“You have so much to do.”
“And spending a few quiet moments with my wife should be at the bottom of my list?”
She felt the heat rise again, wanting to believe there was something there, reminding herself it was only Trap. Of course he would be gracious. Of course he would be kind. She knew he liked her. She wanted him to love her. Why can’t I ever be satisfied? Why is there always something more that I want? She sipped her cocoa. “Your sword practice went well?”
“It did.” He held his cup in both hands as if warming chilled fingers. “Conal seems to be doing better these days. No more of the crying fits, I understand.”
She smiled. “No, thank Eidon. Whatever pained him seems to have faded.”
“And you’re getting a good night’s rest finally. I can see it in your face and the brightness in your eyes.”
She blushed and looked at her cup. That she had chosen to reject the wet nurse and see to Conal’s feedings herself had not been well received in the Chesedhan court. One more distasteful eccentricity of the Kiriathan barbarians, it would seem, but he was far too precious to her to pass off to some stranger whose dialect was so thick she could hardly understand it. The downside was that she’d been roused from her sleep every night now for months, sometimes for hours at a time when he was fussy.
She looked up at him. “You’ll be lunching with Darnley and Hamilton later?”
“I thought to, yes. I also have to drop by the auction house and see if I can pick up the money they still owe me. And then there’s the problem of those lost bales.”
She smiled at him. “And you wonder if there’s something more you could have done to save them. Something more you could do now to make up for it.”
His eyes twinkled as he looked up at her. “You know me well, my wife. . . .”
My wife . . . Did he have any idea how those words made her heart melt? She shook her head and smiled again. “You are not so different from my brother.”
Which was, she saw at once, the wrong thing to say. The grief rolled across his face like a cloud. Stark and raw. He looked down at the cup in his hand, shielding his face from her as he wrestled his emotions back under control.
She kicked herself for her stupidity and tried to think of something else to say as the silence stretched out between them.
Then, “I miss him,” he said. “Sometimes more than others, but today . . .” His voice choked as he blinked several times and turned his face to the window. She saw his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. “Even after all this time it’s hard to believe he’s really gone.”
Her own throat tightened.
“And the boys,” he went on. “I had so hoped Channon would come through for us. . . . Now I fear he’s been taken, too. Or perhaps there was simply nothing to be found. That more likely, I suppose. We both know what they did to—” His voice cut off then, and he swallowed hard and exhaled a short, hard breath and stood there, thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of his nose as the nightmarish images of baby Ian being hurled against the cliff wall flashed through Carissa’s mind. A moment of silence ensued; then he puffed out another short breath and turned back to her.
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard how Maddie’s meeting with Ronesca went?” he asked.
Carissa shook her head. “It would only just be ending now, I’d think.” She sipped her cocoa. “I can’t imagine it went well.”
“No.”
Rumors had run wild through the court of late, both of Maddie’s unexpected pregnancy and of Ronesca’s outrage that her sister-in-law could be six months along and the crown princess not know of it till now. Other uglier rumors speculated on who the father was, and none cited Abramm as a likely candidate. “She never should have tried to hide it,” Carissa said. “If she’d announced it immediately, she’d have nipped all the jailer nonsense in the bud.”
“Maybe,” Trap said. “Or maybe not. I think the Chesedhan court would rather it be a jailer’s bastard, actually. I know Ronesca would—easier to get out of the way so they can get Maddie married off to the highest bidder.”
Carissa frowned at him, uncomfortably aware that what he said was likely true. “You’re aware she’s planning to retire early again this evening?” Carissa asked.
“Aye.” He paused and she felt a sudden deepening of the tension. Then, in a voice tight and forced, he said, “I was wondering if you might like to take advantage of your night of freedom and have supper with me at that inn on the river I was telling you about.”
