Page 67 of The Shadow Key

Henry frowns. ‘Goats?’

‘It’s said they represent vitality.’

It seems he is losing her to more of her strange fancies. Disappointed, Henry is about to change the subject when Lady Gwen turns her pale face to look at him.

‘The Tresilian crest, you see. Three goats within a chevron.’

That familiar tingle in his fingers again. Wait, he thinks, just wait until I tell Linette! Instinct told him that the symbol could not be a crest. But if the symbol is not associated with the Tresilians, what on earth is it?

Suddenly she takes his hands in hers, making him jump. They are very small; Henry feels the barely-there weight of them, marvels how childlike they are. He squeezes her fingers, wills some warmth back into them for despite the heat of the day her hands are freezing cold. Lady Gwen squeezes back.

‘You have been wronged, haven’t you? Wronged by people you trusted.’

The thrill of just moments before cools as Henry’s chest tightens, and he automatically pulls away from her.

‘Ah yes,’ she whispers. ‘I see it clearly. I see many things, you know.’

Wary now, Henry watches her. How can she possibly know such a thing?

‘What things do you see?’

‘Things that would terrify you.’

He remembers her ravings the night before: Wings, beating. People in the room, calling him.

‘What things?’

She gazes up at him, grey-green eyes guarded. There is something else about those eyes too, something odd that Henry cannot place. She releases him. The air between them grows so quiet one might hear a pine needle fall in the woods, and in the wake of it the woman takes a shuddering breath.

‘Within each of us there lies a devil.’

It is not the answer he expected, and Henry is silent a moment. He thinks of his unsympathetic ward nurse who dismissed his nightmares and ignored his cries, the schoolmaster who struck a little too hard with the birch and took pleasure from it. He thinks of the men and women in Bedlam and the people who keep them there. He thinks of the gentleman who died under his scalpel, of the governor’s unkindness.

He thinks of himself.

Within each of us there lies a devil.

Flustered, he pulls at his cravat. The humidity of the day must be getting the better of him, he thinks, and in that instant Gwen Tresilian’s gaze drops.

‘Oh,’ she says softly, stepping closer. ‘You’ve cut yourself.’

She reaches out thin fingers to touch his throat. The action shocks him, holds him still. Henry remembers her desperate grasping of last night, but he sees no fraught emotion in her now. Instead he sees only bewilderment; the moment she touched him her forehead had furrowed, causing a deep gully between her fair eyebrows.

‘What is it, my lady?’ he asks softly.

‘I thought …’ She shakes her head, sucks in her breath. ‘Last night I had a dream. But it’s nothing. ’Tis nothing.’

Lady Gwen drops her hand, turns away to the rowan tree, strokes its bouncy blossoms as if they were a robin’s breast.

She does not remember, Henry realises. Her mind does not acknowledge the truth of her subconscious. The laudanum Mrs Evans administered, then, must have been very potent indeed. He will not trouble with reminding her – her upset last night was so great he does not wish to risk distressing the gentle woman further. And she is gentle, Henry thinks, watching Lady Gwen touch the trunk, how she hums a lilting folk tune under her breath …

‘Milady?’

Across the grass strides Cadoc Powell. He pauses at a bench on the far side of the pond, retrieves from its wooden seat a piece of white diaphanous material (the veil!), before continuing on. As the butler draws closer Henry can see the deep expression of disapproval on his sour face.

‘Come, madam,’ he says when he reaches them, veil fluttering in the breeze. ‘Mrs Evans has charged me to fetch you. It is time for your nap.’

As Henry rounds the mansion back the way he came, two things strike him.

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