Entwined(42)

“I didn’t mean to leave it,” said Bramble, in the same beastly mood. “It wasn’t my fault—we were in such a hurry to leave, after that ghastly story!”

“Mr. Bradford trusted us,” said Azalea, angry with herself. “He trusted me.”

Bramble looked at Azalea up and down, an odd light in her lemon-green eyes.

“Go to it, then,” she said, herding the girls out the door. “I’ll start the wee chicks on their lessons.”

Several minutes later, toes curling in her boots, Azalea rubbed her handkerchief against the mark until it burned and the light burst. She had never been to the pavilion in the day. Descending alone into the silver brilliance felt different. Everything was muffled, and Azalea’s boot clacks left no echo.

When she reached the pavilion, it stood dark, shadowed in the silver mist. Keeper was not there. Azalea knocked, lightly, on the arched doorframe.

“Sorry, hello?” she said.

Knocking made her feel less intrusive. She slipped onto the dance floor, and nearly jumped out of her boots when the orchestra burst into a lively jig.

“Shh!” she seethed. “Quiet! Hush!”

The orchestra cut off, except for a violin that screeched a happy solo. When it realized the rest of the orchestra had quit, it slowed with an embarrassing rosined whine.

Azalea searched the pavilion for a sign of the watch, and as she turned, felt the prickly, uncanny sensation of someone’s eyes on her. She looked up, and let out a cry.

There, on the ceiling like a big, black spider, was Keeper.

Azalea’s heart nearly leaped out of her corset. She stumbled back.

Keeper pushed off from the ceiling and flipped to the ground in a swoop. He landed, catlike, on his feet, and straightened. His cloak settled around him.

Azalea darted for the entrance. Keeper was there in an instant, blocking her way. He smiled a long-dimpled smile.

“My, you startle easily,” he said.

“You—it—on—ceiling…” Azalea choked.

“Oh, do calm down, Miss Azalea.” In a silky movement he brought Azalea’s shaking hand around his arm, smoothing her quaking fingers over his black suitcoat sleeve. “Living in such a small pavilion for so many years makes one, ah, creative. And you, Miss Azalea, I am pleased to see you here. Even if you are here for another gentleman’s watch, and not for me.”

Azalea tried to pull her arm away, but Keeper only smiled, pressed his long fingers over hers, and escorted her to a sofa next to the dessert table.

“Do sit down. You are trembling. It is my fault; I know it. That story last night. I hope you can forgive me for it.”

He produced a cup of streaming tea from nowhere, it seemed, and offered it to her, but Azalea waved it away.

“Where is the watch?’ she said.

“Ah, so quickly to the point. That is bad manners, you know.”

He set the teacup on the table, and next to it, lifted the lid from a small platter. Instead of housing a tiny cake, the plate held the pocket watch. Azalea reached for it.

Keeper closed the lid with a clink.

“Mr. Keeper,” said Azalea.

Keeper had no hint of a smile as he set the covered plate aside and lifted the lid off a larger tureen.

Azalea gasped. On the platter lay an assortment of odds and ends. A pair of lace gloves, a needle with a scarlet thread, one of Jessamine’s stockings, Ivy’s spoon, Eve’s pen, all among other things of the girls’. Azalea was aghast.

“Those are ours!” she said.

“I know,” said Keeper. “I like to keep things.”

“That’s stealing!” said Azalea.

“You must forgive me,” he said. “But I am desperate. I need a favor from you, and your sisters. A great favor indeed, and I don’t believe any of you would help me unless I did something, ah, unconventional. I want to be freed, Miss Azalea.”

Azalea frowned. Keeper was—well, Keeper. Magical and beautiful and part of the ethereal pavilion. She shifted on the velvet sofa, feeling both consternation and guilt.

“I…hadn’t thought of it,” said Azalea.

“I know,” said Keeper. He smiled, but not bitterly. “Perhaps you will now?”

“Oh, honestly,” said Azalea. She stood up and strode to the entrance with a click click click. The familiar hotness had begun to run through her, and she felt she needed a breath of real air. “I can’t believe you would just—just steal!”

“Step out of that entrance,” Keeper called, “and you and your sisters will never be welcome here again.”

Azalea stopped so abruptly her skirts swished the threshold. She glanced back at Keeper to see if he was in earnest. A touch of a smile graced his lips, but his face was deadly serious.

Azalea’s toes curled in her boots. She suddenly hated Keeper.

“Don’t—” she stammered. She couldn’t manage to meet his eyes. “It’s…just…We’ve got to keep dancing here, Keeper. It’s all we have. Don’t take it away. Please.”

“Then you will help free me?”

Azalea gripped the side of the arched entrance, wishing to feel some sort of silvery texture beneath her palms. Instead she felt a strange glassy smoothness, and it frustrated her.

“Fine,” she said, her nails clicking against the post. “For the dancing. And the watch. What do we have to do?”