They reached the center quickly, since Violet had not only had a sixth sense about the maze but had a clear memory of the paths that led to its heart.
At the maze’s center were a low stone bench with carvings of fairies and woodland animals on its base, a small, unadorned marble fountain, whose basin was filled with rainwater, and a carpet of red tulips.
Violet gasped when she saw the flowers. “They weren’t here before,” she said under her breath.
She felt Trevelton behind her, close enough to touch her, yet the distance between them felt larger than the thousands of miles between Los Angeles and his Northumberland farm.
Violet turned to face him. There was no harm in seeing him, since she’d never see him again, not after tomorrow. Might as well take a last look.
She looked up into his face. A shock of his pitch-dark hair had fallen over his forehead. His skin was even paler than usual, and his black eyes seemed blacker and deeper than she’d ever seen them.
He lifted one of his elegant hands and placed it on the hollow of her collarbone.
“I shouldn’t’ve followed you here,” he said, moving closer to her.
“But you had to satisfy your curiosity,” Violet said.
“Yes,” he said.
“About the maze.” Her heart was pounding madly, and she regretted every moment she’d spent with this man, this playacting marquess. She regretted every moment she was spending with him now. Ephraim Croft, farmer.
She felt his other hand encircle her waist and she stepped closer to him. The pull was inexorable. No wonder she had avoided him all this time.
“The tulips. They hadn’t bloomed when we were here before,” she said as he leaned down and covered her mouth with his. His lush, full kisses extinguished every thought of the maze, of the startlingly bright display of red tulips, of returning to Los Angeles and acting in Mirage.
But as he stood back up to his full height, towering over her, Violet said, “Thank you for the lovely farewell. I’d forgotten how well you kiss. My lord.”
Chapter 106
Allene took the sole chair in her cramped room, the smallest of all of the small rooms in the servants’ quarters, and stood on it as she reached into the overhead shelf in her narrow closet.
Jewel Allman had told Allene repeatedly that she should have a larger room and one that was closer to the other end of the corridor. After all, she was the duchess’s lady’s maid, not some floor scrubber.
But Allene had wanted this exact room. It was isolated, and she needed the isolation. She’d told Jewel Allman she preferred to be in a small space. As if anyone could believe that. Yet Jewel Allman had.
Allene pulled the suitcase down off the shelf. Even empty, it was too heavy for her, and it fell onto the floor with a loud thump as she lost her grip on it. She jumped down and crouched next to it. What if someone had heard her?
She waited, alert to the corridor, but all was silent, as it always was. In the entire time she’d been at Hollyhock, no one had walked past her room, which was the main reason she’d chosen it. Tucked away at the end of the hall, it wasn’t in anyone’s path and she could easily hear anyone’s approach.
She pulled at the bag’s clasps, which refused to budge, sat back on her heels, tugged on the clasps with more vigor, then frantically smashed her hands into them, yet they stayed shut. Why hadn’t she gotten a friendlier piece of luggage? She kicked at it and her stomach lurched as she imagined herself falling from the window.
But you’re sitting on the floor, she reminded herself. Don’t fall apart now, Allene, she told herself. You’re almost there. Almost. Almost.
Finally the clasps came undone. Allene opened the suitcase and glanced inside.
What if Clive had found out that Nicholas Coburn had returned, and Clive himself was now out in the corridor, about to enter her room, about to berate her for not telling him about Coburn’s return? She would welcome him, welcome whatever his reaction might be. She imagined him striking her and wished he were there, doing just that. Just to feel his hands on her.
She was supposed to tell Clive everything. Immediately. Not wait to see if maybe things would change. Not wait to see if things would be more to her advantage, or to his liking.
She’d let Clive down. Would he think of this as the betrayal it was? Yes, yes. Clive saw things as they were. That was part of his genius.
He’d never forgive her. He was shunning her already and had dismissed her without bothering to notify her. She knew it. She could feel it. In the same way that she’d felt his love for her, she felt his abandonment of her.
But perhaps there was still time to rectify matters. She closed the suitcase and shoved it under her bed, then went downstairs. She’d contact Clive immediately and tell him what was going on. He had to know. It was her duty, even if he no longer loved her.
She’d beg him to let her come home to him. Yet he might refuse. She knew that.
Even if she never saw him again, never felt his gaze on her, never spread her legs for him again, she would fulfill her duty, as she already should have. She’d made enough stupid mistakes.
She ran out of the kitchen, ignoring whatever it was that Cook had said to her. By the time she got to the border hedges between Hollyhock and Brixton and was certain she was alone, she felt her head become brilliantly clear.
Now. Now, finally, yes, she had time to think and plan.
She wouldn’t contact Clive. Instead, she’d see him in person.
Why hadn’t she thought of this earlier? She’d stow herself away on the transport tomorrow. Surely when he saw what she’d done that would endear her to him, no matter how angry he was at her omission. Wasn’t this how he’d met Marguerite?
And the last remaining bottle of the antidote was safely in her suitcase, waiting for the right moment.
Yes, yes, yes. She knew exactly what to do.
Everything’s clear now.
Everything’s perfect now, she thought just as the arrow pierced her throat and severed her carotid artery.
