I squeeze her arm. “It’s incredible. Granted, I haven’t much to compare it to, but I cannot imagine a finer celebration.”
“I knew I was right to rescue you. Now, take a drink.” She turns me toward a long, white-covered table manned by a row of servants and covered with glasses of sparkling amber liquid. “Then wander until you find one of the quiet side rooms unattended by men looking to dance with the talk of the evening. Here is my card—” She slips me a tiny rectangle of thick paper. “I want you to visit me next week after your feet have recovered from this evening. I will take you to dinner to thank you for giving people something to gossip about. They’ll speak of tonight’s tropical flower of a girl for weeks and remember what a resounding success I am.”
I put my hand against my forehead, closing my eyes. “Was I that terrible?”
“No! You were that wonderful. Now go and hide.” She waves me away with a smile that lights up her face and I return it, surprisingly gratified to have made a friend. It is a small balm to the humiliation of tonight.
Drink in hand, I read the address on her card, then take the first trail that appears to lead away from the vast main space of the conservatory. Through one room dominated by lilies and another so saturated with the scent of roses I can scarcely breathe, I find one that, to my delight, is filled with fire-petals in full bloom.
I sink onto a bench in the corner, wondering how unforgivable a gaffe removing my shoes would be. I cannot make any stranger of an impression than I already have, so I slip them off and stretch my toes. I sip at my drink, wrinkling my nose at the bubbles. They tickle my raw throat, and I drink more.
If Eleanor is correct, whomever Finn dines or speaks with over the next few weeks will bring me up in conversation. He may have meant to mock me, or meant for others to, but regardless of their assessment I will be inescapable. I hope he is utterly plagued by my memory.
The fuzzy, white electric lights in the room go out, leaving only the light from the adjoining room spilling into this one. I stand, stocking feet on gravel, and slide back into my shoes. “Pardon me, is this room closed now?”
Someone stands, silhouetted against the entrance, his shadow stretching all the way to my feet. I frown and set down my glass.
“Jessamin.” Finn quickly closes the distance between us and stands directly in front of me. His silly cane is, as always, clasped in one hand.
“So you’ve remembered my name.”
He grabs my arm, fingers squeezing as I try to pull away. “What are you doing here?”
“Perhaps I am unfamiliar with the strange customs of the gentry. Did you not mean for me to come when you sent the dress, the motor, and the invitation that begged my presence?”
He lets go of my arm and puts a hand over his face, his shoulders stooped as though bearing a great weight. It is so dim I can see only the barest expression on his face, but he looks defeated. “I sent none of those things.”
“What?” My heart pounds. That was not the answer I was expecting.
“It wasn’t me. We’ve been set up, and I can only pray that I played my part well enough for no damage to be done.”
“I don’t understand. Are you saying that the dress, the letter—they weren’t from you?”
“Of course not. I would never do that.”
I let out a sharp breath, wishing this didn’t cut through me with icy pain. I have no reason to stay, no further levels of shame and embarrassment to drop to. My night is complete.
I sweep out past him, ignoring the urgency with which he calls my name.
Back in the great room, I accept another card pressed into my palm with a smile as mechanized as the motor I rode here in. I stay on the outskirts, searching for a door other than the ones I came through, and am mostly ignored save a few curious souls.
I cannot puzzle this out.
If Finn did not send me the letter, invitation, dress, and motor, who did? It is a cruel joke, elegant and expensive in execution. Surely I have no enemies of this caliber. I just want to go home. My driver said another way to the hotel had been arranged, and the thought gives me pause.
Either it is part of the joke and there is no ride home, or some form of transportation will be waiting for me, possibly with answers as to how this whole nightmare of an evening happened.
I want to face neither of those options. It was Finn or it wasn’t, and the only person who can answer my questions is the same one I never want to see again.
I finally spy a side door and slip out. The night hits me with jealous greed, eager to steal away the memory of humid warmth, and for once I am glad of the shock of it.
“Fie on this whole country and everyone in it,” I declare, setting off across the grounds perpendicular to where the main road crosses in the front. If I can get back to the heart of the city, I’ll find a cabbie eventually.
