by Wen Spencer
“Like grain futures.” Eldest slid her pistols into their holster, hanging from her headboard. “A lot of farmers sell their crops in the summer at a set price before the harvest. It helps them tide money over, but it's risky. Basically, it's a loan, and you put your farm up as collateral on the loan. People that don't look at it as a loan usually lose the family farm.”
Jerin picked nervously at his sheets. “What if the market price of your crops goes higher than the set price?”
“That's what the women that bought your crop are hoping for,” Eldest said. “You don't see the profit; they do. That's why the Whistlers don't sell futures. We don't work to make other people rich.”
“Why don't you use my brother's price?” Jerin asked.
Eldest smiled, and hugged him suddenly. “Because I want a husband, silly, not the money.”
Three days later they arrived at Mayfair. The city seemed to go on forever, stunning even his sisters into silence. Eldest took firm hold of his arm with her left hand, keeping her right free to draw a gun, and didn't let go.
“Stay here.” Raven went down the canted stage to the crowded landing. The ship's calliope started up, drowning out all normal levels of conversation with bright loud music. Jerin watched the captain's broad back as she pushed through the milling crowds. Partway to the cobbled street, an odd thing happened. A woman in a wide-brimmed hat coming down the street glanced at Raven as they passed each other. The stranger started as if recognizing the captain, then ducked her face away. Raven, intent on the wagon, seemed not to notice.
“Did you see that?” Jerin shouted at Eldest, standing beside him, as he kept watch on the mystery woman. The woman had turned to watch Raven's retreating back, and Jerin had a momentary stab of fear for the captain.
“What?”
“The woman. Did you see her?” Jerin pointed at the only figure that seemed to be standing still in the crowd.
“I can't hear what you're saying, Jerin! Who do you see?”
He took his eyes away only for a moment, to turn and shout into Eldest's ear. “That woman is acting oddly.”
“Which one?”
He glanced back, and found her gone. “She's gone now.”
Eldest scanned the crowd. “Was she armed?”
He shook his head, and shouted back, “I don't know!”
“Here comes Raven!” Eldest pointed out the captain.
Raven waded back through the crowd, signaling that they were to join her. Eldest took his arm above the elbow to escort him down the stage. Raven met them at the foot.
“I've got a hackney hired,” Raven shouted to Eldest. “Take Jerin over and I'll bring the luggage.”
Eldest nodded, not bothering to shout back. Eldest turned, apparently spotted Corelle and Summer, and flashed hand signals for them to get the gear and follow.
“We'll get your stuff loaded and go straight up to the palace,” Raven told Jerin, pointing.
Jerin gasped. The city ran back to sandstone cliffs, which leaped skyward in walls of rich tan. Crowning the bluffs, with windows glistening like diamonds, sat an immense building. It was an architectural sprawl of turrets and wings, gables and dormers, slate roofs and copper cladding, gray stone veiled with ivy, and windows—hundreds and thousands of mullioned windows. Too huge, too impressive, too noble to be anything but the royal palace.
“I've never seen anything so big,” Jerin breathed.
His words fell in a moment of silence as the calliope paused between songs.
“It's where you'll be living for—for the next few weeks.” Raven said, then patted him on the shoulder. “Go on to the hackney. You can gawk through the window.”
He and Eldest pushed their way through the crowd to the closed carriage. While he climbed into the hackney. Eldest waited outside for Summer and Corelle to catch up. He scooted across the battered horsehair-stuffed seat to stare up at the palace. Ren and Odelia's home. He remembered Ren, standing in the Whistlers' kitchen, watching him cook. How poor and lowborn he must have seemed to her.
He was aware of someone staring at him, and he looked down.
The young woman with the wide-brimmed hat stood before him, shielded from Eldest and the others by the hackney. She looked at him with neither envy nor the open speculation that he had grown used to during the trip, that “I wish I had him” or “Can I get him without being caught?” She seemed, instead, stunned by some surprising news.
