The Dragon of Despair (24 page)

The fabric of Elise’s clothes was just slightly damp and extraordinarily clammy. It seemed to have acquired extra folds, all striving with great vigor and enthusiasm to get as close to her warm skin as possible. She could have sworn the damp chill had a life of its own and in contrast the rain outside—now driving down harder than ever—seemed almost welcoming.

She draped an oilskin cape over the entire ensemble and stuffed her feet into her boots. Neither she nor Ninette had taken the time to scrape the mud off of them and they felt as if lead anchors had been sewn into the soles and hung around the ankles. Elise was raising the flap to duck outside when Citrine spoke:

“There’s an ocean behind the wagon. Give heed or else you’ll drown for sure.”

Elise glanced at the girl. Her face was as wooden as before, but for her eyes, which moved to follow Elise’s movement.

“An ocean?” Elise repeated. “Right. I’ll keep clear of it.”

“Mind you do,” Citrine said in that same odd, almost inflection-free tone of voice, as if in spite of the caution she was offering, she didn’t care one way or another.

Ninette shrugged.

“I’ll make more tea,” she offered, “and set your gown by the lamp to warm it.”

With this comfort and Citrine’s strange words still echoing in her mind, Elise ducked out.

The rain came down as if it had an intelligent desire to conduct an experiment as to whether a human being could really be soaked to the bones. Elise declined to participate. Wrapping her cloak more carefully about her, she made her way to where the other tents—rounded structures, not as fancy as the pavilion, but comfortable enough—had been erected. If she went out of her way to avoid the area behind the wagon, she tried hard not to think about it.

Most of the men of her escort were crowded into one tent, playing cards—a thing made rather difficult in that they were sitting so close to each other that honor alone kept them from reading each other’s hands.

When Elise pushed the flap aside, the man nearest started to curse, thinking her one of his fellows who’d chosen to bed down in the other tent rather than play. He stopped in midword, seeing the pale face framed in its wisps of fair hair beneath the dripping hood.

“Just came to make certain,” Elise said hesitantly, squeezing inside, careful not to touch the sides of the tent and give the water a way through, “that you all are all right.”

Heads bobbed and even the man near the tent flap, on whom she was unavoidably dripping, grinned.

“Well enough, Lady Archer,” their leader said. “Fairly dry, at least.”

Now that Elise was inside, she could smell a thick, beery reek. Oddly, she felt relieved. If they had drink as well as something to eat—and she could see heels of bread and rinds of cheese from completed meals shoved here and there—then they should be content.

“Then I’ll just leave you to your game,” she said, ducking out once more. She didn’t stop to listen to what they might say about her. Lady Aurella had taught her that what one overhears is rarely pleasant.

BY THE NEXT MORNING
, the storm had spent its fury, leaving a muddy road partially obscured by large spreading puddles. The woods and fields within sight were sopping, but the trees were unfolding new leaves as if encouraged by all the wetness.

Elise imagined that the sky looked vaguely embarrassed for having made such a fuss.

What she didn’t imagine was an especially broad pool—nearly an ocean if one was feeling poetic—that spread from beneath the wagon to its rear and across the road. It was so wide that there was no easy way to avoid it unless they wished to abandon the wagon entirely.

Elise warned her escort to be particularly careful about this puddle, suffering slightly under their condescension as they obeyed. She knew they were humoring her. However, her care was repaid when one of the less perfectly obedient decided to lead one of the horses through the edge of the pool.

The murky water proved deceptively deep and the horse sank nearly to its chest in the clingy, clay-suffused mud. They lost a fair amount of time getting the horse out without injury, and then Elise suggested that they take shovels and dig a few channels to divert most of the water.

“This pool could prove a hazard to other travelers as well,” she said. “We owe their care to the king.”

There were no condescending glances this time, and the men—all but the driver and one delegated to continue the packing—dug with a will. The majority of the water drained away readily, revealing a deep hole, far deeper than any of the road ruts they’d seen thus far.

The leader of Elise’s escort poked down into the remaining water with his shovel, three-quarters of its length vanishing before the blade rang against stone.