“Fie on stupid men who see dark skin as an exotic temptation. Fie on these accursed shoes.” I kick them off into the grass, knowing I will regret it when I hit the street but simply not caring. “And fie on whoever sent them.”
A loud caw sounds behind me and I spin, nearly falling off balance. “Fie on birds, too!” A big, black one bobs up and down in the grass behind me, its eyes glowing reflectively in the dark night.
I rub my arms and walk a bit faster. “Fie on creepy glowing eyes, especially.”
Another caw, echoed from the other side behind me. Then another, and another, and finally I look over my shoulder to see dozens of pairs of glowing yellow eyes, all fixed on me.
As one, they lift into the air with a great rush of wings and I scream, throwing my arms over my head. I run forward, away from the birds, but they surround me, flying with a cacophony of wings and horrid, croaking cries. I see a break in their formation and run through it, trying to make it back to the conservatory. My feet pound against the grass, the demon birds right behind me, flying up to block me at every turn with sharp beaks and razor claws.
They are blacker than the night, a tunnel around me, herding me and giving me only one way to escape: into the darkness of the trees surrounding the lawn. As I give up on the beacon of light from the conservatory, the ground slips and slides beneath me, reality shifting. I turn to look over my shoulder one last time, running as fast as ever I have, when I slam into something.
Something with a set of teeth and eyes equally sharp.
Seven
I AM HOME, IN MY BED, MY NIGHTCLOTHES tangled around me so that I cannot move. My mother talks to me in the low, sibilant sounds of our language, though her voice is deep, too deep. Her words don’t comfort—their tone is chiding, accusatory, but my memory fails me and I cannot understand what she is saying as her fingers brush my forehead.
Her fingers turn into the touch of feathers and I scream, fighting upward out of the blackness. I’m in the conservatory, spinning, spinning, passed from partner to partner down an infinite line. I look up, begging to stop, to see that it’s Finn who holds me, his hands tight around my waist. Then he passes me to the next man—Finn again, always Finn, and none of them will look me in the eyes, none of them will answer my pleas to be released.
I try to break through but I can’t, and I’m twirled and danced farther and farther down the line of bodies, an endless path.
Just when I can bear no more, Finn pulls me close and finally meets my eyes. “I am so sorry,” he says. And then he spins me into the sharp man, whose arms wrap around me once more, turning into great black wings.
I am smothered in feathers and pulled into darkness so complete I cannot even scream.
Eight
I GROAN, MY HEAD ACHING WITH SHARP PULSES. For a moment I am utterly disoriented—I was home—but no, I’m in Avebury, and . . .
I sit up, the soft shuffling of feathered wings sending panic through my whole body. I am not home, nor am I at the hotel. I’m in a study of some sort. Dark and masculine furniture with bulky rigid lines takes up more space than required. The room is paneled in wood, the single window shuttered and letting in only the merest mention of light. A fire burns in a stone fireplace covered with an ornamental iron gate, and the room smells overpoweringly of resin. Books line the walls, but there is something off-putting about their unmarked black spines.
Perched on the back of an imposing leather armchair, a single black bird with wicked eyes glares at me. I avoid its stare, hoping that if I ignore it, it will cease to exist.
Nothing is familiar, no clues as to where I am or whose couch I was sleeping on. I’m still in my red dress, my feet bare of shoes, stockings torn but in place.
I’m missing something. I scan my surroundings again. And then I realize: the room has no door.
I stand. I’m wrong. I have to be. I’m feverish or suffering the ill effects of something strange in the drinks from the gala. Keeping the demon bird in my peripheral vision, I pace the walls, pushing on bookcases, searching for seams, but there is nothing, no egress. The window shutter will not move; I cannot even budge the slats to see outside.
“Tea?”
I scream, spinning around to find a man sitting in the now birdless leather armchair, perfectly at ease, as though he did not just appear in a doorless room. My heart races with fear.
“How did you get in here?” I ask.
