Entwined (14 page)

“Raspberries, do you really?”

He produced a crumpled, clean handkerchief, and gave it to Azalea. She tried to hand him the watch, but he wouldn't take it.

“It's still for ransom, is it not?” he said. “I'll collect it when I set the tower again.”

Azalea smiled, warmth rising to her cheeks. “Well, it
has
been awfully useful. Thank you, Lord Bradford.”

He mounted with ease, even with the books, and smiled a crooked smile.

“Mr. Bradford,” he said sheepishly.

“Mr. Bradford,” said Azalea. And now, her cheeks burned. It wasn't unpleasant.

“Thank you,” he said, tipping his hat. “For the pleasant evening. Sleep well, Princess Bramble.”

“What?”
said Azalea.

But he was already off at a canter, spattering gravel. Azalea gaped after him, then turned to the handkerchief in her hands. The sloppily embroidered
B.E.W
. in the corner made all the warmth drain from Azalea's face.

“Bramble!” she said. Ever since the Yuletide, he had thought her Bramble!

Azalea looked up to see him pull up at the gate. His eyes caught her, still at the steps, and he smiled and saluted. Then he was gone.

Azalea hugged herself, thinking that she would have to set things straight when she saw him again. If she saw him again.

“Good night,” she said.

T
hat week, Azalea taught her sisters the Entwine. It was a tricky waltzlike dance, and a competitive one, where the lady and the gentleman each held an end of a long sash and weren't allowed to let go. The gentleman would try to “catch” the lady—bringing the sash about her wrists by pulling her into under-arm turns and stepping about her, while the lady would turn and unspin and twist out of his arms, trying to keep the sash from tangling. Two years before, Mother had brought a skilled dance master to lessons to dance the Entwine with Azalea. Azalea had deftly ducked and slipped from his quick, skilled movements, and by the end of the three minutes, both of them exhausted, the dance master smiled and gave her a bow of admiration and respect. Ever since then, whenever she danced the Entwine, Azalea felt a high-trilling piccolo in her chest and her feet felt like springs.

Bramble tied a handkerchief around her arm and played the gentleman, speaking in gruff tones and making such a spectacle that the girls laughed madly.

“My laaaaaadeee,” said Bramble, bowing deeply to Azalea. The girls giggled uproariously, and Azalea sighed. Teaching closed dances without a gentleman was the most difficult thing so far.

“My lady,” came another voice, and all the girls turned to see Mr. Keeper at the entrance, watching them with dark eyes. He smiled, and the two long dimples on each side of his mouth deepened.

Azalea stepped back. The piccolo trill in her chest glissandoed like mad. She swallowed, discreetly trying to wipe her hands on her dress. His eyes seem to see right
into
her.

“Do forgive me,” he said, stepping onto the dance floor. His feet made no sound. “I could not help but notice. Perhaps
I
could have the honor of this dance?”

A hush fell over the girls. Azalea imagined herself in Mr. Keeper's arms, and the piccolo trill in her chest squeaked into tones only tiny birds could hear. If he danced like he moved—in smooth ripples—he was a very good dancer indeed.

“I thought you said you couldn't,” said Eve.

“My lady, I said I do not dance. That does not mean I cannot.”

“Do you even know the Entwine?” said Flora.

Mr. Keeper strode to Azalea, his dark eyes drinking her in. His cloak billowed behind him.

“My lady,” he said, without turning his eyes from Azalea, “I invented it.”

In a satinlike movement, Mr. Keeper had wrapped Azalea's arm about his and had escorted her to the middle of the dance floor. So silky and gentle. Azalea blinked and realized that he had turned her around into an open dance position. She swallowed. It was hard.

“We've only been practicing with this,” said Azalea, producing Mother's handkerchief. “It's a bit short, I'm afraid.”

It flashed silver in the pale light. Mr. Keeper flinched.

“That won't do,” he said. “But, ah! Here is one.”

Mr. Keeper flicked his hand, and a long sash appeared from nowhere. He shook it out with a snap. The bright red color flared against the pale whites and silvers. It was Azalea's turn to flinch.

Bramble took charge of Mr. Bradford's pocket watch, setting it on the dessert table to mark the time. The Entwine was exactly three minutes long. The girls watched, giddy with anticipation, as the invisible orchestra began a slow waltz.

Azalea shook, nervous, as Mr. Keeper stepped in time, turning the sash about her as she stepped out.
He
did
dance like he walked and spoke, with polished movements. Unhumanly graceful.

“My lady glides like a swan,” he said. He pulled the sash up and brought her under his arm. “You are the best I have ever danced with. And I, my lady, have danced with many.”

