Masque of the Red Death (14 page)

“Hello, Uncle. I’ve brought my fiancée, Miss Araby Worth, to meet you. As you suggested.”

His fiancée. I feel my face turning pink. The diamond ring cuts into my finger.

The prince turns, and the weight of his attention makes me want to hide behind Elliott.

He looks as if he might be posing for a portrait, standing beside his throne with his hand resting on a carved dragon’s head. He is taller than I expected, balding, with sharp dark eyes.

“It is good of you to visit,” he says, as though we had some choice in the matter.

He isn’t large, or physically imposing, but as soon as he speaks, I feel cold.

“I know how busy you are,” Elliott says.

“Never too busy for family, surely?”

A muscle flexes in Elliott’s jaw. This is the man who killed Elliott’s father. His uncle looks past him at me.

“Your father once did a great service for me,” he says.

I won’t let him see my anger. My father did a great service for mankind, not for power or money, and certainly not for the prince himself.

“We are very proud of his accomplishments,” I say.

The prince rubs his chin thoughtfully.

“You should be. And since you are here, I have a request for you. I had hoped that your father would come and live here, in my palace.”

The prince’s voice sounds reasonable, though I feel the danger beneath every word. A wave of nausea hits me as his eyes meet mine. “Your father insists that you and your mother are happier in the city. But since you’ve struck up a friendship with my nephew…”

I wait for him to say that April is here too, that he’s used her as bait. But he doesn’t, and though I feel increasingly ill, I know I have to respond. This is treacherous ground. I stare past him, struggling to come up with the response that won’t anger him. A black spot, a shadow, is burned into the stone wall at the back of the throne room.

The prince follows my gaze and looks pained.

“Not all of my scientists are as fortunate as your father,” the prince says. “Dr. Roth caused an unfortunate explosion when he was working on the steam carriage. I had him put to death, but I find his steam carriages quite useful. Do you have one?”

I shake my head. He already knows this. No one can purchase a carriage without his approval.

The soot running up the wall looks so fresh that it would probably smudge onto my fingers if I reached out to touch it.

“He was Elliott’s mentor, of sorts. Has he told you? Elliott spent hours with him, learning all about the steam engine.”

This room reeks of fear. Expensively dressed people gather around the throne, listening. The prince raises one eyebrow, reminding me for an instant of Elliott.

“It’s a good thing I never accidentally blew anything up, or you might have executed me.”

Elliott is trying to sound nonchalant, but he’s failing. He seems inexplicably innocent, which isn’t a word I would normally use to describe him. Maybe vulnerable is a better term?

Since I’m staring at Elliott, I hope I look like a girl who is in love.

All around us, people are pressed tightly together. This is the most crowded room I’ve ever been in, at least since the plague happened, but there is one area they avoid. A line of tables beneath a stained-glass window against the left wall. Green light seeps through the tinted glass. I recognize some of the items spread over the tables. A microscope. An intricate clockwork device. Part of a steam carriage. But my eyes linger on unfamiliar tools.

“We have ways to help the geniuses among us find inspiration,” the prince says. He has stepped off the dais now and is standing so close I can smell something sharp, like cinnamon. I force myself not to move away. “Do you like parties, dear child?”

Torture implements. He wants to bring my father here and torture him. And now he’s asking me about parties?

“Of course I do,” I stammer.

The prince smiles a frighteningly kind smile. His teeth are stained. “Perhaps we can celebrate your—” He stops. “Your friendship, at my next ball.”

He purposefully did not use the word engagement. Because he knows we’re faking? Because he won’t let his nephew marry me?

“That sounds wonderful.” I don’t recognize my tiny, high-pitched voice.

“It will be,” the prince says. “There’s nothing like a masked ball to change your perceptions. Elliott may walk right past you, and you would never know.” Is his threat directed at Elliott, or at me? “A masked ball is so exciting,” he continues.

“Except that we’re always wearing masks,” Elliott says in a flat voice.

“Ah, but these masks—anonymity can be intoxicating, don’t you agree?”

Despite myself, despite the danger, the prospect of a masked ball is enticing. It seems like something April would love. I wonder why she never suggested attending one of her uncle’s balls.