“I recall there was a big rock flush with the surface of the road just where we pulled the wagon off,” he said. “Must have been loosened by all the water last night and fell down into some animal den or such. Good thing you told us to be careful, my lady. We could have lost a man down there.”

Elise nodded polite acceptance of his praise, but her gaze shifted to Citrine. The little girl sat her pony, almost as motionless as she had been the day before. Today, however, her gaze was animated, and she looked faintly amused and quite superior.

The expression was familiar and Elise struggled to place it. After a moment she did so, but she felt no pleasure in the memory. Citrine’s expression was a perfect match for that of her mother, Melina, the sorceress.

THEY ARRIVED
at the Kestrel estate on the Norwood Grant a few days later than expected, but, given how wet the weather had been, the duchess had not yet ordered search parties to find them.

However, Elise did not think it was a complete coincidence that Edlin Norwood, the earl’s eldest son, had chosen to take his afternoon ride down the road along which they could be expected to arrive.

Edlin was in his very early twenties, a handsome enough youth if one liked loose limbs, and a somewhat rangy bearing, accompanied by a beaming smile. There had been a time when Elise had quite liked all those things, enough to overlook how unfashionably short Edlin wore his curly black hair and the cheerful irreverence in his laughing grey eyes. Elise’s fancy had passed, but had left her with a fondness for Edlin that had been intensified by their shared trials in New Kelvin.

Accompanied by a half-dozen of the red-spotted white hunting dogs that were one of his great enthusiasms, Edlin rode forward. The horse he was mounted on was a rather flashy liver chestnut with a flaxen mane and tail. Elise felt certain she would have remembered the horse if it had been part of the Kestrel stables the previous winter and decided that here, as with her own Cream Delight, she was seeing the end result of doing business with Prancing Steed Stables.

Fleetingly, she wondered where Derian Carter and Firekeeper were now. Had they even turned back from the western lands? What if King Tedric was wrong and Firekeeper intended to winter there? Could Elise manage this proposed expedition without their aid?

Edlin reined in, swiveling the liver chestnut around so that they were all headed in the same direction. He shouted commands at the dogs—each of which seemed to find the wagon endlessly fascinating, though they took care to avoid the horses.

“Ho, you pack of worthless dogs! Away from there, Dancer. You’ll have a hoof through your head! Back, Spangles!”

Despite Edlin’s flurry of commands, the dogs were actually fairly well behaved and fell to sniffing along the side of the road or—in the case of a particularly serious-seeming pair—setting themselves to lead the procession toward the house.

Edlin wiped his arm across his forehead. His tricorn was set at a jaunty angle rather far back on his head, doubtless to permit just this. Elise couldn’t help compare Edlin with his far more serious father and wondered, not for the first time, how well they got along. Nor was Edlin terribly like his mother, Lady Luella Kite.

A cuckoo’s chick
, she thought, meaning no disrespect to either of Edlin’s parents, for though he lacked the distinctive hawklike nose, Edlin was clearly Kestrel.

Edlin bobbed something like a bow from the saddle.

“Greetings, Lady Archer! Wet road, what? Guessed as much from all the mud on the wagon. No real trouble though, right?”

“Not much, Lord Edlin,” she replied. It occurred to her that Edlin had as much right to be called Lord Kestrel as she did to be called Lady Archer. Both of them were past their minority. However, on Edlin the youthful form of address seemed to have stuck.

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” he replied happily. He maneuvered his horse so that it drew alongside Citrine’s pony. “And how are you, cousin?”

Elise held her breath, her hands tight on Cream Delight’s reins. Citrine had adjusted to the presence of the men in the escort by refusing to acknowledge their existence. However, one of the worst moments along the road had come when a fellow traveler had offered the child a cheerful greeting. Citrine had screamed so that it had been a blessing when the man’s horse had bolted.

After that, Elise had tried to get Citrine to ride in the wagon, where she could be screened from casual observation. The child’s tantrums at that suggestion had been so violent that Elise had never dared make it again.

Citrine, however, took no offense at Edlin’s words, nor at his proximity. She bobbed her head in a shy, childish fashion and positively twinkled at him.

“I’m well, cousin,” she answered softly, offering her hand. “That’s a pretty horse you have.”

