I drew back smiling, and he laughing. “No, and Cloate won’t believe that either unless he saw it, which I know he was too busy to do,” he said. “I’ve got an idea! There’s a bench outside, where it’ll be nice and cool. We can sit awhile and talk—”
I had no illusions about Shorro’s idea of “talking,” so this time I was the one to laugh. “I think I’d better stay inside, thank you very much. Or, better yet, go back to my room—”
“No, no, don’t go!” Shorro begged. “One more dance! Two more!”
“But not with you,” said a voice behind me. We both spun guiltily to face the speaker. It was Roderick, dressed in formal black and white, and looking both taller and more severe than usual. I could not keep the blush from rising to my cheeks, and even the bold Shorro looked a little chastised.
“Now, Roderick, there’s no harm in Lady Coriel being here, no harm in my having a dance or two with her—”
“No harm at all,” Roderick agreed in an amiable voice that still seemed threaded with reproof. “No one’s likely to blame you for her conduct, in any case, since it’s pretty well known she does what she wants.”
At that, I stiffened. “All I did was attend the wedding of friends. Among the kind of company I keep nine months out of the year. And prefer,” I added.
Roderick was looking down at me with the faintest smile lurking around his mouth. “So do I prefer it,” he said, “and I have seen my share of the gentry over the past year.”
“Excuse me a moment,” Shorro said and disappeared into the crowd.
Left alone with Roderick, I tried a tentative smile. “It was a very nice wedding, wasn’t it? Not as grand as the one we’ll see in a week.”
“But destined for greater happiness, I would think.”
He kept his voice neutral, but I imagined I could detect a tone of bitterness. I studied him. “You’ll be leaving, then, I suppose, as soon as the vows are spoken?”
He hesitated, and his face grew even more impassive. “That was my plan,” he said. “Now I think I may stay awhile longer.”
“Because?”
He shrugged. When he answered, for some reason I was sure he was lying. “Because I think the prince may have need of me. He lives in troubled times.”
“He creates troubled times.”
“Perhaps.”
I took a step forward and touched him lightly on the arm. “And he draws my sister straight into his own whirlwind. If you could somehow see your way to guarding her while you are guarding him, I would take that as a great kindness. She is so completely vulnerable.”
His gaze dropped to my hand then rose to meet my eyes again; there was no change of expression on his face. “I have always thought,” he said, “that your sister knew exactly what she was doing by marrying the prince.”
“That is how it appears,” I said. “That she is marrying for position and glory. But I think it is because she can see no way out. She does not love Bryan, I know that.”
“That does not mean she wants to be saved from him.”
I shrugged, unable to explain. “Just protect her from the dangers that swirl around him. There are so many. Could you? Would you watch out for Elisandra as you watch out for the prince?”
His face was completely inscrutable, but somehow I was convinced he was angry at me. It led me to pull my hand away and bury it in the folds of my dress. “I will do what I can for your sister,” he said at last. “As much as I am able.”
I smiled now, oddly relieved. “Good! Then I will see you at the wedding—and, I suppose, everywhere Bryan goes for the next few days—”
It was meant as the prelude to a goodbye, as I had started edging toward the door, but he caught my arm. “Oh no, you don’t,” he said, and now his face was open and smiling. “You’ve danced with every other man here. I think you owe me at least one opportunity.”
I’m sure I stared. “I didn’t know you danced!”
He took my hands and tugged me toward the dance floor. The music had already started, but these were no formal figures such as you would find in the court ballroom; no, couples just twirled around madly in any chaos they chose. “I didn’t know you did. Please, Lady Coriel, honor me with this dance.”
He did not wait for a reply, just pulled me into the middle of the milling throng. He was not as spirited a dancer as Shorro, and nowhere near as elegant as, for instance, Kent, but he had a certain relaxed grace that made him an enjoyable partner. He did not flirt with me as Shorro had, but he kept his attention on me, noticed when I missed or faltered, and dexterously moved me out of the way when other couples came careening too close.
I thought, If he watches Elisandra as closely as he is watching me, I shall have nothing to fear for her.
The music came to a flourishing close. Roderick bowed, I curtseyed, and we both came up smiling.
“Now, I really must go,” I said.
“I’ll walk you back to the main doorway.”
“Oh, no! I prowl around alone at night all the time.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Which is, I suppose, how you have become so friendly with all the guardsmen?”
I grinned. “Well, they do tend to be patrolling the area at that hour.”
“I admire a woman who can make friends wherever she goes.”
“Well, that’s nice to hear. I didn’t think you admired me at all.”
His smile grew until he could no longer contain it, and his laughter escaped. “You’re a scamp.”
“Fine way to talk to a court lady,” I said in a mock-haughty voice.
He glanced around expressively at our surroundings. “Fine court lady you are.”
I picked up my green skirts and gave them a little shake. “It’s what’s in my heart that makes me fine,” I said. “Thank you for the dance. And for your promise.”
He walked me slowly to the door. “Are you sure you don’t need an escort?”
“Sure.”
He opened the door, glanced outside as if to check for immediate danger, then gave me a nod of farewell. “Then go quickly. And take care.”