Jerin gazed at her, wondering why she sought him out, what was so surprising about himself. He could find nothing familiar about her face, no hint that he might have known her long ago. True, the silvery line of a scar ran from the corner of her left eye down the line of her chin to the edge of her mouth. The skin lay smooth; the healing had been perfect despite the fact she had nearly lost her left eye with the wound. The scar, thus, did not disfigure her beyond recognition.
In fact, he would not say it disfigured her at all. At one time, her face had been a harvested field under a winter sky: barren of good features, containing no bad. Plain. Neither beautiful nor ugly. It had existed.
The scar gave her plainness character, like a thick choker, or a large bold earring. It spoke to Jerin of strength and determination.
The woman had tensed when their gazes met a look like fear going through her eyes. He had thought Raven might be the cause for her alarm, but then the woman didn't glance to see where the captain was or what Raven was doing. Instead her eyes widened slightly, and Jerin realized she had been somehow afraid of him, and now she wasn't.
She stepped forward, reached out, and lifted his veil.
Time stopped.
They froze there. He half leaned out the window of the hired coach. She held the veil up with both hands. Her eyes were green, green and changing as summer wheat, one moment dark as velvet, next light as silk, with long thick dark eyelashes. Gorgeous eyes. How could he have thought her plain with such eyes?
She gasped, as if surprised, and then kissed him.
He hadn't expected it, and sat stunned during the touch of warm lips, the fleeting exploration of her sweet cinnamon tongue, the brief touch of fingertips on his check.
Then she was gone, his veil drifting down, the calliope blasting forth into the silence that had surrounded them.
The hackney rocked, and Summer climbed in beside him. She leaned against him to look out and up at the palace on the cliff. “To think, after all these years, the Whistlers are going to be guests there.”
Chapter 8
The hackney cab jostled and swayed through town, and climbed the cliff road. At the palace gate, Raven leaned out to have them passed through. All the while, Jerin found himself pressing his hand to his mouth, feeling again and again the kiss of the stranger on his lips. What was wrong with him? Why did he let a stranger kiss him? True, he had not expected the kiss, but still, once it started, once he was aware it was happening, he should have stopped it. Was he in truth a slut, unable to resist any woman's advances? Certainly, prior to Ren, he never had to resist a woman; his sisters kept all comers at bay. Ren certainly hadn't taught him anything in the way of resistance.
All this time he thought—actually, he still believed—he was in love with Ren. If he loved her, why had he let that woman kiss him? Gods above, he didn't even know the woman's name!
Eldest finally noticed his silence, the hand pressed to his mouth. “Are you sick?”
Sick? Well, mental illness would explain his actions. “Perhaps.”
“Should we stop and let you throw up in the gardens?” Eldest asked. “It would be better than spilling your accounts in the palace proper.”
“If he goes, I go.” Summer looked slightly green from the jostling.
“Ah, Whistlers at their finest hour.” Corelle earned a cuff from Eldest.
“I'll be fine,” Jerin muttered, blushing. Certainly with his family pressed so close, he would be able to resist the next woman who tried to kiss him.
The cab came to a stop before the palace in a vast pa
ved courtyard and they spilled hastily out into the fresh air. Women in the livery of the Queens unloaded the wagon as Raven paid the cab driver. The servants were of similar coloring and height, making Jerin suspect they were sisters.
“This is the Queens' majordomo, Barnes.” Raven indicated the woman supervising the others, polished in dress, face passive, but eyes deeply curious.
“I'm at your service,” Barnes said in greeting, giving a half bow. “The Queen Mother Elder wishes to meet you immediately. I must insist, however, that no weapons be kept in the palace. Anything you surrender will be returned to you at the end of your stay.”
“There are rifles in our luggage,” Eldest stated, undoing her gun belt.
Jerin froze, unsure what to do. His mothers always stressed that he should never go unarmed among strangers.
