by A. W. Exley
"Your grace," Elizabeth said, holding out her hand to offer a limp shake. Seth took the offered limb and pressed it once.
"Lady Jeffrey, how unexpected." He frowned at the shade cast by the dim hallway, before turning back to the interlopers.
"Seth," Louise breathed in a husky tone, as though she had come down with a sudden head cold. Or perhaps she had smoked a large number of cigarettes in order to deepen her voice and make it sound seductive.
"You all right, old girl? You sound like you're coming down with something." Seth asked.
A snort welled up in my throat. I had the impression her grand entrance was not going as planned. Louise blushed and coughed. Meanwhile, Charlotte took the opening and pushed herself forward.
"So lovely to see you, your grace." Charlotte held out her hand. "We were passing by and wanted to offer any assistance in organising the forthcoming ball."
Seth took her hand and placed a chaste kiss on the back, which made Louise's blush turn into an angry scowl.
"How kind." His gaze drifted around the entranceway, as though seeking an exit. Hopefully we wouldn't fix on mine, there was only room for one behind the armour.
The butler coughed into his hand and waited until Seth faced him. "Afternoon tea in the front parlour, your grace?"
A pained look flashed over his face and was quickly hidden. A tiny part of me rejoiced, for it appeared that he didn't want to spend time with her at all. Perhaps it would not always be like that? One would hope, over time, that Seth's calm character might bring some change to Louise's shallow one. Or one could hope it would happen for his sake, if they were to fashion any future together. Otherwise, he might be the one booking passage on the next unsinkable ocean liner.
"Oh, that would be fabulous." Louise recovered herself. Her voice returned to normal, and she pounced on Seth's arm, dragging him out of my line of sight.
Poor bugger. I waited until their footsteps had faded, and slipped along the corridor out the door.
Frank stood by my motorcycle. "Gave it a once over, she's in good nick."
"Thank you. Henry does what he can, but four legs are his speciality, not wheels." I swung my leg over the sparse seat. "You might want to rescue Seth shortly with urgent business, he has been captured by the enemy and had the look of a man wanting to pull the pin on his own grenade." I winked and kicked the starter. Better scramble home, before they return and discover my chores not finished.
Frank laughed and waved, as I roared out of the courtyard.
Chapter Sixteen
In the midst of death, life never stopped. Or rather, the jobs that needed doing never stopped. I wondered if Heaven employed domestics to keep everything running smoothly. Or was that Hell, where you found yourself a house maid for all of eternity to the toffs residing upstairs?
Today, at least, Alice and I had managed to escape outside, enjoying the sunshine and gentle breezes. With our skin protected by thick gauze and gloves, we tackled the beehives to scrap the honey free. I wielded the smoker and kept the bees dreaming, while Alice removed the frames and wielded a scraper.
Alice kept up a steady chatter about her intensifying romance with Frank. I could see the appeal. Tall and handsome like Seth, but Frank seemed quicker to laugh and more comfortable in his skin. From Alice's waffling, it seemed he was handy in all manner of things. There were even scandalously delicious details she needed to confess under cover of dark, once the rest of the house was asleep. I needed to know exactly what he was doing with his hands, because Alice always dropped whatever she was holding, and turned red like the motorcar whenever I asked.
I watched them together, and quite apart from the fact that they made a handsome couple, I approved of how he courted my friend. Although, I wondered if I should wave my sword at him and threaten to severe a limb if he ever hurts her.
A bee approached the slumbering hive on an erratic path. He circled several times before landing and starting his complicated dance routine. A few woozy workers looped around over his head and then, one by one, the little squadron flew away, off on some unseen task. Funny little creatures, controlled by their queen. Yet each and every insect had a role to play to ensure the survival of the hive. Their master plan was invisible to the casual observer who saw only each bee in isolation. Yet if you stepped back and saw the hive as a whole, one entity with a myriad of individual parts—
"Bees!" I yelled and dropped the smoker.
