“Am I allowed?”
“I understand if you don’t want to,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry you got tangled in all of this in the first place. You’re just a debutante—”
“Of course I’ll come,” I said. I knew how important it was to him. After all, he was in charge of the case and there was so much on the line: his father’s respect, his mother’s life, and of course, the innocence of witches. But the last was for me to worry about.
“Thank you,” Ash said, gaze softening. He leaned forward and gripped the sides of the canoe. I blinked, startled at his proximity.
What a lovely deep brown his eyes were.
A flush appeared on his cheeks, as if he had heard my thoughts. “Amarante, I’ve been wanting to—”
Then, the boat flipped over.
Icy water knocked the air out of my lungs. My knees hit the bottom of the pond and I scrambled to stand, my nose barely out of the water. Before I could get a lungful of air, something white and feathery smacked my face. A bevy of swans had surrounded us, hissing and beating their wings. A few nipped at my hair.
“What the—” A mouthful of pond water choked me as I lost my footing. Ash grabbed my waist and I clung to his sleeves, gasping for breath. The swans kept beating the water.
“Good heavens, what are they feeding these birds?” Ash exclaimed, shooing away the animals. Miraculously, they scattered, except one who wouldn’t let go of my hair. I shut my eyes, willing it to go away. It eventually did, but not before ripping out several strands from my scalp.
Ash’s laugh rumbled in my ear. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of swans.”
I retched at the taste of pond scum in my mouth. “I am now,” I said, rubbing my head. “They flipped the boat over!”
Our fall created quite a splash, in multiple senses. Lady Hortensia looked almost scandalized as we pulled up with a pool of water in our boat and both of us drenched from head to foot. I was ordered to clean myself up while someone was sent to fetch towels and a change of clothes for His Royal Highness. Lady Hortensia began fussing over Ash before he could speak.
I decided to make my escape, lest the lady blamed the disaster on me. Tori rushed over as I wrung my skirts out under the gazebo.
“Can’t you attend one of these events without something disastrous happening?” she said, picking off a sopping piece of moss from my hair.
I sighed. “It appears not.”
From the east entrance beyond the pond, a squire ran toward us, evidently in a hurry. I thought he had come with Ash’s towels, but he was empty handed besides an envelope tucked in his sash. I was all surprise when he at last approached me.
“Miss Amarante Flora?” the squire asked.
At my affirmation, he handed me the envelope and departed before I could ask him any questions.
Tori peered over my shoulder. “What’s that?”
I began to shrug until I recognized the name scrawled on the corner of the envelope.
Erasmus Lenard.
No doubt it was the symptoms of our manbane experiment.
“It’s nothing,” I said to Tori, tucking the letter into my pocket. I hoped it wouldn’t be destroyed by my damp skirts. “I should go inside and clean up.”
“You need any help? I happen to be very good at wringing out water—”
“No thanks, Tori,” I said, already up and running. Tori was a small figure when I considered myself a safe distance away. There was a wall of hedges behind the pond, a section of which there was nothing but a charred stump. I figured it was the hedge Ash said he set fire to. Wedging into the gap, I opened the letter.
The water from my skirts made the ink bleed, but it was still legible.
Little flower,
The symptoms of the manbane are as follows:
Irregular pulse
