Something in her tone made the older woman look at her more closely. �Rose, dear� there�s nothing wrong, is there?�
�Nothing of any importance. A headache coming on, I think. Best to go have a lie down. Pay my respects to the Countess, would you?�
Camilla squeezed her hand and nodded; Rose Hannah was almost touched by how quickly Camilla gave up wheedling. The carriage rattled away, leaving Rose Hannah unguarded as a stiff wind howled through�she was surprised to see by her pendant watch that it was much later than she had thought�almost evening�and quite dark already.
She thought she heard�a cry? But muffled. Like one of the housemaids? The mechanical peacocks, after all, were inside. And then she remembered that Mary Ann had a bad habit of going out to meet her gentlemen followers��gentlemen� in the loosest sense of the term�at the garden gate in a spare moment, and so Rose Hannah picked up her skirts with the intention of giving Mary Ann and her lover a piece of her mind.
It was only when she got to the gate itself and saw it hanging open that she began to wonder if Mary Ann�s suitor had had worse intentions than usual�began to actually worry for Mary Ann�s safety�so Rose Hannah gripped her umbrella and plunged through the trellis.
The housemaid lay sprawled unconscious beneath the shadows of the witch elm, with some dark figure doubled over her�shouting, Rose Hannah swung into the assailant as if she had a sword, beating his head until he reared up and snarled with blood-smeared jaws at her, and Rose Hannah fell back, stunned.
And in that moment of shock the man�creature? thing?�had the advantage, springing, and had her down on the stones of the garden path before she had even finished processing what she had seen, her head struck the stones hard and she couldn�t see straight, the thing ripped open the collar of her dress as if it were paper. Mary Ann made one moan, a squeaking sort of sound, but the thing had forgotten the housemaid entirely�it was tearing at Rose Hannah�s throat even as she scratched and pounded and scrabbled at the creature but she might as well have been struggling against a steel vise. Her vision was swimming; she finally realized that she was hearing herself scream, that she was bleeding profusely from the throat as a coppery warmth began to soak her dress, that no one had heard or was coming, and as she felt her own body crumpling beneath the thing she recognized the soporific drag of poison, some biological toxin, the numbness in her hands as they fell from the creature�s shoulders, the ebbing of her strength and the approach of unconsciousness. Only then, at the edge of incoherence, did she hear screams coming from inside the house, the breaking of glass, and understood that the thing had not come alone. |