Alice yelped and jumped, assuming I had them under my veil. She stared at me, a frown just visible under her netting. "What is it? Did you get stung? Where?"
"No. No." I waved her away. "It's the bees. We keep thinking of them as vermin, but what if they aren't like rats at all? What if they're actually like bees?"
Ideas swooped and dived in my mind like elephant-sized insects. I pulled at the thick gloves on my hands as I walked back to the house. My skin itched as though what I held on the inside was too big to be contained, and I were in danger of exploding all over the countryside.
What I needed was to blurt the rampaging thoughts out to someone who would understand —Seth.
"You've completely lost me. What do vermin have in common with bees?" Alice tipped her hat back, following me away from the hives.
I tossed the protective layers to the ground as I walked, heedless that they would need to be retrieved. Excitement blasted through my body as I grasped at the idea. It all made sense. How could we have been so stupid to have missed it?
"We look at them singularly. But what if they are drones, or workers? All a part of a hive?" It could explain so much, like why they were leaving the cities. Perhaps we saw the advance workers, looking for a new home or food source? "I need to tell Seth, this could be pivotal."
"Of course you do." Alice laughed. "Off you go, I'll cover your absence. Somehow."
I waved and tore off across the field. My feet pounded all the way back to the house and I skidded around the side, my hand landing on the brick wall for balance as I raced around back.
Henry stood by the motorcycle, my sword in his hand.
"Oh, you are magnificent." I kissed his cheek and settled the katana on my back.
The faintest blush crept up from under Henry's collar, and he stared at his feet. A quick kick and the bike coughed, signalling it was ready. I shot away so fast, I sprayed gravel over the side of the house. Elizabeth would probably ask about the commotion, but I didn't care. My sole focus was on racing down the road to Serenity House. At least today I wore clean clothes, mercifully kept that way by the apiary gear.
The bike skidded through the loose lime chip as I stopped by the grand entrance. Only now did I consider that this might not be my smartest move. What if word got back to step-mother? She would want to know where I disappeared to in such a hurry. Alice said she would cover for me, and someone needing my sword was always a convenient excuse. But there were too many eyes and mouths feasting on Seth's every move.
I glanced around, house or outside? Would he be in his study? Just then, movement across the lawn caught my eye — Seth, with a handful of men clustered around him. He raised a hand at me and smiled. My stomach dropped to my toes before slamming right to the top of my head, where it plummeted back to the right spot. I didn't need Alice to tell me I had it bad; I knew it from the wobbles in my knees that had nothing to do with the horrid suspension on Trusty.
"Ella, we saw you tearing along the lane." He turned to one of the men at his side. "We'll continue this later."
Brims of caps were touched as the men melted away. I bounced on my toes, I couldn't hold it in any longer.
"Bees," the word flew from my lips.
His smile widened and he raised an eyebrow. "Bees?"
Oh heck. Now he would think I was simple minded, racing here to tell him about bees. When I really needed him to show me about the birds and the bees. Concentrate, Ella. One monumental breakthrough at a time. I shook myself and threw my hands in the air. "Argh!"
Seth laughed as I worked to di
spel the excess energy, so that I might have a conversation with him.
"We've been looking at the vermin, the turned, all wrong. We see them as individuals, but what if they are bees?" I needed him to see what formed in my mind.
His frown deepened. "You think the turned are bees? That they will turn brown and furry?"
This was not going well. "No. Think of their behaviour and how they act."
He took my hand and drew me down toward the river to the old oak tree. He paced for a moment as he considered my idea. "The turned have left the cities, but attacks continue in the countryside. Do you think they follow some unseen purpose then, like bees?"
"Yes." Blissful relief warmed me for he seemed to have grasped the thread in my ramblings. I leaned against the bark of the ancient tree to feel something solid at my back, while my mind soared with possibilities. "What if they are looking for a new hive? What if there is a queen that directs their actions?"
