It was hard for me to even pretend to look contrite, though I tried. “I thought we were to meet at the stables. When I arrived there, she was nowhere in sight, and we needed to leave immediately—”
She shook her finger at me even more angrily, though she had to glare up at me, which ruined the effect somewhat. “Don’t lie to me, you idiot girl! I know full well that you left her behind on purpose—to make a mockery of me and a hoyden of yourself! But it’s not me you’re hurting. Oh no, it’s yourself. What respectable young man will take you if you persist in such antics? What hope do I ever have of finding you a husband?”
I stood stock-still. Why had this topic come up so repeatedly in the past few days? “I have no thought of marriage,” I said stiffly. “And even if I did, I would not look to you to find me a husband.”
“Then the more fool you,” she said tartly. “Why else do you suppose your stubborn uncle drags you to court year after year except to introduce you to the eligible men of the eight provinces? He does not want to see his own flesh and blood—bastard though she be!—thrown away on some half-wit yokel from down in the southern swamps. The Halsings are too proud for that. He wants you wed, and wed well, and I have promised him I will do what I can. But if you continue to thwart me as you have—”
“And why would you care if I marry a lord or a stablekeeper?” I demanded, losing my own temper. “You can scarcely stand the sight of me!”
“I know my obligations,” she said stiffly. “I know what is right.”
“Well, you have no obligations to me,” I declared. “I would not marry a husband of your choosing if there were no other men—”
“Be quiet!” she exclaimed, furious again. “You will listen for once, and you will do what I say! You have come to court to meet your future husband, but it will not be this week. I am too angry with you. You will not join us for the grand dinner honoring Lord Dirkson of Tregonia. In fact, you will not be permitted at any of the festivities for the rest of your stay here until you can prove to me that you can behave like a lady. And,” she added, as she saw me draw breath to say that I did not give a damn about the court festivities, “if your behavior continues unchecked, you will not be permitted to ride, you will not be permitted to leave the castle grounds, you will not be allowed to wander even about the castle unescorted. Do I make myself plain? Guard your actions, or they will be guarded for you.”
I could have killed her, right there in the hallway, pummeled her tense little body into bits of bone and taffeta. But very clearly she meant every word; and she had the power to enforce her threats. I could feel my very blood grow brittle as I replied in a shaking voice, “Yes, Greta, I understand you very well.” It took all the willpower at my command to keep from adding all the epithets I knew, especially since she watched me a long moment to see if she could goad me into some further indiscretion. But I held my tongue and stared balefully at her, and finally she turned to leave.
“You will come to my chambers in the morning,” she said over her shoulder, “and we will plan your lessons for the day. There are parts of your education that have been too long neglected.”
With that parting sally, she moved quickly down the hall, smoothing the front of her dress as if by that action she could smooth down her own ruffled emotions. I stared after her with bitter resentment, then stormed into my room where I stomped around until I wore myself out.
It was not until early evening that I finally saw Elisandra. I had flung myself on my bed and was reading a badly written romance when she knocked on the door and called my name.
“Come in! Come in!” I cried, sitting up and nearly bouncing on the bed. “I have been looking for you all—oh, but you can’t stay, can you? You’re all dressed up for dinner.”
Crossing the room to my side, Elisandra pirouetted once, slowly and gracefully as she did all things, to allow me to see the full glory of her gown. It was a glittering silver net laid over a dove-gray silk, and at every diamond-shaped intersection of heavy thread there was sewn a pearl. Her black hair was braided back from her face and pinned in place with silver and diamond combs; great icy scallops of the same gem hung around her throat and wrists.
“How do you like me?” she asked, dropping to a chair beside my bed. “Will Megan of Tregonia be jealous and impressed? Will Lord Dirkson call me the Treasure of Auburn, as he has before?”
“Will Prince Bryan fall to your feet and declare you the most beautiful woman in the eight provinces?” I asked.