And I realize that if April was afraid to attend a party, it must be frightful indeed.

“Have you set a date for your next event, Uncle?”

“Yes. And of course we’ll celebrate when your sister returns. If she returns.”

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

A
SERIES OF DISCORDANT CHIMES SUMMONS US
to dinner. Elliott leads me to a sumptuous dining room. As in the throne room, sculpted dragons are everywhere. The chandelier is a cacophony of hatchlings.

“It’s one of the reasons I’ve always hated the Debauchery Club,” Elliott says. “My uncle’s peculiar taste in decorating.”

“Will he tell us—” I start to ask, but Elliott squeezes my knee, telling me to be silent.

Dinner is served by servants who won’t meet our eyes. Elliott keeps his hand on my leg while we eat. I want to brush it away, but since I’m wearing a long skirt it feels prudish to do so, especially when he’s probably placed it there to communicate with me.

A man across the table spears his meat with a knife and announces, “I tell myself every day how fortunate we are that the plague didn’t kill the cows like it did the horses. Every horse in our stable fell down dead within a week.”

“April loved horses.” Elliott’s quiet voice is meant only for me. “She spent her childhood in the stables. I was taught to ride, of course, and I rode every day for the exercise and fresh air, but April loved it. She was sadder the day her horse died from the plague than the day our father was—” He realizes what he is about to say and stops himself. People are listening.

I meet his gaze, and maybe because he almost made a mistake, or because of the sadness I heard when he spoke of April’s loss, I actually like him.

During the last course, servants roll a piano into the room.

“Do you play?” the prince asks. Several moments pass before I realize that he is speaking to me.

“No,” I say.

“A pity,” he says, and gestures for a young woman to go to the piano. I’m homesick, suddenly; Mother plays that song over and over, especially on gloomy days.

When the concert is finished, the dinner guests trickle out and Elliott stands and takes my hand. I follow him without question as we leave the main part of the castle. He pushes a tapestry aside, and we enter a dark corridor.

“My uncle wants to see me. While I’m gone, I need you to do something for me.”

“Fetch a book?” My teasing tone falls flat in the semidarkness.

Elliott takes off his mask and leans close to me. If anyone came around the corner, they would think we are about to embrace. As he moves closer, I’m tempted to pull away, but he’s speaking so softly that I wouldn’t be able to hear him. It’s more feeling the words he’s saying than hearing them, as his lips move against my hair.

“There’s a girl,” he says. “She has information. Meet her in the dungeon.” He gives directions quickly, but the movement of his lips is distracting.

“I hope April isn’t in the dungeon, but if anyone knows where she is, Nora will.” He checks his pocket watch. “I have to go. My uncle hates to be kept waiting.”

I step away, but he grabs me.

“One last thing. Whatever you do, don’t go into any of the cells.”

And then he’s walking away.

I stand alone for several minutes, watching the shadows move across the stones. The mortar that holds them in place is coarse and thick, as if the stones didn’t exactly fit together and had to be glued into place. The prince had the entire castle moved from across the sea. A prop for his megalomania. I shiver.

Hurrying down a dank stone stairway, I take a candle from a candelabra in the hall and hold it carefully as I descend into the dungeon. The castle smells dark and wet and wrong. I hear mice scurrying, a great many small feet scrambling against stone, and almost lose my nerve. Three more steps. Then five. Then ten. The floor is uneven, so I step gingerly. The ceiling is so low that if Elliott were with me, he would barely be able to walk upright, and Will would have to crouch. Thoughts of Will come unbidden, and I want more than anything to be out of this foul place and in his apartment. I’d settle for the Debauchery Club. Anywhere but here.

But I move down a wide passage, lined with iron doors that presumably lead to cells.

I hear a slight sound that could be a footstep, or might be the castle settling above me.

Turning toward the sound, I almost scream. A girl is close enough that I could touch her if I stretched out my arm. She waits, pressed against a stone wall, and I don’t know how she stands being so close to it. The wall is covered with fungus that glows green in the feeble light. Water has seeped out from between the stones, pooling in fetid puddles on the floor. The stones glisten. Water drips.

The oozing of the wall reminds me of the Weeping Sickness.

