The Black Prince: Part II (50 page)

Which, she supposed, loving any man did. The cost of marrying a crofter might be dying of starvation during a particularly brutal winter. The cost of marrying her father had been, for her mother, seeing her children sold on the block.

She went downstairs.

Solene stood, studying the books in one of the cabinets. She was resplendent in cream and gold. Colors that suited her, Lissa had to admit. Hart’s wife was beautiful in a frightening, otherworldly sort of way. She looked a bit like a model a painter might choose, if he were attempting to describe a Valkyrie.

“Greetings,” she said. “Welcome to my home.”

Solene turned. She looked Lissa up and down. “You aren’t what I expected.”

“Then I hope what you find pleases you.”

“No.”

Lissa sat down on the couch. She folded her hands in her lap, and waited. It wasn’t lost on her that Solene hadn’t bothered to introduce herself. Nor extend any greeting of any kind. Lissa couldn’t decide if that was because Solene had no manners or, if visiting the home of people she considered beneath her, she’d simply taken leave of them. She supposed though, that she’d find out as the conversation progressed. In whatever direction Solene intended.

She’d left the door open and Tad came in, carrying a tray. He put it down on one of three matching end tables scattered about the room, another acquisition of Master Hamel’s. Silently, he poured her a cup of tea. He did not pour one for Solene. Merely nodded and left.

Lissa noted, with some amusement, the comment on Thomasina’s part. That their guest merited tea, not wine, even though it was well past noon. And not an expensive tea, either, but a simple one brewed from the rose hips in their own garden.

“Would you care for tea?” Lissa asked.

“No.” Solene had begun pacing about the room.

Lissa hadn’t forgotten Hart’s warning. If the tea had already been waiting for her when she’d arrived, she wouldn’t have touched it. She knew that Thomasina had been privy to no such warning but wondered if, seeing their guest, she’d simply guessed. There was something about Solene that, for lack of a better term, wasn’t quite right.

The tea had been brewed with honey, and was strong.

“I suppose you’re pretty enough,” Solene said.

“Thank you.” Lissa spoke quietly.

“In a childlike sort of way. You’ve the build of a boy but I’m told that some men find that appealing.” Solene sniffed. “You clearly have no sense of fashion, though. And your hair.” She turned. “Do you always dress like a nun?”

“When I’ve spent the morning folding clothes,” Lissa said honestly, “yes.”

“Why would you do a servant’s work?” Solene sounded genuinely curious.

“They are my clothes.”

“But surely a house like this has servants.”

“Of course.”

Solene resumed her circuit of the room. “I must admit,” she said, “that I was surprised to see where you lived. I had…envisioned something else. But here you are, living the quiet life of any Southern maiden, with your parents. A life that even the most stringent of church fathers would find above reproach.” She sniffed again. “I don’t understand how this, any of this, aligns with your former profession.”

“My parents are my adopted parents.”

“I find that difficult to believe.” Solene’s strange eyes were on her again. “That woman, your mother, you look exactly like her. Thinner, of course.”

Lissa, herself, didn’t see the resemblance. But she took Solene’s remark as a compliment. Whether it was meant as one or no.

Solene stopped again. “I want to know why he loves you and not me.”

This one didn’t mince words.

Lissa, again, answered honestly. “I don’t know.”

“He should love me. I am more beautiful than you. I am richer than you. I have breeding, and position. You, meanwhile, have nothing. And so I don’t understand.”

Lissa sensed that, as rude as Solene was being, she didn’t actually intend to be. She was, rather, like a child: simply describing the world as she saw it, and without great attention to the social conventions that limited her parents’ urges to do the same. Solene was the child who’d call her father’s friend fat, or her mother’s friend stupid, and have to be shushed while she plaintively demanded to know what she’d done wrong and didn’t everyone else also notice.

“But do you love him.”

Solene’s brow knitted slightly. “What?”

“Do you love him. Hart. Your husband.”

