Chapter 16 The Infirmary #2
“I’m so sorry,” she muttered, cursing her shoes, which were a size too large for her feet. Borrowed from Heather’s closet, of course.
“This is the second time you’ve stumbled into my arms. Am I to believe you are simply this clumsy?”
He glanced down at her through dark lashes and caught her gaze.
Celise looked away, feeling a slight burn in her cheeks.
Was she blushing? Oh no, she hoped not. He didn’t kiss her, though for a moment, it seemed like he considered it.
Then he set her back on her feet and helped straighten her dress.
Then, surprising her, Elias removed his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“This is the second coat I’ve given to you,” he murmured.
Celise blushed. His greatcoat slouched around her small form, as wide and long as a blanket. It almost reached her ankles. It was made of a finer, newer fabric than the other coat she had stolen from him.
“I have your other coat in my trunk,” she mumbled apologetically. “I can return it to you tomorrow. I didn’t mean to keep it—”
“That’s fine. I shall collect it later,” he said.
Celise blinked up at him, surprised that he didn’t seem at all upset. He gazed down at her with an unreadable expression on his face, and she wondered at the softening of his eyes.
Then he offered her his arm again.
With a deep breath, Celise accepted it and they followed after the drunken guests.
She sensed him slow his pace to match her short strides.
He was very tall, and she was unusually short.
She felt quite mismatched. She held up her skirts, and, pinching the dahlia between her fingers, she awkwardly navigated the lumpy cobblestone back to the manor house.
All deep in their cups, Old Blackwood, Lord Dhastel and a group of gentlemen sang uproariously into the night.
Blackwood’s barrel-chested laugh carried like booming thunder.
The men stumbled toward the castle in a happy herd.
It seemed Lord Dhastel was enjoying himself.
Both he and Cornelius Blackwood walked with a cane, and they bumped into each other several times as they wandered across the dark grounds.
Each time their canes crossed, the two men guffawed and patted each other on the back like old friends.
In a loud voice, Celise overheard Blackwood promising her father a glass of expensive brandy and a cigar to toast the new engagement.
“I must admit, I forgot you had a third daughter,” Celise overheard Blackwood blustering as he walked down the path like a three-legged bulldog. “Somehow, I recall meeting only two. I apologize!”
“Not to worry, Your Grace, my daughter Celise is . . . well, she doesn’t leave the house as much as her sisters. She has a fragile constitution.”
“If she’s caught the eye of my storm-blooded son, she's far from fragile!” Blackwood laughed with good humor.
Lord Dhastel hesitated, and Celise held her breath.
Was he going to tell Old Blackwood that she was a dunslug?
It would ruin everything. The spell of the night would be broken.
The elite Blackwood family wouldn’t allow a match with a dunslug.
Really, she shouldn’t have been at the ball to begin with!
But the moment passed. Lord Dhastel said nothing.
“A fragile constitution?” Elias said quietly. Then, to her silence, “Do you bruise easily, too?”
Celise raised a startled hand to her jaw. She had forgotten all about her swollen cheek.
“I . . . uh . . . .”
Elias’s hooded gaze saw too much. He glanced back up at her father with a calculating frown.
Then, startling Celise—or perhaps saving her from a lengthy explanation—a great ruckus disrupted the night sky behind her.
Whoosh! Ziiiing! Boom!
Behind them, fireworks arced across the sky, exploding against a backdrop of storm clouds.
The pouring rain only slightly dampened their bright sparks.
It seemed the old duke wasn’t one to do things by half measure.
The crowd of guests stumbled and gazed upward, trying to watch the show as they walked back to the castle.
Elias didn’t turn once to look at the colorful sparks filling the sky. His eyes darted instead to the shadows, ever vigilant.
“I suppose the fireworks might distract any daemons on the grounds,” he grumbled. “A tactical advantage, if it doesn’t distract Kiran’s men as well.”
“I don’t want to encounter another one of those monsters,” Celise said with sincerity.
“I’m sure we’re safe, my lady.”
My lady. She really wasn’t used to that. She felt the urge to correct him but held back. How did she explain herself?
When they reached the rear entrance to the castle, the double doors were thrown open wide by a set of staff. More servants appeared with towels and blankets in hand and warm cups of cocoa for the guests.
Old Blackwood and the rest of the gentlemen turned down the hot chocolate in favor of hot brandy. Then disappeared up a set of stairs to the second floor.
Elias entered the castle with Celise’s hand still wrapped in his own.
