She laughed, deep and rich. “Miss Moreau, you’re practically drooling. You must have the heart of a scientist. No wonder Elizabeth made you her heir.”
Her voice hardened around this last word, and uneasiness curled in my insides. Elizabeth had told me that she spoke to Valentina about the situation and that Valentina bore me no ill will, but her resentment now seemed as thick as smoke. Was I the only one who could see it? Perhaps she was different when she was around Elizabeth, trying to win her favor. She had no reason to win mine. Quite the opposite.
Valentina took another long puff on the cigarette. “When you first came here I thought there must be something remarkable about you for Elizabeth to choose you, but for the life of me, I haven’t seen it. You haven’t expressed an ounce of interest in the management of the manor. You haven’t visited the outer fields, nor sat in on my educational sessions with the younger girls, nor gone with Carlyle on one of his supply runs. So tell me, why do you even wish to be the mistress of Ballentyne?”
My mouth dropped at the directness of her questions.
She put out the cigarette abruptly. “As I suspected, you don’t even want it. It’s fallen into your lap like a pretty new toy, and just like any spoiled girl, you take it without knowing what a rare gift it is. But Ballentyne is no toy, Miss Moreau. It’s a sanctuary. These girls have no place else to go. Elizabeth has dedicated her life to it, and so has McKenna, and so have I. If you aren’t ready to make that same commitment, then you should go. Ballentyne has no room for spoiled girls who only care for pretty toys. The best thing you could do for Ballentyne would be to leave.”
She dug her heel harder into the cigarette.
Anger flared in me. She didn’t understand that I had bigger worries than an inheritance that wouldn’t take effect for decades. My palm began to tingle with the urge to connect it with her cheek, until I felt a cool hand on my arm.
“Come, Juliet!” Lucy pulled me away, tankard of ale in hand. “We’re dancing!”
I’d never been so relieved to end a conversation, though my blood still boiled. It wasn’t until we held hands and she spun me around the fire, amid the other couples, that I started to calm down. We circled around Balthazar and the little girl with a limp. Then around Montgomery and Elizabeth. I couldn’t stop throwing uneasy glances back toward Valentina. She’d rolled another cigarette and puffed it calmly, staring at me. I wondered if Elizabeth truly had replaced her hands. Fingers that weren’t her own, skin that had belonged to another girl. A dead girl, surely. The possibilities made my heart beat wildly. What other secrets was Elizabeth keeping?
We looped around the other couples, Lucy laughing, the carnival troupe mixing with the servants and the townspeople from Quick. I didn’t see the fortune-teller in the crowd, and I was relieved. The fiddler shouted a call and we switched partners. Montgomery grabbed me, to the dismay of the other girls, and pulled me close for a Scottish reel. Sharkey wound between our feet, threatening to trip us, but Montgomery only laughed and pulled me closer to the fire. Sweat broke out on my brow. With the stars overhead, the fiddler, and the good company, the night seemed unreal.
After another dance, I let Montgomery go. “The girls will murder me if I don’t share you,” I said by way of explanation, and was able to slip away. I found Elizabeth presiding by the fire over the manor’s residents making merry in the moonlight.
“Elizabeth, there’s something I must ask you about. It’s Valentina.”
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “Is she being harsh with you over the inheritance? I thought I noticed a rather heated conversation between you two. She has a hot temper, but only on the surface. Give her a few days to cool, and she’ll come around. She loves this place too much not to find a way to get along with its future mistress.”
“It isn’t just the inheritance. It’s her hands. She usually wears gloves but—”
A small voice behind us interrupted. “Mother,” Hensley said, tugging on her fur mantle.
“Just a moment, darling,” she said, her eyes still on me. “Her hands? Ah, I think I understand where this is going. Juliet, you’ve no idea the medical advancements I’ve made out here—”
“Mother,” he said again.
“And the electricity from the windmill is only the start. Next year I plan on—”
“Mother!” he interrupted, more insistently.
“Oh, what is so important, love?” She turned to him and drew in a sharp breath. Still dizzy from the ale and the late hour, I didn’t yet understand what had made her go silent. The fiddler stopped playing abruptly, and a few of the girls gasped.
“Mother, I had an accident.”
From somewhere behind me, a girl screamed. I recognized the voice as Lucy’s, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Hensley. My jaw fell slack. My vision kept spinning and spinning, telling me what I was seeing couldn’t possibly be true. Bile started to rise in my throat.
A tree branch as thick as my wrist stuck straight through Hensley’s chest. It dragged on the ground behind him, bursting out of his small chest with a ragged end seeping blood too slowly. A coldness crept up my legs.
No one could survive an injury like that and still walk.
No one who was alive, at least.
NINE
ELIZABETH GRABBED HENSLEY, FRANTICALLY whispering reassurances in his ear. With a single swift movement Carlyle cut the tree branch with an ax and they carried him to the manor while the rest of us stood dumbstruck.
“Did you see that?” Lucy whispered, lips turning blue. She started to slump, and Balthazar caught her before she passed out.
“Take her to the manor,” I said, a hand on my head to steady my own dizziness. “Stay with her, Balthazar, in case she wakes up.”
He nodded, seemingly the only one not upset that we’d witnessed the impossible, and carried her in the direction of the house. Around the bonfire, the music had stopped. The fire crackled, but no one moved. I could tell by the servants’ faces that they already knew about Hensley’s condition. As did the villagers of Quick, even the carnival troupe. We were the only ones not included in the secret.
What in God’s name was going on?
Across the fire, Valentina smoked calmly on her cigarette. This must have been what she’d alluded to in regards to Elizabeth’s medical achievements—that Elizabeth had gone beyond mere science and lied about losing her ancestor’s research. As if sensing my thoughts, Valentina’s eyes met mine and she smirked.