Page 56 of Marrying Bluebeard

I push the ink and brush into his hands before settling on the wooden stool he’s set out in preparation. Pulling the folded parchment from my pocket, I hand it to him with a curt, “I’m sure.”

He nods, accepting it without argument. Dipping the brush into the ink, he sets to work painting the required runes along my back and arms, stopping every so often to match them against the ones displayed on the paper. When he’s finished, he walks me to the door in solemn silence.

“You’ll see that she gets in the carriage to Calais?” I ask, turning to face him on the front steps. “You won’t let her follow me?”

“Aye, I’ll make sure of it.”

I nod. “Once she’s safely on her way, I’ll need you to double back and head to the shoreline outside the castle. There’s a young woman I’ll be bringing out who’ll need a place to stay and help making a fresh start of things.” I pull a pouch full of coins from my pocket and place it in his hands. “This should help. See that she gets it.”

“I will.”

I clamp a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Thank you, Jacob. You’re a good friend to do all this.”

He clears his throat. “I wouldn’t be standing here if it weren’t for you, so I guess that makes us even.”

I summon a crooked smile, even as my gaze wanders upward toward the attic, longing for one last look at my sleeping wife. “Don’t let her go back there, Jacob. No matter how many years have passed or what rumors you hear, she’s not to set foot there again. Promise me.”

He lifts his own hand to grip my shoulder. “I’ll see to my task, Monsieur. Now you see to yours.”

We part on a final nod, and I turn, facing the road back home. Goodbye, Adelaide. I pray you find a better end than I.

37

ADELAIDE

Isense something’s off before I’m fully awake. The air is cold, and filled with an urgency so thick I can almost taste it. When I lift my lids, my gaze is met with a pair of silvery eyes peering down at me from above. “Whisper?” I scoop the cat off my chest as I sit up. A sliver of foreboding works its way up my spine as I take in the empty space beside me. “Where’s Bertrand?”

Whisper looks toward the door.

My heart drops. “He went back, didn’t he?”

A soft meow, a gentle paw to my cheek.

“To what end? If he kills Celeste, he won’t be able to feed from her, and I know he fears growing feral. But if he doesn’t kill her, she’ll continue to use him, and I refuse to believe he wants that. So, what else does that leave him?” Nothing. And yet, he wouldn’t have left without a plan. “Dash it, Bertrand. After everything we’ve been through, you still couldn’t confide in me?” Anger burns bright in my chest, and I throw the covers aside with a frustrated growl. “Typical man. Always thinking he has to do everything on his own. Heaven forbid he ask for help.”

Whisper wiggles free of my grip and drops to the floor, her head nudging beneath the edge of the braided rug as she mews. Given the effort it takes for her to move physical objects, I quickly drop to my knees and peel the rug back. “What is it, Whisp? Something you want to show me?” The feline scratches at the floor, and I wrinkle my brow in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

Her claw catches in a crack between the floorboards, causing one of them to rattle. “A loose board?” My pulse kicks up as I reach for it, tripping into a full-on gallop when the board lifts free, revealing a hidden space. “Now, what do we have here?” I pull out a leather-bound book, its pages tattered and yellowed with age. There’s an intricate, knotted symbol on the cover, and as I thumb through the pages it becomes rapidly clear that I’m holding some sort of spell book. My fingers still as I reach a page that’s been mostly torn out. The only thing left on the remaining scrap are the words Ritual of Eternal Binding.

I gasp. “This must be the journal Bertrand tracked down, the one belonging to the coven.” And the page that’s been removed must have outlined the binding process the witches used on Celeste. “But why take it out?” I turn the journal over in my hands. “She’s already been bound to the tower, and even if Bertrand could follow through with the coven’s original plan of burying her alive, it would still leave him without access to her blood. There’d be nothing stopping him from running rampant through the town once his restraint ran down.”

He wouldn’t chance it.

“He said he knew a way to stop her, one he’d been too afraid to follow through on before now.” I absentmindedly rub Whisper’s fur as she paces back and forth beside me. For all that she seemed to dislike him upon first meeting, she appears almost as anxious as I am now. She knows something, but what? “If only you could talk, you could tell me what foolhardy plan my husband’s bound himself to…”

My heart stutters at a sudden thought.

“Oh! Oh no. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.”

I pick Whisper up and hold her in front of my face so that we’re nose-to-nose. “Please tell me my fool of a husband isn’t planning to bind himself.” The answering mew is solemn, Whisper’s eyes a pair of sympathetic pools. I can only assume that’s a yes.

“That idiot.”

I all but strangle myself with the dress Jacob delivered yesterday, swearing as I fumble with my new underthings and shoes. I’m still pulling the second boot on as I throw open the door, and I come precariously close to falling down the stairs in my haste. I would have at least had a soft landing, for Jacob’s broad figure appears at the bottom before I’m scarcely two steps down.

“Good, you’re awake. Monsieur Bertrand asked me to escort you to the carriage house this morning in his place, as he’s trying to keep a low profile in town.” He glances nervously over my shoulder. “Don’t suppose you have any luggage to take with you?” He moves to the side as I reach the bottom of the stairwell but remains hovering next to me as if afraid I’ll make a run for it.

Suspicious.