"A queen?" His eyes widened and then he fell silent, mulling over the implications.
Far-fetched I know, but was it really? The virus came from nowhere and animated the dead. If that was possible, then anything could be possible. More ideas cascaded through me. "To us they seemed senseless with no minds. But what if each was a tiny part of a much larger whole? What if each vermin was a single brain cell to a larger entity?"
He blew out a whistle. "This could be an enormous discovery, Ella. I've been charting your sightings. If they're acting like bees, we must look for a deeper pattern. They may be radiating from a central hive. This is an absolutely brilliant deduction."
He caged me with his arms, one on either side of my head under the old oak tree. I basked in the heat of his praise. It really was quite a genius leap, especially if it were true.
"Clever, clever girl," he murmured before claiming my lips.
He kissed me with a thorough languidness, exploring every inch of my lips, tongue, and mouth. His calm blunted the edge of my manic mood, and my body followed his lead. I could kiss him until the edge of forever, if there were such a thing.
There was one idea gnawing at my insides which wouldn't keep quiet, as much as I sought to silence it with Seth's touch. I pulled back to regain my breath, meeting his steady gaze. "What do you think would be a queen vermin's purpose?"
He drew a hand down my cheek. "The War Office says the turned want to perpetuate the virus. So, following your theory, the bees would be looking for a better field of flowers to pollenate."
It sounded poetic when you thought of bees and fields full of flowers, rather than the horror of people torn and devoured by rotten corpses. "I thought the cities would be easier, with a higher concentration of people."
"But they are also better protected, and the turned are found and dealt with quicker. Out here, it takes more time to discover them."
Silence dropped as we both thought of the empty cottage and a missing family, except for a little girl wearing daisies.
"Come on, I'll show you what I have done with the information in your notebook." He held out his hand, and we walked back to the house.
In his study, the topographical map now had numerous coloured pins over the surface.
Seth explained. "Green pins are those who died in the initial pandemic. I have marked the place they died, rather than where they were buried."
The land behind the manse would have been a green minefield if he had, most were buried there in the mass graves or individual plots.
His finger moved to a different coloured pin. "Then I marked those who were turned, yellow for locals, blue for unidentified. Red is where you dispatched someone."
From a distance it was pretty, the colours swirling around each other. Then my eye focused on the red; the final death dispatched by my sword. The map bled in response to the pestilence I spread. Bees still hummed through my mind. I took a step backward, and then another, until I hit the opposite wall.
"What are you doing?" Seth asked.
"I want to ignore the individual detail and look at them as a whole. Imagine each pin represents a worker in a hive. How would you find the location of the hive?"
He leaned on the wall next to me and crossed his arms, the two of us staring at the blobs of colour. "Bees would spread out in all directions from their hive. I would look for a circular concentration."
I let my mind wander, ignoring the blight of red, and concentrated on blue and yellow, like scattered daisies in grass. One area drew my attention. Yellow and blue overlaid with drops of blood when I crossed their path and found, and then destroyed, their bodies.
"There." I crossed the distance and laid my hand over the map. One area to the east had a loose circle of pins with an empty spot in the middle. The rest appeared random, scattered like confetti. It was still an enormous area, easily some two hundred square acres, but we had narrowed our hunt.
Seth stared at the spot with its concentric circles of hills and valleys. "It will still take some time to search, but we have a starting point. You are a genius." He dropped a kiss on my head.
I shrugged, but inside I glowed. "It's only a theory, we have yet to prove it."
"I need to notify London, this could be the breakthrough we have been searching for."
"Seth." I met his grey gaze. "What if there is a queen?" I chewed my bottom lip. The idea both intrigued and repulsed me. A queen bee was larger, fed by her attendants, and rarely left the hive. Would a queen vermin be similar? Would we find a woman running a Somerset hive, or a mother?
He held my gaze. "London will want such a creature captured."