“That, too,” she said serenely, and folded her hands carefully in her lap.
I studied her for a moment, for my sister was a woman it was impossible to look away from. She was beautiful, of course, with the night-dark hair and eyes that characterized everyone in the Halsing line; she had her mother’s fine features and regal bearing, and an innate elegance that I had simply never seen falter. But there was something else about Elisandra that was even more striking, and that was her air of absolute, unbreakable calm. Even when she spoke and gestured in the course of an ordinary conversation, a great stillness lay behind the animation of her features and the glances of her eyes. Even when she danced, she seemed to move as a figure in a frieze would, stately and frozen in place from panel to panel. There was no exuberance in her, no matter how she laughed or smiled. There was a great watchfulness that hung about her like a curtain of light or shadow, and filtered out any thoughts, any expressions, that she wanted no other to see.
I wanted nothing so much as to be like her, and I had no hope of it. My one consolation was that she loved me and never failed to show it. She was courteous to everyone, and she never spoke in anger; but to me she showed a deep affection that left me glowing and grateful by turns. She had no cause to love a bastard half sister foisted upon her by a determined and wayward uncle, but she did—and that was the real reason I was eager, every year, to return to Castle Auburn.
“How long will this horrid Megan be here?” I asked presently.
Elisandra looked mildly amused. “What makes you think she’s horrid?”
“Bryan says she flirts with him.”
She nodded. “All the girls flirt with him.”
“Well, I thought she sounded worse than most.”
“You just say that because she’s here.”
“So is she horrid?” I asked.
“Not particularly. A little insipid. Her father is very powerful and thinks that makes up for his own deficiencies in intellect, as well as his daughter’s.” She shrugged lightly. “Who knows? Perhaps he is right. So did you enjoy your trip?”
“Oh, it was the most wonderful time ever!” I exclaimed. “We rode and rode, and then we were in the forest and we had to walk, and we camped by the Faelyn River and ate dayig—”
“Dayig?”
I nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, it’s a poison fruit, and Jaxon—”
“Poison!”
“Well, only the seeds are poison. Jaxon taught us how to eat it, but only Kent and Roderick and I would try it.”
“Who’s Roderick?”
“A new guardsman from Veledore. He came along to protect us, although Bryan said he didn’t need any protection. And I never saw him use a sword,” I added, “but he was very clever with a crossbow. I liked him. He smiled a lot.”
“I’ll have to watch for him, then, although guardsmen don’t often come my way. Did you find any aliora?”
I hesitated, but in actual fact, we had not found any—though one had come across us. “No,” I said. “But I don’t think Jaxon expected us to. I think you have to be much quieter than we were.”
She smiled faintly. “Just as well, maybe. I don’t think I would enjoy being along on a trip where wild things were trapped for the purpose of being sold into bondage.”
Just this thought had begun to nag at me that afternoon. Still, it was new enough that I felt free to argue. “But I love having the aliora at the castle!” I exclaimed. “Cressida braids my hair for me when no one else will take the time, and s
he sat up with me for three straight nights last summer when I was sick—”
Elisandra nodded. “Yes, impossible to imagine life without them. I just sometimes—” She paused, shrugged, and then smiled the thought away. “So what else happened on this wonderful trip? Did you argue with Kent? Flirt with Bryan?”
I had planned to keep this great betrayal a secret, but the words built up like a storm force inside my chest, and then burst out in one swift, guilty rush. “Oh—Elisandra—I did!” I admitted. “Flirt with Bryan, I mean. We were riding back, and he was telling me about Megan of Tregonia, and how the lords and ladies talk to each other and he—he kissed my hand! I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, but I didn’t know he was going to do it and it made me so happy, but I know it was wrong—”
Elisandra was laughing. She reached out and took both my offending hands in hers. “Oh, silly Corie, Bryan kisses lots of girls on the hand. On the mouth, too, when there aren’t four or five other people watching nearby. Bryan’s a terrible flirt. He can’t help it. All the girls are crazy for the handsome young prince.”