She looked up sharply, frowning at him. The only inn he’d ever told her about was the one where Maddie had secretly taken employment as a serving girl in a wool-brained scheme to gather information on the war. Both Carissa and Trap had sought to talk her out of it, but there’d been no stopping her. It was by Eidon’s grace alone Ronesca had not learned of that yet.
In any case, since Maddie refused to take an escort when she went to “work,” Trap had taken it upon himself to follow her, just in case.
“It would do you good to get away from the palace,” Trap said, his words coming rushed, as if he had to force himself to get them out. “A change of scene, a change of cooking style . . . no servants sneaking about trying to pry into our business. Well, except for one.”
He meant Maddie, and he meant it for a joke, but Carissa had been thrown into such a state of emotional turmoil she could not respond to it, could only stare at him with a feeling that bordered on alarm.
She could hardly believe he would ask her to accompany him, and had no idea why he would. Was he embarrassed by the rumors circulating that their marriage was a sham? That he had married her only to save her reputation? A well of conflicting emotions, the primary of which was terror, boiled up in her, and before she knew it, words were tumbling from her mouth. “Oh no. I can’t. I’ll have to feed Conal, you know, and I’m just not comfortable leaving the palace yet. But you go ahead. The Gilded Ram is the inn where the rivertraders come up from Peregris, isn’t it? I’m sure you’ll gather a good measure of news, and you don’t want me intruding on that.”
She wasn’t sure if the look that came into his expression was alarm or horror, but it was only there for a moment. Then his lips tightened and he nodded stiffly. “Of course.”
Stagnant silence pooled between them.
“It’s all right,” she said then. “I don’t feel bad that you go without me. And if you wished to spend some time with other . . .” She exhaled suddenly and stared at her lap, her face flaming. “I know this isn’t a real marriage. I never expected it would be. You’ve done so much for me as it is, I’ll never be able to repay you. But all this other, the cocoa, the invitations . . . You needn’t pretend what we have is anything more than duty. I would feel more comfortable, in fact, if you didn’t.”
She couldn’t bear to look up at him and see the relief in his face, so she continued to study her cup, struggling to breathe, wondering if he might have spoken and she’d not heard him for the thunderous rush in her ears.
The silence was even more awkward now. Just when she thought she could bear it no more, he spoke. “I’m sorry, my lady. I didn’t—” He cleared his throat, then said more evenly, “It was never my intent to make you uncomfortable.”
He paused, as if waiting for her to speak. When she didn’t, he set his cup on the tray between them and said softly, “Well, as you say, I have much to do this morning. If I may have your leave?”
“Of course.” She forced herself to look up at him and smile, desperate that he not see how deeply his easy acquiescence had hurt her.
CHAPTER
4
The Inn of the Gilded Ram stood at the corner of River and Cantor Streets south of the palace at Fannath Rill. A well-known and respectable establishment, it offered good food, good ale, and a clean, well-ordered environment. A huge stone hearth and multiple levels sporting candle- or kelistarlit nooks where clients could dine in relative anonymity gave it its distinctive character. So did the cadre of mu
sicians that performed evenings for the inn’s customers, mostly well-to-do riverboat traders and their local merchant counterparts, meeting over dinner or mugs of ale to negotiate their deals or exchange the latest gossip.
Fortunately their gossip, unlike that at the palace, dealt more with how the river was flowing through the Silver Cataracts these days, where the price of wool was likely to head that summer, and of course news of the ongoing war to the south. The inn’s patrons were only idly interested in the pregnancy of the deposed queen of Kiriath and could care less about the controversy regarding the child’s patrimony.
Tonight the place roiled with tales of the recent Esurhite offensive to take the island of Torneki. Lying several leagues off Chesedh’s southeastern coast, it was home to some of the richest men and finest villas in all the known world. It was also a key port for the Chesedhan navy, and thus of strategic importance in defending Peregris and the vulnerable mouth of the Ankrill. Maddie’s brother, Leyton, had been defending it against repeated Esurhite assaults for months.
