The Healer's Bargain

sehold had begun to suspect th

een offered a ceasefire and doesn't trust the paperwork. Two maids had been seen inspecting their shoes before putting them on. Mrs. Pell had come to Draven's study before eight and rep

hrown?" Dr

e way someone might announce a comet. "The tea tray went

iss Wh

running for nettle and beets, and I believe she's given a lecture on the uses of pa

s. Two years of thrown crystal and cold trays and doctors who left with tightened mouths

n the house had shifted, the way a stuck door shifts befor

ct weight of a loaded pistol. Feelings had once cost him a wife, and after th

nt upstairs the w

in his jacket pocket around the three brass keys. It was past two. He'd told himself, as he had every night f

f the stairs

standing in

r one shoulder, and she wasn't sneaking. She was simply standing, hands at he

Whit

noted, too, that she'd been stand

can't. Larkspur had a long corridor on the second floor and I

floor. It's off-lim

"I'm the woman you're marrying in five days. I

across the floor between them, and he could smell chamomile on her, and w

with no other locked rooms. A husband who walks up here at night. I'm not a fool,

at is i

n." She said it plai

een asked a hundred versions of that question, by lawyers, by doctors, by po

orage,"

's a

Whit

"You don't have to tell me what's inside. You may keep your secrets, and I'll keep mine, and we'll get married and I'll

ewhere in the walls, the o

your business,

clined her head. "T

if someone had reached out to shake his hand while carefully not looking at the knife in h

t he barely felt the turn. "You don't sleep, either, do

in

ere steady. "Milo told me his mother died when he was th

told it w

s i

t, Miss W

unoffended, as if she'd expected exactly that, and tur

ng very hard to protect them. I think you've been doing it so long you've

e stairs, and Draven stood alone in the corridor with

il the house had go

ool and familiar. The second. The third. He pushed the door open into the stale,

stop

oved again

ears, behind three locks, in a house where every wi

open to the night. Its curtains stirred in the wind. Its latch, which had no

not ope

he corridor. He had

is pocket. All three of them, cold in

in this room. And they