Page 68 of Immortal Rose

I’d left the Treasury on a table near one of the room’s two windows earlier, but this was the first good look I was getting at the handsome, well-appointed space. The leaf-green bookshelves lining the walls were stuffed to capacity with books, their leather spines painted gold by candlelight and the glow of the fireplace. Two worn chocolate leather chairs and a midnight-blue settee had been artfully arranged in front of the latter. The room was so disarmingly inviting, I was tempted to take the Treasury and curl up on a chair. A grandfather clock, whimsically carved to resemble a tree, ticked thoughtfully in the corner, an empty cushion for Brigadier left on the floor beside it.

Foxcourt said nothing as I circled the room, glancing at the shelves. As I neared the chair to the left of the fireplace, my nose caught a faint, sweet stench beneath the fire’s smoke. I placed a hand on the back of the chair, breathing in deeply.

“What is it?” Foxcourt asked, a strange note in his voice.

Shifting the heavy chair along the patterned rug, I concentrated on a faded dark spot near its edge, the source of that rank syrupiness. The notes were nearly gone, as if someone had tried to scrub them out, but the house, clearly, remembered. Old blood and the reek of desperation—anguish. Agony.

And licorice.

Foxcourt watched me intently, retreating behind that mask of impassivity. Yes, something terrible had happened at this very spot.

“Who died here?” I asked, a shiver passing up my spine. It had not been a good death. Not a gentle claiming or a swift one, but I knew—as soon as I saw Foxcourt’s face, I remembered. “Your great-uncle?”

He came around to the front of the old desk, sitting on the edge of it, his arms crossed over his chest. He was silent for a long while. Debating. Weighing if he could trust me.

“He was poisoned,” Foxcourt said. “Possibly by a DeForest perfume.”

“Yes,” I said, breathing in again. “I can smell the last traces of the licorice.”

Foxcourt was striking in nearly every light, but something in the fire’s glow harmonized with his soul, making him seem otherworldly then. There was that hint of the changeling I’d once believed him to be, that lingering mystery, that devastating perfection drawn into sharper relief by the way the shadows had intensified around him.

“By the time we found his body, the perfume’s scent had faded,” Foxcourt said. “He ended his own life with his pistol. I believe the perfume drove him to it, but he had recently fallen out of favor with the King. It was all too easy for the broadsheets to leap to the conclusion that was why he’d done it. But he had enemies, many of them, and . . . I thought I recognized it. The scent. I couldn’t tell if it was truly there or simply the product of a paranoid mind.”

My hands felt nerveless. “You’d smelled it before?”

Foxcourt tilted his head, his gaze drifting to the ostentatious molding on the ceiling. His throat worked as he swallowed. “It was the same one that Glenmoor used on my mother.”

My knees turned to sand beneath me. If I hadn’t been gripping the chair, I might have fallen to the floor. I could barely find the words to speak as I lowered myself unsteadily onto its arm. “Your . . .”

The Duke of Glenmoor—his half brother?

“It causes excruciating pain,” Foxcourt said, his attention fixed on his quill, the way his other hand was stroking it. “The affected seem to . . . it drives them to . . .” His throat worked. “. . . want to end that pain, in the most immediate and final way.”

Nausea rose in me, swift and brutal. I chose my words with equal care to his. “And it was the same . . . for your mother?”

After a moment, he nodded. “I believe so.”

“Why would Glenmoor do such a thing?” I asked. “My God, how do people not know about this? The scandal sheets and newspapers treat him as if he hung the moon.”

“Building orphanages named for the beloved late heir and ingratiating yourself with Parliament by paying off debts will do wonders as a character reference,” Foxcourt said.

“And now he’s home secretary . . .” I stood and began pacing, only to whirl back to him. “You think he murdered your uncle in order to take the position for himself.”

Surprise flickered on Foxcourt’s face. “Yes.”

I couldn’t stop my gasp any more than I could escape the realization braiding itself together with vicious clarity. “You think Glenmoor poisoned the King. That’s who was at the palace, wasn’t it? And he . . .”

The blood drained from my face. She’ll be his prisoner.

“You’re nearly there,” Foxcourt said softly. When I couldn’t bring myself to say it, he glanced at me expectantly, waiting for my guess. Or . . . hoping for it?

“He was named regent in the event of the King’s death, by Parliament’s vote and the King’s wishes,” I said. “If the King dies now, before Eleanor is eighteen, he’ll have power over her.”

“He’ll have power over the entire kingdom,” Foxcourt said. “He will be the one to make the most important decisions, including trade agreements with Gallia.”

I began pacing again. “You think he’s in line with Gallia?”

“I think they supported him financially,” Foxcourt said, “with the hope of him serving as their own puppet. A great deal of damage can be done in two years, including asking Parliament to extend the regency until Eleanor is twenty-five or until she’s married—all the while refusing every marriage offer to her, as he must be the one to approve it.”