Page 28 of Immortal Rose

“Your employer and the King seem to believe it a crime to do so,” I said, unwilling to keep the bitterness from my tone. “Fairgate for the fairyborn.”

“My employer,” Mrs. Keyes said wryly, “once thought it wise to race standing on his saddle and nearly broke his scrawny neck, calling his judgment into some question.”

My brows rose. That sort of honesty was discouraged in servants, who’d frequently rather bite off their tongue than say a word against their employer to a stranger. I bit my lip, my thoughts spinning in a helpless circle. Perhaps it was a test to see if I could be trusted?

The older woman hummed, letting the bedchamber drift back into its warm, contented silence. My gaze flitted around me, absorbing the sight of it without lingering on the details the way I had when I’d first come in.

Everything the candlelight touched was a soft pink or green of springtime, the sort I’d always imagined the countryside to look like. The imposing mirrored wardrobe was carved with delicate fairies, deer, and oak trees, a set with the canopied bed, which featured the same sage-green silk as the window curtains. A meadow of little flowers had been embroidered onto the fabric, picking up on the soft hues of the plush rugs. A vanity with a mirror had been placed in the corner, its wood darker than the other furniture. As if it, too, were a guest.

It was embarrassing to realize that, in all my years imagining the life of a toff, I’d never come close to envisaging the utter decadence of it. That everything could be designed with the utmost comfort in mind, that something could be beautiful just for beauty’s sake . . .

The soul dies without beauty. Mama had said it so often, and I’d never believed her. Now I saw it, what the loss of it had done to her, even as she’d fought to hide it from me.

Mrs. Keyes must have followed my gaze, because she asked, “Is the room to your liking?”

“It’s lovely,” I rasped, hating the burn of tears in my throat. “It’s only . . . I’m not really a guest. None of this is real. You didn’t have to go to all this trouble for me.”

Mrs. Keyes considered the room. “Why not? It suited his late lordship just fine.”

“Lord Foxcourt?” I set my empty cup on the ground by my feet. “This was his room?”

“Indeed” was Mrs. Keyes’s only reply.

The present Foxcourt hadn’t taken up residence? Though I wasn’t sure why that surprised me. A room this joyful would be like poison to the soulless. I supposed he could have redone it to suit his own tastes, but it would have been difficult to repaint the walls a dark enough shade of black to match his heart.

Mrs. Keyes wrapped my chest and back in a loose layer of bandages, “to keep the wounds clean as they heal,” she explained, then helped me restore my shift and wrapper.

“Shall I see to your ankle?” the housekeeper asked.

I sent up a plea for fortitude to God and nodded.

“Brave girl,” Mrs. Keyes said approvingly.

She reached behind her for another roll of bandages on the tray, only for it to slip on the tub’s curled edge. I glanced back as the housekeeper moved with astonishing swiftness, catching and rebalancing it with a single graceful movement.

I blinked, then blinked again.

“Blast and cannon fodder,” she muttered as she knelt before me. “Now, where was I?”

It would have been less painful to put the iron manacle back on than endure that initial burn of salve on the ravaged flesh.

I didn’t understand the subtle way Mrs. Keyes’s expression shifted, not until she said, “Chaining you like an animal—it is the cruel way of life that the most deserving of punishment never receive it. Even hell isn’t enough for them.”

Given the King of hell was said to wield a three-tipped scourge of infernal fire, I thought he was likely to have the damned well in hand, but I appreciated the sentiment.

“The last Lord Foxcourt used to say that pain was a matter of the mind,” Mrs. Keyes said, “that we decide its control over us.”

“Spoken,” I said haltingly, “like a man who’d never . . . been flogged . . .”

The housekeeper clucked her tongue in agreement. “Pain is necessary and vital, for it reminds us that we yet live, but it must be experienced to be truly known. I’m nearly finished—breathe in slowly through your nose and out through your mouth.”

I did exactly that, clenching my hands into fists and pressing them against my eyes. But blocking my sight only strengthened my other senses—the smell of my oozing flesh and Mrs. Keyes’s bloodied essence, the taste of the whisky on my tongue, the sound of the soft snick of Mrs. Keyes finally shutting the tin.

“You’re wrong about one thing, Miss Lockwood,” Mrs. Keyes said as she carefully bandaged my ankle. “There is not a single one of us who does not understand how very real this is. You are safe here. You will always be safe here, no matter the circumstances.”

How very much I wished that were true. How very, very much.

“Will that one work?”