Chapter Thirty-Six #2
about anything beyond your horses.”
I caught Hugh’s eye again as some young lord, his frock coat laden with crystals shaped into leaves, admitted to a friend,
“Do you think they’d notice if a case of cheroots went missing from the smoking room?”
The other man turned to him in alarm. “I beg your pardon?”
The first straightened. “I was only—” He cleared his throat, rubbing at his head. “Don’t mind me.”
Glenmoor’s gaze drifted up the receiving line. His mouth curled into one of his utterly feline smirks at our approach. The
fairy charm glinted where it held his cravat in place.
I was still staring at it as we came to a reluctant stop before them. And somehow—somehow—with all his immense pride, Hugh
bent at the waist, in front of all high society. The final acquiescence. I dipped into a curtsy, feeling as if I wanted to
vomit. The duke’s triumphant smile coated my skin in ice.
Without a word, Hugh swept us down the final, short pile of stairs to the sunken heart of the garden.
His breathing was ragged as we navigated around the quartet playing its serene song, away from the wolves in fine evening wear, into the entrance of the hedge maze, just far enough to be tucked behind a corner.
“The charm . . .” I began.
“I know,” he said, finding my gaze in the dark. He pressed a quick kiss to my lips. “It’s time. Are you certain you want to do this?”
I smiled, brushing a hand against his cheek. “I look forward to seeing what you choose as your distraction. Try not to do anything fatally stupid.”
“Nothing that could top the Drink of the Deep, certainly,” he murmured, releasing me with obvious reluctance, “but I will
aim to do you proud.”
I watched him retrace the steps we had taken into the maze, looking entirely focused on the task at hand. It didn’t matter
what the distraction was, only that he needed to be seen by Glenmoor as attempting one.
I turned my own focus back on the thread of scent I needed to guide me through the maze to the exit on its opposite end. Beyond
it lay a line of oak trees, and past that, beds of daffodils and an iron fence that ringed the palace—a unique and instantly
identifiable combination.
My pulse jumped with excitement as I found the statue of Venia hidden at the maze’s center and continued past her. The scent
trail continued, seeming to double back on itself as the correct path looped and twisted, but within minutes, I was greeted
by the shadows of the trees, as Hugh had promised.
Clutching my reticule, I hurried along the edge of the festivities, where the torchlight blurred into the night’s darkness,
cutting a straight path through the groomed flower beds to the palace. The door was to the left of the grand staircase and
had been well disguised by a screen of flowers.
I slowed, allowing several servants with trays of food and sparkling wine to exit through it before I darted inside.
The air was warmer, carrying the essences of countless staff members, the wax of the lit wall sconces, and the savory aroma
of tarts. I kept straight on through the servants’ hall until it fed into the familiar one from all those nights ago. I would
only need to find the stairs and continue up to the King’s bedchamber—
A rough hand clamped onto my upper arm, and I swung my reticule toward the attacker without thinking. Its pink satin collided with a dark wool uniform. My eyes widened in feigned horror as they drifted up, meeting the grizzled face of a policeman.
“And where is it you think you’re going?” he demanded.
“Let go of me this instant,” I told him, fighting to break his grip. “You have no right—”
“I’ve every right,” he said, flashing his brown teeth with a grin. “You’re the whore who tried to off His Majesty, and now you’ve struck
an officer of the law.”
Fear trilled in me, but I gritted my teeth. “You’ll regret this.”
The policeman hauled me bodily after him, laughing at my attempts to kick him. I didn’t recognize where we were going, but
the maze of doors and halls eventually gave way to a grand sitting room.
In the daylight, it must have been enchanting with its soaring ceilings and ivory walls with gilt ornamental plaster. At night,
however, it took on the grave pallor of a sepulcher—and that was before I saw the duke standing before the drawing room’s
towering portrait of Queen Titania.
Glenmoor glanced over his shoulder, his mask dangling by its strings from his fingers. The way his eyes lit at the sight of
me sent a bolt of ice through my heart.
“Well, what have we here?” he purred. “A murderess creeping through the halls of the palace . . . where could you have been
headed, I wonder?”
The policeman shoved me forward, handing my reticule over to the duke. “She was exactly where you said she’d be.”
My scalp prickled as Glenmoor opened the bag and pulled out the small brown apothecary bottle.
“Wait,” I began, making rather a good show of lunging for it. “Please, don’t . . .”
He pulled it back from my grasp with a disapproving tut and slipped the bottle into the pocket of his jacket.
“Your Grace?” the policeman questioned.
“More poison to finish what she began with the King,” Glenmoor answered smoothly. “You are a witness to this heinous act.
Wait outside for me.”
I forced my breathing to slow, my pulse to settle. This was the point, I reminded myself. To make him believe he was getting
everything he wanted.
Glenmoor returned his attention to the painting. He waited until the door had clicked shut before speaking again.
“I anticipated Hugh would make one final, desperate act to save the King,” Glenmoor said, tapping at the bottle. “You truly
believed you would be able to deliver Immortal Rose to him on this night—on my night?”
The ice of his words sent an involuntary rush of fear through me.
“He has always been as hotheaded as a stallion,” Glenmoor continued. “And, as expected, he has sprung a trap that ensures
I have everything I need to see him ruined. In truth, I deserved a better opponent.”
I bit back a smirk, averting my gaze as he studied me.
“How quiet you are. Have you nothing to say in your defense? No pleas for mercy? I can practically feel your thoughts racing, but there is no need. It is over now, child.”
My fingers knotted around one another with the restraint it took to hide my smugness. “And if I wanted to now accept your
earlier proposal?”
He ran his tongue over his teeth. “I’ve no need of you now. There is another perfumer far more willing and capable—one your
grandfather couldn’t stamp out.”
I kept my face impassive, as if I was above such baiting. But if I could get a name out of him, we’d know the true poisoner . . .
“We know about the DeForests,” I said. “They have been dealt with.”
Glenmoor laughed—if it could be called a laugh. Every emotion felt mimicked and learned. “Dear me, is that why I saw them
at this very fete? Come now, you’ll have to be cleverer than that if you’re hoping to provoke me into giving them up.”
They’re here. My pulse quickened. The poisoner was here, among us.
At my answering silence, he inclined his head, exposing his long, delicate neck. For all his power, connections, and wealth,
the rookery would have gutted him like a fish in under ten clicks of a watch’s hand.
“Magnificent, isn’t she?” he said, nodding to the portrait of Queen Titania looming above us. “A mortal queen, more beautiful
than even the fairies. Elegant. Refined. Humanity perfected. How far we have fallen from her.”
The artist had, by some magic innate to his soul, painted the Queen’s dark skin in such a way that it glittered like starlight.
Her ermine state robe flowed around a gown of iridescent pink.
In one hand she held a scepter; in the other, a wreath of fairy blossoms that had long since vanished from our world.
“Did you know, Miss Lockwood, that it takes over two thousand silkworms to create a gown?” Glenmoor said, slipping behind
his mask of geniality once more. “One as magnificent as hers must have involved thousands more, surely.”
The abrupt twist to the conversation sent a sliver of dread through me. I cast a surreptitious glance around myself, searching
for something weighty. Heavy enough to maim. There was a crystal tray on the side table, a footstool . . . Nothing within
immediate reach.
“Until I was denied my father’s business interests, I had no desire to learn how silk was made,” Glenmoor continued with a