He pulled the sash even closer, and Azalea caught a look in his eye—the same hungry glint she had seen when he had Mr. Bradford's watch.

Convulsively, Azalea dropped the end of her sash.

That was immediate disqualification. The orchestra stopped.

“Only forty-five seconds,” said Eve, looking at the watch, disappointed.

“You know, Mr. Keeper,” said Azalea. “We've never really been properly introduced. Mother always said—”

“Ah, your mother,” said Mr. Keeper. His black eyes were completely emotionless. “I expect your mother always had sweet little things to say. Such as, ‘You're only a princess if you act like one,' and other such nonsense.”

“Well,” said Azalea, coloring. “What's wrong with that?”

Mr. Keeper gave her a thin, cold smile.

“Nothing at all,” he said.

“You know, Az has a sharp point,” said Bramble as she and Clover gathered the sleepy younger ones together.
“We hardly know a guinea's peep about you. Where did you learn how to dance like that?”

Mr. Keeper's thin, cold smile became even colder.

“I once knew a lady,” he said, “who could dance the Entwine nearly as well as your sister.”

Delphinium, lifting Ivy to her feet, perked up. Of all of them, she read the most romantic stories and drew the fluffiest of ball gowns on her stationery, and Azalea knew she wouldn't leave until she had turned Mr. Keeper's heart inside out, begging for details of romance.

“Were you in love?” she said. “Oh,
do
tell us about it. We only hear ghastly things about that time, with the revolution and everything. I want to hear something romantic.”

“Delphinium,” said Azalea.

Mr. Keeper held up his hand, silencing her.

“It is all right,” he said. He turned to Delphinium, his cloak brushing the marble. “I will tell you about the lady I loved.”

The girls settled together on the entrance steps, not even breathing, for fear it would rustle the rosebushes about them and mask Mr. Keeper's words. Mr. Keeper stood unmoving on the dance floor.

“Once upon a time,” he said. His voice dripped in silk strands. “There was a High King, who wanted more than anything to kill the Captain General who incited a
rebellion against him. It consumed him. The desire to kill the Captain General filled him to his core, and he spent
every
breath, every step, thinking of ways to murder the Captain General.

“But he was old, and time passed, as it always does.”

Mr. Keeper paused. Bramble cast a slightly bemused glance at Azalea, her eyebrow arched.

“So,” Mr. Keeper continued, “he took an oath. He filled a wine flute to the brim with blood. And he swore, on that blood, to kill the Wentworth General, and that he
would not die until he did.

“And then, he drank it.

“The end.”

There was a very ugly, naked silence after that. The girls' mouths gaped in perfect Os.

“Sorry?” said Delphinium. “I missed the part about the lady?”

“Ah,” said Mr. Keeper. “The blood. It was hers.”

 

The girls pushed one another through the fireplace wall, stumbling over skirts and tripping over untied slippers in a frenzy. They swarmed to the lamps on the table and by the door, turning up the oil as high as it could go.

“For the last time,” said Azalea as the girls flocked about the lamps, the younger ones gripping Azalea's skirts, “it's not true! Settle down!”

“Aaaah! Oh, ha ha, Ivy, it's just you, ha ha ha.” Delphinium shakily sat on the edge of her bed, her hands fumbling with her slippers as she pulled them off.

“It really sounded true!” Hollyhock squeaked. “It really did!”

Azalea hesitated.

Unlike the rest of them, she had heard this story before. Only in snippets, sometimes in hushed tones when the maids walked by, or reading in Tutor's
Eathesbury Historian
when he had dozed off. No one ever spoke it aloud.

Those hundreds of years ago, the High King had captured Harold the First's daughter, in the gardens. Back then the gardens had been made of thornbushes that grasped at persons' hands and necks of their own accord, pulling them into their prickly branches. He took her into the palace, and several days later, a box appeared at Harold the First's manor. Among the tissue papers lay a hand. It belonged to her.

The story then echoed Keeper's, with the High King drinking her blood, swearing to kill her father. Her body was found later, in pieces in the thorny garden. Azalea shuddered. She hated thinking of the next part of the story.

At night, the palace windows lit with a weird, bright yellow light, Harold the First's daughter could be seen
wandering the halls, feeling her way about with
both
of her hands. The High King had somehow kept her soul. And she felt about with both hands—because…because…Azalea couldn't bring herself to think of it in a complete sentence, but it involved a needle, a thread, and the soul's eyelids.

Azalea nearly dropped the lamp she held, her hands shook so. She managed a smile, set it on the round table, and began to help the younger girls undress.