“No. I don’t know.” She paused, considering. “He’s my husband, so I should.”

“I love him.”

“He’s a cruel man. Even evil.”

Lissa shrugged. “That doesn’t matter to me.”

Solene sat in the chair opposite. She poured herself some tea. Lissa was a little surprised to see that she knew how. Solene didn’t seem like one to wait on herself. But then again, people were full of surprises.

She sipped it. “This is…not terrible.”

“My mother brews it.”

“I’m not going to poison you,” Solene said matter of factly. “Hart would kill me.”

“That is good to know. Thank you.”

“Everyone is afraid of me.”

“Do you want them to be?”

Again, the indecision. “Yes. No. I don’t know. Perhaps.”

Lissa sipped her own tea.

“You must want to poison me, however.”

Lissa shook her head. “No.”

“Why not?” Solene’s question sounded almost challenging.

“Because I believe that we can coexist.”

“Why would you want to…coexist?”

“For Hart’s sake.”

“I…don’t understand.”

“I know.” Lissa put down her cup. Out of reach of Solene. “You want him to be someone else,” she explained. “Someone he would not choose to be and, indeed, could not choose to be. Regardless of what he wanted.” She held Solene’s gaze, willing her to understand. “If you would be happy with him, or at least content, then ask for something that’s within his power to give.”

“You are being…kind to me. I did not expect this.”

“What did you expect?”

“For you to refuse to see me. For you to be angry that I am his wife, and have the certainty of that position. For you to hate me, for all the reasons I hate you.”

“We can’t control how we feel.”

Solene’s lips pressed into a thin line. “No one else seems to understand this.”

“Our hearts are wild creatures,” Lissa replied. “That’s why our ribs are cages.”

Solene took her leave shortly thereafter. Lissa wasn’t certain what, exactly, had transpired. She and Solene had certainly not become friends. Then again, she doubted that Solene had friends. Or wanted them. But maybe, just maybe, they’d established a truce.

Lissa had been sitting there alone, on the couch, for about an hour when Thomasina came in.

“That was something,” she said, taking up the rest of the couch with her bulk. Which today was swathed in red.

Lissa didn’t respond.

“As wives go,” her adopted mother said, “I’ve heard of worse. Met worse.”

Lissa turned, and her eyes widened.

“I, to be honest, expected worse. Based on what I know of the South, and Hart’s part of it in particular. And that ghastly church. But, after having met her, I’m really rather hopeful that you two can make a go of things. She seems to like you. And she’s frightened of you, which is better.”

“You knew?” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

Thomasina’s eyes softened. “Oh, sweetheart. Of course I knew.”

“But how…?”

“Because I’m old. And old, fat women know things.”

The tears came unbidden, and entirely unexpectedly. “I’m scared.”

Thomasina took her into her arms. Lissa let herself be taken, leaning against her mother’s comforting bulk. That Thomasina was her mother, and the only true mother she’d ever known, she had no doubt. Thomasina, meanwhile, stroked her hair and said nothing.

Just let Lissa cry, until there were no more tears.

And then, “it will be alright. He loves you, after his own difficult fashion. And it will be alright.”

I
sla saw Rowena walking alone through Barghast, and decided to follow her.

She was at the jeweler’s shop, picking up Asher’s ring. There were guards outside, waiting for her. And Greta. So she decided to use Asher’s trick and claim a need for the garderobes. Which, as the shop had none, meant a trip to the proprietor’s own house overhead. From there it was a simple enough thing to race down the house’s own internal staircase and out through the kitchen door.

Into the thronging crowds, and obscurity.

She caught sight of Rowena easily. Rowena never faded into anything, even a minstrel show. Her dress was a riot of color, making her look like a pennant snapping in the fog. Isla, meanwhile, had the distinct advantage of being in gray. Like most of the rest of Barghast. Gray cloaks, gray stone. Gray skies overhead. Spring was their rainy season.

