“Let me help you then,” said Arabelle, leaning over the pile and separating the garments by the monogram stitched on the inside of each.
She’d returned the sisters’ clothes in the wrong baskets before and received such a tongue-lashing Arabelle had nearly struck that wicked Drusilla. But the cost of a peasant striking an aristocrat was a month in the Legionnaire’s jail. And to Arabelle, that was as good as a death sentence. So she bit her tongue and let Drusilla call her all manner of names while Penelope stood by and tittered like a mouse. Drusilla could not fathom how Arabelle could have allowed her clothes to touch Penelope’s when it was so obvious that she was the better sister. This was the kind of feeble-minded, superior nonsense one might expect from being raised an aristocrat—another reason Arabelle longed to abolish the class system altogether.
Ruben marched past them, carrying the salver, and then stopped at the end of the hall, rapping softly on his mistress’s door. Arabelle and Mary exchanged looks when Ruben entered.
“What is that about?” asked Mary.
“I don’t know,” said Arabelle. “Someone was at the door.”
“At this hour?”
Suddenly, Lady Lucinda’s door swung open. Wrapped in voluminous robes of garish orange and green, she strode past them without a glance, making her way to the front door. She didn’t even take note of Arabelle’s attire and scorn her for it, so something more important had certainly gotten her attention.
Without saying a word, Mary and Arabelle hurriedly gathered the piles of laundry into the basket, then swiftly carried it together to the servants’ passage. When they were alone on the stairwell, Mary looked down at Arabelle, who walked backward, the basket between them.
“What could it be?” asked Mary.
“I have no idea.” Yet Arabelle felt a sense of foreboding, as if her world had just tilted too far to the left.
Breathing heavily, they came out onto the main floor and carried the basket together slowly down the hall. Voices carried from the large foyer, one of them deeply masculine. Mary and Arabelle froze behind a column.
“I do not understand why we were chosen for such an order,” said Madame Pervis with her arrogant air.
“You were not, my lady. Specifically.”
“Then I must inquire why my daughters are being asked to be subjected to such an…improper examination. Specifically.”
Arabelle drew closer, but Madame Pervis blocked her view of the man to whom she spoke. As Arabelle circled the column, peering for a better look, she hitched in a breath at the familiar features of the man at the door—the grave, sharp figure of Lieutenant Nikolai of the Legionnaires. Instantly, Arabelle’s heart plunged into her stomach. Icy needles pricked along her skin.
“This royal decree has been given to all young women in the Village of Sylus. The Crown seeks to find a particular guest from the ball last night, one our royal prince chose for his Blood Harem.”
Lady Lucinda actually fluttered her hands and swept a nervous bow. “Well, my handsome lieutenant. I shall certainly have my daughters ready for the examination.”
The vampire who made Arabelle’s blood run cold gave a tight bow, his gaze intense and assessing. “See that you do. The royal party shall be here within the hour.”
Ruben closed the door behind the lieutenant. Lady Lucinda broke out into a run up the staircase, her skirts swishing like mad.
“Mary!” she yelled with a laugh of wicked glee. “Get the girls’ finest day dresses. Mary!”
Mary sighed and slumped her shoulders. “I have no idea what the palace is up to now, but they just ruined my entire morning.”
Arabelle took the basket from Mary, heaving it into her arms, her heart hammering. They were looking for her, house by house.
“Sorry, Arabelle, I can’t help you today.”
“Go.” Arabelle gave a nod down the hall to the servants’ passage. “You don’t want to be late.”
Mary took one step and turned back. “But that is curious, isn’t it? What could the royal examiner want with Drusilla and Penelope?”
“I have no idea. Good day, Mary.”
Arabelle marched down the passage into the basement as quickly as her legs would carry her with the unwieldy basket of clothes. She passed through the kitchen without a word.
“Don’t ye want another biscuit before ye go?” asked Cook.
“No, thank you. Need to get on to work,” said Arabelle, trying to get out of the house as quickly as she could.
