The Duke of Snow and Apples (24 page)

“John!”

Frederick flashed back to himself. “Beg pardon.”

Lady Alderley sniffed, her eyes bright with anger. “I
said
I’ll take tea in the yellow parlor.” She turned to Mrs. Templebaum, dismissing him from her conversation. “I told Lady Balrumple that throwing a ball for the servants was a fine idea, but if that means every servant in this household loses their wits the following morning, I’ll reconsider my stance.”

“Only too true,” said Mrs. Templebaum.

A door clicked shut nearby. Voices echoed from the hallway, along with the sound of tramping feet. Frederick took this as his cue to fade into the wallpaper, or as much as a six-foot man covered in blue velvet and gold braid against white marble walls could.

He had to dredge memories of the Basca up all over again as Charlotte, Snowmont, and Sylvia wandered into the foyer. The women buttoned up their pelisses as they walked.

“Oh, toadwarts,” said Lady Alderley. “We’ve only just arrived and looked forward to your company. Are you finished with rehearsals?”

“For now at least,” said Sylvia. “I’m afraid all our pontificating made the room rather stuffy, so we decided to stop for some fresh air.”

Frederick tried not to stare, and failed miserably. Charlotte tilted her head to one side when someone addressed her, but her face maintained that preternatural stillness. No eyebrows lifted in inquiry, her lips twitched neither up nor down. She didn’t look heartbroken—news which should have relieved him, but left a queer sense of disappointment instead—but neither did she look pleased. Instead, she looked nothing so much as—absent.

No
.

“I thought we might take a hike up to those old ruins behind the house,” Sylvia said. “I can’t imagine why I never noticed them the last time I visited. What do you think, Charlotte? Your Grace?”

Almost as one, Charlotte and Snowmont reacted—that slow tilt of the head, the long blank stare that one who didn’t know them very well might mistake for an indication of deep, pensive thought.

No.
She couldn’t be. He’d thrown her misplaced affections back in her face for this very reason. She’d only been there a week. It wasn’t enough time.

He pulled on his power before he could question himself. Before he could guard himself against what he saw.

The Gray. From top to bottom, a pall over her features.

Chapter Twenty-Four

It made no sense. Impotent anger curled sluggishly through Frederick’s veins. If someone had asked who or what he was angry at, or even why, he wouldn’t have been able to answer. He’d spent so much time languishing in sorrow and guilt and recriminations that nothing remained; frustration had risen to take its place.

It made no sense.

“
Frederique,
the mirror, it needs to be higher,” Miss Lamonte said.

Outwardly calm, Frederick raised the large mirror to give Lady Balrumple and her lady’s maid the angle they needed. Miss Lamonte continued to weave strands of silk flowers tied together with gold wire through the elderly woman’s hair.

“Very nice,” said Lady Balrumple. For modesty’s sake, the Dowager had consented to play the smallest role in
The Ratcatcher
, that of the Angel who appeared to Fiona’s father in a dream to convince him to allow the lovers their happiness.

For Lady Balrumple, there was no such thing as a small role, only a small costume, and Miss Lamonte’s task was to ensure that her theatrical toilette merited the same care and attention as the lead.

The red parlor served as a makeshift dressing room while the blue parlor, just down the hall, became the stage. In one corner, a housemaid named Jenny helped Sylvia into her servant’s costume, setting a beribboned white cap upon her blond curls, helping to tie her tiny white apron embroidered with marigolds. A sardonic corner of Jenny’s mouth quirked up, which Frederick guessed was because she, as an actual maid, rarely had access to such pretty garments.

In the center of the room, when he dared to look, Charlotte sat as quietly as a doll on a scarlet-upholstered settee while Lady Alderley’s lady’s maid, Miss Vennis, applied some rouge to her cheeks.

How could the Gray have latched on so quickly? The day before, she’d been brimming with feeling, overflowing with it. Frederick thought he understood the effects of his powers. If he didn’t use them, the Gray stayed away. But even using his powers, it had never happened so quickly. It had taken months to eat away at his mother, with whom he’d been as close as he could be to another person. He’d known Ellie as a fellow member of the staff for years, and no Gray until now. Snowmont—his own jealousy was responsible for that.

He wasn’t jealous of Charlotte, though. How had it happened?

He racked his brain, but he could only follow the deep, rutted paths already worn into his mind from the thousands of times he’d tried to examine his magic. He didn’t know how it worked, how people could be radiant one day and lifeless the next.

“I’m so nervous,” Sylvia said, breaking the silence. She fiddled with her apron strings, braiding and unbraiding them. “I keep thinking I’m going to forget my lines. How do you keep yourself so calm, Charlotte?”

“There’s no reason not to be calm,” Charlotte said. She didn’t so much as fidget. “It’s just a play. If you miss a word, you’ve only failed in front of a dozen people. Since they’re all the Dowagers’ guests, I’m reasonably certain they’ll forgive you.”