“So you don’t mind?” I asked anxiously. “Because I try not to adore him, you know—and of all the girls in the castle, I’m glad that it’s you who gets to marry him, because you’re so beautiful and so kind that you deserve him more than anybody else does—but I can’t help it. My heart just hurts sometimes when I look at him. I do try to get over him every winter when I go back home. Maybe this year I’ll be able to manage it.”
She was laughing still, but now she looked a little sad, though I couldn’t tell what in my tumbling speech would have sparked that emotion. “It is not for my own sake that I wish you wouldn’t love Bryan,” she said softly, refolding her hands in her lap. “I hate to see you hurt or heartbroken. Bryan knows very well what his life holds. Nothing in your adoration will change that.”
“I know—I know,” I said unhappily. “Even if he was not betrothed to you, Bryan would not love me. I’m not the kind of girl that princes marry.”
Now she looked even sadder, though she smiled and leaned over to kiss my cheek. “But you’re one hundred times more lovable than Megan of Tregonia,” she whispered. I laughed. She straightened in her chair and glanced at my bedside clock. “Almost time for me to go,” she said. “I wish you were to be dining with us. But my mother tells me—”
“I am not to have any fun for weeks,” I said glumly. “And if I don’t behave—”
“I know. She told me. I know you don’t like her, Corie, but in a way she’s right. While you’re here, you do owe it to yourself to behave a little bit more like a lady.”
“So she can find me a husband?” I demanded. “Who ever thought that’s why Jaxon brought me here?”
“Everyone, silly,” she said, smiling again.
“Well, I’m not going to be forced into some stupid marriage with some stupid boy from some northern province that I’ve never even been to,” I said sullenly. “I don’t even want to marry! I want to live at my grandmother’s cottage and become a wise woman to be useful and good. I don’t need to marry to do that.”
“No one wants to marry you off to someone you don’t care for,” she said. “And anyway, all that is years away.”
“And who would marry me, that’s what I want to know,” I said next, regaining my spunk. “No lord’s son is going to marry some witch woman’s daughter born out of wedlock—”
“You’re a Halsing,” she said with gentle pride. “It’s the second most famous name in Auburn. And your uncle is one of the richest men in the eight provinces—and he’s shown that he has your welfare at heart. You are much more marketable than you realize, my dear.”
“When you put it like that,” I said deliberately, “I’d rather marry a stablehand.”
She laughed and rose to her feet. “Many days, so would I,” she said. “But some of us don’t get the choice.”
“Don’t go yet,” I begged. “I haven’t seen you for days.”
“I must. I’m late already. But tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow morning your mother says I must come learn lessons in her chamber.”
“Tomorrow afternoon, then. We’ll go riding. I can teach you just as much as my mother can about how to be a lady.”
She kissed me again and was gone in a swirl of silver skirts. I stretched out on the bed again and thought over everything we’d said. So they really planned to marry me off to some minor lordling who wished to curry favor with my uncle. Elisandra, who had been promised to Bryan on the day of the prince’s birth, knew better than anyone what it meant to be bartered away for lands and bloodlines. But Elisandra, at least, was slated to marry the most eligible and desirable man in the entire kingdom; no reason there for any complaining.
I rolled onto my stomach and rested my fist upon my chin. But perhaps the boy they found for me would be handsome and dashing, too. Not as spectacular as Bryan, of course, but broad-shouldered and fierce-eyed, brilliant in battle and tempestuous in love. They might find me a lord’s son who matched that description. I might even develop a fondness for him, though no one would replace Bryan in my heart.
And if I was not fond of him, no one could make me marry him, and that I resolved at that very minute. I might be half Halsing, but I was half woodwitch, too, and the women of my mother’s family had always proved a little hard to coerce. No one would make me do anything I did not want to do. Comforted by that thought, I turned on my side and resumed my reading.
