Chapter 30
“The Phynnodderee, or Hairy-one, is a Manks spirit of the same kind with the Brownie or the Kobold. He is said to have been a fairy who was expelled from the fairy society.”
The rest of the journey to Maudite Castle is quick, bordering on hasty for such a large group and a carriage.
I don’t mind the pace, but I worry over the wearier-by-the-moment countess.
And I worry that the Beast of Brimmond, the murderer of Girard, of my father, of three strangers now . . . is with us.
Isabeau vanished into the night, and a man died.
Is the sleeping tonic to keep her from murderous rampages at night?
Is her curse that she is the Beast of Brimmond?
It seems impossible, but if she is cursed, a beastly curse makes more sense than a sleeping curse.
It’s crueler, and faeries are renowned for their cruelty.
The evidence is scant: a curse, the proximity to her estate, and a dislike for two of the victims. It does not explain why she would attack me, though.
It does not explain how she would become cursed.
There are enough reasons to argue that my love’s curse is the cause of these deaths as there are to think I am being absurd in my suspicions.
I exchange glances with my sister, who darts a look at Isabeau before tilting her head in question.
I shrug. I have no more answers than I did last night.
The beast I have been attacked by twice was barely visible when I saw it in the city.
In the forest, I saw nothing. The third time, I was not attacked.
That creature was unidentifiable to me, but it was not as aggressive as the one in the city was.
Are there two beasts? The thought seems to be the most incredulous of possibilities. I wonder if Isabeau’s curse is tied to the faery. Why would it curse her? How would it curse her? Her curse was to sleep, but she was awake at least part of the night.
Can a curse make a woman a beast? desperation asks.
The woman I saw in the stable was decidedly not a beast, logic points out.
My mind is a cacophony of doubts and questions.
“Are you well?” Isabeau asks me softly as we ride toward Maudite Castle.
As we’ve neared the castle, Isabeau and I have moved to the front of the group, so any watchers will be able to see and identify the approaching group as a nonthreat.
The familiar, briny taste to the air is growing stronger by the moment now that we are out of the wood and closer to the sea.
Nolan is now beside my mother’s carriage. I feel confident that he will guard her well, but it still pains me to be those few yards away from her.
By the time we reach the castle, Isabeau’s staff is coming to greet us.
“Love?” she asks. “Are you well?”
“No. I am not well at all,” I confess as I dismount and walk over to the carriage to assist my mother.
“I cannot ride to the city tonight,” the countess whispers. “I’m sorry. That pace was too much for me. My leg pains me.”
I nod and look to Isabeau. “Can the soldiers garrison here?”
“The quarters are intact,” Isabeau offers. “I will have staff check the beds and find linens for the—”
“Bare mattresses are fine, Your Grace.” Anders stands alongside my mother. Rylan is on her other side. “A roof overhead is nice, but we don’t rightly need that either.”
“I like a roof well enough,” Nolan says. His joviality is welcome as he adds, “I’ll take first watch outside the ladies’ door before I retreat to that bed under a roof.”
As they make plans, I tell Isabeau, “My mother needs to rest here tonight. I will leave the soldiers with her and Rylan.”
“I would offer to summon the family physician, but . . .” Isabeau makes a face.
“May I impose upon your hospitality, Your Grace?” my mother asks.
“You are family now, m’lady.” Isabeau bows deeply to my mother. “What is mine is yours.” She gestures at the castle. “Any time you want to pause on the way to the city, I can have a bedroom permanently set aside. I will have someone ready it now and . . .”
Isabeau catches the eyes of several people. “Tobie. Gin. Alain.” She looks at me. “Alain was my father’s steward, and he is indispensable to me.”
“Your Grace.” He bows to her. “I was not expecting guests or . . . W?chter soldiers.”
Isabeau updates him on the plan, and then while he coordinates with Nolan, she motions to the two people she’s called Gin and Tobie.
“Tobie is my valet in the city; Gin is my lady’s maid.
Things are rather more complicated, being a woman in suit coats.
” She flashes a wry grin at me. “Gin, I need you to look after the countess and Lady Rylan.”
Gin, a bosomy auburn-haired beauty who can’t be any older than Rylan, curtsies to Isabeau and then to me.