Maddie had heard a bit of this up at the palace earlier that day, most of it smothered by the other juicier gossip surrounding her pregnancy and damped by a cultural more that insisted Chesedhan noblewomen were too delicate to endure hearing the details of war and too stupid to comprehend the politics behind it. Here at the inn, ironically, that same belief manifested in a looseness of the tongue before the table maids, as if they weren’t even there. With no concern whatever for female sensitivities, the men exchanged gory details of stories that might not even be true. It was the entire reason she had taken up her charade her as a serving girl.
As she set the first of four plates of seared catfish onto the polished oak table, the men seated there were already deep in conversation on that very topic.
Inevitably she finished doling out plates before she’d heard all she wanted to, and had to move on to the adjoining table, where the six men seated there sent her off to the kitchen for tankards of ale and, afterward, slices of bullock with plump dough puddings. When she returned with those, she noted that Trap Meridon, whom she’d been expecting, had come in while she was in the kitchen and had settled himself in a corner booth not far from where she stood. Once she’d set out her current order, she went back to the kitchen, drew a tankard of cider, and returned to his table. He was lounging back against the booth wall, watching the diners at the tables in the lower level, and when she set the tankard before him, he looked up at her.
Weariness etched his freckled face and darkened his brown eyes.
“Alone tonight?” she asked, surprised and disappointed, for she’d expected him to bring Carissa.
“For now,” he said, grimly. “Hamilton will be joining me later.”
“Hamilton?” She frowned. “Did you even ask her?”
“Aye, ” he said shortly. “She didn’t want to leave Conal.” But from the pain that flared across his face, she guessed there was more to it than that, and knew better than to probe further. Bad enough she’d goaded him as hard as she had into asking. . . .
Usually she twitted him by inquiring if he’d like the mutton stew, though she knew very well he loathed it. Tonight she only asked if it would be the usual, and when he said yes, she headed back to the kitchen for the bullock and an extra helping of the puddings he always ordered.
It seemed the day hadn’t been any easier for him than it had been for her. His expression had brought back memories of the hideous breakfast she’d started her morning with. Her brother’s wife, Crown Princess Ronesca, had certainly possessed an ulterior motive for her invitation, starting in on all of the things she found wrong with the First Daughter from the moment they’d sat down. Maddie’s lack of religious propriety and dedication, her failure to cultivate the proper people socially, her ongoing weakness in continuing to mourn a husband who was dead and gone were becoming inexcusable. Brutally, Ronesca had informed her that Abramm was not coming back and six months of grieving was quite enough time to get over his loss.
She was even worse with regard to the pregnancy, faulting Maddie for not having come to her the moment she’d known of it so they “could have dealt with it efficiently and discreetly.” When Maddie had reacted with heated outrage to the crown princess’s suggestion of using her physician’s special potion to take care of the thing, Ronesca had only shaken her head in exasperation.
“Madeleine, where is your brain? You must know you’ll have to remarry if you have any hope of living the sort of life to which you are entitled. I was hoping it would be within a year of your bereavement—we could use the opportunity to strengthen the power and influence of the royal house. And your father’s treasury cannot withstand much longer the drain you and your retinue are putting on—”
“Me and my retinue?” Maddie had burst out incredulously. “I have ten people, Your Highness. Are you telling me I have to pay rent? In my own father’s house? Fine . . . Or I can find my own residence if you prefer. But I will not be remarrying anytime soon, let alone within the year. And I will not be getting rid of my child!”
She’d left on a high hand, so angry she was shaking. For a while she’d stormed about the palace in a fury. She was the First Daughter! How dare Ronesca speak to her like that! How dare she suggest such things as she’d suggested! The woman was not even of royal blood, nor were her precious sons, offspring not of Leyton Donavan but of her first husband, the count of a minor noble house.
