Summers at Castle Auburn (8 page)

“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 she 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.

 

T
HE 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.