Nobody would escape to a besieged city. He had never been a refugee. But she had known that, hadn’t she? It was she who wanted to escape. This room, this house, this stalking death. She thought of the bryony girl, so desperate to get out of the city, and Violetta’s parents, who had accomplished the impossible and left their daughter behind.
“Were you happy there?” she asked. “After the rebellion, were you pleased with your choice?”
“What choice?” he asked. His fingers splayed across his chest, across the stark tattoos. “Most of these are new. Five years ago, I was little better than a boy. And what choice did you have, really, in remaining here?”
Evelyn sat back in her seat, lacing her fingers together, her knuckles standing out stark and white against the sallow paleness of her skin. “Not as much of one as I thought at the time.”
“Nobody much fled Delphinium or fled to Delphinium, and those of us in the ranks…we went where we were told. As it always is.”
As it was now. Who had sent him? She could almost believe he was a pawn, perhaps even unknowing of what trailed after him.
He seemed so normal, sitting there, but such banality was a lie so bald that she could barely remain still. If he was afraid, blinded and captive in a foreign room, with an unknown captor and no true promises of safety, he gave no sign. He should have been frightened. He should have recoiled from her, or snarled at her, threatened or begged for his freedom.
Even stoic silence would have been less incriminating.
Slowly, Evelyn approached his bedside. “Your caretaker asked me to bring you a drink.” He would trust a cup from Violetta’s hand, distant though it was, more easily than one from her alone.
“A drink,” he said. “And will you be drinking with me?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not much inclined to it myself.”
“A temperate woman?”
“A widow.” Not the truth, but close enough. It was the old defense. He would write her abstention off to the vagaries of grief, along with the fresh brittleness in her voice that she could no longer conceal. They all did.
“You sound too young to be a widow.”
“Fate is not moved by youth, in my experience.”
“No,” he agreed. “This drink. What is it?”
He was testing her. “Brandy. Spiced.”
“I would think a woman with such a warm, dry house could afford the good stuff,” he said, and heaved himself up from his pillows, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. She fought the reflexive urge to step back, to give him room. It wasn’t just the way his muscles flexed in the lamplight. It was something else—confidence.
A confidence he shouldn’t have had.
“Your blockade,” she explained, trying to sound wry instead of nervous. “We’ve always imported the best brandies. Our soils here grow too wet for good grapes.”
“You would know,” he said. She stiffened, certain suddenly that her caution had been for nothing and he knew whose house he was in, until he added, “I can smell dirt and greenery on you. I smelled it the first time, too.”
At that, she shivered.
He should not have been so perceptive, not so soon into his recovery. His mind was barely unfogged. But he could guess at her wealth, at her hobbies, based on the slightest details another man, even Pollard, might not notice at all.
“I’ve said something wrong,” he murmured.
“No,” she said, perhaps too quickly. She made herself take up the glass and sit beside him, too tense but readable, if she were lucky, as only shy. Reserved. “I just didn’t think it was so noticeable.”
“It’s raining,” he added, looking up towards the ceiling where Evelyn could hear the drumming that echoed through the house above them. “But you don’t smell like water. Just dirt and green.”
She didn’t want to tell him she had a greenhouse. She didn’t want to surrender anything, not even with his death so close at hand. So instead, she pressed the glass into his hands, guided it to his lips. “You’re very perceptive,” she said.
He didn’t answer. At first, she expected him to push the glass away. Would he smell the hemlock? Heat threw scent more readily than cold; she should have cooled it.
And yet he drank.
His throat bobbed as he took a heavy swallow of brandy. No hesitation. If he suspected, he gave no sign of it. She pulled the glass from his lips, but his hand covered hers, guided it back. He drained the glass with a groan, then leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes.
He was still a soldier, enjoying a good drink after far too long.
“The house,” he said, after a moment. “It sounded different today. Quieter. All the action far away, and the wrong kind. Different footsteps, too. Has something happened?”
Evelyn placed the glass aside and rose from the mattress, pacing between the bed and the door. How much to tell him? How much did he already know? His tone wasn’t mocking, but she did not appreciate the idea of being made a fool of.
“Something bad,” he said, frowning.
“I’m a very private woman,” Evelyn said. “Perhaps I don’t want you to know.”
“Perhaps.”
Silence stretched between them. Looking at him now, she felt something very close to pity. But she could see it, too, the blackness that was cultivated in his heart. He was more blameless than she but no less blighted.
And yet…and yet...
“I must know something from you. Plainly.”
“Ask.”
“You are not here by chance.”
“That is no question. And am I not? You found me. You brought me here. I had no hand in it.”
“Tell me,” she said, heart pounding in her throat, “did you come here for me? Did you seek out my household? To destroy it?”
He was silent.
“You will not leave this house alive,” Evelyn said, looking over her shoulder at him. “We shall have no more secrets between us. I am your captor and your executioner.”
His jaw firmed, but he did not rage. He did not purple, or snarl, or even weep. He seemed resigned as he rubbed at his swollen, stubbled jaw.
Unnatural. Or simply good training.
“If you want an answer,” he said, “you would have to tell me your name, my fine-bred murderer.”
Evelyn hesitated, her hand for a moment on the doorknob. She could still flee. She could shut the door on this, eschew whatever secrets he still held, and pray that in the morning, her garden torn and burned, her guilt incinerated, she could start anew. She did not need to know this. She did not need to see her tragedy, her downfall or her squandered freedom.
She could remain a coward.
But she had not raised herself to be such. She came closer. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that he could hear her when she murmured, “Evelyn Perdanu.”
For one heartbeat, the room was still. And then he began to laugh. He laughed quietly at first, raggedly, the sound creaking out of his brandy-warmed throat. But it grew louder, filling the room, and he fisted his fingers into the sheets, arching his back.
And then he stilled, and smiled, and said, “I would have been your way out.”
She stumbled back into the hallway, but could not bring herself to close the door. Around her, thunder roared, rain pounded against the walls, and the soldier laughed so loudly she thought the walls would fall down upon them both. She was adrift in the maelstrom, its winds tugging at her body. She stared, fixated, at the soldier as he tried to rise from the bed. He coughed, laughter faltering. The hemlock stole over his muscles. He swayed, then dropped, limbs beginning to tremble.