Summer carried only the six-shooter but had three knives. Corelle wore two six-shooters and a derringer, but no knives. Eldest matched Summer with knives, Corelle for guns, and then added two pairs of brass knuckles and a wire garrote. Barnes and Raven took the weapons without comment or surprise. Jerin was amazed Eldest surrendered all her stash weapons, but apparently she judged the risk of being caught with them in the presence of the Queens too high to warrant keeping them on her.
Which probably meant he should give up his weapons. He gave Eldest a questioning look, and she nodded. Reaching into his pocket, he produced his derringer.
Barnes startled visibly. “Holy Mothers above.”
Raven raised one eyebrow and accepted it. “You know how to use this?”
Jerin nodded, blushing at the thought of taking his knife off. Eldest rescued him by kneeling at his feet, reaching under the hem of his walking robe, and undoing the shin sheath. She made no move, thankfully, to retrieve his lock picks; if she had, he would have discovered if it was possible to die of embarrassment.
Raven accepted the knife with a slight, unexpected smile.
Barnes gave Raven an unreadable look, then turned to the Whistlers. “Thank you for your cooperation. Come this way.”
Barnes led them through a portcullis and down a graveled path to a deep porch overlooking the gardens. Wicker chairs sat in a loose circle, facing one another. A tall stately woman sat waiting for them. She wore a green silk shirt, high-collared with long, narrow sleeves that matched her deep green eyes. A gold circlet over her short, gray-tinged red hair proclaimed her as Queen Mother Elder. Besides the green eyes and red hair, she shared her daughters' deceivingly delicate features and fair skin.
Barnes announced them, waited until the Queen Elder dismissed her with a wave of fingers, and bowed out.
Queen Elder considered Jerin with a cock of her head and slightly pursed lips. After long minutes of study, she indicated that they should sit. A servant moved forward to pour tea, then faded into the background.
The Queen Elder addressed Eldest. “I was one of seventeen sisters. There are only five of us left. Illness, war, childbirth, and assassins have weeded us down. We had twenty daughters, which are now ten. It matters much to us that the count is not nine. We are indebted that you put a brother to risk providing aid to our daughter.”
“We merely followed the law,” Eldest said quietly, choosing to ignore the fact she hadn't been present to consult on the matter. The law usually held the entire family responsible for one sister's action. A family could otherwise engage in wanton lawbreaking, sacrificing one sister to save the rest if they were caught. The inverse, Jerin decided, must be that they were held accountable for good deeds too.
“Unfortunately,” the Queen Elder said, “when it comes to men, our people tend not to be law-abiding. Finding a stranger on their land, most women would have let their fear for their menfolk rule their actions. In part, by rewarding you, I lift you up as an example. If we're to stand against our neighboring nations, we cannot be fighting so between ourselves. This was why the husband raids were outlawed. This was why blood feuds are forbidden. This is why the traveler's-aid law was created. Our people must be made to understand that their neighbors are their sisters.”
The Queen Elder sipped her tea and they sat in silence, unsure what to say.
Eldest finally cleared her throat and said into the silence, “My grandmothers were line soldiers before they were knighted. We are just landed gentry. We're aware of the benefits from bringing Jerin out with your sponsorship—but we're not sure what this all entails.”
“Wisely said.” The Queen Elder smiled. “In the next three months there will be nightly social events to attend. Actually there will be several on any given night; one picks and chooses—and one is picked and chosen, as they are all by invitation only. Normally, landed gentry such as yourself would field only invitations from the lower strata of the Peerage. With the sponsorship of the Queens, all who wish to curry our favor will invite you. There are dances, musicales, dinners, and picnics—window dressing for the true event—bringing Eldests together with brothers in tow. Offers are made, negotiations follow, and hopefully, by the end of the season all will be happily married.”
“It sounds like extended fairs.”
“I'm sure the Season grew out of fairs. Unfortunately, in my view, things have gotten out of hand. I'm afraid that members of the Peerage put too much importance on dress. It is a sign of how rich they are that they can sink so much money into an outfit, then never wear it again. We have not invited you here to bankrupt your family by keeping up appearances, nor to be humiliated unfairly because you're wise not to waste your resources. As our guests, we intend to provide a modest wardrobe to your family.”
