Lucien gave a short nod and turned and left.
And once again, all the eyes were a gauntlet.
Lucien peeled off his gloves, froze in the foyer, and balled them in his fist. He paused there, momentarily stunned to find he’d already arrived at The Grand Palace on the Thames. He’d left White’s blindly.
Dot was tiptoeing furtively through the foyer, ferrying an armload of dead flowers, when she encountered him standing there in the middle of it.
“Dot, where is Mrs. Breedlove?”
She stopped abruptly. She was kind, Dot was. But he had a feeling her expression was an immediate clue to how his own must look: pale and alarmed.
She cleared her throat. “Lord Bolt, is aught ami—”
“Dot.” He closed his eyes. Seeking somewhere in that dark the patience, the peace. His blood still simmered. The light behind his eyelids was still red.
He opened them again to find poor Dot frozen in place like a pointer, staring at him in stark alarm.
Later she would tell the other maids, “My blood fair froze, the way he said my name. He sounded as though he was about to die.”
Dot had rather a gift for hyperbole, as it so happened.
“Where is Mrs. Breedlove?” he repeated slowly.
“She’s... up. Up... stairs, Lord Bolt.”
“Will you tell herat oncethat I wish to speak to her in the reception room?”
But she was already running up the stairs.
Dot had forgotten she was holding an armload of drooping flowers when she ran up the stairs. They flew through the air like confetti when she tripped on the last step. Which is how Angelique, sitting on the settee, came to be covered in flowers.
“Oh, Mrs. Breedlove. I am so sorry. But something... it’s... oh, my... goodness...”
And then Angelique saw Dot’s genuinely panicked expression.
“Dot. Dot, my dear. What is wrong? Sit down, please. You look as though... Are you badly hurt?”
Some injury was bound to happen to her eventually. And yet Dot bounced back cheerfully from every trip, stumble, spill, or poke.
“No, no, it’s not me. Lord Bolt would like to speak to you at once, Mrs. Breedlove. His face is... his voice is... Oh, Mrs. Breedlove, I think there is something terribly wrong and he wants to see you.”
Angelique shot upright and the flower clinging to her shoulder like a fancy epaulet tumbled to the carpet.
“Lucien... Where is he?”
Dot’s eyes widened in fascination at the “Lucien.” “Downstairs. In the recept—”
Angelique was already a blur. Her skirts in her hands, her feet hammering the stairs, clattering across the marble.
And she flew to him. Heedlessly. And there he was, upright, glowing. She rested her hands on his arms, then looked up into his eyes, touched his face, as if to prove that he was whole and safe.
She saw no blood and no limbs akimbo.
She leaped back, a sob of terrifying relief caught in her throat. Astounded at what she’d done.
There was a silence between them as he took her in.
And then she saw what Dot had seen: something was clearly wrong.