Sylvia pressed her lips into a thin smile that couldn’t hide the way they trembled. Her ladyship turned to shoot Charlotte a sharp look, jarring Miss Lamonte’s fingers free. Charlotte’s words sounded cruel, but she spoke them with an utter lack of emotion or intent.

Lady Balrumple’s eyebrows drew downward, pinching a thin line between her eyes. “Are you quite ready for the performance?”

The slow head-tilt again. “I suppose I should take a cup of tea first. Rehearsing my lines left me quite parched.”

Her ladyship nodded toward Frederick, who set down the mirror, wishing he had boots to polish, messages to carry, or anything else to do instead of this. He poured a cup from the tea service resting on a low tulipwood table and approached Charlotte.

He extended the cup and saucer, and she looked up, her eyes meeting his. No mischievous crinkling at the corners or tightening in annoyance. She looked directly at him and saw nothing, and so did he.

Porcelain rattled, and he realized his hands were shaking. He passed the cup and saucer to her without comment and turned away, his heartbeat roaring in his ears.

“I should like a cup of tea, as well. With a little cream, please,” Sylvia said, an odd note in her voice.

Frederick repeated the procedure with a greater measure of ease, but as he offered the cup, Sylvia reached out and placed a staying hand on his wrist. His eyes flew up on instinct, to meet dawning recognition in hers.

“You’re him.” While no louder than a whisper, her voice simmered with anger. “What did you do to her?”

“I don’t know.”

Her hand tightened. “I asked for cream,” she said, loudly. Sotto voce, “You’re
her
footman. What did you do?”

“I don’t
know
.” Scales- and boils-curse it, he had no idea. Ten years ago, he’d thought relinquishing control, becoming a servant, leaving the decisions up to somebody else was the perfect way to leash his curse. Now the helplessness of the situation hung around his neck like a stone, crushing him with its weight.

“You must have done something,” she said. Her lower lip started to tremble again. “O-otherwise it really
is
all m-my fault.”

“So sorry, miss, let me get the cream,” Frederick squawked, as the girl flushed red and her eyes glittered with impending tears. He jerked his hand from her grip, oversetting the teacup. It shattered against the floor.

Miss Lamonte and Lady Balrumple looked up at the noise. Sylvia sniveled, her face red and ripe with tears. Dark tea spread across the floor. Charlotte clucked at the mess and blew on her own beverage to cool it.

“I’ll…I’ll get something to clean that up,” Frederick said. Anger and reproach and desperation collided within him, coalescing into a bright, hot panic that beat an uneven rhythm against his ribcage. With his pathetic excuse still ringing in the air, he left the room.

…

Frederick stared at his woe-begotten valise, a battered, shapeless thing that now comfortably held everything he owned in the world. His weathered shaving kit, two changes of clothes, the only-sometimes-mended black coat for special occasions. His carefully saved wages.

Somehow, he thought after all this time he might have more to his name. He shook himself. No. This was better. Less to lose. Less to worry about—the Maiden knew he had enough worries as it was. Finding a new position without a letter of reference, for one. The Dowagers didn’t stint on their servants’ wages and Frederick had a fair bit saved away, but it wouldn’t last forever.

He had enough to get away—across the inlet to Roan, perhaps, or Trinidon the Flowering City. That’s what mattered. He had to leave before anyone else got hurt. He couldn’t bow and scrape and serve them tea with sugar while their colors drained away.

“What’s this, then?”

Frederick turned. Edward Grubs took in the emptied room, the valise, and the disheveled state of Frederick’s livery. His face hardened. “
Again
?”

Not the response Frederick had anticipated. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t play the fool. Nothing’s really changed, even in ten years, has it?”

“Why are you here?” Frederick snapped. “Another foolish attempt to talk some sense into me?”

“Another foolish attempt to help you, Your Grace,” Edward said, shouldering his way into the room, no small feat considering the chamber’s miniscule dimensions. He slouched to accommodate the sloping ceiling.

“I’m not Your Grace anymore.”

Edward eyed the valise. “So now you’re running away from Frederick Snow? Who will you be next?”

“I have no choice,” Frederick said. He guarded himself against his rising, irrational anger, but his shields were flimsy, half-formed things. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

Edward shook his head, uncomprehending. “What are you really running from?”

Frederick tensed, then dropped his guard. What could he hide from Edward that the valet didn’t already know? “I hurt people. I don’t mean to, I don’t want to, but I do. I can’t stay and watch them suffer.”

“So you run away and let us suffer alone?”

Frederick flinched, but stood firm. “If I’d stayed at Snowmont, it would have been worse.”

“Worse than losing Her Grace, then you, within the span of a few days?”

The slimmest of barriers kept the full measure of his anguish from paralyzing him. “Yes, worse. I don’t know what I am, but it drives people away.”

“The only person I remember going away was you.”

