Chapter Fourteen #2
Mr. Plum sighed. “Of course, Miss Forscythe. Miss Elderwood, would you care to join me for a dance?”
She looked to Mr. Plum, with the remnants of wine still staining his chin purple, and then to the dance floor. “A tendrille? I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar with the steps.”
“It’s quite easy,” Venus said. “Just switch partners when the music changes. The gentlemen will do most of the work. You’ll do splendid. Now go on, the band is starting.”
Mr. Plum smiled sourly and then moved to the floor. Venus and Elswyth followed.
“I will say, Venus,” Elswyth whispered, “I am not overly fond of Mr. Plum.”
“Oh, yes, horrible, isn’t he? But he’s very rich and likely to die young, what with the way he drinks. It will make Lord Forrester very jealous, I assure you. And it’s a mixer dance, so you’ll pair with Lord Forrester eventually. Do at least try to look like you’re having fun.”
With that, Venus smiled and retreated to the edge of the ballroom, away from the dancers. Elswyth stepped before Mr. Plum, who took her hand in a moist grip. She suppressed a shiver.
The music began. The dance was more complex than she’d hoped.
She went through the motions as best she could, and while Mr. Plum was hardly an athletic man, he had the confident dependability of a gentleman trained in dance.
He made conversation, but Elswyth could hardly follow along.
All of her attention was on her feet, keeping them carefully in position.
The tendrille grew more lively, twisting the dancers around the room in fast-moving lines.
“As I was saying,” Mr. Plum said, “botany is a woman’s science, akin to gardening, or midwifery—”
He continued his lecture, and Elswyth continued focusing on her feet.
The music quickened, and the first change was imminent.
Elswyth hopped backward, away from Mr. Plum, and stumbled gracelessly.
This elicited a small snicker from behind her.
Lord Ashdown and Begonia Pritchett danced nearby, and Begonia covered her laughter with a hand.
Blood rushed into Elswyth’s face, but she managed to stay upright.
She regained her footing, kept her chin high, and hoped the blush didn’t show through her makeup.
Her next partner, she was pleased to find, was Lord Forrester.
He stepped to meet her, swept her up in his arms, and soon they were dancing.
He took her hand and his fingers slid between the ivy rings.
His other hand rested lightly on her lower back.
“Miss Elderwood!” he said, smiling. “You look radiant tonight.”
“Lord Forrester,” Elswyth said. “I must say I am glad to see you again. Our first meeting was so brief, and I have so many questions about entomology. I just learned that in rainforest ecosystems, plants and insects create complicated webs of toxins and antitoxins, and I wanted an entomologist’s perspective—”
“Oh drat. Time to change!” Lord Forrester said.
Suddenly, she was spinning away from him and landed firmly in another gentleman’s arms. Her dance partner changed several more times, but she never returned to Lord Forrester.
The dance seemed to stretch on forever. She spun between gentlemen, her legs tiring, trying desperately not to trip again.
Finally, she fell back into the arms of Mr. Plum.
“—and that’s the difference in the physiognomy of the Irish and the Italians. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Elswyth wasn’t listening. Instead, she looked longingly over at Lord Forrester, who was sweeping Hyacinth Thatcher gracefully across the dance floor.
She mumbled assent, not really knowing what she was agreeing to.
When she looked back to Mr. Plum, he’d taken his hand away from her waist and was scratching at his throat.
“Are you all right?” Elswyth asked.
“Hm? Yes, yes, just a scratch.” He stopped itching his neck and grabbed her hand again. When he did, his fingers were swollen and slick with sweat.
“Now, as I was saying before, about skull shape… My, that really does itch, the little bugger. I’m sorry, just a moment.”
Mr. Plum stopped dancing. Lord Ashdown and Begonia Pritchett almost collided with them, but he didn’t seem to notice. He undid his collar and scratched beneath it. Up close, Elswyth could see red blisters beginning to form, leaking yellowish pus.
“Erm—Mr. Plum. It appears you have a rash,” Elswyth said.