It was nothing short of a miracle that Rowena hadn’t seen her. Then again, for all that she was clearly up to no good, she was also making no effort to be covert. Although constantly looking around her might have brought more attention than simply walking, Isla considered. As it was, no one other than Isla and a few others knew that Rowena had made a point of telling everyone that she’d be attending a reading of
The Chivalrous Heart
at Greta’s aunt’s house.

Which was on the other side of Barghast and currently ongoing.

So Isla had been more than a little surprised to catch her sister—who rarely ever left the castle, for any reason—out of the corner of her eye.

And now she was acting like one of Asher’s friends, playing scouts.

In short, she was acting like a complete fool.

She supposed that the startled maid back at the jeweler’s would report having seen her eventually. That, indeed, someone would begin to worry that she’d died in the garderobes. There was another rumor going around that she was with child. The more she denied it, the more the rumor grew. So she’d get a few extra minutes, while everyone assumed that she was in there being sick.

Then they’d check, and then they’d start to look.

And she’d have a difficult time explaining herself. If she even tried to at all. Which she most likely would not. It was about time, she thought, that she started using the fact that she was a duchess to her advantage. Duchesses could go where they pleased; duchesses could be as strange as they pleased. And duchesses, especially potentially pregnant duchesses, were known for being strange.

She might indeed say that she’d thought she’d seen Rowena, but had been mistaken.

If they wondered why, then, she hadn’t simply gone out the front door…well, that was for them to wonder.

The simple truth was that she’d long been suspicious of her sister. Not for any reason she could put her finger on; it was more of a general sense that Rowena was up to something. As in, something more than usual. That she manipulated, even outright lied as a matter of course was a shock to no one, least of all Isla. But what concerned Isla more than Rowena’s obvious avarice, and her jealousy, was Rowena’s recent tendency to be absent at significant moments.

Where had she been the first time Asher had met Maeve? Rowena had, prior to that moment, been all but dogging the child’s footsteps. Attempting to frighten him, or curry favor, Isla didn’t know which. But then…she’d suddenly lost interest. And then, the second time Maeve had appeared, when Asher had nearly died, Rowena had also managed to be elsewhere.

Her timing was so perfect, it was almost as if she knew something the rest of the household didn’t.

For Isla, sitting beside her son’s prone form, couldn’t help but think that none of their recent misfortunes had left Rowena terribly surprised.

And when she had returned, from wherever she’d been, to find the castle still in an uproar, she’d done something even more damning. From Isla’s perspective, at least. Or rather not done. She hadn’t asked what was wrong. In her shoes, Isla would certainly have wanted to know. Even counting for Rowena’s self-absorption, she still should have been curious. If for no other reason than that whatever had everyone else so upset might threaten her own safety.

All of which begged the question: what
did
Rowena know? And how? Had she, herself, met with Maeve? Was she the silhouette Apple had seen? Or thought she’d seen?

Isla knew that Rowena would never answer these questions. At least not honestly. Which made this opportunity too tantalizing—and maybe, ultimately, too important—to pass up.

Staying several paces behind her, Isla trailed her sister to an inn she’d never heard of called The Crooked Hare.

It looked like a nice enough place, clean and well maintained. Clearly, though, catering to a different crowd than that found at the castle. These were lower rung merchants and farmers, well enough off to travel but just barely, who had business in Barghast of one sort or another. No guardsmen, or members of the city watch, strode in and out through the main entrance. Nor anyone from the more impressive guilds. At least, not that Isla recognized.

In short, Rowena had found the perfect place for an assignation.

Isla was surprised to see, though, that Rowena didn’t go into the inn proper but instead into the adjoining stables. Finally now she looked around: a quick glance right and then one left. Isla, her breath catching, ducked down behind the wall enclosing the inn’s courtyard. Her sister’s eyes passed right over her and, when Isla dared to peer over the dressed stone, she was gone.