22. The Birth of Baskerville #2
“That I don’t doubt. But I’d rather know what font you’d assign to me.” She pauses for a moment, thinking hard. Her nose does a little scrunch, and I force myself to look away. “Go ahead, duchess. Impress me.”
Once more, I see her hand lift to her locket. “Um, I don’t really know fonts as well as you do.” I doubt anybody with hobbies does, either. “But if I had to choose, I’d say Arial?”
I actually fucking flinch, and the move makes a surprised snort leave her. She covers her mouth with two fingers, apologising softly, but I couldn’t care less about propriety or whatever the fuck.
I care about the fact that she just told me I’m Arial .
Swallowing down my complaints, I turn on my heel. She lets out another laugh, and I savour the sound of her shoes doing that clacking thing as she scurries after me. “Where are you going?”
“To consider religion,” I throw behind me, picking up my pace. “You just called me the typographic equivalent of a tax form. I might need God’s intervention for this type of insult.”
The click-clacking grows louder as she, honest-to-fuck, rushes to catch up. A second later she’s before me, forcing me to halt. “What’s wrong with Arial? It’s timeless. Classic.”
“It’s Helvetica’s ugly cousin,” I deadpan. “It’s tap water. Bland tea in a beige cup. I don’t think I’ve ever had anybody tell me something that breathtakingly cruel. Fuck, you’re definitely Sheffolk.”
She looks up at me with an odd sheen to her eyes. “Where does the poeticism end with you? Now I’m breathtakingly cruel ?” I glare down at her. “You should print that out. Maybe in Arial.”
“Yes, I’ll frame it next to my will to live. Are we done here?”
“Need I remind you that you’re the one who followed me?”
No, I didn’t. Except— fuck , I did, didn’t I?
“I lingered coincidentally in your direction and received an assassination of my character in return for it. Believe me when I say I won’t be making the same mistake twice.”
She steps closer. Close enough that I have to tear my gaze from her mouth to the minimal space between us. “You’re taking this very personally for someone who said, and I quote, ‘It’s nothing personal’.”
I heave a sigh. “Francesca, I’m a royal exile with a complex need for control, an encyclopaedic knowledge of typography and a mild disdain for emotional intimacy. Of course I’m taking it personally. I don’t do surface-level anything.”
Her arms fold over her chest, and she says quietly, “That was a lot of words.”
“Yes, well, I’m a lot of man.”
She snorts. “In Arial.”
“I’m leaving.”
I move around her, trying—and failing—to drown out the sound of her laughter. It doesn’t provide me with answers to every question I yearn to ask her, but it does leave me with something.
Something that would make Kai proud, I think.
For a long moment, she remains on my mind as I deftly catalogue the small proof she’s left behind in her amusement. Gratitude . Again. A sort of sentimentality just large enough to file between ‘dead girls with opinions’ and ‘things I don’t intend to revisit but inevitably do’.
I shake off the interaction and cut through the corridors I’ve managed to memorise thus far.
Redford’s still yet to loosen up, but I’ve studied her arteries, lest she swallow me the way she did the girl in Francesca’s painting.
On the ground floor, two footmen are hoisting a positively monstrous frame with nothing but a ladder, rope and prayers.
Even the walls can tell everybody’s been working twice as hard in preparation for this ball.
“Why move it from the drawing room?” the smaller man asks through his teeth, straining against the weight of the canvas. Handrew . That’s the guy from Kai’s story, I think with a grimace.
I’m prepared to pass by, but the second man’s response stops me clean. “This’ll be the photo station nook on ball day. Pascoe swears the girls will love it as a showpiece.”
Pascoe .
His name dangles from the hook like bait, and I, paranoid fool that I am, allow it to sink in.
No such thing as coincidences here. The footmen glance my way and bow quickly before continuing to strain.
I turn, eyes dragging to the painting and letting it steal my full attention.
As it was meant to, apparently. Oil paint in various shades stains the canvas, whimsical enough to confess to being a doting commission instead of a professional one.
There’s no wind down the corridor, yet coldness nips at my nape.
