It was something Fox still pondered when he walked down one of the paths of the pleasure garden with Bourne a little time later. Thick blankets of snow covered the flower beds and lay on the bare hedges. Dubious, Fox cast a glance around. “Are you
sure
we will find that plant under all this snow?”
The older man gnawed on his lip. “I am,” he finally said. “I have to be.”
But you aren’t
, Fox thought despairingly.
And you don’t know whether it will be enough to save Amy after all.
His eyes pricked, but he rapidly blinked against the sting of tears. He took a deep breath.
For now, focus on doing what you can
. They needed to find that plant.
At midday they returned to the house to warm themselves and drink steaming cups of hot tea and the soup Cook had prepared for them. Only Fox stole away without having eaten and slipped back outside. He went to the lake and bleakly stared across its expanse. Their search this morning had been fruitless. Would they ever find the plant? To find a single plant on grounds the size of Rawdon Park was akin to finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. Oh, why hadn’t Isabella Bentham been more forthcoming?
His throat closed, and he swallowed convulsively.
God, what was he doing here, standing around like a ninny? He must search for the plant! And so, frantic, he dashed off to continue the search alone while the wind chafed his cheeks.
Three quarters of an hour later, the others joined him again. His brother came over and clasped his shoulder. “You look dreadful. What were you thinking? Going all alone out here again?”
With barely veiled impatience, Fox shook his hand off. “I need to find that thing.”
This time, Richard gripped both of his shoulders and wrenched him around. His kind brown eyes searched Fox’s face. “You should have at least eaten. Mother worries about you.”
Fox snorted. “Would you eat if it were Bella?” He shook his head, not liking how his brother’s gaze sharpened.
“The last time we spoke about this, you were very angry.”
“The last time we spoke about this, I was fool,” Fox hissed. “A stupid, arrogant fool.”
Richard regarded him a moment longer, then pressed his shoulders. “Good. I’m glad you saw the light. And Sebastian…” His hand curved around Fox’s jaw. “We will all do our utmost to find that plant. You know that, don’t you?”
With a hollow laugh, Fox dropped his head and rubbed his hands over his face. “But you’ve heard what Bourne said: it might not be enough in the end.” And with that, Fox stalked off to continue his search.
In the evening, when they finally returned to the house, they learned that the carriages with the rest of the Bourne family had arrived. Amy had been carried upstairs to her old room, where Mirabella was sitting with her, and Fox, still in his muddy boots, raced up the stairs.
When he saw Amy, lying still and pale in the bed where they had last shared a night of joyful passion, his knees buckled. He sank down beside the bed and warily touched the back of her hand. “She looks worse than before,” he said hoarsely, not looking at his sister-in-law.
“Have you found anything?” Bella’s voice was soft.
Wordless, he shook his head. His gaze roamed Amy’s face, traced each blue line that was visible through the skin.
“Would you like to sit with her after you’ve changed?”
Again he shook his head. Her hair had lost its luster and straggled down over her shoulders. Carefully, he took a strand and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.
“Sebastian—”
It seemed only yesterday that he had buried his face in her hair, while his body had still been buried deep inside hers.
“I’m not going to leave her,” he said.
“Sebastian—”
“No.” He shrugged out of his damp frock coat and put it over the back of a chair.
Bella sighed. “You’re adamant, are you not?” She handed him a book. “Here. I’ve been reading this to her. She’s never had the chance to finish it.” She stood, straightening her skirts. “Shall I send a tray to you?”
Once more, he shook his head.
Lightly, she laid a hand on his shoulder. “But you have to eat, Sebastian. Starving yourself to death won’t help Amy.” She leaned forward and kissed his temple. “I will send a tray.”
Quietly, she closed the door behind her.
For a moment Fox sat very still. The light of the candles flickered over the walls, kept the darkness at bay, which was waiting outside the windows like a great beast.
He turned the book between his hands. Dark red leather, soft and smooth like silk. The flash of gilt letters and ornaments. He rubbed his thumb over the inscription on the spine:
Histories of the Rhine
.
