Page 39 of Immortal Rose

The older man’s smile returned, his eyes softening. “You are too kind, Your Royal Highness. Yes, I am certain. And if I may speak freely . . . it is with some regret that the other gentleman who was present that dreadful morning remains hale as well.”

My mind latched on to that statement. Interesting—a rival servant or a hated courtier, perhaps?

“Yes, it’s curious, isn’t it, that he was there at such an hour,” Foxcourt said wryly. “It seems he has been spending more time at the palace.”

Eleanor’s hands, delicately folded in her lap, tightened around each other.

“The household has taken notice, certainly,” Vernon said, in that light-footed way servants had of dancing around a truth. “Perhaps it might be useful to you, my lord, if I were to keep you apprised of other such changes, as well as the whispers one hears.”

Foxcourt was silent for a tense moment. “Yes. That would be quite useful, as I suspect no correspondence from the princess leaves the palace without being first read.”

Eleanor looked positively gray now, and it played out in her scent: disgust, dread, and fear. I watched her, more alarmed by their implications with each passing moment.

Eleanor may have been the presumptive heir to the throne, but she was still a woman. Royal ladies were hostages to their supposed good fortune, traded away to foreign courts, or reduced to broodmares, or simply puppeteered by the men around them. Eleanor was on the cusp of marriageable age. The wolves were no doubt circling.

Finally, I couldn’t take another moment of this cloak-and-dagger nonsense. “Who are we speaking of, exactly?”

“It is not for you to know,” Foxcourt said coldly. “Your focus is to remain on your task.”

If it hadn’t been for Vernon’s presence, I might have picked up the small statue of the dancing fairy on the table before me and thrown it at his head.

“Yes, of course,” I said acidly. “How foolish to wonder who wished such a slow, painful decline on the King.”

In the silence that followed, I realized my mistake. Foxcourt came around the back of the couch at once, his expression frighteningly alert. Eleanor was watching me closely, too, looking almost afraid to summon the question now rising in her.

Hell’s tits. I hadn’t meant to tell them that I’d recognized the perfume; the implications were terrible.

“You know more about this poison than you’ve let on, Miss Lockwood,” Foxcourt said. The leather of his gloves creaked as his fists clenched at his sides.

“You never asked if I recognized it,” I shot back, feeling my own anger rise. “In fact, my thoughts have mattered very little to you in all of this.”

“That certainly hasn’t stopped you from shamelessly turning the King’s misfortune to your advantage,” Foxcourt scoffed.

I inhaled sharply. This nib had the gall to slap my hand and deride me as grasping when he was the one to have brought me into this?

“Miss Lockwood,” Eleanor began, her fingers knotting in her lap, “you said it would be a slow decline . . . ?”

The hope in her voice cooled whatever heat had been building in my blood. At the edge of my vision, Vernon leaned forward, eager to hear the answer himself.

“It’s only, I wonder . . . how slow will it be?” the princess continued softly, disarming my temper and Foxcourt’s dark mood in an instant. The severity of the earl’s stance eased, and something like concern stole into his expression.

“You can tell me the truth, Miss Lockwood. I assure you, I can handle the knowing of it.” A small, pained smile touched Eleanor’s lips. “I am quite adept at receiving bad news, you see.”

I hesitated then, not because I didn’t believe her, but because I did. She had lost both of her parents before her fifth birthday, had seen the late Queen—by all accounts a second mother to her—stolen by her tenth.

I had grown up in the gutters of Riverside, and she had flourished like a hothouse flower within the glittering halls of this palace, but I saw myself in her then. The way she had set her shoulders back, her hands gripping each other as if she might have a hope of bracing herself. I saw the girl I had been at sixteen, asked to face a terrible truth, to accept and endure it with a stoicism that had aged me far beyond my years. Her courage broke my heart.

“I believe it may be similar to one known to the Rosebournes as the Gravekeeper,” I said into the silence. “The darkened fingernails are the most telling side effect. And if I’m correct—if they are similar—and it’s already been five days since the poisoning, there is only a week left before he is beyond saving.”

I had anticipated the silence that followed. The salty kiss of desperation. Leathery shock. Even the wintry brush of despair. Vernon’s distress was so palpable, it was as if another soul were in the room with us, writhing in the throes of horror.

“But,” I added quickly, “the King’s Blend may give us more time. It’s difficult to tell.”

Certainly the last person who’d suffered the poison had been far worse at this point; the King seemed almost in decent health by comparison.

But as Eleanor turned her huge eyes toward Foxcourt, it was none of those emotions that played out across her face or layered into her essence.

It was fear.