Ronesca was, however, born of the House of Harvadan, one of the oldest of the Chesedhan lines, and it was that fact that finally drained off Maddie’s anger into uneasiness. Maddie might have supporters in the palace on account of her royal blood, but Harvadan had power in its own right. As well as a longstanding antipathy to all things Kiriathan. A legitimate child of Maddie’s—as time would reveal this one to be—would trump any claim Ronesca or her two sons made upon the throne.
What if she decided to take matters into her own hands? A potion could easily be slipped into someone’s food or drink to do its work before anyone realized it was there. The pregnancy would be terminated with no one to blame. The thought so spooked Maddie, she ate nothing in the palace all afternoon and had taken her evening meal at the inn just after she’d arrived.
When she returned from the kitchen to set Trap’s food before him, he gestured at the empty stools before the hearth on the lower floor. “Where’re Kyra and her boys tonight?”
“Entertaining in the back room. Some ‘esteemed gentleman’ who’s fled his villa on Torneki is holding court there. His men came in this afternoon to set things up. They’ve erected a tent in the big dining hall, and he’s brought at least sixteen attendants. The cook staff is all aflutter, and, of course, Serr Penchott is quite pleased to entertain a man of such wealth and nobility. . . .” She trailed off, watching as a glistening brown staffid crawled over the table’s far edge and slithered toward Trap’s plate.
He killed it without even looking, his Light-thread sending it into convulsions a handspan from his plate as he asked, “Does he have a name, this gentleman?”
“I get the impression he didn’t give it.” Maddie pulled the folded rag she used to clean up spills from her waistband and wiped up the spawn as if it were no more than the foam off a tankard of ale. “Everyone just calls him ‘our esteemed guest’ or ‘the gentleman from the south.”’
“What’s he look like?”
“I don’t know. Mace and Lindie are taking the shift.”
“What?!” Trap leaned back to regard her with raised brows. “Snoop that you are, I’d have thought you’d be first in line for that duty.”
“I would’ve, but I got here too late—thanks, I might add, to a certain someone who insisted I wait for my ‘cousin’ to walk me over here!” That had been Lieutenant Whartel, one of her personal guard.
Trap shook his head and sliced into his bullock. “You take your ability to fool people far too seriously, and your safety not seriously enough, my lady.”
She frowned at him
for the deliberate slip in his mode of address. “And you take everything in the world too seriously, sir.” She jerked up her chin. “Anyway, when there’s a party like that, it’s difficult to argue the other girls out of the kind of coin they’re likely to receive. Let alone the notoriety that’ll come from serving our esteemed but very mysterious guest.”
“Mysterious indeed. I wonder what he’s hiding.”
“Maybe he’d just like to travel relatively unnoticed—having just been driven from his home and all.”
“Generally folk who desire not to be noticed don’t travel with sixteen attendants and set up their tents in the dining halls of middle-class inns. He must be Sorian, though, if he’s got a tent, so I suppose you wouldn’t be able to understand their talk anyway.”
She sniffed. “With all the news breaking in here, I’m quite happy where I am, thank you.”
Movement at the corner of her eye drew her attention to one of the diners down the row from her, lifting his empty mug at her and wagging his bushy brows. “I’ve got to go.”
In the kitchen Mace and Lindie were arguing over who would bring the platter of bullock kabobs and rice balls, and who would bring the mulled wine. Lindie looked unusually distressed—pale, sweating, and dark around the eyes. Perhaps she was coming down with something. Maddie considered offering to take her place but, recalling what she’d just said to Trap, decided she’d rather hear the latest on the battle at the front. Besides, they were nearly done. As the two went off with platter and tray, she ladled mutton stew into a bowl, balanced a rasher of bread atop it, refilled the tankards from the bushy-browed man’s table, and carried it all out into the common room.
She had just delivered the stew and was stopping to hand out the refilled ale mugs when the front door burst open. Three men in heavy greatcoats blew in on a gale of cold wind that ignited shouts of protest from the diners even as the newcomers recaptured the door and slammed it safely shut.
Return of the Guardian-King Page 5
