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Clarimonde blinked. “I don’t know what you mean by that,” she said.
“You are being very agreeable,” Lord Foxglove told her. There was a hint of suspicion now in his voice. “That is unlike you.”
Clarimonde gave a small huff. “I can be agreeable!” she protested.
Lord Foxglove stifled a short laugh. “You could not bring yourself to flatter your current host for even a few hours,” he pointed out to her.
Clarimonde flushed with embarrassment. “Well, I am capable of being agreeable with people that I find agreeable,” she retorted.
For some reason, this pronouncement sent Lord Foxglove into a sudden, thoughtful silence. Gradually, he began to brush her hair again.
Clarimonde frowned as she worked out the implications of what she had just said. “I didn’t mean… that I find you agreeable at all times,” she warned him. “I certainly do not.”
“Hm,” Lord Foxglove mused. He set aside part of Clarimonde’s hair, as though considering a fresh braid.
“I find you tolerable when you are being honest,” she added.
“Is that so?” the faerie asked. Warm amusement coloured the words.
He was very close behind her again, Clarimonde thought, and she did not like the way that she had begun to notice that. There was a growing flush on her skin, uncomfortably similar to the one that had developed when she had first seen Lady Foxglove in the carriage. And that was terribly unfair, given that Lady Foxglove was currently nowhere to be seen.
“I am reassured,” Lord Foxglove said lightly. “I had forgotten what it sounds like when you are trying to lie, Miss Betony.” He finished winding up her hair and pinned it gently into place again. “Speaking of which… I believe that I have an idea on how to right today’s small stumble. Obviously, I will need to tell you what to say.”
CHAPTER 10
“I am sad to know that I need not teach you how to endure the world’s worst horrors. I suspect that you have long since learned that lesson all too well.”
LORD ELIAS WILDER TO MISS CLARIMONDE BETONY, AGE 16
Cold blue candles burned away the edge of midnight, as Clarimonde walked through the darkened corridors of the Hollow House. Had she been entirely alone, she might have had more difficulty navigating the Faerie side of the house—but the little white dormouse hidden in her pèlerine whispered helpful directions to her as she went.
Lord Foxglove directed her to a slate of rooms on the far side of the gallery. Among them, Clarimonde knew, was Tertia’s bedroom—but based on her previous conversations with Tertia and Miss Molinari, she suspected that the lady of the house would currently be found in her boudoir.
Even as she arrived at her destination, however, the door was already opening to let Miss Molinari slip out of the boudoir.
The poet had undergone a subtle but unmistakable transformation. Her dark hair was loose about her shoulders, and her pèlerine was missing entirely. Her manner radiated a dazed and distracted contentment which added the occasional stutter to her step. In fact, Miss Molinari nearly overlooked Clarimonde entirely as she stumbled for the hallway—but as Clarimonde cleared her throat, the other woman glanced up at her, blinking dimly.
“Oh,” said Miss Molinari. “Miss…” A silly smile tugged at her lips, and she laughed oddly. “I have forgotten. Dear me.”
The display made Clarimonde’s gut twist with a sudden, familiar discomfort. The small hairs on the back of her arms tingled with awareness, and a cold sweat raced across her skin.
It took her more than a few seconds to regain her voice. When she finally spoke, the words were tight. “Are you intoxicated, Miss Molinari?” she asked.
The poet stared at her blankly. Clarimonde was not certain whether the other woman had even heard the question. Her expression was so distant and unmoored that the words had probably slipped past her entirely.
It was, she thought, the sort of behaviour one expected from an opium addict.
Clarimonde’s hand slipped urgently into her pocket, grasping tightly at the pocket watch there.
“Oh, Clarimonde.” Tertia’s voice drifted out from the boudoir, vaguely welcoming. “Have you come for drinking chocolate after all?”
Clarimonde stared back at Miss Molinari for several more seconds, unable to make herself move. For her part, the poet seemed to have forgotten why she was in the hallway at all; she closed her eyes and leaned idly against the wall, basking in her own internal world.
Whiskers tickled at Clarimonde’s neck. “Move, Miss Betony!” a tiny voice ordered from her pèlerine.
Clarimonde reacted automatically, turning back towards the door. Her initial horror quieted into a sluggish dread, as she left Miss Molinari behind her to enter Tertia’s boudoir.
The space was lush with greens, blues, and vivid peacock violets. Plush rugs overlapped along the floor, soft enough to sink beneath Clarimonde’s feet as she walked. Various musical instruments and half-started art littered the room, discarded into messy corners—with the notable exception of a large painting of Tertia crowned with pomegranates, which had been displayed upon an easel. Clarimonde’s heart briefly leapt with hope as she caught sight of a large harp—made of solid gold, of course. It was so obviously gaudy and in line with Tertia’s other tastes, though, that substantial doubt soon flooded in.