Then she sighs and murmurs, “Proper ladies! I wonder if they will let me do their hair . . .” She shoots a sassy look at Isabeau and then goes off to whatever tasks she now has. “Tobie! Their trunks!”
“She’s been worried, Your Grace,” Tobie says quietly before scurrying after her. He is handsome and strong, and his gaze is fixed solidly on Gin’s person even as he hefts a trunk and carts it off.
“We will figure this out,” Isabeau tells me as we watch the W?chter soldiers and her domestic staff make quick work of the tasks. Horses are led away, and the carriage is taken into the stable.
I nod, but the mundane tasks are not where my mind is.
After an awkward throat-clearing sound, Isabeau asks, “Are you emotional about your . . . about the innkeeper . . . about him, what with him being your former lover? Do you need to stay here too? You could take the night to mourn.”
I squeeze her forearm in my hand. “He was a friend, Isa. I would feel the same way if any other person from the village was dead. They are my people, my duty, more so than the nobility. They are a weekly part of my life.”
She watches as Woede is led toward the stable by a stableman who looks resigned to exhaustion.
The massive stallion is similar to Imp in form, but he is not complacent for anyone but Isabeau.
She has a way with difficult creatures, and I feel empathy with Woede.
We both benefit from her tenderness toward feral things.
“I must see the duchess,” Isabeau says quietly. “Would you like me to stay here or come with you?”
I cannot tell her why I do not want her to stay here at her own castle without me. I would shatter her heart with my doubts. I shatter my own heart each time I allow them to rise. I hope that I am wrong, but the fear that I am right makes my voice rawer than I like as I ask, “Come with me. Please?”
“Anywhere. Everywhere.” Isabeau smiles, looking so hopeful as she says, “And maybe we can look at the stars together tonight.”
“I would love that,” I whisper. I truly would. I hope that she is in my arms as the woman I know, not transforming into something monstrous that I must kill.
My mother and sister are off to get situated; the soldiers are as well.
The Maudite garrison is far grander than ours.
Here, the garrison juts like a watchtower, stabbing into the sky as if it wants to touch the clouds.
The view from inside stretches as far as the eye can reach.
Although the staircase that twines around the building is uneven and the windows are near impossible to open, Isabeau and I played there as children—and kissed there when we discovered that the door was rarely locked.
Instead of tugging her into one of the many empty rooms, I follow Isabeau into the castle, hoping that soon I will make my home here with her.
Admittedly, the thought of sharing my home with the stern dowager duchess is daunting, but even that is less intimidating than thinking of my love as a murderous beast.
“Mother has been unwell,” Isabeau says softly as we walk through the foyer and take the grand staircase to the second floor, where the bedrooms are. “She took a fall, and her leg does not heal.”
I hold fast to Isabeau’s hand and follow her.
The door to the duchess’ rooms is propped open. “Isabeau?”
Isabeau pauses in the doorway, keeping me behind her. “Are you uncomfortable, Your Grace? Shall I summon a nurse?”
“Book.”
“I have brought my future wife here to the house, Your Grace.” Isabeau takes a step into the room, pulling me with her.
The dowager duchess coughs. She looks nothing like the imposing woman I saw when Father and I were last here. Her disdain is sharper now, too. She skewers me with a look. “Of course, you would marry her.”
“Mother!” Isabeau releases my hand and storms toward the dowager duchess. Her voice is low, but I hear her all the same. “You will respect my betrothed. I can send you to a carriage house or to the city, if you prefer, but if we are in the same place, you will speak to her kindly.”
The dowager duchess shoos Isabeau aside. “She can’t have planted a bastard in you, what with being a woman, and you have plenty of money. What do you want with my daughter, Lady Fleuriste?”
“I want to make her happy,” I say simply.
The Dowager Duchess of Maudite points at a shelf. “That one.”
Isabeau follows the gesture toward the heavily laden bookshelves and stands there. She glances back at her mother. “The Countess of Fleuriste and her daughter Lady Rylan are staying at the estate tonight. I could take you to the Great Room before I—”
“No.” Duchess Maudite points again, her arm looking like not much more than bare bone encased by paper-thin skin. Blue lines stand out starkly as the long sleeve falls back; her bruises are many. “One from that shelf.”
