BLYTHE
TWO DAYS AFTER HER FATHER HAD BEEN SENTENCED TO HANG, Blythe received
an invitation.
She held it tight, reading the words once, twice, then three times more before the reality of them settled over her.
Signa Farrow had invited her to a ball. The woman who had killed her brother—but who Blythe now understood was being influenced by Death himself—had invited both her and Byron to attend a soiree at Foxglove little more than a week before her father was set to hang.
For the first half hour Blythe spent staring at the invitation, she had done so while inwardly fuming at Signa’s gall. The next half hour she brainstormed what ulterior motives could possibly be at play. Finally, she set the invitation down on the table and took to pacing around the drawing room. With every step she was all too aware of the small tapestry tucked beneath her corset.
During the weeks that Signa had been gone, Blythe had spent every day filling her diary with theories while coming to terms with the fact that there would be no more social calls to scrounge up for herself. She could barely show her face in tea shops since her father’s verdict, and following the gossip had become near impossible. As much time as she spent plotting ways to break the news about Everett’s potential motive and cast a doubtful light upon him, she doubted there was a single person alive who’d believe her. Which meant that after everything she’d done, Blythe had nothing to show for sleuthing other than a horrifying skeletal hallucination of Eliza
Wakefield burned into her brain and a tapestry that could change her fate.
It was warm against her skin, the threads around it more visible by the day. Blythe should have been surprised by all she’d learned or by the ease with which Aris had controlled her. Yet why should she be surprised when she herself had seen the shadows that trailed behind her cousin, and how both her lady’s maid and Eliza had looked sickly and skeletal one moment only to be perfectly healthy the next? Blythe had seen threads of gold sewed into the air itself, and hands that could take a life as easily as they could give one. She believed everything Aris had told her.
He was a strange man, and while she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, Blythe couldn’t help but recall his determination as he’d stomped through the woods to save a fox he’d then held bundled in his arms. He couldn’t be that bad. He was powerful, yes, but so was Signa. Besides, far less favorable marriages had been made before. Even if Signa was angry—even if Death’s hold on her was so fierce that she retaliated— Blythe would be doing her a favor. By the end of this mess, perhaps Signa would realize that. Perhaps things between them could someday return to normal, and Blythe wouldn’t have to lose her, too.
Blythe clutched the tapestry against her chest a moment longer before she moved to the desk, confident in what she had to do as she took up a pen and parchment and wrote Aris a letter.
On June the first, Miss Farrow will be holding a ball at Foxglove. I will be there with the tapestry and hope that you will accompany me.
She copied down the details, then tucked the letter into an envelope, sealed it with wax, and sent William to take it to Wisteria at once.
He returned three hours later with Aris’s response.
