Chapter Forty
I was tucked into the farthest archway, resting on the balcony wall with one foot lolling over the open corridor below, when Clio delivered on our bargain.
A keening shriek tore from one of the bedrooms opposite me, high-pitched, ragged-nailed, and wholly terrified. It dragged roughly down my back, making my senses prick in the way of true fear: my pupils dilating, my throat burning, my chest squeezing in anticipation of a predator.
I grinned as I heard it. Additional cries followed shortly afterward, fluttering and panicked, accompanied by an ominous slap against the doorframe like the fleshy hurl of a body. “Noé! Please, I need Mr.Noé Alaire!”
Hidden in my alcove, I shrank back as, within a minute, the sound of rapid footsteps echoed from the other end of the corridor.
A pair of servants appeared in a streak of motion, bypassing my archway completely and heading directly to Clio’s door.
I waited until they’d shoved their way into the room, their initial attempts at consolation furiously rebutted by the distraught voice within (“Absolutely not , I require Noé or I shall be forced to leave the premises immediately, and I daresay his father would be most unhappy about that ”), before noiselessly slipping from my perch and creeping down the passageway to round its corner.
Clio’s diversion had already begun its outward ripple; in the next hall over, a pair of maids scurried about aimlessly, like insects wriggling in disoriented patterns beneath an overturned rock.
I maneuvered around them and kept going, pausing only to duck into a nearby empty parlor at the sound of Noé’s approach, his speech like the crack of a whip, commanding the chaos back into order.
“For the Envies’ sake, let her go home if she wishes—it isn’t as if she’s going to win, is it?—”
His voice boomed louder as he passed by my door and then was gone, on toward his destination.
Once I could no longer make his words out, I counted off thirty seconds and then exited back into the hallway, releasing an exhale when I found it abandoned, buzzing with the dazed, electric silence of the ocean after a storm.
Hurry. I urged myself forward, bunching my skirts around my ankles and widening my strides until I was moving at a near sprint.
My palms began to sweat when I reached the turret Bernard had led me to the evening of Noé’s and my dinner and ascended it, passing the stern-faced portraits in their spiraling rows, their black-raven eyes peering disapprovingly out at me. Stepping all the way to the top.
Noé’s door awaited me at the summit, standing rigid and proud like a soldier at attention, puffed up and ready to defend its charge.
If the household patterns I’d observed over the past week or so were accurate, it should be empty at this time of the morning, the maids having finished their rounds prior to breakfast. Waiting until nightfall, when the estate was silent and the hallways abandoned, would have been safer, but I’d lost the luxury of time long ago.
When dusk came, I would either be crowned the newest Alaire bride—or dismissed from Fortblanche for good.
I had one chance. I could not afford to squander it.
Steeling myself, I summoned my Wit and opened the door.
Beyond the threshold, Noé’s chambers were quiet—familiar, but somehow stiffer than I recalled, as if the room had noted my intrusion and drawn itself up in indignant protest. I did not linger in the living area for long, making my way through the adjoining door at the back to the bedroom.
Here, evidence of recent occupancy was abundant: a clothbound novel was splayed facedown atop his neatly made bed, a half-drunk cup of tea waiting to be finished on his desk, steam still issuing in thin curls from the liquid within.
I sifted through his belongings as neatly as I could.
More than with any of my previous explorations, I was acutely aware of my out-of-placeness; the threat of discovery was like a wind at my back, spurring me on.
I wasn’t entirely certain what I was searching for—some proof, I supposed, that the poem Noé had quoted to me and the one I’d found hidden in Ophelia’s room were not twins by coincidence.
My mind drifted as I worked, fragments of old conversations swimming to its forefront like debris snagged by an undertow.
He’s been in love before. The secret Eliot had confessed to me just after my arrival at Fortblanche, which I’d then turned against Noé at the end of his first trial.
I’d assumed my brazenness had impressed him enough to call on me for a stroll the next day, but what if Noé’s summons hadn’t been out of affection?
What if he’d simply wanted to see how much I knew?
A boy rumored to have suffered a recent heartbreak, and a love poem stashed in a dead girl’s room.
In retrospect, the connection seemed obvious, yet why hadn’t I identified it before?
Because Noé—and all others besides him—had insisted his relationship with Ophelia had been platonic?
Because he’d given me a name, a story, to attach to the whispers about him?
Neither of those excuses seemed sufficient now.
I bent down as I reached his nightstand, pulling out the shallow drawer set into it.
Then a thump , and an object rolled against the wood, disturbed by my movement. I registered a glint of gold, a nub of wax affixed to the metal, the wick protruding from it blackened and sad. A candle. And all around it…All around it, scattered like snowflakes, were singed, half-crumpled scrolls.
My thoughts blurred as I picked one up, unfurling it to reveal my own message stamped in neat ashen letters across the paper. From the depths of my mind, a memory rose: Manon standing at her door only two days ago, her eyes red from crying as we spoke.
I always felt that Miss Lear’s smelled personal…like an affair.
I’d dismissed her comment then—had assumed that her Wit had picked up on Ophelia’s secretive relationship with her correspondent and misread it as a romantic one. Why hadn’t I paused to consider whether the truth could be both?
She’d given me the answer, and I had been too caught up in my own theorizing to see it. Noé was not only Ophelia’s lover, the person who had given her the poem by Vaudevaul. He was also my correspondent.
My blood froze at the sound of footsteps in the living area behind me, deliberate and unhurried. After them came the rasp of wood scraping over the floor, followed by a curt click : the bedroom door, pulling open—and then, swiftly, closed.
“Oh, Miss Lovett,” said a voice—soft but authoritative. Regal. “This is a pity. My son had such high hopes for you. Really, I’d almost been convinced.”
Bastian. The revelation pierced me like a blade. Hands still wrapped around the candle, I started to turn just as a familiar presence blossomed at the back of my mind, unfurling rapidly outward and drawing me into the velvety dark.