Hidden Huntress

by Danielle L. Jensen

  “I certainly hope you declined.”

  Opening my eyes, I saw my mother standing next to the desk, Tristan’s note in her hands. I’d left it there knowing she would pick it up, because as much as this ruse was for Anushka’s benefit, it also required luring my mother in. “Of course I didn’t. Why should I have?”

  She grimaced and was silent for a long moment. “Accepting a last-minute invitation makes you appear eager. Desperate. Boring. None of which are attractive qualities.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. He knows me well enough to have made his own judgments.”

  “Which is rather interesting, given that you’ve never mentioned him before.”

  “I didn’t think I’d ever have the opportunity to see him again,” I said, sorting through the sweets so that I wouldn’t have to look her in the eye as I lied. “I met him in Courville this summer. After I was injured, I didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye before the Girards whisked me back to the Hollow. I didn’t even know he knew I was in Trianon until I received his letter.”

  “And just how well do you know this young man?”

  Her inflection and her meaning were obvious and my cheeks burned. “Not that well, mother.”

  Relief flooded her face. “Small mercies.”

  Catching her by the arm, I led her to the settee and pressed a salted caramel upon her because I knew they were her favorite. “I thought this was what you wanted for me,” I said. “You yourself said this is what you had me trained for.”

  “He is a poor choice.”

  “Why?”

  She set the candy on the table. “After you told me the two of you were acquainted, I took the liberty of tracking him down, Cécile. He is not right for this purpose. He’s too young, too handsome, too used to having everything he wants. I’ve met his kind before: his affections will be fierce, but fleeting. And he will not be discreet. There are better options.”

  “Like the Marquis.” My tone was sour.

  She nodded. “He will provide what you need at very little cost to your person. And no risk of heartbreak.”

  I picked up her candy and ate it myself.

  “This young man will only end up hurting you,” she said, taking my hand. “He’ll eventually take a wife and his attentions will turn to her. And there is no chance of it being you. You are not of the same class, and whether he says so or not, he considers himself better than you. Is that really a path you want to go down?”

  The caramel was sticking in my teeth and tasted overly sweet. “What if it is?”

  “Then you’re making a mistake.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  She caught hold of my chin, forcing me to look into her eyes. “Are you in love with this man, Cécile?”

  I jerked my chin free. This conversation had gotten away from me.

  “Well, that explains a great deal.”

  I got to my feet, retrieving my box of candies and Tristan’s note. “This is my life, Mama, not yours. Sometimes I think you forget that. Now I’m going to get ready for rehearsals. It would not do to keep everyone waiting.”

  * * *

  The clock bonged six times, and I fought the urge to go to the window to check for any sign of the carriage.

  “He’s with Bouchard, who is chronically late,” my mother said, from where she sat reading a book. She’d switched strategies from this morning, now employing passive-aggressive indifference in her attempt to dissuade me from this path. “Don’t fret.”

  “I’m not fretting,” I said, smoothing my lace gloves over the rich blue velvet of my dress. The bodice was both tight and low, revealing the slight curves of my breasts, which were amplified by the added padding. It was one of my new gowns, and I could not help but admire the sleeves, snug to my elbow and loose in a spray of lace that hung to my wrists. The crinoline puffed the skirts out from my hips, the velvet slashed to reveal the lace petticoat beneath.

  My shoes were matching brocade with ribbons that wrapped around my ankles, and I wore sapphire and diamond earrings that Sabine had deemed a perfect match to the dress. She’d fixed my hair so it was up, a few curls left loose to frame my face, and rimmed my eyes with kohl and tinted my lips.

  A knock sounded at the door, and I leapt up. “I’ll answer it,” my mother said, rising far too slowly for my tastes and then ambling toward the door. “Good evening, Monsieur de Montigny,” she said. “Please do come inside. Winter is truly upon us.”

  “How is your hand?” Tristan asked, but whatever she answered went unheard in my ears as I adjusted my dress for the umpteenth time. When I glanced up, he had rounded the corner with her, and our eyes met.