He flicked the book open. The frontispiece showed a strapping young man in the dark robe of a scholar, a fat book raised high over his head. In front of him crouched what looked like a cross between Cerberus and a sheep. “Worthy Markander and the three-headed monster poodle,” the description read. And on the title page,
THE HORRIBLE HISTORIES
OF THE RHINE
Being the True Story
of Seven Brave Knights
of Mayence
& what Befell them
A few colorful threads, interwoven into a narrow ribbon, marked page 271. Fox remembered how he had watched Amy knotting that same ribbon all those weeks ago. How deftly her fingers had worked—he had been transfixed.
If only he could transport them back to that day! The world had seemed perfect then, their love indestructible. Had she already known then?
But no; no, that had been long before Dickie’s fall on the stairs, before her behavior had so markedly changed. She wouldn’t have suspected anything either. How often had he seen her and Mirabella giggling over the pages of the book! It had lain on the nightstand when he had come to her room that first night and she had read to him the episode of the battle between the ghastly lindworm and worthy Markander.
With the flat of his hand Fox smoothed down the pages of the book.
“Heim Heinrik’s words so abashed the fair maiden,” he began to read out loud, his voice rough, “that she went with all the speed from the tower and told the giant, how a knight of Mayence remained at the gate, who had sworn to suffice his hunger in despite of his will…”
For the next few hours, Fox read to Amy how brave Heim Heinrik saved the girl-princess Idonia from the clutches of the evil giant and how he continued to win the heart of Queen Cristiana. But too soon, Heim Heinrik had to leave his beloved again: “This letter was very welcome to Queen Cristiana, who now began to set such high esteem on Heim Heinrik, that she judged him worthy of the empire of the world. And now, he being the sole monarch of her heart, she could not but breathe forth some sighs to think upon his absence; but then considering upon what an honorable account he was engaged, she could not but applaud his undertaking: yet to give him some clear demonstration of her affection to him, upon his marching away, she went in her chariot to speak to him, whom she found at the head of his troops, and kindly bade him farewell and bestowed upon him a scarf of her own with these words:
Let me request you to wear this scarf for my sake, that by looking on the same, I may not be altogether out of your remembrance
.”
By now Fox’s voice was hoarse. He had to clear his throat, before he could croak, “End of Part II of
The Horrible Histories of the Rhine
.”
He looked up.
Amy lay as still and pale as before.
With a deep sigh, he put the book aside and took up her hand. “If you were held captive by the most horrible giants or the most dreadful of lindworms, I would lay siege to their castles and lairs and not budge until I held you safe in my arms.” Softly, he kissed her palm, then pressed her hand against his cheek. “But what can I do against this? How can I help you now?” He closed his eyes and nestled his face into her hand, trying to pretend that it lay not limp and lifeless and cold, so cold against his skin, but warm and vibrant.
After a while, he opened his eyes and placed her hand back on the bed. When he glanced around the room, he noticed for the first time that the candles had burned down and that somebody had left a tray with food on the desk. He stood and rubbed a hand over the stubble on his cheek, then went over and ate a bit of bread and a slice of Mrs. Ogg’s venison cake, which he washed down with the wine Mirabella had had sent up—thank heavens not the ginger beer Richard was so partial to!
Fox yawned. He took off his boots, shucked his waistcoat and trousers, and went back to the bed. Clad in his drawers and shirt, he slipped underneath the covers beside Amy. With one arm protectively curved around her, he dozed.
~*~
He was up again early the next morning, before any hint of light showed on the horizon. He left a maid sitting with Amy and went to his room to change. By the time he went downstairs, it was still dark and he had to ring for the butler to get a hastily assembled breakfast served. He had just finished it, when his brother stumbled into the room. Richard had obviously dressed in a hurry and was not yet quite awake.
“Sebastian.” Richard blinked. “Whatever are you doing?”
Impatient, Fox threw a glance out of the window. “The plant. I need—”
“Heavens! It’s not even light outside. You can’t want to bump around in the dark, Sebastian.”
