weight, and brought the scent of sunshine, the sweet citrus of her perfume, and beneath it, the fainter fragrance of her skin.
He tried not to remember that first time he had done this for her, focusing on keeping his hands steady. And slowly he wove the strands into a simple braid.
This was his doing. His fault. Charity had been right. He invited calamity into the lives of everyone around him. Endangered all those who bothered to befriend him.
“Charity,” he whispered shakily as he tucked the last few strands behind her ear. “I am not sure if you can hear me, but I am so very sorry, my love. Wait for me? Please.”
He curled himself around her as he finally broke completely. Just as his mother had promised Charity he would.