  His disguise was in place, eyes grey instead of silver and skin altered to a duskier, more human hue. But all else was the same, and even if he had made himself unrecognizable I still would have known it was him. I loved him; so much so that my chest felt tight and my breath short, and everything else in the room seemed wan as a faded painting.

  “Mademoiselle de Troyes.” He smiled, glanced at the floor and then back up to my face. “Memory, it would seem, is a pale comparison to reality.”

  “How charming he is!” My mother clapped her hands together and we both twitched. “Best be off. You don’t want to be late.”

  Once we were outside, I said, “Marie’s ladies were talking about you at rehearsals today. Of a certainty, she knows you are in Trianon. And if she knows, so does Anushka.”

  “Good,” he said, although it seemed as if he hadn’t really heard me. I gripped his arm above the elbow as we walked down the slippery steps, uncertain of the state of his wrists and knowing better than to ask.

  “I meant what I said,” he added. “You look beautiful tonight. That dress…” he trailed off.

  “I’m supposed to be trying to seduce you into giving me all your money.”

  “Trying?” He laughed. “You have succeeded, and in doing so, quite driven thoughts of anything else from my mind.”

  “Your focus on our task is admirable,” I said, but secretly I was pleased.

  “If I am distracted, it is your fault. You have been my undoing since the day we met.”

  The coachman opened the door to the carriage, and Tristan helped me inside.

  “Good evening, Cécile,” Monsieur Bouchard said, his loud voice filling the small space. I’d met him several times previously, as he was a subscriber, and the nephews sitting next to him as well. “Good evening,” I replied. “I understand I have you to thank for giving Monsieur de Montigny an excuse to see me tonight.”

  “Glad to oblige.” The older man winked at Tristan as the carriage started forward. “I wanted proof that he wasn’t all bluster and that you two truly were acquainted.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, smiling up at Tristan. “We met in Courville this summer. I was ever so pleased when he decided to join society in Trianon.”

  “And from now on, I shall go to Cécile with all my questions,” Bouchard said. “She is far less taciturn than you, Montigny.”

  I laughed. “He hoards his secrets like a miser does his coin, I’m afraid. I spent all summer trying to pry them out, and I’m quite certain I barely scratched the surface.”

  “For good reason,” Tristan replied. “It gives me an air of mystery. If I told you everything, I’d risk you realizing that I’m really quite dull.”

  “I doubt that,” I said, then the carriage hit a dip in the road, bouncing me sideways against Tristan.

  “Steady!” Bouchard shouted, banging on the wall. “Curse these roads. Something needs to be done about them.”

  Except I didn’t curse them at all. Even through the layers of my skirts, I could feel the press of Tristan’s hip against mine, the brush of his coat against my neck as he rested his arm along the back of the seat, the way his breath tickled my hair. I wanted to lean against him, but the gleam of amusement on the other men’s faces told me I was already skirting the line of what was proper. I wanted them gone so it wouldn’t m
atter, and from the burn of the heat in the back of my head, I knew the same thought had crossed Tristan’s mind.

  There isn’t anything stopping you. The thought that I’d been thinking more and more over the past few days, crept across my mind even as I laughed along at a joke I hadn’t even heard. He is your husband.

  I considered the reasons why our intimacy had been limited before. Certainly a child was a complication we could not afford. Our lives were too much in jeopardy, and I couldn’t even bear to think about what would happen to our baby if we were both killed. Half-blood as it would be, if the King got his hands on our child, would he not sell it off as a slave as he had done with Lessa? And that would be if he didn’t kill it out of hand. And wasn’t there a certain inevitability that the child would have to go to Trollus as long as the curse remained? Would it happen the moment it was born? Before? I shivered at the idea.

  The carriage pulled to a stop beneath the domed side entrance reserved for subscribers and other important guests. Tristan stepped out first, then helped me down. “What are you thinking?” he asked quietly, leading me toward the doors the liveried men held open for us.