I nodded in response, and slipped out into the summer night. After the heat and noise of the hall, the air outside seemed wonderfully cool and quiet. My hard-heeled shoes made a loud tapping noise across the cobblestones, but I was the only source of sound, the only source of movement, in the whole courtyard. Even the moon seemed breathless, watching me with her round open mouth. She seemed astonished that, after the events of the past few days, she could actually see me smiling.
FAR TOO EARLY the next morning, the regent expressed a desire to see me.
Cressida carried the news in along with a breakfast tray, hours before I was ready to get up and consider the world. “You don’t look like you’ve been in bed long,” she commented as I glumly spooned up some fruit and cream.
“Four hours, maybe,” I said. “What does Matthew want?”
“The lady Greta did not share that information with me,” she said. “I think perhaps your blue dress. It makes you appear sober.”
“If I look at all like how I feel this morning, anything would make me appear sober.”
I bathed and dressed as quickly as I could, and, after a glance in the mirror, decided the smallest application of cosmetics would not come amiss. Therefore, it was close to an hour later before I made my appearance in Lord Matthew’s somber, book-lined study. I was surprised to see Kent there as well as his father. The two of them were engaged in a low-voiced conversation when I entered the room, which they broke off when they saw me. Kent’s eyes went instantly to my tired face, and the smallest smile crossed his own. He knew my night habits.
Lord Matthew, of course, was not smiling. “Coriel. Please sit. We have some things to discuss.”
I flicked a glance between the two men, but settled my gaze on the regent. “Yes?” I said cautiously.
Matthew was studying some papers before him, which I took to be letters. “I believe I told you some time ago that Ordinal of Wi
rsten is planning to attend my nephew’s wedding. He will arrive today and stay with us a week or so after the ceremony. He has not visited Castle Auburn in nearly five years, so this is a great mark of favor. I want you to be especially polite to him while he is here.”
I sat up straighter in my chair. “I always strive to be polite to all your guests, Lord Matthew,” I said in a level voice.
The regent looked at me with those completely humorless eyes. “Sometimes with better results than others,” he said dryly. “You did not charm Hennessey of Mellidon as I had hoped. I had wished to cement an alliance between our provinces, but he has instead chosen to marry a girl not far from his brother’s court. A mistake, I think, but I suppose there are Mellidon lords to placate.”
“And is Ordinal of Wirsten someone to placate as well?” I asked sweetly.
“He is someone to court,” Matthew said bluntly. “His cousin is viceroy but relies heavily on Ordinal for advice. Ordinal has seen two kings and a regent sit on the throne in Castle Auburn, and he knows the value of peace in the realm. He is a strong voice of reason—but he has been outspoken in his criticism of the prince. He is one of the best allies we could find if we could win him completely to our side.”
I glanced at Kent but he was watching his father; he would not meet my eyes. If Ordinal of Wirsten had lived long enough to see Bryan’s grandfather on the throne, he must be as old as my grandmother. “I just want to make sure I perfectly understand you,” I said in a reasonable voice. “You are hoping to make an alliance—a wedding—between me and Lord Ordinal? Is he looking for a wife?”
Matthew looked surprised, as if he could not believe I was so stupid I needed things put into plain words. “Yes, of course, a marriage is what I am after,” he said. “And I know Ordinal is looking for a bride. He’s been haunting Tregonia ever since his wife died six months ago.”
“What makes you think he would be interested in me?”
Now Matthew did smile, though it was not a particularly pleasant expression. “Your face—your lineage—and your dowry,” he said. “It’s rare that a young woman so winningly combines all three.”
At that, Kent’s eyes did flicker from his father’s face to mine, more in astonishment than complicity. From Matthew, that was a compliment of fawning proportions. He had never said anything so approving to me in my life.
“Then no doubt he will be most ready to fall in with your schemes,” I said, earning another quick look from Kent and a second smile from his father.
“Of course, you must do your part and treat him with particular attention,” Matthew added. “But he knows I am interested in this alliance. I do not think he will be difficult to snare.”
“And if my personal allure is not enough, I could mix a potion or two,” I offered generously. “I know a few spells of attraction.”
Matthew frowned. “No, I would not like to see you resort to that sort of trickery,” he said. “Your name and your money should be intoxication enough. And your charm of manner, of course.”
I rose to my feet, even though he had not dismissed me yet, because I was not sure I could carry on even a few more sentences of this conversation without screaming. “Well, I shall do what I can to make his visit here memorable,” I said.
Matthew nodded and said, “Good, good,” but Kent at last turned his eyes my way. He knew me well enough to distrust my meekness, well enough to guess that my unforgettable behavior might not be all that the regent hoped. But I would have to be very careful. If I were to be banned from the court for life, I wanted it to happen after Elisandra’s wedding. Something told me I had to be present for that.
IN THE NEXT few days, hundreds of guests arrived at Castle Auburn. I had never seen the castle so full, or so busy, not even the previous year at the grand summer ball. But the marriage of the man who was to be king—this was not something even the nobility had a chance to witness often in one lifetime. No one wanted to be left out.
