Heartless(103)

She reached up and touched a finger to the soft flesh of the nearest bud, gathering a single drop of warm blood on her fingertip. Each bleeding heart bloom was a delicate thing, beautiful and haunting.

She crushed the flower in her fist, relishing the wet smear in her palm.

Mary Ann never came to start a fire. Abigail never brought her breakfast. Catherine stayed in bed, undisturbed, well into the afternoon. She felt like a Jack-O’-Lantern hollowed out. She wondered if Jest had been found and taken to prison, but she knew he hadn’t. He was too clever for them, too quick, too impossible.

Her eyes repeatedly drifted to the window, hoping to see a white rose sitting outside, beckoning to her. But there never was. Jest had not come back for her.

Never in her life had she felt so abandoned.

She imagined that Mary Ann had not betrayed her, and that her parents and the King had discovered nothing. She pretended that Jest would be there at the masquerade and she would walk straight up to him in his black motley and bell-twinkling hat and kiss him in front of everyone. Then she would announce the opening of her bakery, and she would leave the castle with her head held high and begin her new life with Jest at her side.

The dream was fickle, though. If it had ever been possible, it certainly wasn’t now. Jest was considered a criminal, and—as Cheshire had warned her—no one would ever be a patron at a bakery run by a fallen woman, no matter how delicious the treats. Even if they could clear Jest’s name, they would forever be destitute and disgraced. They would have nothing.

It was past tea time when Cheshire appeared among the stems of the bleeding heart plant, his plump body curled in the corner of the bed’s canopy.

Catherine stared up at him, unsurprised. She’d been expecting him all day. Surely the kingdom’s greatest gossipmonger could not stay away.

“I thought you might like to know,” Cheshire said, by way of greeting, “that everyone is talking about you and your escape from the dastardly joker. What a lucky, heroic thing you are.”

“I thought you might like to know,” she replied, “that it’s all a bunch of hogswaddle. The Joker did not kidnap me.”

She said it mildly, knowing it didn’t matter what she said to Cheshire or anyone else. Most of them would go on believing whatever was most convenient, and right now, it was convenient to think that the King’s bride, their future queen, had been taken against her will.

Cheshire scratched a gob of earwax from an ear with one claw. “I was worried you might say that. It isn’t as good a story, you know, though I shall continue to be amused as all the King’s horses and all the King’s men scramble to find him again.”

“They never will,” she said, believing it a little less every time she said it.

After all, Hearts was not a large kingdom. Where could he go? Back to Chess?

Maybe so, but it was little consolation. It meant she would never see him again.

“His Majesty is beside himself with anxiety,” Cheshire continued. “I don’t think he has the faintest idea what to do with all this madness, between the Jabberwock and the Joker and a plot to steal the heart of his future queen … He is not accustomed to real treachery, is he?”

“All the more reason he should not be wasting his efforts on an innocent man, and what for? Because his pride has been wounded?”

“What pride?” Cheshire folded his paws. “Our King is an ignoble idiot.”

A weak smile flittered over her lips. “So he is.”

“Of course, ignoble idiocy seems to be an epidemic around these parts.” Cheshire began to fade away. “So he shall not be alone.”

He vanished at the same moment a tap came at her bedroom door. Abigail poked her head inside. “I’m sorry, Lady Catherine, but it’s time to dress for the masquerade.” She crept into the room like a timid mouse.

Catherine sighed and slid from her bed without argument.

The night was inevitable.

She made no fuss as her cheeks were pinched to bring back some of their color, and Abigail made no comment on how her complexion was drawn tight from all her crying.

“Oh, Lady Catherine,” Abigail murmured. “It’ll be all right. The King’s a good man. You’ll see.”

Cath scowled and said nothing.

She was stuffed into a white crêpe dress striped with wide bands of burgundy, and a fine ivory mask covered in rhinestones. As Abigail went about tidying the discarded underpinnings, Catherine caught her own reflection in the mirror. She looked like a doll ready to be put on a shelf.

Then Abigail handed her the final touch.

A tiara, all diamonds and rubies. As it was settled onto her head, Catherine no longer thought she looked like a doll.

She looked like a queen.

Her lips parted, her breath escaping her.

She had promised Jest that she would reject the King. She had promised.

But that promise had been made by a girl who was still going to open a bakery with her best friend. That promise had been made by a girl who didn’t care if she was a part of the gentry, so long as she could live out her days with the man she loved.

That promise had been made by a girl with a different fate altogether.

Her eyes narrowed and she reached up to adjust the tiara on her head.

Mary Ann had betrayed her secret. Jest had condemned himself forever.

But maybe it wasn’t all for naught.