  “The compulsion is getting bad again,” I said, because it was true and he needed to know, and I didn’t want to admit that the only thing that chased it off was my lusty thoughts.

  “Keep in your mind that you are doing what you promised you would,” he said softly. “She knows my intent, and she’ll come after me sooner rather than later. She has to.”

  I knew he was trying to make me feel better, but the reminder that Anushka would try to hurt him or kill him did anything but. He was not afraid of her, but I was. There was no one alive who knew more about trolls, and she’d killed one as powerful as him before.

  Sensing his words had the opposite effect than he’d intended, he reached up with his free hand and squeezed mine where it rested on his arm. Then he lowered his head, his breath warm against my ear. “I know that wasn’t what you were thinking about.”

  My cheeks flushed, but a smile crept onto my face. “Perhaps not.”

  My mother had taken me on a tour of the opera house soon after I’d arrived in Trianon, but sometime since, I’d lost an appreciation for how extraordinary it really was. Marble colonnades banded with gilt twisted up to ceilings painted with soft golds and blues, with massive crystal chandeliers hanging one after another to light the long stretch of the grand foyer.

  We were somewhat late, and went straight to Bouchard’s box on the second level of the horseshoe-shaped theatre and took our seats, the lights already dimmed and the curtain up. Willowy girls in white tulle flitted across the stage, and even though I’d seen them perform countless times before, I could not help but marvel at their grace, lifting up onto their tiptoes in shiny satin shoes, limbs impossibly flexible. Tristan leaned forward against the railing as he watched, his expression captivated. This, like so much else, was not something he’d ever seen before.

  My eyes went to his wrists, where the sleeves of his coat and shirt pulled up ever so slightly. Instead of skin between cuff and glove, there was black fabric wrapped around his wrist. I turned my gaze back to the stage before he could catch me looking, but my stomach still clenched. Five days, and still not better. It was past time I ask him to let me try to heal the injuries.

  A waiter brought glasses of wine, and Tristan leaned back in his seat and sipped at his, never taking his eyes off the stage. What did he think, I wondered, at this display of humanity? Of the color and the vibrancy, of the filth and the beauty, of the faces and features so wildly different from those in Trollus? Did it change the way he felt about me?

  Fingers brushed against mine, and I started, the wine sloshing back and forth in my glass. Never taking his eyes from the stage, Tristan locked his fingers in mine, our hands hidden in the folds of my skirt.

  He shifted almost imperceptibly my direction, and, keeping watch on Bouchard out of the corner of my eye to make sure he didn’t notice, I did the same. My shoulder brushed against his arm, and heat trickled through my veins, building low in my stomach. I took a sip of my drink, the lights on the stage seeming bright and unfocused. His knee bumped against mine, and I inhaled deeply, feeling my breasts press tight against the bodice of my dress. My skin flushed with desire that had no outlet, slowly filling me until I could think of nothing else. Would he ask me back to the hotel tonight? Should I ask him?

  Abruptly the curtain dropped and the lights went up. Tristan dropped my hand as though it were on fire, looking at me in surprise. Intermission, I mouthed, and he nodded slightly. We all rose and stepped out into the corridor. As we did, I noticed a wave of bows and curtsies coming in our direction, but I was too short to see which of the peers was in the house tonight.

  Tristan was not. A vicious wave of his anger filled me, and I held tight to his arm, rising up onto my tiptoes to see who it was – just in time to watch Lord Aiden’s eyes light on Tristan. Fred and one other guard stood behind him, and I watched the expression on my brother’s face darken as he realized whom I was with. The men surrounding us bowed low and I dropped into a curtsey, hauling on Tristan’s arm as I did. He bowed, but only just.

  “You’re far from home, Montigny.” His eyes went to me. “Well done, mademoiselle. I underestimated you.”

  “You are not the first, my lord,” I said. The corridor had gone from slightly chilly to hotter than midday in the height of summer, and I dug my fingernails into Tristan’s arm, praying he would not react any more than that. “And undoubtedly, you won’t be the last.”