Not quite what I meant. I really had no interest in rounding up vermin for the War Office to study. I was more concerned with what might drive a queen vermin. Were they all part of a hive intelligence, perhaps each diminished to a mere single spark in a collective conscious? Did they likewise share a single soul? Was that how they continued functioning, and why severing the head made them fall — did the wound sever their connection to the hive? So many ideas and theories.
I looked back to the map, where the rings of colour now took on a different meaning. We just had to prove it, and somewhere in that area, we might find an answer.
Chapter Seventeen
There were days I felt like a Clydesdale, pulling the plough and tilling an endless field. The harness weighed heavy around my neck and shoulders, but I had no way to remove it on my own. The leather bit into my skin as I strained against the weight I must drag behind me.
Today was most certainly one of those days.
We started extra early. With the ball tonight, our workload seemed to quadruple. They all wanted special baths and their hair washed, which meant lugging hot water up to their rooms because we had no money to plumb in the bathroom. Father had planned one before the war. The room was built and tiled and held a divine claw-foot bath, but the pipes were never connected. Now it seemed like an extravagant luxury. I was quite happy with the tin bath in the kitchen, at least it was closer to both the water source and the range to heat it. But no, they had to bathe upstairs in the fancy, useless room.
I was nearly done for the evening. The horses munched on their feed in the barn as I walked back to the house. My feet were killing me, and all I wanted was to lay down. Then I remembered that Seth had made me promise to go tonight. Silly to even contemplate it when I didn't have an evening gown, though Charlotte's hand me down might suffice. Sometimes, the way he looked at me, I don't know if he even saw what I was wearing in that moment.
Oh. Shouldn't have thought that. The very idea of being naked with Seth made something hot uncurl and slither around my insides.
I snorted, wrestling my thoughts back in reality. How could I contemplate a night of dancing when my toes were numb? Maybe it would be bearable if he held me close to keep me upright. A giggle shot from my throat, most unlike me, as I pushed through the back door.
Elizabeth sat at the kitchen table, rapping one long fingernail on the waxed surface. Louise and Charlotte sat on one side. Charlo
tte stared at her folded hands in her lap. Louise filed her nails and tried to appear disinterested, but her head shot up and pure venom filled her eyes. Magda stood at the range, her face drained and pale. Her gaze flew to me and she shook her head. Step-mother fixed me with her steel gaze; the ice blue pierced me and held me to the spot before I could heed Magda's warning and turn tail.
"Do take a seat, Eleanor." She lifted a foot and kicked a chair out from the table. It scraped along the floor. Never had an inanimate piece of furniture looked more foreboding.
Louise smirked, while Charlotte still avoided looking at me. They rarely ventured into the kitchen, to the servant's territory. For all three of them to be here, I was in trouble so deep I might spot the Titanic.
I sat and waited for the iceberg to hit. The only question racing through my mind was did I try and cling to the wreckage, or jump clear and take my chances in the frigid waters? I could only think of one incredibly handsome and charming thing that would bring her rage down on my head – Seth deMage.
I laid my palms on the table, hoping to hide the quiver starting in my fingertips. Elizabeth could cut me to the core with a few choice words. While I could slay vermin, this demon defeated me in every single encounter.
"I have a very dear friend who happens to be a companion to Queen Alexandra," Elizabeth said, her gaze drilling through me. "And today she relayed a very interesting piece of gossip. Did you know that a duke, being so close to the throne, requires the permission of the monarch to marry?"
I stared at my hands, the tremor visible and creeping up my arm. "No ma'am. I did not know that."
She laughed, a cold sharp thing. If a noise could take physical shape, this would be my iceberg, bearing down on me and ready to rip my side open.
"Of course not. You are merely a servant, such matters are far above your head." The fingernail kept rapping on the table. "The Duke of Leithfield has sought the king and consort's opinion for his choice of bride. Apparently, he has his eye on a local Somerset girl."