There were seemingly hundreds of events filling up every minute of those next seven days. We had breakfasts in the garden, musicales in the salon, nightly theater performances in the ballroom, which had been transformed into a stage. The ladies played genteel games on the south lawns; groups of men left every day on organized hunts. Every dinner was more sumptuous than the last, every new arrival more glittering. I could not imagine that the castle could hold one more soul.
Ordinal of Wirsten had arrived the very evening of the day of my conversation with Matthew. I was not surprised to find him my dinner partner that night, and less surprised to find Greta sitting across the table from me so she could watch my every move. Ordinal was exactly what I had expected him to be, an aging, powerful man of no charm or subtlety, so convinced of his own importance that it did not occur to him to wonder if others found him quite so magnificent. Oddly enough, I did not dislike him; I was relieved that he had no sensibilities that my behavior might offend. I was also relieved that he was unlikely to notice how completely disinterested I was in him, so he would not be complaining to Matthew of my attitude. I treated him civilly, did not pay much attention when he talked, and never gave him a second thought when he was not in my immediate vicinity.
Other guests, as far as I was concerned, were equally unwelcome. Megan of Tregonia, for instance, was very much in evidence from the moment she arrived at the castle. She had improved greatly in appearance since I had first noticed her four years earlier. She was still pale and, to my way of thinking, vapid, but she had developed a certain flickering presence that caught men’s attention whenever she walked into a room.
Nearly every time I saw her, she was hanging on Kent’s arm, or seated beside him at the dinner table, or turning a corner to conveniently step into his path. Judging by the expression on his face and his unfailing courtesy, he was always pleased to see her. I spent a great deal of effort convincing myself that his manner was only polite, and that he liked her no more than I did.
Though it was nothing to me whom Kent did and did not like.
Also at the castle for these heady days were several other nobles I had met in the past, and Marian and Angela were often paired with some of these lesser lords. Indeed, more than once I saw Angela smiling decorously at Lester of Faelyn, who was highly eligible, and flirting madly with his cousin Jude, who was not. Marian had already been unofficially betrothed to Holden of Veledore, but that announcement was not to be made until after the prince’s wedding, so she had been instructed to spread her favors around. She did so, but not too willingly; she had formed a real attachment to the handsome young lord, and I wished her all the best. I had already made up a wedding kit for her, filled with herbs for happiness, serenity, and fertility. I did not think she could want for more.
Elisandra walked through these final seven days as a dreamer only lately wakened from her bed. She was much sought-after and constantly being pulled from one conversation to grace the participants in another. She could not speak more than five sentences to someone without being interrupted by someone else who absolutely had to have her attention. She smiled faintly and impartially at everyone, extended her hand to be kissed a hundred times a day, graciously accepted good wishes from obsequious strangers, and seemed to satisfy everyone’s notion of a fairy-tale princess.
But I thought she looked paler and more ethereal with every passing day. I thought she had given herself up to the reaching hands and insincere embraces with the hope that so much contact, so much squeezing and pressure and stroking, would wear her away so that, by the time the day of her wedding dawned, there would be nothing left of her at all.
During this week, Bryan and Elisandra were seldom together in the same room—seldom at the same event, except for dinner. He rode all day in the hunt, and in the evenings gathered with his uncle and the other lords to discuss politics in one of the libraries, when she was listening to music in the salon. Even over dinner, though they sat side by side, they rarely exchanged a word. Of course, they were attended by a succession of importan
t nobles to whom they had to give all their attention, but to me it seemed more deliberate than that. They had nothing to say to each other. I had long suspected that Elisandra despised Bryan, but I could not believe that he, that anyone, could feel for her anything except a famished fascination. And yet he sat beside her and ignored her; he could not have seemed less interested in marrying her if she had been a gilt and onyx statue set beside him to pretend to dine.
Which did not augur well for the success of their marriage. But then, nothing did.
ALONG WITH THE nobles, aliora came to the castle during that busy week in high summer.
I had asked Jaxon once how many aliora there were in captivity, expecting a rough estimate, and he had surprised me by giving me names. One hunter had captured ten aliora in his lifetime, who had been sold to the viceroy of Tregonia and his lords; another hunter had captured sixteen, and these had been parceled out to the lords in Chillain and Wirsten. Jaxon himself had snared thirty, all of whom had been bought by the residents of Castle Auburn or sold at Faelyn Market to nobles whose names Jaxon could still recite. A handful of others had successfully trapped one or two aliora and sold them for fabulous sums. Of the sixty-seven captured, five had escaped and eight had died in the service of their human masters. Nine, now that Andrew was dead.
Fifty-three aliora in captivity. One night, uninvited, I went up to the slave quarters at the top of the castle and crept through the room of sleeping creatures. I had sprinkled myself with siawort, which did not exactly confer invisibility but tended to distract the watcher’s gaze and made him look the other way involuntarily. No one stirred as I passed through the room, though the humming sounds of their musical dreaming paused and altered as I crept past. I had to step carefully, for though the aliora were sleeping two and three to a bed, there were still a dozen on the floor.