Page 24 of A Fearless Heart
Arcadia shook her head. “No need. It’s not a difficult procedure. Not like some of my experiments, which require far more rigor and attention. Anyway, you’ve much more important work to do.”
Gabe blinked, his mind still on the assignment. “I do?”
“Yes, Mr Court. The mulching.”
“Ah, right. The mulching.” He really couldn’t putthatin his report to Aries.
“Never disdain to do the small things, Mr Court. The glory of a garden in full bloom hides all the hard work we do earlier, when no one notices except when we get covered in filth.”
Thus dismissed, Gabe left the stillroom, trailing the scent of rose in his wake.
* * * *
Late evening brought Cady back to her laboratory. She’d spent the whole afternoon distilling the massive amount of rose petals down to their essence, in the form of rosewater. Then she’d dutifully bottled the results and carefully labeled each bottle.
Hours later, she was still surrounded by the fog of rosewater, which made it difficult to use all her senses to assess what she created in the lab. In hindsight, she would blame this fact for her mistake.
She was eager to get to work on the solution she had read about in the book Mr Addison had given her. Since she was able to finally harvest the sap of the Iranian salvia from the glasshouse, she had everything she needed. Cady was excited about the possibilities for this solution, because the author of the herbal (a Persian doctor) claimed that it had the ability to calm even the most anxious and upset patient. In his words, “I have used a mere dram of this solution to bring a patient suffering from hallucinations and panic to a sedate and happy demeanor.”
Well. That was just what Cady needed.
So she measured and mixed, stirred and separated. Finally, Cady peered at the solution in the glass tube. Viscosity was correct, the color was correct, the smell was correct (she thought). According to the description in the book, she’d followed all the directions and made the solution exactly as she ought. But there was only one way to be certain that her creation would do what it was supposed to.
With a slight grimace, Cady drank down the prescribed dram. The taste was bitter—she’d need to remember to have a strongly flavored drink right after so anyone else using it could keep the initial dose down. She leaned over the table, recording the time she took the dose, the amount, and her impression of the taste. She’d add to the entry every quarter hour, with precise details of the physical effects she experienced.
Was she calmer? Hard to tell. Cady wasn’t willing to wait until she was in the throes of one of her attacks to try the first dose, so she’d just have to hope that she’d notice a difference even now.
Oscar the cat meowed at her, having snuck in an open window from the walled garden.
“Oh, Oscar, you shouldn’t be in here. There’s far too many breakable things.” Turning to shoo the cat out, Cady stumbled, lurching to the right. Perhaps the base ingredients were stronger than she thought. She ought to drink some water to dilute the substance.
Before she could pick up the water glass, she fell forward, directly onto the worktable. Glass tubes and dishes shattered, and items went flying. But Cady didn’t even notice, because she had crashed, unconscious, onto the cold marble surface.
* * * *
Gabe couldn’t wait any longer. Everything he had learned so far pointed to secrets contained within Arcadia’s walled and locked garden. So tonight was the night that he’d scale the walls and investigate for himself.
Scaling the wall wasn’t Gabe’s first choice. He did try to pick the lock on the heavy gate, but without luck. The lock was a strange one. If he were a superstitious man, he might blame magic for his failure to open the lock. But he didn’t believe in magic, or witches, or ghosts, or anything else that seemed to be whispered about around here.
So, if he couldn’t get in through the gate, he’d just have to go over the top of the wall. He used the same ladder as before (with the broken rung repaired). This time he also attached a rope to it, wound about in such a way that he could pull the ladder up behind him and take it along if needed.
By a combination of climbing and crawling along the wall’s ivy-massed top, Gabe reached the same point he’d got to in his last excursion, tantalizingly close to the windows of the lit shed in the walled garden. He was not surprised to see light coming from the windows. Lady Arcadia mentioned something to Mr Addison about working on an experiment from a book. She’d seemed unusually excited about it, which made Gabe curious to see what all the fuss was about.
He moved forward as quietly as he could. Once he nearly lost his balance when a dark shape moved unexpectedly ahead of him, and then turned and gave a huge meow.
The cat Oscar. He’d seen the tabby cat lurking around the house and gardens from time to time. God damn, someone should bell that thing.
The cat leapt from the wall to the ground with no effort, and then darted over to one of the windows, which was cracked open several inches. Gabe heard a murmuring voice from within, but couldn’t make out any words.
Then he heard the sound of breaking glass. He held still, listening. Had someone in the house seen him, and broke the glass to raise the alarm? No, that made no sense. Any servant in the house would yell if they saw an intruder.
Oscar darted out again, streaking through the dark garden as if being chased. Whatever happened in there, the cat didn’t like it.
Spurred by a sense of unease, Gabe swung over and let himself down feet first to ground level, not far from where the cat had landed. He was a tall man, and by holding on to a particularly fat branch of the ivy, he reduced the drop to about three feet, but it was still not a treat to do in the dark.
Light continued to flicker through the window of the shed, but he heard nothing else. He hurried to the window that cat had used and peeked in though the gap.
For a split second, he saw what appeared to be the gruesome image of a corpse about to be dissected, but then he realized that the body was not on the table but rather bent over it, with feet on the floor. Coldness hit his lungs when he recognized the pattern on the dress—massive lilies on a black background.