“Do I? Does it look bad?”
She looked at him. Red splotches sprouted on the sweat-soaked skin of his face.
“Perhaps I have overly exerted myself—I should like some water. Is it very warm in here?” Mr. Plum waved over a servant, and Elswyth looked around the room.
The music had suddenly stopped, and all the other dancers had stopped with it.
Lord Ashdown stood with Miss Pritchett and complained about something under his breath.
He itched his neck furiously. Elswyth could see an angry rash spreading up toward his jaw.
Begonia, too, itched her hand, where a similar rash had formed.
Elswyth’s head turned. All around the dance floor, people stopped in place, scratching at their skin.
Crimson pustules bloomed up the faces of the dancers, weeping yellowish liquid. All of them, it seemed, except for her.
The chatter began to rise. Begonia Pritchett let out a moan as she saw herself in the reflection of the greenhouse, her pretty face covered in red blisters. She itched at them and pus leaked from the rash, staining her gloves.
“What is this? Who’s done this?” Begonia said, looking around the room.
From the outside of the dance floor, Drusilla Wilton pointed at Elswyth. “Look! She’s the only one who doesn’t have a rash!”
Elswyth watched as all the eyes in the room settled on her.
“You did this,” Begonia Pritchett said.
“What? No, I—”
Mr. Plum stepped away from her. The blisters on his face swelled by the second. “That plant, on your gown, what is it?”
Elswyth raised her hand, looked at the ivy that circled her fingers. “I—I don’t know. It’s what the dressmaker sent.”
Drusilla stepped forward and examined Elswyth’s arms. “It’s poison ivy,” she said, announcing it to the room. A gasp sounded from the crowd, which quickly turned to shouting.
“That’s nonsense, of course it’s not. It’s…
it’s…” Elswyth started. But as she looked at the vines around her arms, on her hands, across her whole gown, she noted the features.
It wasn’t truly poison ivy, at least not as she knew it.
After all, poison ivy wasn’t really ivy at all.
This was a hybrid, most likely, of poison ivy and Hedera helix—she could see a red glisten to the leaves where the toxic oil leaked.
But why hadn’t she been affected? The oil would have surely given her a rash as well, but she’d grafted the plant to her skin, which would have allowed her body to adapt to the toxin.
That, and Kehinde had been slipping various toxic plant oils into her tea for weeks, at this point.
She’d been exposed to poison ivy countless times.
“… natural immunity,” she whispered. But who had done this? And why?
Elswyth frantically searched the room, looking for Venus. Miss Forscythe stood safely in the corner, away from the rest of the dancers, untouched—of course—by the ivy.
“You don’t understand,” Elswyth began, pleading. “I was tricked. I didn’t intend—”
“You witch,” Begonia Pritchett said. “If this scars, you will hear from my family’s barristers, I’ll ruin you! I’ll—”
Everyone in the crowd began shouting at once.
“—madwoman, now this—”
“—strange, horrible girl—”
“—must have poisoned the Captain—”
A scream cut through the noise. All eyes turned to where Hyacinth Thatcher stood over Lord Forrester, his body crumpled on the floor. “Somebody do something. He can’t breathe!”
The crowd stopped, momentarily distracted from their own itching. Before she knew what she was doing, Elswyth had crossed the room and was kneeling by Lord Forrester’s side. He looked terrified, hands grasping at the floor for purchase. A thin whistling sound came from his throat.
“What are you doing? Get away from him!” Hyacinth Thatcher screamed.
“We don’t have time to wait for a doctor,” Elswyth said. “He is having an allergic reaction, and his throat is swelling shut. If we wait, he will die of suffocation.”
Elswyth examined his throat for a moment.
She reached down to touch it and then thought better of it, ripping the ivy from her arms. She tossed it to the side and then took a glass of water from a nearby table and vigorously washed her hands, fabricating soapwort as she scrubbed.
Then she massaged his throat, feeling the swelling there, as he feebly tried to push her away.
Elswyth placed her fingertip to the spot under Lord Forrester’s jaw where she felt his pulse.
