Chapter Thirty-Nine
It was just like the Patricians to insist on having their extravagant fete, blissfully dancing the midnight away, even after
one of their most prominent members had been dramatically exposed as a traitor.
I glowered down at them from the top of the stairs into the gardens, prowling like one of the caged animals at the Royal Menagerie.
“Rather shocking, isn’t it?” Eleanor said from where she leaned against the damp stone railing, surveying the twirling dancers
with a look of distaste. “I cannot tell if they’ve bred the scruples out of their family lines or if they simply see it as
part of the evening’s entertainment. Either way, they are remarkably unbothered.”
One of the guards nearby snorted in amusement, only to straighten back to attention when Eleanor and I glanced at him.
I moved to join her, bracing a hand against the railing and the other against the Foxcourt tiara as I leaned over, searching
for the door Hugh had disappeared through. It had been nearly a half hour since he’d pursued Glenmoor, and ten minutes since
Reddy had given up the pretense of being untroubled and gone to find him. I was about to come out of my skin.
“You played your part exquisitely,” I told her softly. “He never saw you coming.”
“Because he and all the others think I’m weak,” Eleanor said.
“You’ve changed that perception tonight,” I told her.
The princess smiled, at least. “I’m grateful to you,” Eleanor said. “Truly.”
“I think you should be more irritated than grateful,” I told her. “Glenmoor took my only working blend. Immortal Rose still
isn’t complete.”
Her smile appeared and vanished again, quick as a hummingbird. “But it will be come tomorrow morning, won’t it? You are giving
me back time, and for me, that is power. Whether it is Glenmoor or someone else, I would be controlled completely in a regency.”
And yet, what Greystone had said in parting still troubled me. “Do you have any idea what Glenmoor had on your uncle?”
Eleanor shook her head. “At first I thought he merely saw him as a son, but—”
I reached out, touching her arm to silence her as I pivoted toward the door. A moment later, Willie and Tommy appeared there,
looking ashen.
Willie blinked rapidly as he came toward us, struggling to muster the words. My knees bobbed, suddenly weak, as the world
spun around me.
“What’s happened?” I demanded. “Where is he?”
Eleanor signaled to the closest guard, drawing the whole cluster into a tight formation around us.
“You’d best come, my lady,” Willie said at last. “We barely got him into the coach—I’m not sure how much time he has left.”
The dark night air pressed in around me, ice to my skin. I hauled up my skirts, demanding, “Where?”
Tommy had only got out the words servants’ court before I was off like a shot, running through the open doorways into the hall. The walls of flowers wilted around me, their
scent suddenly suffocating, tinged with decay, the very horror of life and death.
Near the servants’ wing, a new, terrible stench slowed me—rancid, a bitter green with the slightest essence of sweetness.
Of licorice.
“No,” I gasped. The magic had faded to a sinister murmur, its fangs blunted as it had dispersed.
Hugh. His name pierced me like a dagger to the heart, because I knew now what this was.
Poison.
I started toward the door into the servants’ wing, only to be grabbed from behind.
“No, my lady, not that way—” Strong arms hauled me from the corridor.
Eleanor rushed forward, her face blurring in front of me. “There’s another path to the courtyard—here—”
We were inside one moment and outside the next. The rain-washed air drove out the spikes of the poisoned perfume, clearing
my mind. Water dripped from the ivy covering the walls, apace with the distant melody of the string quartet. My eyes skipped
from an abandoned black jacket crumpled on the ground to the waiting coach. Cartwell hovered near the open door, looking stricken.
Just inside, Reddy crouched beside a shadowed figure curled on the seat.
At the sound of our approach, Reddy climbed out. He met my gaze silently as he handed me up, and it was only then, when I saw the fear in his face, that the last of my hope abandoned me.
I dropped to my knees beside the seat in a cloud of dress and petticoats. Hugh’s essence surrounded me, its comfort stolen
by the thready scent of the poison that clung to him.
His hair was still soaked through with rain, and the wool blanket they’d wrapped around him did little to stave off the chill
that had appeared to have set in.
I stripped off my gloves, careful to replace my ring on my finger to keep from losing it. I clasped his face between my hands,
gasping at its icy touch. His lips were tinged with a terrifying blue.
“Hugh,” I choked out. “Hugh—can you hear me?”
There was no response. Not even a groan of pain.
“What happened?” Eleanor demanded.
“I don’t know,” Reddy answered. His voice was gentle. Too gentle for my liking.
“Home,” I called out to Cartwell. “Home, now.”
