Page 19 of The Pureblood Daughter
“Of course, Mama. I’m sorry to have frightened you. I needed some air and decided to try the maze, but I’m lost.”
“Oh, my dear, come now. It’s easy to find your way back. It’s a left, and then a right, and then...” Lady Gray casts her brown eyes about the shadowy hedges, and the confidence fades from her expression. “Now, I’m certain it’s this way. Come, we’ll find our way even if we have to traipse straight through these hedges.” She reaches out a hand, and Adelina takes it, allowing herself to be led away like a child who wandered too far into the woods.
Promise, the voice says in Adelina’s mind.
Looking once more over her shoulder, she finds the maze dark and empty.
I promise.
Chapter Eight
And Adelina keeps her promise.
When Rose wakes her the following morning with the painted teacup, the tonic swirling around its porcelain rim, Adelina takes it with a smile before sending Rose to the kitchen for a cup of lemon balm tea. It’s an odd request for Adelina, and Rose hesitates, her hazel eyes studying Adelina’s face. But Adelina betrays nothing, smiling and lifting the teacup to her lips like she does every morning. What reason does Rose have to doubt her?
Rose acquiesces, and when she steps from the room, Adelina hurries from bed, trying not to stumble on her weak legs, and tosses the tonic through her open bedroom window. The liquid lands on the grass below, twinkling like dew, and Adelina returns to bed before Rose arrives with a cup of tea.
“Thank you, Rose,” Adelina says, exchanging the fresh teacup for the deceivingly empty one. Rose looks into the cup as if to study it, then curtsies to Adelina and carries the silver breakfast tray from the room.
Alone again, Adelina sips the lemon balm tea, the shaking of her hands nearly sending the scalding liquid down the front of her nightgown. The lemon warms and soothes her throat, and she rests her head back against the plush pillows, closing her eyes.
What am I doing?
She can see no sound reason to do what the viscount asked, yet she threw her tonic—the tonic she’s consumed every morning since she was a child—out her window at his behest.
Holding up her hand, Adelina finds it shaking like a leaf in a storm, and she clenches her fingers into a tight fist, hoping she hasn’t made a terrible mistake.
“I’d like to paint inthe garden,” Adelina tells Rose that afternoon. The shakes finally subsided, albeit slowly, but she’s fatigued, and even moving across her bedroom proves difficult.
“I’ll set up your canvas,” Rose says as she pulls a brush through Adelina’s long hair. “You look pale. Are you feeling well?”
“I’m tired today,” Adelina says, looking at Rose in the mirror. “Perhaps the fresh air will do me good.” Her smile is soft and true, and Rose nods before setting the brush on the vanity and moving from the room.
Now alone, Adelina studies herself in the mirror, lifts a hand to touch the dark circles beneath her blue eyes. She should be vibrant, glowing with youth, but she appears quite the opposite—drawn and pale, lacking any semblance of verdure.
“Dreadful,” she whispers, then turns abruptly away from her reflection. Opening the armoire, she fetches the widest-brimmed sunhat in her collection and slips it over her dark hair before leaving her room.
She descends the stairs carefully lest she fall on account of her exhaustion, and by the time she makes it out to the garden, Rose has already set up her canvas and paints.
“I thought the shade would be more comfortable,” Rose says, gesturing to the dappled light coming through the leaves overhead.
The elm is bright green, though it won’t be long now before its leaves turn red and orange and yellow and begin twirling into the yard, falling in a blanket for the gardener to rake away. As the leaves fall, most of the families in Everborough will step into their carriages and ride away into the country, where they’ll spend the winter months. The thought of Lord Rosetti riding away, not to return until the following summer, makes Adelina’s stomach twist into knots.
Adelina reaches out and takes Rose’s hand in gratitude, then pulls away in fear of the shakes starting again. She takes a seat before the canvas and tips her sunhat low over her eyes. Though she’s in the shade, the sunlight feels brighter than normal, and it causes her to squint, a subtle throb beginning behind her eyes.
A summer cold, perhaps, she thinks hopefully, but she’s not able to convince herself. If headaches and a drawn countenance are all she’ll get from not taking her tonic, she sees no reason to do so. Perhaps she’ll request that Rose make her another, claiming she spilled some of it and didn’t get enough.
Adelina considers calling Rose over and foregoing this ridiculous experiment, but then she dabs paint from the glass syringe onto her palette and pauses. The color, cobalt blue, is rich and lustrous and more intense than she’s ever noticed. She takes the glass vial in which the pigment and carrier oil have been mixed and holds it up to the light, marveling at the brilliance of the color. This paint must’ve been mixed differently than usual, Adelina surmises.
Momentarily distracted from the pain behind her eyes, she dips her brush into the paint on her palette and sweeps it across the canvas, the distinct sound of brush on material a calming melody.
As the abstract image comes alive, swirls of cobalt blending with chrome yellow, Adelina is dazzled by the colors’ continued intensity. They jump off the canvas, and as she sets her brush down and looks about the garden, it seems everything—the roses, the cornflowers, the hollyhocks—is brighter and more beautiful this day.
A coincidence, surely.
Foregoing the tonic could not cause such a difference in her perception of light and color... could it?
Adelina looks over her shoulder toward the house, up to her father’s study, then at the large windows into the sitting room where her mother spends the afternoons, and an uncomfortable stone settles in her stomach.