The low-lit halls of Gravenmere embraced them.
The corridors were dry and cold. Celise heard voices and footsteps echoing from the door above them, then a loud door slam.
It sounded like Blackwood’s guests were all retreating to their rooms to turn in for the night.
Elias flagged down a passing servant. “Would you wake up Dr. Forrest? It’s urgent. We will wait for him in the infirmary.”
The servant bowed and headed for a flight of stairs to the second floor.
“The infirmary is just down here, on the left,” Elias said, escorting Celise down another hallway. They passed by silver wall sconces lit with low flames.
Easing the silence, Elias said, “The Dhastel estate is in the lower plains across the river, isn’t it? From Gravenmere, I believe it’s two days by train. You have a long trip ahead of you tomorrow.”
Celise cautiously cleared her throat. “I don’t mind the train ride. I’ve never traveled this far from home before.”
"Really? Don’t you go into the city on occasion?"
“No, not often.”
Celise clammed up again. She felt like she was going to say the wrong thing and somehow give herself away.
What would Elias think if he knew she spent all of her time with the horses in the pasture or the stables?
This was one of the few times she had left Dhastel lands.
She sometimes went to the nearby town of Sultan with Mordwen to buy supplies for the house, but those trips were infrequent, and Sultan was no more than an intersection in the road between farms. She had only been as far as Castleberry City two or three times.
Gravenmere was the farthest she had ever traveled from home.
At the end of the long hallway, Elias opened a door and ushered Celise inside a large, clean room lit by glowing gas lamps.
A long oak table stood before her, scattered with medical ledgers, bottles sealed with colored wax, and slender, shined wands used for mana readings.
The mingled scent of dried lavender, clean linens and bitter herbs tickled her nose.
She had never visited a mana healer before, but it seemed like the Gravenmere infirmary was equipped with all the latest technology.
She didn’t see anyone in attendance.
“Have a seat on that chair over there. I’m sure the doctor will be along shortly. Everyone is fast asleep at this late hour.”
Celise nodded and sat down in the nearest wooden chair to wait.
A clock ticked away on the wall. Elias stood quietly in the room.
The silence was deep and terrible. Celise fiddled with the flower in her hands.
The white bloom, so glowy and bright under the stars, was beginning to close.
She watched the petals slowly fold inward.
According to Heather, it was one of the rarest flowers in the kingdom, and Elias had plucked it from the garden like nothing at all.
She wondered if she would be allowed to take it home with her: a token of her fateful night.
Of course, the engagement couldn’t last. It didn’t feel real at all.
She thought again of Mordwen’s fortune, told with dramatic flair in her bedroom above the stables.
The final card had been the Abyssal Rose—she wasn’t misremembering things.
Dasha didn’t believe in Mordwen’s fortunes, but Celise did, now more than ever before.
What did it all mean? Had she somehow managed to steal Katrina’s fate?
Was such a thing possible? She couldn’t imagine her younger sister’s fury.
Not only had Celise failed to be killed by the daemon, but Elias had chosen her to be his bride. Katrina would not stand for it.
The silence stretched. Celise fidgeted, her thoughts heavy on her mind as her imposter syndrome grew.
At least walking across the grounds in her ill-fitting slippers had given her something to focus on.
Now, trapped in awkward proximity with the Mad Dog, all she could manage to do was fiddle with the flower in her hands.
Finally, Celise summoned her courage and cleared her throat. “So . . . what happens now?”
Elias raised a dark eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what happens next?”
“Next?”
“The gala, the garden, the proposal . . . it’s all very exciting, but . . . this isn’t real, is it?”
Elias considered her, his hands clasped behind his back, his face unreadable, that of a soldier standing in rank.
“Do you want it to be real?” he asked.
Celise hesitated. Should she tell him she wasn’t Luminous?
Now would be the time.
She really should say something before the whole ordeal got out of hand.
“I . . . I don’t know,” she muttered. She was a coward. She couldn’t say it.
“I see.” He paused. “We can part ways tonight, if you like. But if you are willing, then we shall play our parts and fulfill our duty.”
Celise blinked twice. Our duty?
So, it was all an act? It must be. He didn’t care for her at all.
Had she imagined all those lingering glances? What about the kiss they had shared in the garden? Oh, how she wished to return to that rainy darkness, where she felt so close to him, without the curtain of propriety falling between them!
Celise gathered up her courage. It was time to reveal her secret. Her lack of mana-channeling would put an abrupt end to this madness, guaranteed.