By rote, she set the basket on the small cart she would attach to Willow’s saddle, but she waited till she heard the horse hooves in the drive fade into the distance. She needed to get out of the village and into Larkin Wood. That hawk-eyed lieutenant would certainly recognize her after his not so subtle interrogation. She feared that one.
As she hooked the cart to Willow, the slap-slap of feet on dirt sounded to her right. Peering up the path that led to her shack, she saw the tiny figure of Nate running toward her.
When he made it to her, breathless and barefoot, he turned his dirt-caked face up to her as he pulled out a scrap of paper from his pocket.
“What on earth is this about, Nate?”
Having run so fast that he couldn’t speak, he pointed to the paper Arabelle was unfolding. In Deek’s rough scrawl, she read: He is not dead. The Tower is looking for the girl with the black lily tattoo. They are looking for you. Run!
“Oh God.” Hands shaking, she unhitched the cart that she’d just tied onto Willow. “Go, Nate. Go!”
“Yes’m.” He nodded, gulping air.
“And mark the signal,” she whispered.
With another nod, the scamp was off again, running through the field that led toward the village.
She pulled Willow about and mounted, adrenaline flooding her body and spurring her on. Filled with fear and determination, and underneath it all a surprising sense of relief, she whipped Willow into a full gallop back to her shack.
Before her mare came to a full stop, Arabelle had leapt from her back and bolted through her rickety door, knocking it loose from the hinges. Snatching up her satchel, she stuffed inside what few clothes she owned. She pulled up the floorboard behind her bed and lifted the sword wrapped in linen cloth, the one Deek had made for her.
“Seems I’ll be putting you to use sooner rather than later.”
Having no scabbard for it yet, she carried it in the cloth and strapped it to the saddlebag. With a nod to her home of ten years—where she grew from girl to woman, where she dreamed of a life unbound by servitude and fear of the vampires, where she mourned on cold, lonely nights the loss of a mother she’d loved so dearly—she mounted and whipped Willow toward Larkin Wood.
Chapter Seven
“It was bound to happen at some time.” Friedrich gestured toward the kingdom on the map north of the Glass Tower where he held a fiefdom under King Dominik’s rule, Marius’s eldest brother.
“Why would you say that?” asked the king, eyeing the gold-tipped dagger—now clean of Marius’s blood—sitting next to the map. Gold was the one element that had the power to kill a vampire. It could burn a vampire’s skin without doing lasting harm except for scarring, but if it somehow came in contact with a vampire’s blood or was fashioned into a blade and pierced a vampire’s heart, they would certainly die.
“Humans, by nature, are subservient creatures,” said Friedrich. “They want to please. They want to be pleasured. But nature shows us that there is always an anomaly, a wayward root if you will. A weed in the garden.”
Marius didn’t know what displeased him more. The fact that Friedrich compared Grace, or whatever her name was, to a weed, or the fact that the analogy suited. Not a weed in the garden, however. She was more a lone star on a dark night, the one that lingered when all the others had gone to bed, greeting the sun when it first rose.
His father planted his fists on the table, knuckles down, his black hair slick, his pale face gaunter than usual. There was always a wicked edge to
his temper when he hadn’t fed in a long while. Vampires could go a week or two, some even a month as his father often did, but prolonging the blood they needed for sustenance could push a vampire toward violence.
“Well, let me make this quite clear. I want this weed to be found and plucked from my harvest. She cannot be allowed to grow and spread her villainy among the populace. And we must find this store of gold. Find the girl, and you’ll find the gold.”
The steady march of boots on the marble sounded as Nikolai entered the king’s study in haste. Though the man was always steady and reserved, his tight expression revealed this was no simple report. His eyes lighted on Marius. “I believe we may have found her. That is, found out whom she is.”
“Take me now.” Marius followed on Nikolai’s heels as he spun for the door.
“Marius,” called the king.
Marius paused at the doorway.
“We must snuff out the root.” His father’s pale eyes glinted with a supernatural flare. “Catch the girl. Then we will make an example of her for what she did to you.”