Right there, in the centre of the painting, sits a toddler on an antique wingback chair.
Even rendered through the painter’s gaze, Francesca is recognisable.
From the thick, dark hair all the way to the green eyes almost too big for her face, that’s Baskerville, for certain.
Dressed in her sage frock, she’s painted with a little wren in her outstretched palm.
Squashed beside her is a second girl with hair the shade of burnished copper.
Percy, I presume. The painter gave her a magpie, its black and white wings outstretched mid-theft of the brooch pinned to her frock, and Percy herself seems delighted by it.
My gaze climbs to the foot of the chair, where there’s a girl I’ve never met and never will.
Luciana Lanorythe, forever preserved at five, cross-legged with a goldfinch cradled in her lap.
She’s Francesca but not: same nose, same mouth, but with eyes painted a summery blue.
It’s the brightest shade on the canvas, competing only with the yellow bird she’s holding.
Last comes the boy, a solemn child in a three-piece suit with a crow stitched onto his shoulder.
He stands out, both in terms of wardrobe and tone, as if he missed the memo that they were doing whimsy that day.
He’s also the only one looking directly at the painter, and with an expression of distaste too.
And where the other birds seem playful, this crow sits with its beak tilted towards Edmund’s ear.
You’ll find that this crow’s immensely loyal to his first fascination. He doesn’t range far, rotting on the same branch and waiting for it to feed him, even when it bears nothing of sustenance.
“Who’s the artist?” I ask, keeping my expression neutral even as I take a step back.
Handrew, quick to please and still bent under the weight of the frame, answers, “Pascoe, Your Highness.”
I blink once. Because naturally, the butler paints premonitions. Suspicion hardens into certainty as Pascoe’s warning rings loud as a bell. He’s been pointing at Edmund all along. I thank the footman with a clipped nod and stride off.
Fascination . Pascoe’s choice of word is poisonous.
Francesca. Edmund’s fascination. How obvious.
How revolting. Calling it love would’ve been less bloodcurdling.
You don’t hurt the people you love, not if you can help it.
Fascination requires destruction. Collectors will stab pins through wings, spread their specimen beneath the glass, and press the flower just to preserve and admire.
What forgiveness could the butterfly, suffocated in a jar, give to the hand that claimed to be fascinated by it?
Shit . If Pascoe’s goal was to make me picture the thin skin of Francesca’s throat, imagining the pins, clamp and glass slides, then he’s fucking succeeded.
The discovery festers within me until I’m nauseous with it.
I stop only long enough to instruct a pair of house staff to go and assist those footmen with their behemoth of a painting—an afterthought of an instruction, but strong enough to soothe my conscience.
Then the corridor turns, up the stairs, and I’m by my room, phone already in hand.
A theory sits inside my head, and I need to voice it before it eats through bone.
It takes two swipes to get to Henrik’s chat. No Kai lurking in the corner to add his two cents, and soon I’m typing out the message before I can stop myself. In a rare moment of luck, he’s already online.
Eric
Need a favour.
Is there a way you could pull Edmund Marathid’s full medical records?
Something isn’t adding up.
And don’t involve Kai.
Henrik
the fuck would i involve kai for?
he still thinks the WHO refers to ‘horton hears a who’
and i already sent you everything the palace had clearance for on the sheffolks.
if anything in those files seems as though it was redacted, it had to have happened before i even got my hands on it.
Fuck.
Eric
There’s a gap. His file reads too clean for what I’m witnessing over here.
Scan for anything strange when you have the time. I don’t care how minor, just send it my way.
People misfile things all the time , I tell myself.
But I need to know, more than my next breath, whether somebody flagged Edmund as being a risk and yet somehow never disclosed it.
Francesca deserves that certainty, and if Edmund is being protected, well, history certainly taught us that protected threats breed even bigger problems.A small, annoying part of me hopes that, just this once, my theory is proven false and that Pascoe’s nothing but a distrustful old man.
For the sake of the love I know Francesca harbours for her cousin, being wrong would be a relief, especially when the alternative is Edmund deciding she’s prettier pinned than left free.