Page 43 of Holly & Hemlock
The wine is doing its work. My head is light, my limbs loose. I feel the room shift, the center of gravity moving toward the end of the table where Lane sits, rigid and unyielding.
Larkin says, “So tell us, Nora. Who do you trust more: the man who wants to impress you, or the one who wants to protect you?”
The question is a trap, but I answer anyway. “Depends what I need protecting from.”
Larkin grins, wolfish. “You see, Lane? She’s smarter than both of us.”
Lane doesn’t reply, but the muscle in his jaw twitches.
The meal winds on. The air grows dense, the windows opaque with frost. Whitby clears each course, her footsteps the only sign of order in a room spinning toward entropy.
Larkin licks his spoon, lets it clatter to the plate. “I suppose we should thank you, Whitby. It’s been a memorable evening.”
Whitby bows, the gesture regal. “It’s not over yet, Mr. Hughes.”
She leaves the room, and the silence is immense.
Larkin reaches for the wine, but Lane’s hand closes around the bottle first. For a moment, their eyes lock. I watch as Lane pours himself a glass, then refills mine and sets the bottle down with a deliberate care.
There is murder in the pause, but also longing.
Larkin says, “You want to hit me, don’t you?”
Lane shrugs. “Not in front of a lady.”
Larkin laughs, low and mean. “You’re all class, Lane.”
I push back my chair, the velvet catching on the edge of the rug. “I should go,” I say, though I don’t mean it.
Larkin stands as I do, his hand at my elbow. “Don’t,” he says. “Please.”
Lane looks away, the shadow of his face doubled in the candlelight.
Larkin’s fingers trace the inside of my arm, barely touching. “Stay,” he says, and for once, there is no irony in it.
I do.
12
Feast of Temptations
By the time dessert arrives, the world has contracted to the span of the dining table and the charged inches between its occupants. Whitby enters with the final course balanced on a silver tray: berries macerated in blood-dark wine, arranged on the plate in five-pointed clusters, their white edible blossoms unmistakable. Hemlock, rendered in sugared form. The message is not lost on anyone.
She sets the plates before us, then lifts her glass, filled with a liquor so clear it refracts the candlelight into prisms along the rim. “A toast,” she says, voice softer than I have ever heard it.
Larkin’s eyes flick to Lane, then to me, then to the glass in his hand. He raises it without hesitation. Lane copies the motion, but his hand is unsteady; the wine ripples in the goblet, a warning signal.
“To the living,” Whitby says. “And to the lingering.”
The phrase sits in the air, dense and sweet. We drink. The liqueur tastes of anise, or maybe something older, a flavor that reminds me of licorice and lightning. It hits hard, then fades into sugar.
Whitby stands at the head of the table, arms folded. Her gaze lingers on me for a moment, searching, and then she bows—just a fraction, but enough to register. “The house is yours, Miss Vale. May you do it justice.”
She leaves the room, the click of the door loud as a gavel.
No one moves. The flames in the candelabras are low now, throwing wild, erratic shadows across the plates and the ruined tablecloth. I scoop up a berry, watch it bleed onto the white, and taste it: sour, sweet, cold as a kiss. I feel the electricity under my skin, the way it hums from fingertip to tongue to the soft place behind my knees. The silence is immense, but it is a new kind of silence, one that hovers just before the break.
Larkin is the first to stand. He crosses behind my chair, slow as ceremony, his hand trailing along the back of my neck, the touch feather-light. He bends, mouth close to my ear, and says, “You realize, of course, what comes next.”