With a nod and a clenching of his jaw, Marius left with Nikolai.
“Where?” asked Marius as soon as they were out of earshot and striding through the palace door to the horses waiting below. His favorite stallion, Erebus, a sleek black, awaited him alongside Nikolai’s.
“You were right. She is from Sylus.”
“And do you have her in custody?”
“No. She is gone, or at least, the mistress of the house believes she may be doing her daily chores.” Nikolai gave him a wry smile as they mounted and steered the horses toward the palace gate. “She’s a laundress.”
“How convenient,” said Marius as they crossed through the gate. “Much easier to steal clothes that aren’t yours and pass yourself off as someone you are not. Do you have men out searching the washing fountains and brooks?”
“Of course,” he said, tossing him a superior look. “Who do you think I am?”
“Lead on, Nikolai. Faster.”
Nikolai tapped his gray steed with his crop and galloped down the winding road into Sylus. Marius could think of nothing else but the undying need to find her. His father was right. One revolutionary could beget many more. From what Friedrich reported, there had been stirrings on his own land.
Friedrich had found a little girl in the village schoolroom painting a black flower. When he’d asked her why she would paint such a dark flower, the girl had replied, “She is coming to save us. She says there is always darkness before the light.” When the pretty schoolteacher shushed the girl and made some excuse for her ramblings, Friedrich inquired with a trusted household servant who finally admitted the Black Lily was the woman who promised to lead them into a life of freedom, where the nobility—vampire or human—no longer ruled over them. But the servant did not know who she was or where she was from. Only whisperings on the wind. Apparently, those whispers were carried directly from Sylus.
Nikolai veered off the central road onto a shaded path up to a respectable but neglected mansion. The estate was in want of care—molded cornice, unswept portico, ivy growing wild along the walls.
“Whose home is this?” asked Marius, moving alongside Nikolai, who’d slowed his gait but continued on toward the back of the house.
“Lady Lucinda Pervis.”
“Oh, dear God.” He pulled up on the reins and stopped short. Erebus tossed his head. With a sigh, he slackened his hold and they moved on.
“Yes, afraid so,” said Nikolai. “And she insisted on accompanying me to the laundress’s abode.”
“The girl doesn’t live in the main house?”
“No. Lady Lucinda said she refused to live under her roof, preferring a hut on the property.”
“And what is her real name?”
“Her name is Arabelle.”
Marius felt her name sink into his chest like a long-ago lullaby waiting to be sung again.
“Your Highness? Are you all right?”
He couldn’t fathom why knowing her true name or hearing it spoken aloud could affect him this way, reminding him of the sensation of an old friend coming home.
“Marius?” Nikolai raised his voice.
“What? I’m fine. And how did you know it was this laundress that we’re looking for?”
“I smelled her. Caught a whiff of her wildflower scent in the mansion’s parlor. It was faint, but I knew it was the same of the woman you held on your arm at the ball.”
Marius didn’t much like the fact that Nikolai had locked onto her scent so strongly, a possessiveness tightening his chest as he went on.
“I asked if there were any other ladies living in the house, to which they replied none. Only the servants. Of course, I demanded to meet all of the female servants and none of them was she. When I inquired, the housemaid confessed there was one servant not present. The laundress who lived outside the mansion. When I arrived at her place”—he turned a pointed look at Marius—“I was absolutely certain of it, the scent of your black lily strong and potent.”
Marius swallowed the burning need to inhale her scent and taste her skin, his desire fogging his senses. “Lead on.”
Not far down the dirt path leading away from the estate squatted a small wooden hut next to a one-horse paddock. Marius caught sight of the ghastly noblewoman on the doorstep alongside her two daughters in gaudy sunflower-yellow gowns. The Legionnaires stood guard, looking alert and sharp in the Varis colors, wearing their gray uniform pants, double-breasted blue coats, and silver buttons winking in the sunlight. One of them took the horses’ reins when Nikolai and Marius dismounted.