THE NEXT FEW days were trying in the extreme. In the mornings, I sat with Greta in her chamber, allowing her to drill me in manners, deportment, and speech (she didn’t like my southern accent and had said so more than once in the past). Elisandra escaped her own duties only once to go riding with me; and Kent, who could sometimes be counted on to play a game of cards with me, was nowhere to be found. Off squiring Megan around, I supposed. I despised the young lady even more.
I did come across Roderick one day, finishing up sword practice in the yard with the rest of the young guardsmen. I was not enough of a judge to determine whether he did well or poorly, but he was still standing at the end of the final bout, while some of the men were not. I had joined about a dozen other spectators sitting or leaning on the broad wood fence that circled the weapons yard. Most of the others were kitchen maids, who were making eyes at the young men, or old soldiers, who had come to watch with a critical eye. There were no others of noble blood, or even half noble blood, anywhere in the vicinity.
I was surprised when Roderick came over afterward to greet me, pulling off his helmet to reveal his matted sandy hair. I had not thought he would notice me among the others, dressed in my plain daytime gown.
“Well, you’ve learned the trick of hunting aliora,” he remarked, leaning his elbow on the top railing of the fence. I had perched precariously on top, and was swinging my legs rhythmically despite the very real possibility of overbalancing and falling off. “Are you next going to take up swordplay?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Ugh,” I said. “So I can learn to kill people? I don’t think so.”
He gave me that lazy smile, and his whole freckled face looked amused. “Well, you wouldn’t have to kill them all. Just disable them. Discourage them a little.”
“Are you any good?” I asked directly. “I can’t tell.”
He shrugged. “I’m improving,” he said in a laconic voice. Which told me nothing, since Roderick did not seem the type to boast of his prowess. I would have to ask Kent. “Yesterday I got a cut in the shoulder because I was careless.” He flexed his arm experimentally and frowned briefly in pain. “Hurts more than I thought it would.”
Now I was interested, in a professional way. “Have you bound it? Put salve on it?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It didn’t bleed so much as all that. It’ll heal in a day or so.”
Most of the onlookers had dispersed by now, and the guardsmen still in the yard were talking amongst themselves. No one appeared to be paying us any attention a
t all. “Let me see it,” I said.
Again that smile crossed his face, but without any protestations of modesty, he unlaced his leather vest and unbuttoned the cotton shirt beneath. The wound on his shoulder had started to bleed again with the afternoon’s activity, and it did not look to me quite as minor as he had made it out to be. Nothing that would kill him—unless it got infected—but it was a cut that would cause him great discomfort.
“I have something I can give you for that,” I said, swinging my legs to the outer edge of the fence and hopping to the ground. “Come up to my room and I’ll give you a salve.”
He did not move. “Come up to your room?” he repeated. “I don’t think so.”
I stopped with one foot already on the path back to the castle. Of course, stupid girl. Even Kent, who was close friends with my sister, rarely came to the suite of rooms reserved for Greta, Elisandra, and their attendants. Bachelor men and their valets resided in rooms on the other side of the castle, while the royal apartments were in the central portion. And guardsmen of Roderick’s status were almost never in any of these wings; they lived in barracks situated nearer to the stables than the ballrooms.
“Lady Greta is right,” I said with a smile, pivoting back to him. “I’ll never understand the etiquette of the royal household.”
Roderick was relacing his vest. “I’ll be fine as I am.”
“No, I’ll get you something. Meet me in the stables in twenty minutes.”
He still seemed reluctant, and his next words explained why. “Are you really sure you can concoct some ointment to soothe this? You’re a very nice girl, I’m sure, but—”
I laughed out loud. “My grandmother is a wise woman, and I’m her apprentice,” I said. “Didn’t anybody tell you that? I know a lot about herbs and medicines—and other potions, too, when it comes to that.”