“It's only
partly
true,” she said firmly. “Yes, he drank blood, but it didn't do anything. You know the picture of Harold the First, in the gallery? He died of
old age
. He killed the High King. The blood oath didn't work. Drinking blood can't do anything more than if you've pricked your finger and sucked on it. It's all tosh.”

“He made it sound so vivid,” said Flora, huddled with Goldenrod under their bedcovers. They hadn't bothered to undress.

“The High King did a lot of awful things,” said Eve as Azalea pulled the twins gently from their bed and helped them into their nightgowns. “He trapped people in mirrors. They died there.”

“That's—not—as bad as—capturing souls, I should—should think,” said Clover, stammering more than usual.

“What a great load of rot,” said Bramble. She threw her slipper at the wall. It hit the wainscot next to the
door and fell into the basket. “And what a rot of Keeper, telling a story like that. Didn't he realize it would scare the tonsils out of the younger ones?”

Azalea rubbed her skirts, still feeling Keeper's hands against hers.

No one slept well that night. Azalea brought up two steaming kettles of tea for everyone, cooing and soothing them when they awoke with a cry. The younger girls crawled into her bed, burying their noses into her sides, patting her cheeks each time they stirred.

When Azalea awoke, it was late and she was cranky. She became doubly so when she discovered that Mr. Bradford's pocket watch had been left at the pavilion.

“I didn't mean to leave it,” said Bramble, in the same beastly mood. “It wasn't my fault—we were in such a hurry to leave, after that ghastly story!”

“Mr. Bradford trusted us,” said Azalea, angry with herself. “He trusted
me
.”

Bramble looked at Azalea up and down, an odd light in her lemon-green eyes.

“Go to it, then,” she said, herding the girls out the door. “I'll start the wee chicks on their lessons.”

Several minutes later, toes curling in her boots, Azalea rubbed her handkerchief against the mark until it burned and the light burst. She had never been to the pavilion in the day. Descending alone into the silver brilliance
felt different. Everything was muffled, and Azalea's boot clacks left no echo.

When she reached the pavilion, it stood dark, shadowed in the silver mist. Keeper was not there. Azalea knocked, lightly, on the arched doorframe.

“Sorry, hello?” she said.

Knocking made her feel less intrusive. She slipped onto the dance floor, and nearly jumped out of her boots when the orchestra burst into a lively jig.

“Shh!” she seethed. “Quiet! Hush!”

The orchestra cut off, except for a violin that screeched a happy solo. When it realized the rest of the orchestra had quit, it slowed with an embarrassing rosined whine.

Azalea searched the pavilion for a sign of the watch, and as she turned, felt the prickly, uncanny sensation of someone's eyes on her. She looked up, and let out a cry.

There, on the
ceiling
like a big, black spider, was Keeper.

Azalea's heart nearly leaped out of her corset. She stumbled back.

Keeper pushed off from the ceiling and flipped to the ground in a swoop. He landed, catlike, on his feet, and straightened. His cloak settled around him.

Azalea darted for the entrance. Keeper was there in an instant, blocking her way. He smiled a long-dimpled smile.

“My, you startle easily,” he said.

“You—it—on—ceiling…” Azalea choked.

“Oh, do calm down, Miss Azalea.” In a silky movement he brought Azalea's shaking hand around his arm, smoothing her quaking fingers over his black suitcoat sleeve. “Living in such a small pavilion for so many years makes one, ah, creative. And you, Miss Azalea, I am pleased to see you here. Even if you are here for another gentleman's watch, and not for me.”

Azalea tried to pull her arm away, but Keeper only smiled, pressed his long fingers over hers, and escorted her to a sofa next to the dessert table.

“Do sit down. You are trembling. It is my fault; I know it. That story last night. I hope you can forgive me for it.”

He produced a cup of streaming tea from nowhere, it seemed, and offered it to her, but Azalea waved it away.

“Where is the watch?' she said.

“Ah, so quickly to the point. That is bad manners, you know.”

He set the teacup on the table, and next to it, lifted the lid from a small platter. Instead of housing a tiny cake, the plate held the pocket watch. Azalea reached for it.

Keeper closed the lid with a clink.

“Mr. Keeper,” said Azalea.

Keeper had no hint of a smile as he set the covered plate aside and lifted the lid off a larger tureen.

Azalea gasped. On the platter lay an assortment of
odds and ends. A pair of lace gloves, a needle with a scarlet thread, one of Jessamine's stockings, Ivy's spoon, Eve's pen, all among other things of the girls'. Azalea was aghast.