Marius prepared for the onslaught. Before he’d even approached, his senses were overpowered with sickeningly sweet perfume, too pungent for his heightened sense of smell.
“Oh, Your Highness,” Lady Lucinda gushed, curtsying till her knee hit the ground. “It is such a pleasure to see you again so soon. You remember my daughters, Drusilla and Penelope.”
“Yes, my lady. Delightful.”
“Your Highness.” The eldest daughter dipped into a curtsy. She leaned forward and whispered suggestively, “If Your Highness would like, he could do a royal examination as well. In case your royal examiner missed whatever he was looking for.” She pulled down the left sleeve of her awful dress, bearing half her breast. “Was it this beauty mark you were searching for?”
Nikolai cleared his throat, obviously trying not to laugh. Marius only clenched his jaw tighter. He contemplated tossing these horrendous women into a cell for being the most disagreeable humans he’d ever encountered, but the hassle wasn’t worth it at the moment. There was only one goal narrowing his focus razor-sharp—to find Arabelle.
“That will not be necessary,” said Marius in as calm a voice as he could muster.
The woman wilted with disappointment. Then the younger sister hurriedly removed her sleeve, showing him a larger beauty mark.
“I have one, too, Your Highness. Am I the one you’re looking for?” Only her fake mark was smeared since she hadn’t let the makeup dry before slipping her gown over it.
“I am not looking for a woman with a beauty mark on her shoulder,” he said in a cool manner before turning to the mistress of the house. “Lady Lucinda, I would like to examine this hut in private, if I may.”
He needn’t ask permission, but Marius always prided himself on his civility, even if it wasn’t reciprocated or deserved. These women were more uncivilized than a pack of wild hogs.
“Of course, of course, Your Highness.”
He swept past her and ducked his head into the one-room abode while Nikolai ushered the women away from the door. The moment he crossed the threshold, Arabelle’s scent wafted over him in a seductive wave, buckling his knees. Her familiar rain-and-wildflower-in-the-wind scent was a sweet balm to his senses. This was definitely the home of the woman who’d enchanted him last night before attempting to assassinate him.
He took a moment to center himself. When he looked
around the room, he was aghast at the sparse hovel. A small bed sat on a rudimentary frame. A tin ewer and cracked pitcher stood on a rickety table in the corner next to a dressing screen made of potato sacking and river reeds, and across from the bed stood the smallest fireplace he’d ever seen. It was clean, and that was the only positive characteristic of the place.
Nikolai walked in, ducking his head as well, the doorframe not made for the height of vampires. Marius knelt in the corner where a floorboard had been pried loose.
“Empty. She took whatever was in here.”
“Yes,” agreed Nikolai.
Marius caught his expression of disappointment.
“Then you know as well as I do that we won’t find her at the washing fountain or brook. She’s gone.”
“Yes.”
Marius stood and walked toward the bed, admiring the patchwork quilt made of numerous scraps of cloth. He traced his fingers across the fabric. Though not one patch matched another, there was a harmony in the design—the warm colors contrasting prettily with the cool tones. Much like the maker of the quilt.
Arabelle. She was a fiery beauty in the cold darkness, a beating heart among the lifeless, mundane world he knew too well.
“Marius?”
“Hmm?”
Nikolai said something else, but Marius was far away, dreaming of golden hair, creamy skin, and accusing hazel eyes.
“Did you hear me?”
Marius looked up, snapping from his trance. “What’s that?”
“I said we have more evidence that this is your girl.”
“Well. Do you plan to keep me in suspense?”
“Riker!” Nikolai shouted out the door.
One of his sergeants—quick and sharp—stepped into the room. He handed Nikolai a small drawstring leather pouch then returned to his post at the door. After opening the pouch, Nikolai pulled out a woman’s damp stocking. He passed it over to Marius. “Take a look. And a sniff.” At first all he could smell was the overpowering scent of Arabelle.
“Look. High up near the lacing.”
The Black Lily (Tales of the Black Lily) Page 6