Then, blocking out the sounds of the room, she concentrated.
Her nail bed faded from pink to green and then finally to black.
It grew outward until it came to a point, forming a thin thorn.
It was a particular variety of whistling thorn with a hollow interior—Vachellia drepanolobium—one of Kehinde’s methods of administering poison.
Within the thorn, she summoned the essence of Ephedra sinica in its concentrated form, ephedrine, a powerful stimulant.
She built ephedrine within the thorn until it threatened to burst, and when it was ready, rammed it into Lord Forrester’s throat.
“She’s going to kill him!” Begonia Pritchett screamed.
“That’s enough now, Miss Elderwood—” Lord Ashdown started, rather uncertainly. He moved to Elswyth and put a firm hand on her shoulder.
“If you move me now, he will die,” Elswyth said.
Lord Ashdown hesitated for a moment, and in that moment, Elswyth was able to push the rest of the ephedrine through the thorn-needle and into Lord Forrester’s blood.
Lord Ashdown pulled Elswyth back. Her thorn-finger slipped from Lord Forrester’s vein, followed by a spurt of blood, and the man erupted upward, sucking in a monumental breath.
This was apparently too much for Miss Hyacinth Thatcher, who screamed and fainted into the arms of Lord Barry.
Thankfully, Lord Ashdown went to the girl’s aid, unhanding Elswyth.
Lord Forrester gasped again and then scrambled to his feet with the help of Mr. Plum. Elswyth moved toward him.
“Are you all right, Lord Forrester? You mustn’t move too fast. The ephedrine—”
She reached out for him, and he jerked backward, a look of disgust on his face.
“Don’t touch me,” he said. He looked around the room, sweat still dripping down his brow, a red rash still covering his face and neck. He flattened out his coat, brushing dirt and dead leaves from it, and then turned to Miss Forscythe.
“Venus, this has gone on long enough. I entertained her affections because you insisted, and because I pitied the loss of her sister. But I cannot go on with this ruse a moment longer.”
He cast a venomous glance at Elswyth. Her blood felt cold. She wanted to say something, but it felt as if the room were spinning. Everything around her was collapsing all at once, and all she could do was stare.
Lord Forrester turned and bowed to his hosts. “Lord Forscythe, Lady Forscythe, thank you for your hospitality. Now, if I may, I would very much like to leave the presence of this dreadful woman.”
With that, Lord Forrester stormed from the room, followed by a flood of other guests. Many of them wept, scratching at the sores on their hands and faces, or yelled obscenities as they passed her. Elswyth reached out. “I can help,” she said. “I can make medicine for the rashes—”
“You’ve done enough,” Lady Forscythe said. Her voice, high and shrill, echoed in the now-silent atrium. Her face was flushed red with anger, and her eyes ate at Elswyth. “I should have expected nothing more from the sister of that harlot Persephone.”
Harlot? she thought, but the mention of Persephone barely registered. The room was moving too quickly, and her mind struggled to catch up. Elswyth turned to Venus, who was busily fanning the fainted Hyacinth Thatcher.
She seemed unable to conjure the words. “You—your—why?” Elswyth said. “Why at your own party?”
Venus looked perfectly innocent. She helped Lord Ashdown lift Hyacinth Thatcher to her feet and guide her to the doors.
Lady Forscythe stepped between Elswyth and Venus. Her face was twisted into a look of pure rage. “Leave,” she said. “Now.”
“You planned all of this,” Elswyth said to Venus, calling over Lady Forscythe’s shoulder, “from the beginning. All so that I wouldn’t tell anybody about you and Silas.”
A slap. Pain exploded across Elswyth’s face.
Lady Forscythe raised her hand again. “I said leave my house at once!” she shrieked. “You have ruined my party, and if I have anything to say about it, you shall never show your disgusting face at a ball again!”
Elswyth flinched at the hatred in the woman’s voice. Tears began to well in her eyes. She turned away, covering her tears and her scar, and ran from the room.