Chapter Twenty-Four
I tasted the blood before I smelled it. It dripped from my nose, snaking over my lips. I choked as it filled my mouth.
“Viola . . .” Foxcourt shook me, only to go stone-still as I finally managed to lift my head to look at him. His face turned
ashen, his eyes widening in terror.
Help, help me— The pain was so desperate, so acute, it blinded me. I tried to say the word. Licorice.
I clawed at the bodice of my gown, sobbing for breath. I couldn’t make out his face, couldn’t speak except to gasp out, “Take
it off—Hugh—”
“I beg your pardon!” the priest squeaked.
There was a flurry of movement around me. Hands at my arms, my back, the fastenings of my dress. Somewhere nearby, something
heavy fell to the floor.
“Take it off,” I sobbed, clawing at the fabric. “Take it—”
“You have to let me,” I heard Felicity cry. “I have to be the one—”
“No,” Foxcourt thundered, gripping my bodice.
The sound of rending fabric filled my ears as he tore the delicate lacework with his bare hands. The silk slipped away, collapsing
into a puddle at my feet. He pulled me away from it, kicking the fabric toward the hearth.
“Good God,” the priest cried, making the holy wheel over himself. “This is the Devil’s den of sin—”
I tried to pull back from Foxcourt and the others, but there was no strength left in me, only that white-hot pain, incinerating,
inescapable.
Perfume. He would smell it, the others—they couldn’t breathe it in, it wasn’t safe—
The last of my vision darkened as agony surged, melting my bones, boiling my mind to seething darkness.
I came to with a piercing scream. Something else was in control of my body now; it thrashed wildly against the hands holding it captive, each a burning brand feeding its heat into the flames.
I clawed at my chest, my face, trying to open my skin to release the fire.
Nothing mattered but stopping it, ending it—
Images cut through the roiling darkness like shards of glass. One of the vases shattered on the ground, flowers trampled.
Fleming’s unconscious body on the carpet.
“—the bath—” someone said.
“—no time—”
“—don’t—”
Help me, I tried to scream, my face slick with sweat and tears as I tore at it. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak—everything hurt,
even sobbing. My throat tore open with flaming knives. Please. Help me. Kill me.
I screamed again as arms slid beneath my legs and around my shoulders, lifting me. The friction of cloth against my raw skin
was too much to bear. I fisted the fabric of a shirt, tearing at it each time I was jostled against a hard body. My sense
of the world was dimming as if I was receding from it.
Mama, I thought, please—
A voice pulled on me like a tether, refusing to let me go. “I know—I’m sorry, I’m sorry—just—”
The cold water shocked me back into my body, stinging like acid as I was submerged in it.
I broke through the surface of it, gasping and choking on the water, my body contorting with such force I was sure my spine
had snapped. The fires flared, raging at the attempt to smother them. A sopping-wet cloth wiped at my face, my lips, my nose—inside
of it. I craned my face away, straining against the arm banded around my shoulders.
“Please, sweetheart,” a voice rasped. “You have to let me—”
I knew that voice. That was . . .
I felt blindly, gripping the wet fabric of his shirt again. Twisting it, clutching it like an anchor, refusing to let the
pain drown me again. If I could just hold on to him—
“Viola. Viola. Viola.” He was chanting my name. “Take a deep breath—you must—”
I gasped in the cool air, letting it burn my abraded throat. Slowly, the darkness in my sight lightened to a blurred gray.
Through the haze of pain, his beautiful face took shape, rigid with terror.
Remembered terror.
“Look at me,” he ordered, a sharp distress edging the command. “Viola, look at me.”
I did. Tried. Each agonized breath wheezing. The darkness threatened to sweep down over my sight again, but I wanted to see him. Needed to. He was so frightened.
“What do you smell?” he asked, insistent. “Focus on that. Tell me what you smell.”
I gasped for breath as my body was racked with spasms. The notes drifted around me, burning to ash as soon as my mind gripped
them. Damp earth . . . the mineral essence of water . . . greenery . . . coming rain . . . the cloying sweetness. Sweetness
like . . .
A hand stroked my cheek, leaving a blistering trail behind. I whimpered, holding his gaze with every dimming ounce of strength
I had.
He will help me, my mind whispered. He will not let me go.
My body convulsed as an arrow of fresh pain lanced it.
He drew in a sharp breath, lifting my upper body out of the water, reaching into the open neck of his shirt, tearing at something
I couldn’t see, flinging it away as he drew me to his chest.
An unfamiliar scent exploded across my senses, and I gasped as though taking my very first breath of life. The warm essence
enveloped me as I strained toward it, my face pressed to the hollow of his throat. My lips moved against that smooth, heated
skin with each shuddering breath. Nothing existed beyond it.
Honey soap, leather, the metal of blades . . . birchwood . . . a deep, heavy snow . . . something thorned . . . wet fur, but
an earthy sweetness, too, like vanilla, like . . .
I shivered, and his arms tightened around me. My mind grasped for what he was murmuring into my wet hair. “You’re all right,
just breathe, let it pass, sweetheart . . .”
I closed my eyes, my body quaking with each hard kick of my heart. I breathed him in, only him, until the flames in my blood
banked to embers and the sensation of his hand smoothing down my back no longer sparked a new blaze of pain.
My soaked shift clung to me like a second skin, and I was sure it was as translucent as his own shirt. The chill of a soft
breeze easing over my wet skin felt good. Soothing. I could no longer tell who was shaking, sending waves through the water.
The water . . .
My shattered mind took in the world, passing it through that lingering veil of pain.
We were outside, in the back garden. In the pond.
Foxcourt knelt in the waist-deep water. I was draped across his legs, one hand still clutching his shirt, the other caught between our panting bodies.
He pressed his face to my wet hair, his arms unyielding, as if afraid I might drift away. Lily pads bobbed on the pond’s gleaming
surface, the trailing tendrils of the willow tree acting as a shield against the day’s light, the whole of the world. Nearby,
the whimsical statue of the two frogs merrily rowing in their boat withstood the lapping water.
A soft whine drew my eyes toward the edge of the pond, where Brigadier sat at Mrs. Keyes’s feet, her ears flattened against
her skull.
“Is she all right?” Mrs. Keyes asked softly, a folded blanket between her hands. Several strands of hair had escaped her usual
crown braid. A gauzy film coated my eyes, and as she moved, the sun caught the gold pins in her hair, making it glow like
an angel’s corona.
Foxcourt only nodded, as if he couldn’t quite speak himself. After a moment, he lifted me carefully, sending only a murmur
of pain through my weak body as he adjusted his grip.
A lick of fear brushed my too-quick heart. One of his sleeves was stained with bright poppy-red splotches. Blood. His? Mine?
Exhaustion weighed my body and mind down like bricks. I tried to lift my head to help Mrs. Keyes wrap the blanket around me,
but even that proved impossible.
Foxcourt turned us back toward the house, where a line of pale, stricken faces awaited us like a funeral party. Felicity wept
quietly in the circle of Mrs. Silver’s arms.
Tommy hurried to open the door, guiding us away from the strange scene there. Fleming was stretched out over the staff table;
Willie hovered over him with smelling salts and a lady’s silk fan.
Foxcourt’s voice was a low, pleasant rumble against my ear, conspiring with his warmth to lull me back to a calmer, heavier
darkness.
I drifted toward it, surrendering my body and my mind, breathing in the beloved scent of the house.
Of him.