Page 40 of Immortal Rose

“It will be all right,” Foxcourt told her, with a gentleness I would never have thought him capable of. “That is more than enough time.”

“But—” Eleanor choked out, silenced by the clatter of horse hooves and rattling carriage wheels in the courtyard beyond the window.

“Who could it be at this hour?” Vernon asked.

Foxcourt was at the curtains at once, edging the tasseled fringe back just enough to glimpse the new arrival. He swore under his breath.

“My lord!” Vernon chastised. “There are ladies present.”

“Not for long,” Foxcourt said, coming around to my side. Before I could lodge a protest, he had my arm in hand, and I was rising from the couch. The heat of his body radiated against mine as he drew me toward him.

“Wait here with Vernon until you hear the carriage depart,” Foxcourt said gently to Eleanor. “Lock the door behind us.”

She nodded, her fingers curling like claws against the velvet settee. It was enough to put me on guard, even before her pleasant essence was tainted with the scent of mulled wine.

Hatred. No—loathing.

Before I could ask why, Foxcourt had dragged me to the entrance. I cast one last bewildered glance back at a shocked Vernon, who dutifully shut the door behind us.

“What the bloody hell—?” I began.

Foxcourt hushed me, continuing our purposeful stride through the darkened servants’ corridor at a near run. My narrow skirt strained against my legs, but he didn’t relent, not for a moment. We made a left, heading the opposite way we’d gone to see the King.

His expression stilled my tongue—the tension there he couldn’t disguise. The steadiness of his grip, his unerring focus, was enough to tell me that we were fleeing not for his sake but for mine.

My pulse rose as the tinge of a new scent sharpened from possibility into reality behind us. I craned my head around, searching for its source.

A tall man, dressed resplendently in a powder-blue striped silk waistcoat and matching tailcoat, appeared at the juncture of the two halls, humming softly to himself as he turned to head in the opposite direction, either to retrace our path to see the King or to head deeper into the palace.

Despite the growing dark gulf of distance between us, the man’s smug essence flooded the corridor: cold crystal, raw silk, the pipe smoke of a gentleman’s club, and leather that suggested a whip rather than reins. I couldn’t decide if the sharp bite of bergamot was an expensive perfume or merely his unyielding confidence, but, in truth, I didn’t want to linger to find out.

In that sliver of a moment, just before I turned around, our gazes clashed. His top lip curled disapprovingly, as if disgusted I had dared to appear in his presence.

There was something unsettlingly lionlike about his face, the way his long nose balanced the sharply defined bow of his lips. His blond brows were a shade darker than his hair and sat flat across eyes that were small but a bright shade of turquoise.

As that mesmerizing gaze flicked away, I had the unnerving feeling of having been summarily devoured and my bones spat back up.

“Who was that?” I gasped.

Foxcourt’s face was shadowed. “God willing, you’ll never find out.”

Chapter Nine

The man’s essence pursued us through the last of the labyrinthine halls, all but chasing us out.

The unanswered questions pattered against my every thought, matching the force of the rain against the stately Royal Mews. Warm hay and damp horse blanketed the muggy air as I eyed the small curricle with growing weariness. It was a two-seated carriage that sat high on two large wheels—the sort toffs loved to race each other in, heedless of the rest of us who could be crushed beneath them.

My nerves prickled at the thought of being made to sit beside Foxcourt, even for the short duration of the ride to Foxcourt House. Yet even that misery paled in the face of the suffocating amount of polish some helpful fiend had doused the carriage in, scrubbing it until it gleamed like a newly minted coin in the nearby lantern’s light. Not even pressing a hand to my nose and mouth could stifle the sneeze that burned up my throat and erupted out of me.

The bleary-eyed groom startled at the sound, but Foxcourt merely went about checking the straps and harnesses, stroking a hand along each horse’s flank as he worked. Eyes and nose burning, I moved past the men, climbing into one of the waiting seats without Foxcourt’s assistance.

The horses pawed at the stone ground, as impatient as I was to leave the palace. After raising the curricle’s hood in anticipation of the rain, Foxcourt climbed up beside me and took up the ribbons. I ignored his look of disapproval, and soon enough, we were off.

An exhilarated laugh bubbled in me as Foxcourt deftly navigated us out of the mews, through a nearby gate, and onto the empty street. Within a few moments, the rain eased, before mercifully halting altogether. Still, a deep gray clung to the sky like a wet wool blanket, dampening the vibrancy of the coming dawn.

And yet, even those storm clouds seemed positively joyful compared to the one glowering on the seat beside me. It was a wonder the lightning strike of his furious gaze hadn’t reduced the road to a smoking pile of rubble.

With anyone else, I would have known exactly what he was feeling with a single breath. Being forced to decipher Foxcourt’s moods was like reading tea leaves, deriving meaning from the smallest of unconscious tells. It was maddening and tiring, and to the part of me that had never cowed in the face of a challenge, strangely exhilarating.