I turned back to Hugh as the coach door slammed shut. There were muffled voices, then the sway of the coach as the Longmounts
and Cartwell reclaimed their positions. The bobbing movement jostled us both, and for the first time, Hugh cried out.
His arm slipped down off the seat, and something fell from his grasp, clattering into the floor’s dark well. I felt for it,
gasping as my fingers brushed against scalding metal. It pulsed as if it possessed its own heartbeat.
The fairy charm.
I looked between it and Hugh’s face. If it absorbed magic, helping to nullify it—
“My God,” I whispered. It had to be slowing the effects of the poison, sapping at it. Keeping him alive—for now.
I reached over Hugh, clawing at the knot of his cravat until I could open the front of his shirt. He gasped again in pain
as I cradled the back of his skull, lifting it only long enough to loop the leather cord around his neck. The silver pendant
crackled like fire devouring wood as it came to rest against his skin.
I leaned over him, knocking frantically on the coach’s back window, unsure of whether it opened.
It did. Willie’s pale face appeared there as he crouched down, keeping a perilous grip on the coach.
“Do you have the pin?” I asked breathlessly. “Glenmoor’s pin?”
He patted the jacket of his livery with his free hand. The charm bounced from his hand to mine as the well-sprung coach battled
the cobblestones. I just barely managed to catch it again before it disappeared into the dark footwell.
I pinned it to Hugh’s shirt, just over his heart. If the other charm failed, there would be this one, and if this charm failed . . .
“Don’t you dare die, you insufferable toff,” I told him, my eyes stinging with tears. My gaze fixed on his pale face, on that
faint, shallow breath. “You promised me a dance.”
But he was beyond hearing. Beyond seeing.
But not, I knew, beyond saving.
The ride to Foxcourt House was the most agonizing passage of time I could remember since Mama’s horrific decline on the eve
of her death.
It was his breath—the way it rattled with each shallow gasp, as if his lungs were drowning themselves in blood. The way his
eyes snapped open only to stare vacantly past me, to the dark roof of the coach, murmuring delirious, hoarse words.
Someone leapt down from the coach before it had come to a stop outside the mews—Reddy, who had apparently been riding up front
with Cartwell. He was joined by Willie, tearing up the garden path and bursting into the house.
By the time Cartwell had brought the coach to the back garden gate, they’d returned with a stretcher and brought the rest
of the household with them.
Brigadier barked wildly at the flurry of activity, circling and circling the coach until she was snatched up by Felicity,
who was already supporting a pale-faced Fleming.
Mrs. Keyes flung the coach’s door open, her expression turning stricken at the sight of us.
“Help,” I managed to get out. “He’s . . .”
Mrs. Silver edged in beside her, making a quick assessment. “Poison?”
I nodded, the heavy collar of my necklace suddenly strangling. “Perfume.”
Cartwell’s grave face appeared beside them, reaching inside for me. “Come out, then, darling,” he said soothingly. “We’ll
bring him in.”
I took his offered hand, navigating the knot of my crushed skirts. The steps they’d set down wobbled uncertainly under me, or perhaps that was only my footing. In either case, Mrs. Keyes was there to grip my other arm.
“Did it come?” I asked her. “The nectar?”
It had to be past midnight. If Greystone had cheated us, if he’d delayed its arrival by even a moment . . .
“Yes,” Mrs. Keyes said, watching as Reddy and Willie slid the stretcher inside. “It arrived like a visiting royal, complete
with a gilded coach—careful now!”
That last order was barked to the young men as they attempted to settle Hugh’s supine form onto the stretcher. My body went
rigid at his hoarse cry of pain.
Mrs. Keyes turned back to me. “Unfortunately, there’s another matter you may need to see to first.”
Reluctantly, I trailed after her to the house. The flower beds shivered in the wind as we passed them. The drops of rain clinging
to the leaves and petals looked like teardrops in the dark.
The scent of the house was a balm to the heavy ache in my chest. As my eyes adjusted to the light in the kitchen, the matter
revealed itself at once: Theo sat at the head of the staff table, looking to all the world like a haughty boy king as he stared
down a grizzled man swathed in tattered clothing.
The latter rose at our entrance, his lips shaping into a perfect O at the sight of me. He swept off his hat, releasing his
ponderous clouds of side whiskers for us all to admire. “M’lady, I—God’s teeth!”
The visitor balked as the door opened behind me and they carried Hugh in. Willie stopped, his face scrunching at the sight
of the man. He passed his end of the stretcher to Tommy. “Reynolds, you’d better have a good reason to have turned up here—”
I glanced toward the others as they passed, saying, “Put him in my bedchamber, please. I think we’ll need the room to see
to him.”
