Page 8 of Those Fatal Flowers
He darkens the same doorway that Margery just spilled in through, no more than a menacing shadow before Margery’s hearth illuminates him. He has his mother’s severe cheekbones, and her fierce pale blue eyes, though their effect is different. Her gaze studies and catalogs; his devours.
“Lady?” Mistress Bailie repeats, a thin yellow brow cocked. I didn’t register the different title until now, but from the way her face contorts to try to hide her displeasure, I glean thatladyfalls abovemistress.Who’s the slattern now?
Raidne’s letter, the one we spent an entire day composing, is clutched tightly in Thomas’s hands. My sisters sang its contents into the parchment, hoping to imbue some trace of their voices’ magic into the ink, to charm whoever found me into understanding our words. We didn’t know if it would work, but Thomas’s hungry expression reveals that it did. Mistress Bailie snatches it from him the moment he offers it.
I can barely breathe as her eyes dart across our tale, but the letter is only one piece of the deception. Men adoreweakthings, after all—either to save or to crush. Which will Thomas choose?
“What’s that?” I allow myself to draw closer to Mistress Bailie, peeking over the paper’s edge, as if I don’t have every single line of its ink memorized. “Was that with me…?”
“You don’t know?” Thomas’s question is loud with surprise.
My teeth find my lower lip and tug it between them in a display of embarrassment. His hungry stare follows them, then lingers on my mouth. How predictable.
“Lady Thelia’s having some trouble remembering what happened to her,” Margery says.
“Was there anything else with me?”
The question brings Thomas’s eyes back to mine, and he laughs, delighted by it. “Come, I’ll show you. Perhaps it will jog your memory.”
“Thomas—” Mistress Bailie starts, but her son hasn’t taken last night’s conversation to heart. He’s already lost in the dazzling relief of my smile, and when he extends his hand to me, I accept it, trying to ignore how badly my heart aches.
Leave this place,my heart begs, as the image of that cloaked woman comes to mind.Go find her.
But I can’t. To abandon the Bailies’ home in this moment would be to fail my sisters. Thomas’s grip tightens around my hand.
Mistress Bailie follows on our heels as her son leads me from the cottage’s kitchen into a large main room where a polished wooden table gleams before another brick fireplace. It holds a cataloged fraction of my trove, all glittering with the fire’s reflection.
“We found you last night,” he says. “You washed ashore in a little boat filled with treasure—”
“Filled?” I ask, unable to help myself. The riches before usare impressive, surely, but they wouldn’t fill much of anything.
“The rest is locked away upstairs. For safekeeping.”
I nod, as if this doesn’t essentially amount to theft.
“I’ll admit, I thought you were dead. That this was all part of an elaborate funerary ritual…”
My feet carry me to the table’s edge, and I let my fingers trace over the familiar items—the golden openwork bracelet with its elaborate lattices and shiny pearls, the beaded emerald necklace, the pile of gold coins of all different origins.
“…but little did I realize that this was all—”
“A dowry,” I finish for him, realization dripping from my voice as I pluck a silver ring from the hoard. “My dowry. I remember now.”
The lie spills easily from my lips, though I suppose it should. I had all of early autumn to practice.
“Princess Thelia.” Mistress Bailie finally speaks, lowering the letter to her side. “Who left a place called Scopuli in search of a husband.”
The corner of her mouth twitches into a fanciful grin, and she drops into a deep curtsy. She’s no better than the women who clung to Ceres’s side, fanning her with palm leaves and feeding her grapes in thinly veiled attempts to garner her favor. In fairness, Ceres was generous in those early days, so their efforts were typically rewarded. A correctly timed glass of wine guaranteed a bountiful harvest; a perfectly recited poem, a pregnancy. Back then, she’d even smile when she saw Proserpina take my hand in hers. True smiles, as warm as summer soil. Those golden days seem impossible now. After Proserpina bled, Ceres’s kindness evaporated. Where I was once a treasured confidant, a childhood crush, I became a liability to her plans for Proserpina’s future. But what Ceres never understood was that Proserpina didn’t need me towhisper poison into her ears about her mother’s preferred matches; Proserpina hated them all on her own.
To fall out of favor with Ceres was to fall out of favor with the women who served her—women I’d known for years, friends to my mother and my aunts, who suddenly refused to meet my eyes. As if I were blight on crops that would spread to them on contact. They made me sick then, and Mistress Bailie makes me sick now.
Her bowed head hides her face, though the way her knuckles turn white as she grips her skirts betrays that she’s not as deferential as she’d like me to believe. “Forgive me, my lady, I had no idea.”
“We must celebrate the arrival of such a distinguished guest! Mother, fetch Margery and tell her the news—tonight, we’ll throw a feast in Lady Thelia’s honor!”
The only evidence of Mistress Bailie’s irritation at his order is a smile that’s slightly too wide. “Excellent idea, Thomas. Why don’t you go share the exciting news with the Council?”
“The Council?” I ask.