Page 64 of Mortdale

He loosened his tie, lit a cigarette, removed his jacket, and folded his sleeves. “She never fixed that last spin in practice. She’s going to take someone down with her. Out of all the things she could have inherited from her father, it had to be his two left feet,” he muttered to himself, unbuttoning the top of his shirt. “I warned Cassandra he was going to ruin her chances at having any talented off-spring.”

No matter how much I tried to pinch myself, bite my tongue, and press my mouth shut, I couldn’t stop shaking from laughter.

“I’m glad you find it funny.” He finally relaxed back in his chair, breathing out a slow sigh. “You look good, wife of mine.”

I was fanning myself so hard I could have started a squall. “You should reward me properly. I have about a dozen garments under this dress. If someone paid me to get undressed, I’d be a ridiculously rich woman. Luckily, only you can probably afford me.” My teeth sank into my tongue. What the Hell did I just say?

The lights dimmed as the curtains pulled back, and a wave of claps ricocheted off the heavily-painted walls of golds and reds and many other bright colours. Despite how impossibly dark it was, I was acutely aware that he was looking at me.

“Powder room,” I murmured in his ear, dragging a cloud of bergamot and vetiver with me as I stood, trying to escape his attention before I’d say or do something stupid.

Liam peeled off the wall, following me across the hall to the powder room.

The buzzing bulbs overhead flickered when I opened the door. Another woman stood in front of the delicate sink mirror, dabbing a red-stained finger to her lips. “Do not look at me like that. Do you think all those women out there are rosy and flushed by nature? A man doesn’t know any better.”

She was an older witch, one I could easily recognise. A red maiden married some time ago now, way before Agnes had come into succession as Holy Mother.

I grabbed her by the elbow, stopping her from leaving the powder room. It hadn’t taken her long to zone in on the fact that I was a witch, too. “You don’t look like a red maiden. How did you ever end up in this predicament?”

“You’re Sybil Fortuna. Your portrait is in the halls of Crimson Weaver.” Not to mention that she was one of the most famous red maidens to have graduated. A woman of medical sciences—a surgeon. Someone whose papers I’d referenced many times.

She huffed. “Strange, I remember setting that entire hall on fire just before I was sold to my vampire keeper.”

Her bitterness was hard on the tongue. “Agnes sent me here.”

“Do not say another word,” she hissed, shoving the door behind me shut. “And do not mention that wretched woman to me again.”

I stepped in front of her again. “It’s about the sisters that are dying in the hands of the vampires. Word must circulate. You have to know about Harriet Derby, who married just a little over a year ago. She’s now dead. Like so many other red maidens. I searched the papers and there’s no word or mention of her, of them, of anyone anywhere. No obituaries, nothing. Most if not all of them were married to powerful men, and they should have been in the papers at the very least. Mortdale seems to have wiped their whole existence off this earth.”

Boredom oozed off her face. Her features were flaccid as if I’d been reading her a housekeeping column in some old age newspaper. She looked annoyed at best. “And?

And?

“How long has it been going on? Why was Meridian never made aware of it?”

“You’re the duke’s wife, aren’t you?” She turned to the mirror, running her fingers through the blond curls. “Do you love your husband?”

“What?” I shook my head. “I don’t have time for this.”

Her eyes dropped down my body. “Do not fall in love with him. It will do a good girl like you no good.”

She paused by the door when I asked, “Aren’t you scared that it might be you next?”

Irritation coloured her face red. “I am safe.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because I am a sensible woman!” she hissed in my face, more than out of patience. There was pain in her words. Frustration. And something else.

“You know something.” I grabbed her arm again just as we left the powder room. Thankfully, Liam had pissed off somewhere. “Tell me one thing. Just one thing. Is it related to this Madness? It has to be somehow. Every time a witch dies, a noble has gotten infected and died only days to weeks apart. Has one of us created this infection?”

Panicked, she skimmed the empty hall before whispering in my face, “I’ve already told you all you need to know.”

“You’ve told me nothing.”

She shoved me off. “Maybe that’s for the best.”

“You were once one of us.”