Page 196 of Immortal Rose

I steeled myself. “Thank you. If you’ll wait right here?”

At his confused nod, I climbed the steps to the landing. The movement rustled the tulle hanging over Lord Foxcourt’s portrait. With a deep breath, I twisted the coarse fabric in my grip and tugged.

The mourning shroud drifted to the ground silently, falling like a shadow at my feet.

And all the while, I watched Vernon. Watched as the blood left his face and the terror set in. His body tensed, as if preparing to bolt back to the door.

“I—” he began. “I don’t understand—this—”

I picked up Rosebourne’s commonplace book where I had left it balanced on the table beneath the portrait, opening it to the page I had marked.

“‘Radcliffe Apothecary,’” I read. “‘Encounter with hostile man—ask Lord F about placement—if man is related to DeForests?’”

Vernon jumped as I shut the book and left it behind on the landing. I descended the steps, and he drew back, his shoulders curling in as he hunched at the waist.

“Vernon,” I began softly, “how old are you?”

“I’m—sixty-seven,” he choked out. “I’m sixty-seven.”

“How old are you in truth?” This was a nightmare. It had to be. “How old would you be if you had never encountered the man in the portrait?”

He was silent save for his heavy breathing. Until: “Twenty-seven.”

I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to smother the dagger-sharp pain that pierced it. “And when you were taken by a snatcher?”

“Seven.”

I bit my lip, trying to control my own emotions as his unraveled. I saw the boy in his face then, how very frightened he was. It reminded me so much of Theo, I nearly wept.

“How did you know?” he whispered. “I was careful . . . I was so careful. I never revealed it. Not even His Majesty knew. Only the perfumer. Only that man.”

The perfumer. My grandfather. My stomach twisted viciously.

“He wrote about the required sacrifice of youth to create a perfume, adjusting it to the King’s tastes in the book of perfume formulations,” I forced myself to say. “It replaced another ingredient called sweetfeather.”

Vernon flinched again at the name.

“That was the alias Lord Foxcourt used when he hired men to steal children from the Brickbats, wasn’t it? Children few people would care to look for or miss,” I whispered. “To take their youth and vitality for the King’s perfume.”

A perfume that he claimed revitalized him, that had somehow warded off even poison for a time. Now I knew why.

“A monster can wear a smile and an orchid on his lapel,” I said, repeating his words back to him. “He wore them often, didn’t he? That was why he was depicted with one.”

The white orchid on Lord Foxcourt’s painted lapel was bright despite the house’s evening gloom. My soul raged at it. A symbol of purity. Of innocence.

“You were so nervous when you came to see me, and then you mentioned the statue in the back garden’s pond, as if you had been here before,” I continued. “I asked the others, and the statue you recalled broke nearly twenty years ago.”

Just around the time Vernon had his youth ripped away from him.

“He . . . he placed me in service, after,” Vernon said hoarsely. “As a consolation. Can you credit that?”

“Oliver’s grandparents,” I said. “I remember.”

“It was fine . . . I was fine . . . until we came to live with the Radcliffes and I was surrounded by young boys,” Vernon said. “It was a mockery, a punishment. Every day I felt more like an atrocity, neither adult nor boy. A wasted, withered freak.”

“No—” I began.

He held up his hand, silencing my protest. “Oliver knew nothing of my past, but he sensed my pain. That was why he helped me gain employment at the palace. The old Foxcourt had no idea until I had already ingratiated myself with the King.”