He smiles, lips thin under a stylishly clipped mustache. He is older, handsome in the way of Albens. Carefully styled black-and-gray hair sets off his pale skin, so white it is nearly blue in this light. There is nothing remarkable about him, though I know I’ve seen him before. “I should think myself perfectly capable of entering my own study.”
“But there are no doors!”
“Oh?” He raises his eyebrows as he stirs a cup of tea—where did the tray come from? That coffee table was empty before, I know it was. And then I see over his shoulder, plain as day, a door.
I stumble forward and collapse on the couch. “My apologies, sir. There is something wrong with me. There was a bird, and no door, and—” I pull off a glove and put my hand to my forehead, but it feels cool to the touch. “Where am I? How did I get here?”
“I found you outside the conservatory. Fearing you had too much to drink and that others might take advantage, I had my man carry you to the carriage and brought you here.” He smiles knowingly and I try not to bristle—one glass of fizzy champagne would never render me unconscious.
“I thank you for your gracious actions, sir, but I cannot account for the circumstances.” I shake my head, remembering the birds, and the man, and the dreams. “I suspect I was drugged.”
“Doubtless.” But his smile indicates he doubts it very much. There is something wrong with his face, with the way it moves—almost mechanical, the lines of his eyes not matching the expressions, his lips not quite keeping pace with the words he speaks. “Sugar?”
He holds out a delicate teacup and I take it, staring down at the milky brown liquid as though it has answers for me. I set it on the table without drinking any, and then stand. “I should be going. My friends will be worried.” I’m unnerved and have no desire to remain in a room alone with a man I do not know.
“Sit down,” he says.
I sit.
“Drink your tea,” he says.
I reach for the cup and bring it to my lips, but smash them shut before I can take a sip. My arms trembling, I set the tea back down on the table. “I am leaving,” I say, and now I am certain I am still trapped in a dream, one of those horrible nightmares where I tell my body to run but it does not listen to me. I force myself to stand, every movement slow and labored, like the very air around me has solidified.
The man laughs, and the film around his face parts for a split second. I see the sharp teeth and sharper eyes of my nightmares.
“You,” I whisper. Wake up, wake up, oh please, Jessamin, wake up.
“Stubborn. Any good Alben girl would have downed the whole pot of tea at the slightest suggestion. I’ve spent a remarkable amount of force on you.” He cocks his head, the movement like a bird, and his blue eyes flash to black.
My legs shake. I am telling them, screaming at them to move toward the door, fighting the overwhelming urge to drink that accursed tea.
“You may as well be comfortable and sit. You’ll wear yourself out, and we’ve barely begun.”
I strain for a moment longer until I realize the door behind him has disappeared once more. I slump down to the couch, sitting on my hands to keep them away from the tea.
“I should very much like to wake up now,” I say to no one in particular, because I am done dealing with this nightmare.
“It is a puzzle,” the nightmare man says, and I avoid looking at him by staring at the bookshelves and trying to determine why they unnerve me so. “I can’t understand why he would notice you. You’re utterly without potential for a man like him.”
I count the spines: twenty-five across. I count the same row again: thirty-three. Again: twenty-seven. And yet I can detect no movement, no change.
“How did you catch Lord Ackerly’s affections?”
He succeeds in yanking back my attention. “Is he going to show up, too? This dream keeps getting worse.” I’ve reached for the teacup again. Furious with myself, I swipe it off the table to the floor. There. No more tea to tempt my wayward hands.
“It is puzzling. I shouldn’t think a girl like you would be more than a trifle to him. Poor Lord Ackerly, my great challenge. He’s been untouchable all this time, only to trip and drop the key to his undoing.”
My head aches where the silver comb is digging into my scalp, and I reach back to pull it out. Several hairs come away with it. I pull them free from the comb’s prongs. Wake up, wake up.
“Give them here,” he says, holding out his hand, and I’ve placed the hairs there before I can stop myself. “Let’s add them to the collection, shall we?” He opens a polished ebony box and places the hairs gently next to my blue ribbon and the strands already there.