Chapter 107
Practice pays off in the end, Clive thought. That and planning. And patience, naturally. Always. All skills he’d cultivated and honed over the years. Money didn’t hurt either, really. It solved almost every problem that wasn’t solved by sex.
Clive smiled. Thalia Rivers had been generously accommodating, as expected. She’d been just as generously understanding of his devastation when Eliana Havens had mysteriously died during that majestic. Thalia had comforted him, and he’d pleasured her in ways that she’d never experienced before or, he felt sure, since.
She was no Alexander, though, and Clive was sorry he’d not see his passionate lover again. Not be in the presence of that grand emotional energy that only Alexander possessed. But Clive would have his beloved Marguerite, and she’d be his in a way that she had never previously been.
Clive thought of walking past the hedges and taking a stroll around the Hollyhock grounds, but then thought better of it. It wasn’t in the plan, and as things currently stood, there was nothing linking him to Allene Dickens’s death.
Plenty of the Brixton players practiced archery, and a stray arrow could easily have reached anyone near the border between the two estates. As his had done.
Her body wouldn’t be discovered for hours, and by then it would be too late to determine who the archer had been. And no one knew of Clive’s skill with the bow and arrow or that he’d taken anything from the equipment room at Brixton.
He went back into the manor house and was able to replace the bow without anyone seeing him. He could be effectively invisible when it suited him, a talent he’d discovered when he was a schoolboy.
Clive walked around to the front entrance of Brixton Hall and entered through the main door. He pulled off his gloves and was about to toss them onto the table in the entryway when he thought how useful they could still be, how Thalia might enjoy them.
He vaulted up the steps to her room on the fourth floor. Ther
e was just time before he had to get ready for the ball. Thalia had even supplied Clive with a valet, who’d already come in handy, since Regency-era clothing was unfamiliar to him.
“Yes?” Thalia said after he knocked on her door. She’d returned to her room for only a moment. There was still too much to do downstairs, and one of the players needed a new costume for tonight.
Clive opened the door and stepped into Thalia’s room.
“Mr. Idrest,” Thalia said.
“Miss Rivers,” Clive said as he turned the lock behind him and untied his cravat. “I believe this may be our only opportunity.”
Thalia reached to the floor, grabbed her hem, and gathered up her skirts, hoisting her dress over her head.
She had an acceptable body, Clive thought. Not Marguerite’s, which was incomparable. And not Alexander’s, which no woman could hope to equal. But Thalia was accommodating.
He was still holding the gloves in one hand and Thalia bit into them as he lifted his hand to her face.
Tonight he would be reunited with Marguerite, he thought as he pushed Thalia back onto her narrow bed. Tomorrow Marguerite would return to 75 with him and he’d let her pack before they moved.
Everything was in place. Allene Dickens had done her job and had been dispatched with.
Nicholas Coburn had supplied his seed and was now out of the way. After all, it hardly mattered whose sperm fertilized the egg. What mattered was the father who was present, who would guide the son, introduce him to the truths of life. The father who would be there when his son was born. The man whose face Marguerite would look into when she handed him their child.
He would have Marguerite and their son and their new life together.
Poised over Thalia Rivers’s rounded torso, he pictured Marguerite’s belly growing larger and thought of how grateful she’d be to him for allowing her this selfless gift, for taking her to their new home that he’d already prepared, on an outworld where there was plenty of water and sunshine, where no one knew them, where they could have the life together he’d always dreamed of.
“Clive, don’t make me wait,” Thalia said between panting breaths.
But his thoughts drowned out Thalia’s moans and murmurs. He laid the gloves down on the coverlet and gradually increased his rhythm.
With his eyes closed, he could see Marguerite beneath him, feel the passion he’d never felt from her before.
Alexander, I must find a way to be with you again, Clive said to himself as he pushed deeper into Thalia.
Chapter 108
Alexander stood on the slab at the rear of the Idrest house and stared out into the churning waters of Outworld 75’s red-orange sea. Too late, they seemed to say as the waves rushed up onto the slab and then retreated again.
The two suns beamed their merciless rays into the slab, into Alexander’s bare arms.
This was to have been Clive Idrest’s last day. At this very moment, his sister’s husband and tormentor was supposed to have drowned while taking a nap on this very slab, overcome by the increasingly turbulent waves and powerful undertow.
Clive couldn’t always be counted on to be at the slab during high tide, but he’d told Alexander to meet him there today right at the very time when Alexander’s plans could easily be realized. Finally, finally, finally, Alexander had thought.
He’d been so disappointed that he couldn’t tell Gil, but Gil had left in the transport the day before and Alexander couldn’t dare attempt to reach him.
Except Clive hadn’t been here. He wasn’t in the house or on the grounds or at his office, which he seldom visited anyway. And no one knew where he’d gone or if he had gone anywhere. Or when he’d return. Or if he’d return.
Alexander had planned this for so long that he could envision it as though it were occurring right beneath him. Clive in his usual post-orgasmic stupor, Alexander with his hand resting lightly on Clive’s chest. Then as the tide came higher and higher, Alexander holding Clive down, at first so gently that Clive would enjoy it, a lover’s playful hold.