Richard was right, of course. Fox narrowed his eyes. Not even the tiniest band of gray showed on the horizon. And so he was forced to wait—wait until dawn finally broke, wait until everybody else had had breakfast. Like a caged tiger, he walked up and down the window front of the breakfast parlor.
That day, as bad luck would have it, it took the sun a long time to banish the shadows of the night. Clouds were hanging low, and when the men finally assembled in the front yard once more, thick wet snowflakes fell and clung to their clothes. On their skin the flakes immediately melted to splotches of icy-cold water.
This morning, it was the younger Bourne boys who protested when they had to stay behind. Yet their father was just as adamant as Richard had been with his own sons the day before, so they went back inside with long faces.
The men spread throughout the park and gardens. The fat flakes quickly dampened their coats. Coldness seeped into their bones while they searched empty flower beds, while they looked under hedges and checked the undergrowth in the park. Faster and faster the snowflakes fell, until they resembled a gray, cold veil, behind which the world disappeared.
Fox lost all sense of time as he stomped through the snow side by side with the admiral. They had searched the walled gardens, had lifted forcing pots and opened the lids of the forcing frames. They had sneezed at the concentrated stench of manure that greeted them. But the only thing they had found were ripening strawberries. They had marched through the glass houses, walked along neat rows of peach trees and beneath cucumbers and fat melons as round and full as small green moons.
It was long past midday when they reached one of the utmost corners of the park and entered a small grove which hid the outer wall surrounding the park from view. Cutting coldness bit at Fox’s skin, making him shiver. They would not find the plant.
Snowflakes whirled around him as he stood staring into thin air. “We won’t find it.” A shudder ran through his body.
“What?” The admiral half turned toward him. “My dear young friend, don’t tell me that you will give up now.”
“We won’t find it,” Fox repeated. Despair slowly knotted his insides. “We won’t.” He shook his head. “We won’t.”
“Nonsense,” the admiral said firmly. “Look here.” And then, in a very different tone, “Oh… oh my. Look here, Sebastian. Look!” Snow and gravel crunched underneath his boots as he strode forward. “
Sebastian
!”
And Fox looked.
Stared.
Could hardly believe his eyes.
With a cry he stumbled after the admiral: a small distance away, the snow had melted away from blackened earth. They followed the stripes of black until they reached the wall. And there they found their quarry, nestling between two withered bushes: black with a glistening dark ball at its top, the plant had unfurled thick, meaty leaves that slithered close to the earth. One of them covered the rotting remains of a robin’s wing; the stalk of another had curled around a long-dead mouse. The stench of death and decay saturated the air.
“Heavens!” The admiral’s exclamation ended on a cough.
The plant quivered. The leaves rustled across the earth, shifted and revealed the scattered bones of another small mammal. The men took a step back.
“It knows that we are here,” Fox murmured, pressing the sleeve of his coat against his nose.
Keeping his gaze trained on the plant, the admiral reached for the gun he was carrying and fired a shot into the air-the sign they had agreed on. The central stem of the plant bent toward them, the black ball at the top moving from side to side like an evil eye.
It hissed.
“Heavens!” Sweat beaded on the admiral’s forehead. “I’ll be damned if I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
Fox nodded slowly. Transfixed he stared at the plant, gazed at the blackened earth all around it, and followed the curving stripes of black that snaked out toward trees and bushes in the vicinity. Some of the smaller bushes were already covered with dark slime and had withered and died. Black pustules had broken out on the trunk of a nearby oak tree.
“What—” Breathless, two of the gardeners arrived. Their eyes widened as they caught sight of the plant; then the stench hit their noses. They started coughing and wheezing. “Gracious!”
The admiral gave another shot.
From all sides, men came toward them. Richard arrived with his head gardener, who appeared about to burst into tears when he caught sight of the damaged oak tree. He made as if to step toward it, yet Richard grabbed the back of his coat.
“You want to stay away from that, Mr. Chapman. At least until Mr. Bourne says it is all right.”
Bourne finally came in the company of one of the footmen, closely followed by his two eldest sons. All three of them paled at the sight of the plant.