Page 192 of Immortal Rose

“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.