“I’ve not told him,” she said. “But he is having the wood searched for the criminals now. If he finds them, I have little doubt what will be the outcome, even if he doesn’t yet know that one of them is Euphemia’s killer.”
“He will leave no stone unturned.” Caris pulled away then, and something outside the window caught her eye and she turned her head nodding toward the wavy, bubbly glass. “There go two more searchers now.”
Iris only gave the most cursory glance out the window; she didn’t care what Hargrave’s men-at-arms did to the monsters who inhabited the wood. “I’m sorry to be the one to have to deliver such news to you, my lady.”
“Oh, Beryl, I’d have wished it from no other.” She looked with bittersweet longing to the twinkling lights about the room, the tray sitting on the bed, the foodstuffs and cup perfect, just as it had been every night since Iris had arrived at Darlyrede.
Then she looked back into Iris’s eyes. “I wish you were she,” she said. “Forgive me.”
Iris felt tears well in her eyes. “There is naught to forgive.”
“Perhaps, just for tonight, we could pretend,” she said in a small, pleading voice. She reached out to smooth back Iris’s hair behind her ear. “Before my lord comes for me, let us drink and eat of the last meal I will ever have prepared for my sweet, lost Euphemia. And then, if the morrow comes, we shall decide what we shall do next.”
Iris nodded, not willing to tell the woman that she planned for the morrow to find her without station in Darlyrede’s current incarnation; she would stand firmly, openly, on Padraig Boyd’s side, both before and after the king had passed his judgment, whatever it might be.
That would be too much shock for the woman, and Iris would not betray her so.
She gained her feet, and Caris took her hand once more as they walked together to the bed. The lady pushed the tray to the center of the perfectly arranged mattress, and the women sat upon its edge, facing each other. Caris reached out for the ewer and the cup with a peaceful smile and poured a generous portion before handing the cup to Iris. Then she broke off a piece of the thin loaf and held it out.
“You must be famished, my dear, running about the wood all day like a peasant.” Her smile was indulgent, perhaps a mother speaking to her spirited daughter.
“Thank you.” Iris took it and tried to keep a bright smile on her face, although she felt almost guilty participating in the farce. Perhaps it would help the lady achieve peace, but Iris had a sick feeling in her stomach as she bit into the soft bread and chewed.
A dead girl’s meal, she couldn’t help hearing in her head.
The bread was dry and difficult to swallow, so she lifted the cup and drank of the tepid milk, even as she heard the door in the next room open.
“My lady?”
Iris forced her throat to swallow as her eyes widened, and the noblewoman’s face lost all traces of contentment, to be replaced with blatant anxiety.
“He was not to come so soon,” she whispered, as if in apologetic explanation.
“Lady wife?” Lord Hargrave called again. “Are you in there?”
“Stay here,” Caris whispered and pressed her arm before scrambling from the bed and walking around the chamber and through the doorway. “I’m here, my lord.” She pulled the door closed behind her.
Iris put the bread back on the platter and stood with the cup, tiptoeing around the end of the bed toward the closed door. She could hear the muffled conversation through the thick slab, harsh and clipped. Iris felt her head start to swim and realized that she had been holding her breath. The deeper voice of Lord Hargrave seemed to be growing louder, closer to the door.
She was suddenly very afraid, though she could not have said why, and turned to the door that opened into the corridor. Iris engaged the handle, yanked, but the door stayed firmly shut.
She remembered her notes, the curious lock on the exterior of the door.
Iris hurried back to sit on the side of the bed and then began to worry why Hargrave had chosen this night to visit Caris’s chamber. In all the months of Iris’s employment, he had never called upon his wife’s apartments during the twilight hours while Beryl was present.
He was not to come so soon…
She drank the last of the milk to soothe her parched throat and set down the empty cup, pushing the tray from her. She looked about the room, but she could see nothing to be used in defense of herself. Not a heavy bowl, nor an iron poker for the fire; not an eating knife on the tray—nothing heavy, hard, or sharp in the whole of the room.
She stood up, not willing to be caught off her feet, but then another wave of dizziness overcame her and she sat again. Her nerves would be her ruin this day. She breathed in and out slowly through her nose.
The chamber door opened, and Iris heard Lady Caris shout “No!” in a strangled voice as Lord Vaughn Hargrave walked into the room with a curious smile on his face.
“Well, look who is here,” he said, his smile not warming the cold glint in his eyes.
Iris’s head began to swim, and each of the fifteen tiny flames turned into little explosions of light, sparkling on the air like the sun glinting off water. She could no longer see clearly, but she heard his muffled footsteps drawing closer on the thick carpet, and so she held out a warding hand.
“No,” she thought she managed to choke out, but the voice she heard sounded too far away, so perhaps it was Lady Hargrave who had spoken again.
And then everything was black and silent.
* * * *
If Padraig had been