“Name’s Moonkissed,” Edlin replied. “New come to our stables. I like her too. Want to ride with me?”

In reply Citrine held up her arms and, to the unconcealed amazement of all, permitted Edlin to lift her from her pony’s saddle to sit in front of him.

“Make Moonkissed go fast!” the little girl giggled, and Edlin, always impulsive, obliged, urging the mare into a gentle canter.

His dogs ran after, a few barking as if on the chase.

Elise stared after them, amazed and yet curiously unsettled. As far as she knew, Citrine and Edlin were mere acquaintances. Certainly, they knew each other, but over ten years separated them and so those social occasions when they would mix would have been rare. Citrine had only been permitted to attend adult gatherings maybe the last two years and at those her family’s seat would have been lower than the Kestrels’.

Yet here was Citrine treating Edlin as if he were her dearest friend. From the muttering of the rider who came forward to gather up the pony’s reins, Elise wasn’t the only one unsettled by the girl’s spontaneous friendliness.

I should be happy,
Elise thought.
Relieved. Surely if Citrine has taken to Edlin it will make our journey easier.

She remained unsettled, though, and tried to make herself believe that all she was experiencing was a spate of petty jealousy at being replaced as “best cousin.” Try as she might, in her heart of hearts, Elise was not reassured.

“
WE’RE PUTTING YOU
in a nice house about an hour’s walk from this one,” Duchess Kestrel said. “It has been a dower house in its time, also a place where more than one young couple of the family has first set up. It’s large enough for you and Citrine, your maid, Wendee Jay, and some servants.

“I’ve handpicked those,” the duchess went on, “for their skill and discretion. You won’t be entertaining, so I didn’t bother with a butler, but you’ll have a housekeeper, cook, several maids, a gardener, groundkeeper, groom, boot boy…”

“So many!” Elise gasped. “You won’t have any servants left for your own household.”

“Nonsense. We have more than enough to go around and a few who will be happy to prove their worth in a new establishment. Laundry, however, will need to be sent here. I have been informed that the tubs at your house are in need of repair and scouring before they will suit.”

For a moment, Duchess Norwood looked like any housekeeper informed of such an annoyance, then her pale eyes became serious.

“In any case, the more servants I send you, the more eyes there will be to see that your behavior is perfectly respectable. The more tongues to confirm it, too, if the gossips get started.”

Elise blushed, but the duchess pretended not to notice and went on with her description.

“There is a gatekeeper’s house on the grounds, quite large enough for a bachelor establishment. That is where Grateful Peace will stay, and the other gentlemen when they come for their lessons. There will be no question of lack of propriety.”

Elise smiled in gratitude at the old woman. It was very hard to believe Duchess Kestrel the scandalous creature of Grand Duchess Rosene’s acid-tongued memories, but when Elise had questioned Lady Aurella her mother had confirmed that no one knew the name of the man who had fathered Norvin and Eirene.

“You have gone to a great deal of trouble, Duchess.”

“Not too much when it’s to fulfill the king’s own request,” came the bland reply. “In any case, the house needed to be opened, aired, and put into order. No one has lived in it for several years. Eventually, we will need it for Edlin and his wife…”

“Is he planning to marry?” Elise asked, realizing too late that she had interrupted.

“Not that I’ve been told,” Saedee Norwood replied with a laugh, “but he’s of an age and even if he is not ready to marry, it might not be unwise for him to learn how to manage his own household—perhaps when he returns from New Kelvin. In the meantime, this gives a good excuse to learn what drains aren’t working and just where the roof has begun to leak.”

They shared a laugh over this; then Elise grew serious.

“You do know that the king wishes to keep gossip to a minimum,” she said.

“I do,” the duchess replied, “but the easiest way to start gossip is to tell the servants not to talk. Everyone knows that the crown princess’s sister is touched in her mind. I have given out that she has been brought here to get away from things that will awaken bad memories. You have come as a confidant of the queen. As to your language lessons, well, that was a bit of a puzzler. Norvin suggested that it was reasonable to give Citrine something new to concentrate on—that perhaps she had been left too much to herself and to familiar things.”