Because You Love to Hate Me(63)

What was agreed by everyone in England was that the Erl-folk were wicked. For when their pride is insulted or their territory trespassed upon, erls take something in return.

They take children.





Princess Alice, second daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, disappeared on September the third of 1850, when she was seven years old. When she scampered into the woods that morning, saying she had seen a perfectly lovely fox, her governess had pleaded with her to come back. The woods belonged to the Erl-queen. It was common knowledge. An unwritten law.

But Alice had always been too curious about people who were nothing like her, and Erl-folk had intrigued her since she was old enough to know that they existed. Later, people would doubt that she had seen a fox at all, but the red hair of the Erl-queen’s sprites.

The governess had called in vain. She had been certain, for an hour, that she could hear Alice singing; she had chased the voice until she was exhausted. A manservant found her lying beside a stream, cold as death and murmuring nonsense.

A search party was mustered, but the dreadful truth was soon apparent: Alice was gone. She was the latest in a long line of girls to be taken in a year.

The princess had been missing for a week when the Erl-queen’s son arrived at Windsor to broker a deal on his mother’s behalf. Queen Victoria had pleaded for Alice’s safe return and offered a trade to the creatures of the forest. The Erl-queen was welcome to any person in England in exchange for Princess Alice. Anyone at all.

It was assumed that a person of some importance would be required in exchange for the life of a princess, and that the matter would need lengthy consideration, but the Erl-queen’s son had made his decision at once. He had called her by name: Marigold Beath. No title. A servant in the household of the Sinnett family. Her employment had been an act of charity from the housekeeper, who had taken pity on a pretty orphan. Yet she, of all people, was known to the elves.

Eight girls missing, and now, by royal decree, the Erl-queen had Marigold.

Marigold was the ninth.

London, September 1850

Isaac Fairfax opened his eyes and beheld his moonlit image in the glass. How like his father he looked tonight; he could almost be his ghost. Grey eyes, a square jaw, and a hint of mustache. Marigold had always said how much she liked it.

Marigold. Sweat sealed his hair to his brow. His flesh ached for her touch. Her absence tore at his soul, leaving a wound where his heart had been.

Short breaths cut between his lips. His fingers were stiff on the buttons of his waistcoat, but he didn’t call for a servant. No one was to know that he had left the house.

His head was throbbing. Why, why did it have to be her? How had Marigold caught the eye of the Erl-queen? She was quiet as a doll, and delicate, too, more of a household spirit than a living girl. Even he would never have noticed her had George, her elder half brother, not shown her to him. He had been hers from that first moment, when he had seen her through the window of the Sinnetts’ house. She had been kneeling beside the stove in the kitchen, scrubbing the floor with care, never rushing in her work. Her hair had been tumbling from its cap, obscuring most of her face, and her hands had been raw.

That hiddenness about her, the sense that she could never be known, was what made her such a desirable maid. Employers did not like to know their servants as people—it was an uncomfortable thing, to imagine them as more than silent pairs of hands—but he had known her. He had known her more times than he could count. And every time had been a risk. Forbidden in the eyes of proper society.

His gaze had cast a light on her, elevated her from obscure to divine, and, oh, he had worshipped her. Her skin had been his altar; her lips, his confession.

Yet there had been other eyes on her, too, watching from the deep forests of Britain.

Isaac walked to the chest at the end of his bed. Inside was his sword, polished to a star-bright gleam. He would have Marigold back, and he would have her tonight—even if it meant taking her from the Erl-queen by force. Even if it meant facing whatever lay in the Forest of Erl, which swallowed all who entered it.

There was no enchantment on the weapon. There was no need for that. The Erl-queen feared steel. And iron, and clockwork. It was why she abhorred industry and, by extension, the industrious men with whom she shared her land.

His fingers skimmed the blade; he caught his own eye in it. Why had the foul creature wanted her, of all people? Why his Marigold? She was sixteen, far older than the girls the Erl-queen usually took, but they did say that her son had an eye for human women. Rumor had it that he frequented London’s brothels, disguised as a man—but Marigold was no common whore. She would never have been unfaithful to him, never. She loved him—she had said so. No virtuous woman would allow an erl to court her, in any case, knowing their insatiable lust for mortal captives of the fairer sex. The Erl-queen’s son might have known who she was, but she could not have known him.

His heart was all aquiver. In the coffeehouses and supper rooms of London, it was whispered that the Erl-queen’s son was taller than any natural man. Instead of teeth, there were thorns in his mouth, hidden behind petal lips. His ears were gently pointed, like the tips of willow leaves. The moon was always in his hair. He moved like water, and his eyes were black through, without so much as a glimpse of white. They glistened in a face as ancient as Stonehenge.

They said Marigold had wept when Queen Victoria agreed to the exchange. That she had begged for mercy. Heartsick, Isaac closed his eyes. She must be terrified. She was terrified of almost everything in the world. And he, the man she loved, the man she trusted, had let that Erl-prince steal her away.