“My mother—”

“She changed, it’s true. Stopped caring, started letting the housekeeper run the household in her place.”

“That’s what I mean.” Even a normal person blind to colors noticed the draining away of her being.

“But she didn’t leave.
You
did. You went off to school.”

“That’s not—”

“You never wrote back. Or visited.”

“I had to—”

“You’d come home for one dinner a season, on holidays, then flee to whichever of your cronies’ estates was closer.”

Reason fled Frederick’s mind in that instant, leaving no protection against the rage that coursed through him. His arms shot out, pinning Edward to the wall, and he gloried in the solid
thump
the valet made and the
whoosh
of air forced from his lungs.

“
What else could I have done?
” he snarled. “You’re a professional valet, a gentleman’s gentleman. Solving our problems is your life’s work. Tell me, then! What else could I possibly have done?”

Edward’s response emerged in a wheeze, but he continued to glare. “You could have stayed and fought for those you cared about. Instead of abandoning them.”

But I didn’t know how.
Frederick loosened his grip and let Edward regain his footing, but kept his hands fisted around the man’s lapels. “How do I know that wouldn’t have made things worse? Made Mother fade even faster?”

“We’ll never know now, will we?” With a calm, pitying look, Edward peeled Frederick’s numb fingers from his lapels. “Everyone back home knew about your…
gift
, in one way or another. But you don’t have to run away this time.”

“I don’t know how to use it. I always
felt
how to use it. Nobody taught me.” He closed his eyes and felt his magic, huddled in the back of his mind. He could summon it, use it, transfer it by instinct. He followed that instinct and felt his power swim up into his mind and take hold, but he kept his eyes closed.

“I can’t say I wholly understand it either,” Edward admitted. “But every spell can be a ward or a strike. Every plant a poison or a cure. If this magic you have causes people to lose, well, who they are—maybe it can also find them.”

“It can’t be that simple.”

“Have you even tried?”

No, Frederick realized, he hadn’t. By cutting himself off, he’d only thought about not making people worse, not about actually making them better. Fear left a sour taste in his mouth. What if actively using his magic only worsened things?

What could be worse than the Gray?
Frederick opened his eyes, fire and music rising within.
Worse than the loss of self?
Edward met his heated, lightning gaze straight on, dark golds and rich reds revealed to Frederick’s sight.

He’d tried repressing his emotions. He’d tried hiding behind the mask of a servant. He’d tried keeping himself apart from people—but none of those attempts had worked. Maybe it was time to see if some good could be wrought with his freakishness.

Especially now that Charlotte was involved. She was heat and light and everything from which he’d hidden, everything that had been mysteriously quenched within the span of one night. Something had happened to her—perhaps something he’d done—but he couldn’t run away without understanding how, and without trying to make it right.

He would never be able to attain a full understanding of his curse—his
magic
—if he never used it, he realized. If he had driven Charlotte’s colors away, he could damn well bring them back.

He hoped.

…

“Now that we are reunited, I shall never let you go,” said Snowmont. By this point, the glamour written in kohl across his upper lip to give him the appearance of a handlebar mustache had faded as perspiration smudged the lettering. He offered his hand, with a dramatic flourish Lady Balrumple had spent nearly an hour schooling into him.

Charlotte had already uttered her last line (“Oh! Beloved Ratcatcher!”) and now all she had to do was take his hand and curtsey to indicate the play was finished.

A soft smattering of applause greeted the lovers’ reunion, applause that grew in volume as the other players took the stage for their final bow. Finally, Aunt Hildy swept onto the dais in the parlor, eliciting the loudest response of them all.

“You are too kind!” Lady Balrumple waved her handkerchief at an audience comprised mostly of fellow Dowagers, shyer guests, and Lord and Lady Mettle. “I am quite overwhelmed! I was only the Angel, after all.” An angel whose brief speech to Fiona’s father had involved one paroxysm of self-righteousness and two fainting spells. “I must now ask you for your patience as we actors retire from our roles—there shall be refreshments to follow.”

Charlotte followed Aunt Hildy and Sylvia into the red parlor, where a trio of maids waited to remove their costumes and flamboyant cosmetics. Aunt Hildy’s gaiety withered amidst the determined silence that now existed between the sisters, or at least Sylvia, who didn’t recognize that Charlotte didn’t speak because she had nothing important to say.

Lady Balrumple’s dramatic pronouncements and congratulations faded into silence, and with one last, long look at Charlotte, she left the room without even letting Lamonte unwind the flowers from her hair. Similarly, Sylvia only stayed long enough for her lady’s maid to remove the worst of her rouge and the gaudiest elements of her costume before she departed, her eyes downcast and her hands shaking.
Odd
, Charlotte thought.
The room isn’t that cold.

She held still as the lady’s maid removed the itching, red wig. Behind her, she heard a door creak and shut, and the lady’s maid’s hands stilled.