“Blue? White?”
“Close your eyes and reach up,” the dowager duchess orders.
After Isabeau has done so, randomly choosing a knightly tale, she kisses her mother atop the head and refills her water goblet. “Gabrielle and I need to speak to you about the curse,” she says quietly.
“You are not ready for the weight of this curse. Either of you.” The dowager duchess’ hand reaches up to cup Isabeau’s face. “Do not add her to this burden you carry.”
“So there is a curse?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Are you cursed?”
“No.”
“Her father?”
“No.”
“Yet no faeries capable of cursing people are allowed through the gate from Faerie,” I point out.
“And you think only those creatures come through? That faeries are rule followers?” The dowager duchess gives me a familiar look of disdain.
“Have you taken any new tonics since the duke’s death?” I watch the older woman’s face for any hint of duplicity, but her expression is implacable. “We had Isabeau’s tonic tested. It’s a sleeping medicine. Dangerous and addictive.”
“What did you do, you foolish child?” the dowager duchess whispers. Her bony arm shoots out, patting Isabeau’s face and arms as if checking for fever. “Perhaps the apothecary brought you the wrong one and—”
“It is not. It is the same noxious-smelling thing you have handed me every day,” Isabeau says. “There were new additives. Why would the family physician or the apothecary try to harm me?”
The duchess grows still. “Do you think they’ve changed my medicines, too?”
I wonder briefly what medicines the dowager duchess takes, but there is no delicate way to ask.
“Perhaps!” Isabeau sinks to her knees beside her mother. “I thought your frailty was grief. I should have questioned your changes. I thought since she’s treated His Grace all these years—”
“I will have someone new for our physician.” The dowager duchess eyes me. “Perhaps your woman would come, Hunter.”
“You knew she was the Hunter?” Isabeau murmurs.
“Not until she came here with the earl.” The dowager duchess sounds more like herself by the moment. “A lone rider could fetch the physician to attend me. The Hunter could go retrieve her for us.”
“We must go to see Auntie Mor today, Mother,” Isabeau says, still kneeling on the floor and holding her mother’s hand gently. “I will have her send one of the royal physicians here.”
“But your curse—”
“There might not be a curse,” I say, interrupting the dowager duchess. “I will be at Isabeau’s side to watch over her tonight. Or I can have several royal physicians there—”
“In the city?” The dowager duchess stares between us. “You will share her bedroom?”
“She’ll either be dead to the world if there is a curse, or she will be ill from the poisons that she is purging from that tonic,” I point out.
I don’t speak the third option. If Isabeau is a beast, her mother already knows.
“Tell Cook to speak to the countess regarding meals,” the dowager duchess says. “Have her throw out the remaining tonics. Yours and mine. I must rest now.”
I stare at the dowager duchess as she suddenly closes her eyes and promptly ignores us as if she is already asleep.
Isabeau seems nonplussed by this, simply leaning in and kissing the dowager duchess’ forehead.
I cannot grab and shake an ill woman, still mourning her husband’s death, even as I would like to do just that in this moment.
I am certain she knows more than she is sharing.
She must, but I cannot force her to speak.
I follow Isabeau from the room in silence.
At first, she says nothing, and when she does, her words are about the security of the castle. “I will order Alain to close the gate. No one can approach from the sea. The beach there is too rocky, and anyone that tries would be spotted well in advance. Our families will be safe here.”
“That will ease my worries,” I admit. “Are you able to ride to the city yet today? If not, we can wait here for the night. I can stay with you here, too. I’d rather ride but . . .”
Isabeau glances at the sky. “There’s enough light to make Regina Centrum tonight. That way we can consult the queen at dawn’s break.”
I feel relief that I am taking Isabeau away from my mother and sister. If she is the beast, if her curse has made her into a murderous creature, I will not rest well if she is near my family. This is the best path left to me. By morning, I will have an answer.
After a few short orders to soldiers and staff, Isabeau and I are on the road.
The sound of the heavy castle door dropping down behind us feels comforting rather than ominous.
We are on fresh horses, leaving Woede and Clatterbuck behind.
No soldiers join us. No family. We are alone as we ride toward the city.
Soon I will know if my love is the killer.