“The costs are truly prohibitive?” Eldest asked.
“Fifty crowns.” She gave a number that made Eldest startle, and then added, “For each outfit.”
“Each?” Eldest asked.
“Each.”
Jerin blanched. One hundred for Eldest and himself to be made a single set of outfits. Two hundred if Summer and Corelle were included. Multiply that by three or four. The numbers staggered him. His entire brother's price could be swallowed by the cost of the clothes.
His sisters exchanged a look.
“We will have to depend on your generosity,” Eldest murmured.
“Good,” the Queen Mother Elder said. “The best tailors in Mayfair were put on notice. A runner has been sent to their shop with news of your arrival. You will see them this afternoon.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Eldest said, bowing her head.
The answer pleased the Queen for some reason. She offered cakes and they accepted, using their best manners to negotiate getting the rich flaky pastry from the delicate china plates to their mouths using only the silver dessert forks. Jerin remembered without prompting that he was the senior ranked male at the table, and thus responsible for refills. He filled everyone's cup without spilling a drop or trailing his sleeves in the liquid, all the while grateful that their grandfather had drilled table manners into the family. They even managed polite small talk, answering questions on the trip down and the health of the sisters and mothers they'd left behind.
“Your family seems blessed with strong, healthy, beautiful children. Any birth defects?”
“None,” Eldest said proudly. “Our family has always kept itself clean of inbreeding. If a family can't pin down a male from the time the first daughter is born until the last daughter hits menopause, some forty or fifty years, then the family shouldn't reproduce in the first place.”
The Queen Elder laughed for a moment, then sobered. “There is much to do, and time is growing shorter. Barnes will show you to your apartment.”
Barnes led them up a curving flight of stairs and down a long carpeted hall to a set of double doors. These she opened to reveal a spacious parlor, done in pale yellow damask-velvet wallpaper and cheery yellow silk drapes and matching settees. On the left-hand wall, two doors led to bedrooms. Jerin's wedding chest sat untouched in the small corner bedroom with a large four-poster bed. Barnes called this bedroom the men's quarters. His sister
s' luggage had been unpacked into the richly carved mahogany wardrobes of the much larger bedroom, which contained six elegant sleigh beds.
“Will you be wanting baths?” Barnes asked Eldest.
“If it can be arranged,” Eldest said.
Barnes signaled a younger woman with a family resemblance to her standing at the parlor door. “Two hip baths, hot water, and towels will be brought up. It will be removed while you are at dinner.”
She showed them how the double parlor doors could be barred at night. She went on to quietly point out that the parlor and women's room isolated Jerin's bedroom from the rest of the palace. She demonstrated how one of the parlor settees could be wheeled to block his bedroom door and used as a bed. Surely even the most paranoid of sisters would feel safe with their brother in this apartment.
Jerin recalled that in his sisters' adventure novels, there were always secret passages to the men's quarters. The daring heroines used them to save their true loves from heartless mothers, cruel sisters, abusive wives, and vile kidnappers. He sighed over the banks of windows, evidence that no secret passage could open into his bedroom; Ren wouldn't be visiting him late at night.
A squad of servants, obviously younger sisters of the majordomo, brought up two copper bathtubs. They set one in his bedroom, the other in his sisters' room to share, and poured buckets of steaming water into them. All the while, the women sent curious glances his way. It made Jerin blush—these strangers preparing a place that he'd step naked into.
“The Queens have commissioned tailors for you,” Barnes was saying. “They'll be here in an hour.” The tub filled, the servants filed out. Barnes followed them to the door, then turned, indicating a length of tapestry fabric hanging from a loop in the ceiling. “This is the bellpull here. Ring if you need anything.”
Jerin glanced to his sister and saw the slight frown Eldest wore when irritated. Was she as baffled as he was but too proud to ask? Summer and Corelle studiously ignored Barnes, which probably meant they were also ignorant. Luckily men were expected to be naïve. He cleared his throat and asked quietly, “I don't understand. Ring what?”
