Page 51 of Bane Bloom

My eyes moved to the spirit’s face, questioning.

“Your heart’s desire.”

In my mind’s eye I saw myself in the Physic Garden, making sketches for my herbals. I saw a stack of my herbals in the window of the bookseller near our house on Cheyne Walk. I saw Papa resting on a bench in the sun, watching boats on the river.

I reached out and took the petal from the spirit’s hand. He closed his long fingers into a fist, watching me.

I studied the petal in my own palm, and my mouth began to water as if I were a girl again and the glinting thing were a candied violet. I looked at the spirit, but someone else was in his place now. Someone familiar. Dark hair pinned in a high, looping bun; laughing eyes, the same color and shape as the ones I saw in the mirror each day. The woman offered a smile, not wry or distant, but warm with affection and loving encouragement. A sob rose in my throat.

I brought the candied violet petal to my lips.

“No, Catherine!”

The urgent shout lifted my gaze again. The woman’s expression changed in an instant, contorting into impatience and anger. The shout had not come from her. Behind her, Thomas took long strides toward us, boots splashing into the shallows. He burst right through the woman, and then, like the spirit, she was gone.

My mother. She had come to me at last, and Thomas had interfered as he always did. Another sob escaped my lips, and I closed my fist around the petal.

I stepped deeper into the water, away from him. The breeze and the waves had gained in strength, and the rain stung my cheeks like needles.

“Catherine, stop.” His voice rang like a command. “This is a trick. You’ll know it if you’ll but take a moment to think.”

A quick impulse almost had me swallow the petal before he could take it from me. But he froze, opening his hands and holding them up. I’m no threat to you. Yet he watched me closely and steadily, without even a blink.

“Do you hear what I say?” he continued.

As I replied, I was surprised to hear my teeth chattering. “The spirit said it would give me my heart’s desire.”

He nodded solemnly. “But think, Catherine. What is it your heart desires?”

My tone edged in impatience, I replied, “To join the Society of Apothecaries. To support my father so that he may rest. Is that wrong?”

Rain streamed down his face. The lake lapped at his white shirt, and the hard plane of his abdomen beneath. “I believe you want that, but I don’t believe it’s your heart’s desire. And sometimes our heart’s desire is the most dangerous thing we can be given.”

His words and his voice were threatening my resolve. I couldn’t afford to throw away this chance. A quiet voice inside me tried to reason that I didn’t need fairy flowers to give me what I wanted. My own efforts were already underway, and I had come here with the belief that they had a fair chance of succeeding.

But my words came out hard as I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What business is it of yours?”

His expression grew soft and pleading, and he said gently, “You are not yourself.”

My heart raced. Opening my palm, I stared at the Bane Bloom petal. A sudden wave nearly swept it away, and I drew my palm toward my lips.

“Give me one more moment,” he said, voice strengthening again. “Hear me out. Then I’ll leave you, and you may do as you wish.”

I glared at him. “You are strangely eager to provide answers I’ve been begging you for since my arrival.”

He acknowledged this with a nod. “I had hoped, like a fool, to prevent exactly this. It was not within my power.”

I shivered and took a breath, sheltering the petal in my two hands as the lake continued to lap at me. “What do you wish to say to me?”

Thomas’s features composed, and his voice evened. “My grandfather went down this path. Wished to be with his wife again. He was granted his own death. My mother found him floating in the lake, peaceful as sleep, clutching a water lily to his breast. My mother, too, went down this path. Wished for a child that wouldn’t require her to be shackled to a husband. She was granted something unnatural, a child with no father, and no future. And Carroll, whom you’ve been so anxious about? Like you, he wished to make his career, but what he truly wanted was to be released from the noise and stink and trials of life in London. He hoped to become caretaker of this place.”

A wave slapped my back, but I took little notice of it, transfixed by Thomas’s voice. The answers were indeed coming at last. I glanced around at the agitated water, recalling that he had seen Caroll go into the lake.

“What happened to Carroll?”

He swiped at the raindrops streaming down his face. “You’ve just seen for yourself.”

I didn’t follow at first, but then it struck me like a blow. “You don’t mean—not the wild man at the window!”