Jest’s confession had destroyed any credibility she might have had. There was nothing she could say to them now, no argument she could make to persuade them she was not under some enchantment – that Jest was not a villain.
That she loved him. She chose him.
Turning, she fled from the foyer before she dissolved into a tantrum-stricken child.
Rushing into her bedroom, she slammed the door and slumped against it. In the hallway, a painting fell off its hook and crashed to the floor with a muffled Ouch!
Leaning over, Cath gathered up her skirt, pressed her face into the fabric, and screamed as loud as she could.
‘Catherine?’
She startled at the meek voice and peeled the skirt away. Mary Ann stood before her – her black-and-white uniform blurred in Cath’s vision.
‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered, before Cath could gather herself.
Cath swiped her palms over her eyes. ‘You told them everything! How could you?’
‘I had to. You don’t know him, Cath. Nobody knows him, and I was so scared—’
‘I do know him! I trust him! But you’ve ruined it. He’s a wanted man now, a criminal. It’s all over, and it’s all because of you!’
‘I thought you were in trouble. That sorcery he used to take you away from the theatre – it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. We were all so frightened, but still, I wanted to believe he was taking you to the beach, and when it turned out you hadn’t gone there at all . . . I thought you were in danger. You’ve been gone for hours and the Jabberwock is still out there somewhere and I didn’t know . . .’
Cath pushed herself away from the door and yanked it open. ‘I don’t want to hear it. You had no right to tell them what you did.’
‘Cath—’
‘Get out!’
‘Wait, please. Listen to me, Catherine. I think I saw . . . when we were at the theatre, I could have sworn—’
‘I don’t care!’ Catherine shrieked. ‘I don’t care what you think or what you saw. We had a plan, Mary Ann. We had a future, and now you’ve ruined it!’ Tears began to streak fast down her cheeks. ‘I never want to see you again. You can go be a scullery maid for all I care!’
Without waiting for Mary Ann to leave, she turned and stomped into the washroom and locked the door behind her. With a sob, she slid down on to the tile floor and hugged her knees close, pushing her face into the folds of her skirt. She tried to recapture the feeling of the meadow and the wildflowers and Jest’s arms and lips and how everything had felt so very, very right.
She couldn’t fathom how, so quickly, it had all become so very, very wrong.
WHEN CATHERINE AWOKE the next morning, a new shrub had sprouted from the posters of her bed. The room was scented with dirt and metal and sadness and she could see a blur of red blooms beyond her swollen eyelids.
The vines drooped along the canopy; the flowers dripped towards her quilts.
Hundreds and hundreds of small, delicate hearts surrounded her – all of them bleeding.
She reached up and touched a finger to the soft flesh of the nearest bud, gathering a single drop of warm blood on her fingertip. Each bleeding heart bloom was a delicate thing, beautiful and haunting.
She crushed the flower in her fist, relishing the wet smear in her palm.
Mary Ann never came to start a fire. Abigail never brought her breakfast. Catherine stayed in bed, undisturbed, well into the afternoon. She felt like a pumpkin lantern hollowed out. She wondered if Jest had been found and taken to prison, but she knew he hadn’t. He was too clever for them, too quick, too impossible.
Her eyes repeatedly drifted to the window, hoping to see a white rose sitting outside, beckoning to her. But there never was. Jest had not come back for her.
Never in her life had she felt so abandoned.
She imagined that Mary Ann had not betrayed her, and that her parents and the King had discovered nothing. She pretended that Jest would be there at the masquerade and she would walk straight up to him in his black motley and bell-twinkling hat and kiss him in front of everyone. Then she would announce the opening of her bakery, and she would leave the castle with her head held high and begin her new life with Jest at her side.
The dream was fickle, though. If it had ever been possible, it certainly wasn’t now. Jest was considered a criminal, and – as Cheshire had warned her – no one would ever be a patron at a bakery run by a fallen woman, no matter how delicious the treats. Even if they could clear Jest’s name, they would forever be destitute and disgraced. They would have nothing.
It was past tea time when Cheshire appeared among the stems of the bleeding heart plant, his plump body curled in the corner of the bed’s canopy.
Catherine stared up at him, unsurprised. She’d been expecting him all day. Surely the kingdom’s greatest gossipmonger could not stay away.
‘I thought you might like to know,’ Cheshire said, by way of greeting, ‘that everyone is talking about you and your escape from the dastardly joker. What a lucky, heroic thing you are.’
‘I thought you might like to know,’ she replied, ‘that it’s all a bunch of hogswaddle. The Joker did not kidnap me.’
She said it mildly, knowing it didn’t matter what she said to Cheshire or anyone else. Most of them would go on believing whatever was most convenient, and right now, it was convenient to think that the King’s bride, their future queen, had been taken against her will.
Cheshire scratched a gob of earwax from an ear with one claw. ‘I was worried you might say that. It isn’t as good a story, you know, though I shall continue to be amused as all the King’s horses and all the King’s men scramble to find him again.’