“No.” Duchess Maudite points again, her arm looking like not much more than bare bone encased by paper-thin skin. Blue lines stand out starkly as the long sleeve falls back; her bruises are many. “One from that shelf.”
“Blue? White?”
“Close your eyes and reach up,” the dowager duchess orders.
After Isabeau has done so, randomly choosing a knightly tale, she kisses her mother atop the head and refills her water goblet. “Gabrielle and I need to speak to you about the curse,” she says quietly.
“You are not ready for the weight of this curse. Either of you.” The dowager duchess’ hand reaches up to cup Isabeau’s face. “Do not add her to this burden you carry.”
“So there is a curse?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Are you cursed?”
“No.”
“Her father?”
“No.”
“Yet no faeries capable of cursing people are allowed through the gate from Faerie,” I point out.
“And you think onlythosecreatures come through? That faeries arerule followers?” The dowager duchess gives me a familiar look of disdain.
“Haveyoutaken any new tonics since the duke’s death?” I watch the older woman’s face for any hint of duplicity, but her expression is implacable. “We had Isabeau’s tonic tested. It’s a sleeping medicine. Dangerous and addictive.”
“What did you do, you foolish child?” the dowager duchess whispers. Her bony arm shoots out, patting Isabeau’s face and armsas if checking for fever. “Perhaps the apothecary brought you the wrong one and—”
“It is not. It is the same noxious-smelling thing you have handed me every day,” Isabeau says. “There were new additives. Why would the family physician or the apothecary try to harm me?”
The duchess grows still. “Do you think they’ve changed my medicines, too?”
I wonder briefly what medicines the dowager duchess takes, but there is no delicate way to ask.
“Perhaps!” Isabeau sinks to her knees beside her mother. “I thought your frailty was grief. I should have questioned your changes. I thought since she’s treated His Grace all these years—”
“I will have someone new for our physician.” The dowager duchess eyes me. “Perhaps your woman would come, Hunter.”
“You knew she was the Hunter?” Isabeau murmurs.
“Not until she came here with the earl.” The dowager duchess sounds more like herself by the moment. “A lone rider could fetch the physician to attend me. The Hunter could go retrieve her for us.”
“We must go to see Auntie Mor today, Mother,” Isabeau says, still kneeling on the floor and holding her mother’s hand gently. “I will have her send one of the royal physicians here.”
“But your curse—”
“There might not be a curse,” I say, interrupting the dowager duchess. “I will be at Isabeau’s side to watch over her tonight. Or I can have several royal physicians there—”
“In the city?” The dowager duchess stares between us. “You will share herbedroom?”
“She’ll either be dead to the world if there is a curse, or she will be ill from the poisons that she is purging from that tonic,” I point out.
I don’t speak the third option. If Isabeau is a beast, her mother already knows.
“Tell Cook to speak to the countess regarding meals,” the dowager duchess says. “Have her throw out the remaining tonics. Yours and mine. I must rest now.”
I stare at the dowager duchess as she suddenly closes her eyes and promptly ignores us as if she is already asleep. Isabeau seems nonplussed by this, simply leaning in and kissing the dowager duchess’ forehead. I cannot grab and shake an ill woman, still mourning her husband’s death, even as I would like to do just that in this moment. I am certain she knows more than she is sharing. She must, but I cannot force her to speak.
