Page 66 of Immortal Rose

Theo wheeled around, his jaw falling open. “Miss?”

Unable to resist a well-timed bit of theatrics, I pulled off my topper. Theo gasped like a society matron, nearly keeling over.

“Why didn’t ye tell me?” he demanded of Foxcourt. “I’m no rantipole. I’d’ve doffed my hat to the lady!”

“You aren’t wearing a hat,” Foxcourt reminded him, sitting on the edge of the staff’s table.

“Still!” Reddy said, in mock outrage.

“Still!” Theo echoed, in genuine outrage.

“I’ll just go up, shall I?” I said, edging toward the door. I was desperate for a moment to myself, if only to escape the nightshade coiling in my lungs.

As the door swung shut behind me, I freed a breath, passing a hand over my face. And still, the scent of the nightshade clung to my skin, and I wondered then if there was even poison in the cabinet at all or if it had been Mrs. Silver’s essence all along.

A cook named Mrs. Silver. A housekeeper named Mrs. Keyes. A maid chosen for her immunity to magic. And Theo’s reaction to the Longmount brothers . . .

“Cor,” I heard the boy swear again from inside the kitchen, “what sort of house is this?”

I gripped the banister, forcing myself to climb.

Yes, I thought, unease spreading in me like a spill of poison, my question exactly.

Chapter Fifteen

“I promise you, it was done with good reason—”

Foxcourt’s defensive tone stopped me on the bottom step of the stairwell.

I hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, of course.

Really, they should have known that voices would carry through the tiled entry, helpfully bouncing between the walls. If they hadn’t wanted the entire household to know their business, they might have tried shutting the study door.

“What reason could there have possibly been? What could justify this?”

Felicity.

Somehow, I hadn’t thought she’d be the one who wanted to speak to him—and never would I have imagined her chastising him. She wasn’t shouting, but the quiet anguish in her tone was even more devastating. For a servant to dare address her employer in that frank, condemning matter—a lord, no less—my breath caught at her courage.

I braced for Foxcourt’s excoriating response, wrapping my shawl tighter around my shoulders to march forward and deliver a tongue lashing on her behalf. If he threw her out, I would hire her to work for me at the House of Rosebourne in an instant. No one would ever be allowed to hurt her again; she’d never want for anything.

But when the earl spoke, his tone was shockingly patient and . . . contrite. “She ran at the first attempt my man made to speak to her—it would have taken days to track her again, and by then, it might have been too late for His Majesty. It seemed she’d require some convincing to agree to this task.”

Hell’s tits. They were talking about me.

I sat down heavily on the step. The man who had shown up at the flower stall, making inquiries about me . . . he hadn’t been sent by who I’d thought. There had been no reason to run, to leave Linden.

“But you don’t know that,” Felicity continued. “You knocked down the door before you ever tried knocking. You know how they treat the prisoners at Fairgate. She was there for only two days, and they beat her as they would a murderer. They beat her.”

“Fizzy—” he began again.

“No,” she interrupted, sounding furious and near to tears. My throat ached in sympathy. “No, my lord. I will not hear your excuses, nor will I work for anyone who condones such cruelty. If that’s to be the way of it, I will leave this house tonight and never come back.”

My father was a religious man . . .

I pressed my fingers to my lips, trying to restore some feeling to my face.

He tried everything to save my soul. Prayer . . . the rod.