“Of course,” Reddy said quickly. “Some hot water might be helpful—”
“Yes,” Mrs. Silver said, her wrapper flying out behind her as she moved to the stove. “Yes, right away.”
“I’ll find clean clothes for his lordship,” Fleming said, hurrying after the stretcher.
“As I told you, Mr. Reynolds, now is not the time for your urgent business,” Mrs. Keyes told the bedraggled man.
His attention snapped back to us as the commotion in the kitchen settled. “I—well—ye told me to come if I’d ’eard anything about them snatchers. And I did, straight off.”
I began unfastening the heavy pearl earrings, fighting my impatience. Felicity held out her hand for them, already at work
removing the roses from the base of the Foxcourt tiara. I ducked to allow her to lift it off my head.
I gritted my teeth. “All right. What is it you’ve found?”
“I’d forgotten till I talked to my boys, see—ye remember how it is, Willie, how these things get away from ye until they matter
again,” Reynolds continued, scratching at his nose. “We was having ourselves some ale at Traydon’s and got to talking about
the snatchers and such. One of them—Colby, ye remember ’im, don’t ye?”
Willie looked like he wanted to kill Reynolds, then Colby, as slowly as possible. “Yes.”
With a comforting stroke of my arm, Felicity took the parure and ducked out of the kitchen to see it put away.
“Well, ’e mentioned ’e ’eard one of the snatchers being called Sweetflyer,” Reynolds continued. “Colby swears ’e saw ’im take
a boy, no more than ten.”
“Could he describe the man at all?” I asked.
Reynolds shook his head. “Said it was dark and ’e wore a cloak. This was years ago, mind, when we were lads ourselves.”
But of course. That would have been too easy.
“Thank you,” I told him.
Reynolds looked to Willie. “About that silver ye promised—ack—” Willie gripped him by the collar, dragging him away.
“I told you not to come here,” Willie growled as the garden door shut behind them.
Mrs. Keyes blew a loose strand of hair out of her face. “Is the hot water ready?”
“Yes, my love,” Mrs. Silver said. “Help me bring it up, won’t you?”
The women hoisted the cans of hot water and vanished through the doorway. Quiet descended on the kitchen as I steeled myself
with a long, steadying breath.
“’E’s wrong.”
Theo, for once, had been so quiet I’d forgotten he was there.
“Reynolds?” I asked.
He nodded, scratching absently at his ear. “I’d forgot till now, till I ’eard it, like ’e said.”
“That’s all right,” I said, fighting my impatience to go to the still room. “What was he wrong about?”
“The name of the shadow man.” The boy stared back at me with dark eyes that seemed entirely too old for his face. “The other
sweeps, they called ’im Sweetfeather.”
That word again. Sweetfeather.
I started toward the still room, only to be stopped by his quiet whisper.
“That toff,” Theo said. “’E’ll be all right, won’t ’e?”
Through the still room door, I could see where not one but four brown bottles had been placed on a tray, all in whimsical
shapes like the others I’d seen in the archive at Briarwood Palace. Greystone had sent them all, not just the nectar.
Rather than amaze me, the realization was unsettling. There would be invisible strings attached to the other three, no doubt.
“Yes,” I promised Theo. “He will.”
Because there was still Immortal Rose.
I brought two candles into the still room with me, setting one on either side of the table to light my workspace. As I tied
an apron around my dress, I considered the bottles, the hint of their nature that escaped their stoppers.
I opened the Treasury, quickly turning the pages until I found a perfume that used heatherbore—A Whisper of Mist, for clearing
the chest of congestion.
All the Rosebourne perfumes, magic or otherwise, were pleasing to the nose—there was a harmony to their scents. Given the
grasses and oakmoss listed for the perfume, heatherbore was likely to be the one that smelled like cool, damp earth—it drew
to mind the image of a shadowed grove.
One by one, I worked through them. It was so rare to discover new scents, it was difficult, even under the circumstances,
not to be swept away by them, feeling the shimmer of their magic kiss my fingertips through the glass.
Silverbranch had an unusually cold scent, almost like tuberose carved from ancient silver into a key—one used to find what was lost or hidden.
Moonflower was a crisp, sweet scent, and like the first bite of a peach, that sweetness kept unfolding, revealing new, nuanced depths.
Every perfume that used it involved some form of protection, including from nightmares.
Which left the final bottle. The divine nectar of the flowering Afallach tree.
Tart like strawberry or rhubarb, but rounded by a honeyed note that made my whole soul lift. It was weaker than the other
scents, and as I took the bottle in hand, drawing it toward the candle’s light, I saw why.
There was a single drop of it left inside—enough for exactly one dose.