Without another word, she rushed from the room.
She had a beast’s grave to desecrate. Such a task required no distractions.
CHAPTER
Fifteen
Ruben waited for Jane to shuck on her boots and a jacket before they walked out into the yard together. The storm had tamed itself to a gentle drizzle and mud sloshed beneath their boots as they crossed through the mist. The island was considerably smaller than the day before; Jane could no longer see the drowned carriage.
Near the kitchen’s side door and within the cemetery, Jane noticed disturbances in the mud from the beast’s attack. Even though it had rained, there were puddles of old blood in the slurry, and she looked away with a shuddering breath and continued following after Ruben as fast as her injury allowed. Wet mud and slippery organs felt too similar, she learned; in the mud around them were the beast’s pawprints.
Like rows of teeth, the wood’s trees rose through the mistahead of them.
Jane’s steps faltered. Ravens lingered. They took turns swooping down to pluck choice bits from the corpses that flooded the death-pit there, and the ones that remained atop their perches offered her challenging stares.
“Must we go in there?” She squawked past a dry throat. She didn’t want to be anywhere near the death-pit. She could still taste the decay and see those maggots consuming all that was once living.
Ruben paused to look back at her, but only briefly before continuing into the woods. “Lady Hayes said that the beast’s bodies were to remain hidden and away from those of the family. We’ve been burying them away from the family plot.”
Out of sight, out of mind.
Then how many of those gravesdohold a human body?
Jane popped the collar of her coat so that the mink-fur lining could stifle the rising stank of rot as she followed in after him.
A rustling in the leaves drew her attention back to the wood’s edge, though. There Terence lingered. He stood with his posture slouched, gaze shadowed by hair loosened by another chilled gust of November air. The edges of his overcoat flapped in the breeze and his hands hung at his sides as he watched her; a dog listless without an owner to guide his chain.
How long had he been following them?
Jane paused to rest against her parasol, puckered her lips in a whistle, and patted her thigh. “Come! Come, boy!”
There was a moment’s hesitation before Terence crossed the threshold into the forest’s realm of death-rot with stilted strides until he loomed beside her. Cast firmly downward to the leaves that clung to his muddy trousers and shoes, his hazel eyeswere as dark as charred wood.
Jane forced a smile as she cupped his chin and gave it a scratch in a manner like she’d seen her sisters praise the hound Patroclus; fresh stubble chaffed her fingertips. She hated the sensation.
Nonetheless, she cooed, “Good boy!”
He gave no response to her, or her touch. His shoulders slouched further, his eyes dimmed until they closed entirely, and a new line formed between his brows as he breathed out a heavy sigh.
Jane’s smile faltered. The novelty of teasing wore off if it garnered no response other than increased sorrow. Though her leg, the very one he’d nearly eaten, panged with every step and fueled new hatred for the beast, she failed to hatehim. Not with how tamely he rested in her palm as her grip loosened and she traced lazy circles in the center of his chin with her thumb; she grazed his lower lip to part them just enough to glimpse his teeth, to ensure that they were blunt and human.
Perhaps she would’ve spoken to him, uttering a quick apology, if his eyes hadn’t opened again and looked toward Ruben deeper in the woods.
“Allow me to help, Miss Sterling,” Terence said and offered her an elbow.
Jane didn’t take it and instead glared at him, as a jab of her own out of the shock of his formal addressing of her. He seemed to notice, furrowed his brow, and ushered her along with a gentle ghosting of his touch against the small of her back.
As they continued on, Jane also noticed how Terence held himself beside her, especially as the sweetly sickening stench of rot from the death-pit assaulted her senses. A wall for her to hide behind.
The ravens in the trees above cackled.
The beast wouldn’t have been this gentle, Jane thought, as she felt another accidental brush of his touch against her back. She was certain it would throw her into the death-pit, not even offering her the dignity of eating her, leaving only scraps of a plaything for the birds to pluck at until even her bones were spent.
She took a moment to brave a glance at Terence, and saw his gaze fixated firmly ahead; his body blocked her view of the death pit, but she could still catch glimpses of rib bones, Mistletoe’s bloated midsection. As he stepped on a branch, she thought it was the crunch of bone.
They reached the opposite edge of the wood, bordered by overwatered marshland rather than muddy lawn, and Ruben stood atop a ridge that overlooked another shallow ravine, much like the death-pit. Unlike the death-pit, shrubbery encased the ravine’s bottom, with an ‘entryway,’ if Jane could even call it that, being a small tunnel formed by the brambles into a brown-shaded darkness.
Jane narrowed her eyes at Ruben, then Terence. “What’s down there?” As if she didn’t already have a guess.
