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“I do care, sometimes,” Lord Foxglove told her softly. “I could not sound as though I do if I had never felt that way before. You have a keen awareness for dishonesty, Miss Betony. I think you know I speak the truth.”

Clarimonde stared at the door in front of them, letting his words sink in. She turned the implications over in her mind, letting them displace the image of Bellamira’s final rest. Yes, she decided reluctantly: Lord Foxglove was capable of feeling everything that he pretended to feel. Truly self-absorbed monsters—of which she’d met a few—had a hollow sort of quality to their deceptions that always stood out upon close inspection.

“I think you feel the kind things that you imply, at times,” Clarimonde said finally. “I think that you ignore those kind feelings, though, as terribly irrelevant. They do not influence your choices. I am not certain if that makes you any better than someone who feels nothing kind at all.”

Lord Foxglove smiled down at her. “You have so many harsh opinions on right and wrong, Miss Betony,” he said. “I do not understand it at all… but I must admit, I have begun to find it fascinating. Where on earth did you divine all of these rules about how people should feel and how they should speak and how they should live?”

Clarimonde tugged her arm away from his. “Everyone else is always so very concerned with the quality and quantity of my rules,” she observed acidly. “You can ignore them entirely, Mr Fox, if my disapproval does not bother you. That is the only consequence at issue, after all.”

Clarimonde closed her hand around the iron door handle. A discomfiting surge of wrongness, deep down in her bones, nearly made her let it go again—but she tightened her grip enough to shove the door open.

The bedroom beyond was surprisingly spacious and well-appointed, centring the largest four-poster bed that Clarimonde had ever seen; the stained glass window on the far wall filtered dim light upon the floorboards in the shape of its twining yellow daffodils. A few smaller, older pieces of furniture had been hastily shoved into the corner and smothered with a Holland cover, but the room was so big that they barely took up any room at all.

Clarimonde set her valise down at the foot of the bed. Distantly, she noted that she had begun to tremble—not from cold or even from exhaustion, but from helpless, aimless grief.

Lord Foxglove had leaned himself against the doorframe, studying her with more intensity than he had ever bothered to show openly before; his chill blue gaze glimmered at the corner of Clarimonde’s perceptions. Finally, however, he seemed to come to a decision.

“Will you tell me about your pocket watch?” he asked.

Clarimonde stiffened. “I have not mentioned a pocket watch,” she replied.

The faerie smiled at her. It was a gentle expression, at least by appearance. “I saw it in your pocket, while I was hiding on your person,” he told her. “You seem very fond of it. I thought that perhaps your sister had given it to you.”

Clarimonde’s strength wavered at the reminder. She sat down wearily on the edge of the bed, leaning her elbows onto her knees. “I bought the watch myself,” she mumbled. “But… it does remind me awfully of Bellamira.” Speaking her sister’s name aloud left an odd ache in her throat. “Why do you want to know about it?”

Lord Foxglove considered the question, as though the answer had not readily occurred to him. “I am terribly curious,” he admitted. “And I may not ever see you again. This may well be my only chance to ask.”

Clarimonde opened her mouth to tell him that she had no desire whatsoever to speak of Bellamira right now—but even as she did, she discovered that this was a lie. In fact, some part of her desperately wanted to speak of Bellamira to someone.

Very slowly, she drew the pocket watch from her skirts and settled it into her lap. The brass case glimmered faintly in the darkness, as the watch silently ticked away the seconds against her fingers.

Clarimonde cleared the ache from her throat. “There is an entire year of my life that I do not properly remember,” she said. The words felt thick on her tongue. “I think back to it, and there is only haze, and pain, and Bellamira.”

Lord Foxglove watched her as she spoke, and she thought that he must be pulling entire worlds of meaning from her that she did not intend for him to glean. “You are not speaking of physical pain,” he guessed.

Clarimonde sighed heavily. “I had learned the truth about something awful,” she said. “It made me feel… oh, I do not know how to describe it. As though I did not want to be in the same room with myself. As though I could not stand my own company.” The ghost of that old misery echoed dimly in her chest, and she found herself reaching up to rub at her heart, as though it were indeed a physical sensation. “Some women take opium for nerves. I tried the pills. They made me numb, at least. I had a lovely silver pill case; it never left my side.”

She tightened her fingers on the pocket watch, clinging to its cool solidity. Here is your time, it reminded her.

“I had given up entirely on myself,” Clarimonde whispered. “But Bellamira was so often there, regardless. And one day, finally, she told me… I remember it word-for-word, you know. I can hear her say it now.” She closed her eyes and conjured up the image of her sister, lovely and sickly and cheerful, and always drowning, somehow, in a death that had not yet arrived.

“‘We all have only so much time, Clarimonde,” she recited from memory. “I know that better than anyone. I have chosen to spend my time on you and Hugh and Winnie, because you are important to me. If this is what you want to do with your time, then I will not judge you for it. But I would like to ask, just to be sure… is this how you wish to spend your time?’”

Though Clarimonde did not open her eyes, she felt Lord Foxglove’s focus, keen upon her skin. What he made of this story, she did not know—nor did she terribly wish to know. She was speaking now because she had to, because she did not know how to keep the words inside of herself.

“Bellamira chose to spend her time on me,” Clarimonde rasped. “She wanted to be there with me, even when I loathed my own company. And so, I chose her back. Her and Hugh and Winnie. I bought the watch so that I would have something else in my pocket, whenever I reached for the pill case. Something that reminds me that I have only so much time, and that I should spend it carefully.”

Finally, she forced herself to open her eyes again.

There was a peculiar expression on Lord Foxglove’s features, as he lingered in the doorway. She had never seen it on his face before, and could not seem to properly interpret it.

“And… what will you spend your time on now?” he asked softly. His tone had the respectful hush of someone at a funeral.

Clarimonde’s chest flared with fresh pain, as she clung to the pocket watch. “I have not yet decided,” she whispered.

Lord Foxglove was silent for several seconds, as he absorbed that answer. Eventually, however, he bowed his head in her direction. “I am very sorry for your loss, Miss Betony,” he said. There was, Clarimonde thought, a genuine touch of emotion to the words. “I wish you well, as we part ways—if that is any comfort.”

Clarimonde frowned down at the pocket watch. Despite her best efforts, she could detect no obvious deception in the words. A strange pang of relief filtered through her at the realisation, briefly pressing back against her misery.