I force my eyes back to the girl. She is holding a lantern, but there’s a cover over it. She pulls it off, smiling a little, amused by my discomfort. She is very beautiful.

“Elliott sent me,” I tell her in a low voice.

She adjusts her apron and looks me over.

“Tell Mr. Elliott that his sister isn’t in the palace,” she says. It takes a moment for the words to sink in. I’m distracted by the way the corners of her mouth turn up when she says his name.

“She has to be here,” I say. Where else could she be?

“She isn’t. She hasn’t set foot in the palace, not since last year when they visited together. Tell him that he should leave as soon as he can.”

A sound from inside one of the cells startles both of us. She puts the cover on her lantern, takes two steps back, and disappears, leaving me alone in the near-impenetrable darkness. My eyes search the shadows beyond the light of my candle. This place, with the seeping wall, appears to be the convergence of multiple corridors. I count five passages, all leading away.

I’ve turned in a complete circle twice and am horribly disoriented, unsure which corridor leads back to Elliott and safety. I pick one and start to walk, careful not to get close enough to the doors of the cells for anything to reach out and grab me. I hear a grating sound, a door opening, and I scurry down the corridor, straining to hear.... Are there footsteps behind me?

At last I find the stairs. My toe connects painfully with the uneven stone, but I keep moving, ascending so quickly that the faint light in the hallway above seems blinding. I hear something above me and look up. It’s a bat. A big black bat, beating its wings. I lunge to the side, ready to scream, but before I can draw breath, someone grabs me.

And pushes me against the rough stone wall, pulls his mask aside, and kisses my neck.

“Are you scared?” Elliott asks.

Footsteps clatter behind us, and he grips my shoulders harder, as if that will make it more convincing that we are embracing here against these mildewed wall hangings.

A servant passes, and when she’s out of sight, Elliott lets me go so abruptly that I almost fall.

“Sorry.” He uses the edge of the tapestry to help me remove the dungeon muck from my shoe. “We don’t want anyone to know—”

“She isn’t here.” My voice sounds strange, filled with disappointment.

“No?”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“I never sound surprised. That doesn’t mean…” A second set of footsteps is approaching. I brace myself as he reaches for my shoulders, but his hands are gentle this time. He leans in, looking into my eyes, and for a moment I’m so certain he’s really going to kiss me that I grab my mask, holding it so he can’t pull it away from my face. No matter what risks he is willing to take, I’m not comfortable breathing the air in this place. And I don’t want to kiss him.

I don’t know him well enough to be sure of the emotions that cross his face. Guilt, distrust, maybe desire. I feel myself going rigid, even as I try to relax into his embrace.

“You’re way too stiff. No one is going to believe you are enjoying this,” he says.

“I’m not enjoying it,” I mutter.

Two servants walk by. I look, but neither turns out to be Elliott’s pretty serving girl.

“I don’t think anyone would believe that you had brought me to this dank passage to … embrace me,” I say finally.

“You’d be surprised at the places people will embrace.”

“People … lovers … come down here for those purposes?”

“They have been known to.” Something in his voice lets me know that his lips are quirking behind his mask.

I can’t help myself. “Have you?” I ask.

“When I was younger.”

“With that girl? Is that why she looked at me like—”

“I don’t remember,” he says. “Different girls, different places.”

“That’s despicable.”

“Probably. My uncle kept me prisoner here for years. He didn’t keep me in a cell, but I was still a prisoner. Everyone knew it. I did a lot of silly things to try to annoy him. Including meeting girls in most parts of his precious palace. None of it meant anything.”

“Not to you. Perhaps it meant something to them.”

“They were fools. It wasn’t safe for anyone to be friendly with me.” Elliott’s voice is low and angry. “It probably still isn’t.”

“I hate it here,” I say.

“As do I.”

“We’ll leave tomorrow?” I ask.

“We’ll leave when the prince allows us to leave.” We walk out into a hallway and up another flight of stairs, and then down a long corridor lined with fluttering wall hangings that would be easy to hide behind. Elliott stops outside a door. “This is your room. I’m across the hall. If you need anything”—he smirks—“just knock on my door. In fact,
I
need something. We should practice. Every time I put my hands on you, you freeze. People are certain to notice.” He pulls me close. “Some girls enjoy…”