Watching Idrest’s expression change as he realized that Alexander wasn’t merely playing and that the tide was gaining, moving higher onto the slab, covering more and more of his body. Panicking, clawing at Alexander, kicking out.
Alexander had seen it all so clearly. Seen the look of terror on Idrest’s face when he’d realize that Alexander was Death himself, come to claim him.
Marguerite would return to 75 for the funeral, and Alexander would watch for her. Only when he saw her would he decide if he’d approach her. She might be afraid of him, not knowing what her own brother was capable of or if he’d give her over to the authorities.
Or perhaps she wouldn’t recognize him. He was a man now and had been a boy the last time they’d seen each other.
Only after their mother would finally die, a few months from now, would the danger to Marguerite finally end. Because his mother had devised a plan where she’d take the blame for Lawrence’s murder.
After Alexander grew up, his mother had begged him to let her confess to killing her husband, but by then she was ill, and Alexander couldn’t bear the thought of her, a slave, exiled, dying the most gruesome and grueling of all deaths far away from him and from her home. So she’d agreed to wait. For him. And with a small hope that one day she could see her beloved daughter once more, if only for a moment, a glance.
Together with his mother, they’d figured out a way that she could have been in the house and murdered Lawrence, and she’d leave the detailed information for the authorities to discover after her death. Lawrence’s murderer would be known, the case would be closed, and Marguerite would be free, even if her family could never see her again.
Marguerite had saved her mother and brother, and they’d do everything they could to repay the enormous sacrifice she’d made.
Only when Alexander got to Outworld 75 and met Clive Idrest did he realize the degree of Marguerite’s sacrifice. It wasn’t enough that she’d risked her very life when she’d killed their father, but she was now married to the scheming, devious, disgusting, abusive, cruel weapons dealer.
Gil had warned Alexander about Idrest, but until Alexander met him for himself, he didn’t really understand. The way Idrest controlled everyone around him, the eerie look in his sickening yellow eyes, the twisted way he approached everyone and everything, using everything and anything to his advantage.
Slipping from one lie to the next, each one spoken as if the truth. Changing instantaneously, as the situation changed. Sinuously avoiding harm while taking every pleasure he could.
There were rumors that he had practically enslaved a former drudge worker at the factory, setting her up in an apartment on the north side, having her available at all times to do whatever he commanded of her.
Someone had told Alexander just yesterday that the former drudge had gone to Outworld 5730, accompanying Mrs. Idrest on her latest vacation. Perhaps it was a vacation for the drudge as well, Alexander thought.
Alexander sat on the slab and let the water wash over him. If only someone could figure out a way to make the red-gold sea into drinking water, bathing water, washing water. The sea that covered more than three quarters of Outworld 75, that created such heartbreakingly beautiful vistas, that was the catalyst for the firebursts, one of the most stunningly beautiful light shows in the galaxy.
The tide started coming in then, its force increasing with every cycle of waves.
Alexander put his hand out next to him and felt for the person who wasn’t there. The person whose chest he was going to be leaning into, holding him down, watching the last sparks of life escape from his corrupt body.
The drought had lasted for three hundred and seventeen days now, so when the clouds enlarged, the sky darkened, and the sea went quiet, Alexander ignored the signs.
But as the rain abruptly streamed down in heavy, gray torrents, Alexander looked up.
Chapter 109
Violet stood back, pushing Trevelton away. He
deserved that, he knew, so he let her. He was nearly a foot taller than Violet and could have easily resisted, but he had no rights where she was concerned.
“I can’t do this,” she said. “My lord.” The last words sounded almost bitter to him, a seasoned expert at bitterness.
“Nor can I, Violet,” Trevelton said as he stepped back and sat on the huge stone bench. “What do you suppose these fairies are doing?” he said as he traced his hand along the outline of the nearest one.
“They’re going back to Los Angeles for their part in Mirage,” Violet said. “Tomorrow. Only they wish it were today.”
She was wearing that pale gray dress, the one she’d worn the night he’d dragged her around the lake path. The urge to do the same again welled up in him and he laughed.
“I wasn’t joking,” Violet said, and crossed her arms over her chest. She looked like a fairy herself, standing there against the background of red, red tulips, her glimmering chestnut hair sleeked back into a bun, her green eyes alight with the satisfaction of knowing her future.
“I wasn’t laughing at you,” Trevelton said.
“I see,” she said.
“No, you don’t,” he said. He’d been laughing at himself, at the absurdity of life itself.
“I’m in no mood to argue,” she said. “Should we return now? You’ll get lost if I leave you here.”
“Let me get lost,” he said. He lay back onto the surface of the bench and let one arm drop to the ground. The sunlight was fierce, even here in the center of the overgrown maze. To make up for the incessant rainfall earlier in his stay, he supposed.
She brushed by him on her way to the leftmost hedge. He’d have to remember that if he hoped to exit in time for the transport tomorrow. In time for the ball tonight. Etterly would shame him to the gods if he didn’t show up for that.
“Violet,” he said after he could no longer see her. The sun obliterated everything, even more effectively than the rain had. Or it seemed that way at this moment.
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