The Deepest Night

Chapter 34

Mental asylums are solid places. Everything locked up all right and tight, all the time. But the architects and doctors, the burly guards with batons, were thinking only of the delusional. The shackled. The helpless.

They never anticipated me.

The duke had iron bars on his windows (which probably didn’t open anyway) but also his very own fireplace. Which meant a chimney.

I emerged as smoke in his cell. His Grace was seated in the same chair before the hearth as he’d been the first time I’d visited him. He was staring blankly into the distance, perhaps to a place that did not have barred windows and locked doors and the scent of human misery lingering beneath that of bleach.

A cup of tea had gone cold on a table, next to an ashtray overflowing with crumpled cigarettes. A pair of electric lamps burned upon the writing desk, tiny dots of heat. There was no crackling fire to warm him today.

I took my shape behind the wing chair facing his, my fingers curled atop its back.

“Reginald,” I said.

“Rose?” His eyes regained their focus, surrendering whatever private realm had held him.

“No.” My lips curved. “Eleanore.”

“This isn’t a dream, is it?”

“It is, if that’s what you wish.”

“No.” His face hardened. “I’ve done enough dreaming, I think. Is he safe?”

“He is alive.”

“I know that!”

“He is no longer a prisoner. He’s in France now, being cared for. He’ll be home again.”

“Tranquility,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

The duke became old and small in his chair. “Good,” he sighed, gazing at his lap. “Good.”

Past his door sounded footsteps, masculine voices too hushed to make out. Beyond all that was a woman crying, the heartbroken sobs of the forgotten, muffled and endless, as if she’d never draw steady breath again.

“Perhaps you might renew my scholarship to Iverson, Your Grace.”

“What’s that? Oh.” He looked back up at me, puzzled but calm. “Is that your price?”

“My price? No. Merely a request.”

“You desire to be a schoolgirl again? A beast such as yourself, bound to classroom schedules and lectures about etiquette?”

I dug my toes into the rug beneath me, all the way down to the nubby base.

“Yes,” I said.

“Very well. I shall inform Irene you’re to be readmitted for the fall.”

I smiled again, performing a mock curtsy behind the chair. The duke did not return my smile.

“One last thing, Your Grace. If you do dream again—if you share dreams with that boy in the stars again, tell him this. I’m ready any time he is for the bargain to be concluded. I’m ready to hold up my end of the pact.”

“As you say,” he agreed, unruffled.

I nodded, he nodded, and I left.