  Lord Aiden’s gaze went back to Tristan. “I’d have a word with you, Montigny.”

  “As you like.” Tristan’s tone was flat.

  The other men noticed the lack of honorific and their eyebrows rose. As I followed Tristan back into the box, I met Bouchard’s gaze and rolled my eyes as though the tension were nothing more than the posturing of young men, and nothing to be concerned about.

  “No interruptions,” Aiden muttered to the other guard, but allowed Fred to follow us in.

  The door clicked shut, but it was magic that drowned out the voices in the corridor and the musicians tweaking their instruments in the pit. Fred frowned, and his hand drifted to the pistol at his waist.

  “Don’t,” I said, and the flames of the massive chandelier overhead flared brightly. Fred blinked, then turned to me, incredulity written across his face. “And don’t you dare look at me like that,” I snarled. “Not after what you did.”

  “It was for your own good,” he said. “I was only trying to help you.”

  My head jerked from side to side in furious denial. “Say you did it because you don’t agree with the choices I’ve made. Say you did it because you wanted to stop me from freeing the trolls. Or because your loyalty is to him.” I jerked my chin in Aiden’s direction. “But don’t you dare claim that you did it for me when we both know you did it to control me.”

  “Cécile.” He reached for me, voice pleading, but I stepped back. “Is that why you hate our mother so much? Because she didn’t make choices you liked? Because she wouldn’t change to be the person you wanted her to be?”

  It was a low blow, but as I watched Fred blanch, I found I was too angry to care.

  “That’s not the reason,” he stammered. “You’ve got it backwards. She made me choose between her and Father. And when I wouldn’t take her side…” He swallowed hard. “She made me pay for it.”

  “And now you’re doing the same to me.” I went to stand next to Tristan, who leaned against the edge of the balcony, feeling my anger fuel his and his fuel mine. No good can come from this…

  “What do you want from us?” I snapped at Aiden, struggling with the desire to have my own revenge for what he had done to me, for what he had intended to do to my friends.

  “Tell me why you killed her,” he demanded. “You could have taken the book back and gone. Catherine was only a pawn – she didn’t need to die.”

  I frowned, more surprise
d at his sentiment toward the dead woman than his accusation that we were her murderers. It had seemed to me that he’d despised her – had only allied with her out of sheer necessity. But perhaps I’d been wrong. “I thought you hated her.”

  He leveled me with a dark stare. “I needed her.”

  Of course.

  “We didn’t kill her,” I said, not bothering to hide my disgust. “When we arrived, her shop was in flames. Tristan got her out, but it was too late.”

  Fred’s shoulders slumped with obvious relief. “Thank God,” he muttered.

  Hurt sliced through me. “You didn’t honestly believe I’d murdered a woman in cold blood?”

  “Some people will do just about anything for the sake of revenge,” he replied, staring at the ground. “And I’m not even going to guess at what he’s capable of.” Fred lifted his head to glare at Tristan.

  “If I was so quick to kill, let me assure you, His Lordship” – Tristan coated the word with mockery – “would have been the first to go.”

  “Then by all means, get it over with,” Aiden snapped. “Quit this pretense at being human, troll, and show your true colors.”

  Tristan’s disguise melted away, and in two strides he was in Aiden’s face. “I gave you a chance to do a small good – to help Cécile – but instead you thought only of yourself and pursued a plan as evil as any of my father’s. If you had saved her, I would have done what I could to help you, and our future might look very different. But now all you are is my enemy, and you will come to regret that fact.”

  Fred shifted, and I turned to give him a warning look only to find his brow furrowed and his gaze fixed on Aiden. The Regent’s son had not, I suspected, told him the whole of the truth, and my brother would not take well to having been manipulated.

  “The only regret I have is that my plan failed, because I lost my chance to see a future unencumbered by your father and the rest of your wretched race of creatures,” Aiden snarled. “I swear that I’ll never stop until I find a way to see every last one of you on your knees, starving, dying, and begging for the mercy of humanity. But let me assure you, troll, I will show you none.”