Sleep refused to come for hours. My mind kept replaying the scene—her fingers stroking those glowing petals, the flower pulsing with that hypnotic glow, alive and calling to me.
The image of that luminous bloom burned in my memory. I had to find that flower. Whatever it was, wherever it grew, I had to find it.
The voice let out a contented breath, satisfied at last.
Chapter 14
Unfortunately, all concern for M. and the mysterious flower dissolved the moment I stepped into the study the following morning.
Dr. Ambrose was waiting for me.
He stood, hips resting against his desk, the journal that revealed Hawthorne’s creation in his hands.
I paused in the doorway, our eyes meeting across the space between us. A slow-spreading grin teased his lips, but beneath that amusement lay something cold and dangerous.
I collected myself with effort, plastering an expression on my face I hoped was casual. My pulse thrummed loudly enough that I wondered if he heard it from where he stood.
“Good morning,” I said, my voice coming out a pitch too high. The false cheerfulness rang hollow even to my own ears.
“Good morning, Miss Reed,” he replied, surveying me with those penetrating eyes, taking in my posture, and the slight tremor in my hands I was trying desperately to control.
It truly annoyed me how observanthe was.
I took a few cautious steps into the study. “What do you have there?”
He held the journal up, turning it in his hands so the gold-embossed date caught the morning light streaming through the windows. “I think you know.”
My heart sank, but I tried to maintain my composure. “I am afraid I do not understand—”
“Please.” He held up one hand to stop me. “Let us not insult each other’s intelligence with unnecessary denials.”
I pressed my lips together, saying nothing.
“It is the strangest thing,” he mused, tilting his head as he watched me. “This journal went missing the very night you arrived at the house.”
He straightened from his casual lean against the desk, taking a step toward me. “But when I came into my study this morning, I noticed it had mysteriously reappeared, exactly where it belonged.”
I wrung my hands in front of me, the gesture betraying my nervousness. I forced my gaze to meet his. “I have no idea what you are implying, Dr. Ambrose. I have never seen that journal before in my life.”
The lie tasted bitter on my tongue, made worse by the fact that we both knew it was a lie.
“Is that so?” One dark brow lifted, his expression shifting toward skepticism. “How odd. I asked Agnes this morning if she had taken it for any reason. She confirmed she had not, and it certainly was not me who removed it from this shelf.”
He paused, his gaze searching mine with uncomfortable thoroughness. “That would leave you, the only other person in the house.”
I swallowed hard, my lungs constricting. My mind raced through possible explanations, excuses that might sound plausible, ways to deflect his suspicion.
“Perhaps…” I began, then fumbled as the words caught in my throat. “What about Hawthorne? He might have taken it.”
Dr. Ambrose laughed, the sound low and rich. It would have been appealing under different circumstances—if I were not so panicked, if my entire position here were not hanging by a thread.
“I think you know that is a rather impossible theory.” He observed me closely now. “Hawthorne is not human. He does not have a brain. He cannot read, nor can he understand the significance of written documentation. He is, for all his remarkable animation, incapable of intellectual curiosity.”
I stared at him, emotionless.
The confirmation of what I had read was stated so baldly, so matter-of-factly, as though he were discussing a peculiar limitation in any normal servant rather than acknowledging that said servant was a botanical construct animated by a vine that fed on death.
He nodded as he watched my reaction, clearly noting that I was not shocked by the revelation—that I had already known Hawthorne lacked anything resembling human awareness.
