“Milady, hurry,” she rasped.
“I will…release you, Iris. Only…do be patient…a moment,” she chastised with a rasp. “Do.”
Iris stared up at her in confusion, her mind seeming to catch on something the woman said. And then she realized that Lady Hargrave had addressed her as Iris. Her face must have given it away, for the woman’s smile deepened knowingly.
“Yes, I know. It pains me…to admit that I did not realize the truth on my own, especially after…you spoke of your brother.” The woman’s words broke off as she struggled to catch her breath. “I was so enamored of you. So…trusting. Lady Paget was your undoing…after all.”
Caris gasped, and Iris didn’t know how any air at all was getting into the woman’s lungs at the tight whisper of sound. “There is no use…denying it. What happened to…Beryl? I must know.” She pulled a kerchief from her sleeve and held it to her mouth, and again Iris was struck by the strong smell of smoke.
It could not only be Satin’s recent presence that had brought on such difficulties for the woman.
Iris swallowed with some strain herself now, she realized. The numbness in her throat had increased.
“She died. After the birth of her child.”
Caris’s eyes narrowed over the kerchief.
“I had nothing to do with her death,” Iris breathed. “I swear. I did everything I could to help her. But I was desperate to gain Northumberland, and her death was the perfect opportunity to return.”
Lady Hargrave lowered the kerchief, gasping weakly. “To return…to me?”
Iris was confused. “To return to the land of my family. I didn’t yet know you, my lady.”
“You did,” Caris rebutted, her chest heaving pointlessly. “You…don’t remember.”
“Perhaps I don’t,” Iris acknowledged. “I find that I am muddled just now. I—my lady, I’ve only tried to protect you. But we must go.”
“Protect me from what…sweet Iris?”
“From Lord Hargrave,” Iris insisted, her voice sounding hollow and echoey. “I know about the people he’s murdered. The young girls he’s taken.”
Caris nodded weakly. “Do you? I’ve already told you…Lord Hargrave would never harm me.” She leaned close to Iris’s face, her breath bitter and faint against Iris’s mouth. The woman’s nose was running unchecked. “When your parents…died, I wanted to take you. Lucan. Mostly you. I have…fond weakness…orphans.”
Iris felt her mouth going slack, but it wasn’t from surprise; her entire face seemed to be going numb, creeping down her neck to the top of her chest.
The drink. The drink in Euphemia’s chamber.
A dead girl’s meal…
“My lord forbade it. Too suspect. I let you go…pretty child. All…dark hair.” Her forearm moved as though she were stroking Iris’s head again, but Iris couldn’t feel the woman’s touch as Caris seemed to collapse more heavily against the table. “Euphemia fled to…fire…at Castle Dare. To find…Thomas…she thought. She left me…for him.” The words ended on a wheeze. Caris paused, looking deep into Iris’s eyes as she struggled to draw breath. “Her father.”
“Iss true?” Iris slurred. “Cordelia?”
“Cordelia.” Her words were little more than breathy squeaks. Caris lifted the heavy-looking cup and drank from it, choking as she tried to swallow, spraying Iris’s face with a fine mist of the green-smelling liquid.
In a moment the woman could gasp again. “Cordelia didn’t… understand. She discovered…my husband’s interest in…the human body. She didn’t…understand. Wouldn’t…listen. He is brilliant. Lord Hargrave knows more…about…what a person can withstand and recover from…as do…the greatest surgeons…in the East. The organs…their functions. He should…been a master teacher. But he was chastised…hated…hunted for his work.”
Caris raised the cup once more, and this time managed to swallow whatever liquid remained in the cup. When she looked again at Iris, her eyes streamed, the circles beneath them purpling. She gulped each breath now, as a fish coming to the surface of a pond.
“We knew…Cordelia was pregnant, stupid girl. If she would have stayed…silent, she could have…married weak little Thomas. But no. No, Cordelia was going to…tell about the stupid servant girl. Many girls…but all one girl. All the same. All eager to… seduce the lord and gain…his favor. He let them think…they’d won him. Stolen him away to…a secret place. Here.” Her words ended on a screech of breath.
“Cordelia freed her,” Iris whispered as she herself realized.
Caris nodded and leaned even closer, kissing Iris gently on her slack lips. “But the girl…couldn’t run. Mercy. What happened to Cordelia was…an accident. She fell. I had to…stop her screaming. She would have…suffered. Then I realized…my responsibility. Take care of…my girls before…they ended up here. I don’t like it when…he touches them—they’re…never the same afterward. Pieces…missing.”
Iris’s voice was barely audible. “Cordelia’s baby?”
Caris coughed into Iris’s face, and her tongue darted out, trying in vain to wet her lips. “I’d forgotten. But…my lord…is a skilled surgeon.” She leaned even closer. “Life…emerged…from death-h-h.”
Iris moaned in horror, too weak to do anything more.
“I loved them,” Caris insisted, her voice nothing but a wheeze now, the sagging bodice of her gown revealing skin over heaving ribs, a living skeleton. “All my girls. And you. Could not…let them suffer so.”
Caris reached down to Iris’s hands, and she heard a faint rattling through the dizzy spinning of her head. Her forearms rocked free as the manacles around her wrists were released. Then her ankles.
“There,” Caris wheezed. “Go. Run.”
Iris tried to sit up as she swung her legs over the side of the table, but it was as though she no longer had command of her torso. The world spun as she tumbled to the cold stone floor, banging her suddenly heavy head and scraping her face on the supports as she fell. She strained to lift her head on her weak neck, looking at Lady Caris’s blurry slippers, tried to get her hands beneath her.
Her head jerked back and Caris squatted over her, grasping the top of her head by her hair. She saw the flash of the
