Chapter Twenty-Two #3
Mrs. Keyes took my arms firmly in hand, easing me forward so that my face was nearly pressed to my lap. “Simply breathe. It
will pass, I promise you. Breathe.”
It was a fight, to be certain. Each gasp of air dragged in and out of me, threatening to tighten the invisible band about
my lungs.
“Yes, like that,” Mrs. Keyes said, stroking a hand over the crown of my head. The touch was so maternal, so kindly meant,
it sparked a fierce heat behind my eyes.
Mrs. Silver set three glasses of whisky down. She vanished again, only to return with the healing salve. Its medicinal scent
burned my nose as she began to apply it to my darkening bruise. I only realized how badly the injury stung when the medicine
finally dulled it.
I wanted to cry, to release some of the terrible pressure trapped inside of me, but no tears would come. There was only that
suffocating bleakness I’d experienced the day I’d been pushed into the prison cell at Fairgate and the door had locked behind
me.
I wasn’t a fool, but I’d never felt stupider in my life or more like a pathetic child. I’d known there was a chance my identity
would be exposed before I had finished Immortal Rose, but somehow, I had never considered this—in being exposed, I would also
be accused of being the poisoner.
There was no evidence of luck in my life, only stolen bits of fortune I’d been quick enough to snatch. This was why it was
dangerous to hope for anything, to allow yourself to be drawn in by the promises and assurances of others. It was the lesson of every fairy story and all
their terrible endings: fear the wish granted, for it is never the gift it seems.
But damn it all, I’d barely had a taste of that hope being fulfilled. Why couldn’t I have just had this? This one thing?
I sat up slowly, feeling the women’s hands fall away as I did. My breathing had finally steadied, but my thoughts were still jumbled, and my heart lay in tatters.
And, God, a new chill set in, biting down to my bones. He would see this, too. He would know about me, be able to find me.
With the Rosebourne fortune, I could have paid for protection against him. I could have tightly controlled the release of
information about Mama, to spare her memory the humiliation of being painted as a woman of low morals. How could it be that
a single article had ripped that power away from me? How had it stolen the narrative I’d only just begun to write?
“I didn’t do it,” I told them again.
“Of course not,” Mrs. Silver said, sitting on the table. “Not that we would have judged you if you had. The old goblin’s temperament
could only be improved by a brush with painful death.”
“Celine,” Mrs. Keyes said, chiding.
The cook sniffed in a quintessentially Gallian way, looking as though she was struggling to bite her tongue.
“The only person I’d like to kill is Glenmoor and the policeman who gave the newspaper Mama’s journal,” I said darkly, then
paused. “I suppose I’d like to poison the writer of this piece as well.”
Mrs. Silver straightened, her face brightening.
“Celine,” Mrs. Keyes said again, an edge of warning in her tone.
The paper blurred before me. It was unbearable. All of it.
Mrs. Keyes clucked her tongue, trying a different tactic. “Allow yourself this pity, Miss Lockwood, but don’t forget your
strength. You will need it more than ever in the days ahead.”
“There is no overcoming this,” I said. “Even if I were to take control of the House of Rosebourne now, Glenmoor has ensured
my reputation is destroyed. I would only taint the name and destroy the business.”
“My dear girl, when others cannot control you, they will seek to control how you are perceived,” Mrs. Keyes said. “You must
take back your story. You must fight for what you desire. There is power to notoriety. In time, you may find you like it.”
“And it is good for men to be a little afraid of you,” Mrs. Silver said, with a Gallian shrug. “It will only make you more
irresistible.”
I picked up the dram of whisky, gulping at it. The burning did nothing to ease the misery swirling in my chest.
“Allow me to share a little wisdom passed to me many years ago by the woman who raised me,” Mrs. Keyes said, tearing her gaze away from Mrs. Silver.
“Carry a fire within your soul and the darkness will learn to fear you. Because there is no darkness in this world so deep that it cannot be cut through by a single flame.”
Mrs. Keyes ducked her head, meeting my uncertain gaze.
“This anger you feel now,” the woman said, “let it burn away the helplessness. And if that should still feel too difficult,
you need only to remind yourself, as I have reminded myself many times, that you have survived too many shadows to deny yourself
the light of hope.”
One day they would be strangers to me again, and it would be gutting. But not today. Not this afternoon.
“Thank you,” I told them both.
The sound of footsteps on the garden’s gravel path made the three of us pivot to the door. My heart gave a painful leap as
Foxcourt’s dark shape blew through it like a storm. Behind him, Willie and Tommy stayed back with the others in the garden.
His eyes, rimmed with shadows, sought mine immediately, and that little composure I’d managed to grasp unraveled. The silver
had softened to a gloomy gray. Not with pity, but uncertainty.
He bowed in greeting, saying, somewhat ironically, “Good afternoon.”
“Good God,” Mrs. Keyes said mildly. “You went out looking like that?”
He still wore his black garments from the night before, but what had been a hint of beard was now making a tremendous showing.
His thick locks of hair looked as though he’d spent the morning tearing at them in frustration.
“I would like to speak to Miss Lockwood alone, if I may,” he said, his voice hoarse.
Mrs. Silver and Mrs. Keyes looked to me, waiting for my nod before rising.