The Scholar's Heart (Chronicles of Tournai Book 3)

by Antonia Aquilante

  Etan nodded. “I didn’t think you did, not really, but I loved you, and when you got married, I was devastated.”

  “I am so sorry. So very sorry.” His heart hurt for Etan, for what he’d done to Etan without realizing it. But his breath caught at one word Etan said. “Loved?”

  “I don’t know if I can love you again, Tristan. I don’t know if I can let myself. I loved you back then, and I thought you might feel the same, or come to feel the same. I thought we were moving toward something together, but then you married someone else with barely a word. I didn’t want to get involved with you again because I knew it would hurt when it ended.”

  “But I don’t want it to end, Etan. Not ever.”

  Etan stared at him for a long moment as everything within Tristan froze. “I don’t know, Tristan. I don’t know if I can trust that. I’m sorry.”

  Tristan couldn’t get himself to move, to speak, as Etan walked past him and out of the room. His paralysis only broke as he heard the front door close behind Etan. And then what could he do? Etan was gone. Tristan sank to the floor right where he stood. Was this, this grief, this pain, what Etan had felt when Tristan told him about his wedding?

  Chapter 13

  “WE’RE KIDNAPPING you.” Vita’s expression edged into the sarcastic, but her delivery of the line was perfectly serious.

  “What?” Etan was no less bewildered after her statement than he had been when he was told she and Stefan were at the palace gates at an hour far too early in the morning for polite visitors.

  Stefan looked down at her from his much taller height, mostly mock outrage all over his face. “Whose side are you on?”

  “Mine mostly,” she said with a shrug and a little smile. “And I’m really being pressed into service here too.”

  “I don’t see why you object to fishing. It’s a beautiful day for it. We’ll ride out to a nice spot on the river, relax, and do some fishing. It will be perfect, peaceful.”

  “I don’t enjoy fishing either,” Etan said, feeling the need to interject now before Stefan and Vita went too far in their bantering almost-argument.

  “That’s because you never spent much time doing it. You’ll enjoy it today.” Stefan turned to Vita. “And you’ll sit in the shade with a book as we agreed you could.”

  “Can I sit in the shade with a book? I think I’d prefer it.” Actually Etan knew he’d prefer it. Hunting and fishing were not his chosen methods of relaxation.

  “No, you’re fishing.” Stefan’s tone left no room for argument, not that Etan would let that stop him.

  “Why does she get to read and I have to fish?”

  “Because I said so, and because she could hurt me.”

  The first part of that statement was too childish to even respond to, and Etan couldn’t argue with the second. Still. “I could hurt you.”

  “Yes, but you would have to fight me, and I could defend myself. She could hurt me with a thought. I’d never see it coming.”

  Vita rolled her eyes, but she didn’t disagree, and Etan couldn’t fault Stefan’s logic. She wouldn’t hurt him, of course, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t if she wanted to. And he probably wouldn’t see it coming. Her Talent was that strong and she that skilled.

  He tried another approach. “I have work to do today.”

  “You work too hard,” Vita said. “You could use a break.”

  He gave her a hard stare filled with more than a dash of betrayal.

  She shrugged. “I told you whose side I’m on. If I have to go, so do you.”

  He looked from one to the other of his friends and knew he wasn’t getting out of this excursion. If he kept refusing, they probably would just drag him out of the palace—in the dressing gown and sleep clothes he still wore. He wondered if the royal guards would stop them, or if somehow his friends had persuaded the guards to their side as well. A ridiculous thought, as ridiculous as him ever calling out the guards on his friends.

  “Fine. I’ll get dressed.”

  Etan retreated to his dressing room and dressed quickly, afraid Stefan or Vita would burst in to check he hadn’t climbed out the window if he took too long. He wouldn’t put it past either of them. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to go with them—a day with friends sounded like a pleasant distraction from his confusion—but he could think of a dozen other ways he would prefer to spend it other than fishing. On the way through his bedchamber back to the sitting room, he slipped his book in the pocket of his cloak. Just in case.

  Stefan and Vita were waiting almost patiently for him in the sitting room. As soon as he stepped into the room, they gathered him up and swept him out into the corridor. They flanked him all the way to the stables as if afraid he would run from them at any moment. When the three of them arrived at the stables, Etan’s horse was already saddled and ready.

  He shook his head and mounted up as Stefan and Vita did the same. The palace stable hands were far too well trained to react, but Etan had seen others display their shock that Vita rode astride, wearing breeches under her skirts for comfort and modesty. He’d seen her ride too often to be surprised, or to care. He was far more worried about the amount of fishing gear strapped to the backs of their saddles.

  Stefan led them off the palace grounds and through Jumelle to the North Gate, a smaller city gate that allowed them to avoid the crowds entering the city for market day. They left the city without delay, the guards waving them through and on their way, and struck out on the northern road. Etan followed Stefan, since he had no idea where his friend would take them, and let himself be drawn into conversation as they rode at a brisk trot.

  They rode for some time, leaving the main roads for smaller ones that took them into the woods lining the river. Stefan finally stopped them at a bend in the river where a small pool formed. They dismounted there and took care of the horses, leaving them happily eating grass, while they went to attend to the rest of the things Stefan brought. Etan spared a moment of envy for Vita who laid out her blanket in a grassy spot under a tree, settled herself on it, and opened her book.

  He wanted to be doing that.

  Instead, he helped Stefan unload the bags and listened to his instructions before they both settled at the water’s edge with their fishing poles. Etan had only tried fishing once in his life, when he was a child. Vrai had gotten it in his head one summer when he, Cathal, and Vrai were staying at Alzata with Philip that they should fish in the lake. They’d caught a few fish, mostly by accident, but Vrai was the only one who truly enjoyed himself. Etan abandoned fishing fairly early on in the endeavor, but kept the others company on the sunny banks of the lake, reading when no one felt like talking. Cathal didn’t seem to mind the fishing, or perhaps he was just too stubborn to quit, but Philip had no qualms about giving up something he didn’t enjoy. He spent his time sitting with Etan after only a brief time trying to fish.

  Etan didn’t expect to enjoy the occupation any more this time than he had years ago, and he was proven right. Fishing would never be a favorite pastime, but he did enjoy the day. Their little corner of the world was as quiet, as peaceful, as he could have hoped. The peace broken only when they talked or teased each other.

  At some point, after catching no fish and losing his patience, Etan abandoned his own fishing pole and sprawled on the blanket next to Vita. He pulled out his book to Stefan’s teasing calls.

  “I can’t believe you’re abandoning me here. Give it a chance!”

  “No, thank you,” Etan replied as he opened his book.

  “Come on. Don’t be a quitter. You’d enjoy fishing if you weren’t so set against it.”

  “Leave him alone,” Vita jumped in. “He doesn’t have to like catching fish and hunting for things just because you do.”

  “I am aware of that. I just think he would.” Stefan turned to him. “You realize I’m only teasing, right?”

  “I know.”

  “I just want you to relax and have some fun. You work too hard, and you’ve been
tense lately.”

  He’d been tense more because of Tristan than anything going on at the palace or the university in the week since Tristan told Etan he loved him, but he wasn’t relaxed enough to talk about that yet. And maybe not ever. “Thank you.”

  Stefan heaved an exaggerated sigh. “All right. I’ll just fish by myself and catch us a meal. Then Vita can clean the fish and cook them for us.”

  “No,” Vita said casually but definitively as she offered Etan a dried apricot from the pouch she held. “I do not clean the fish you catch.”

  Another exaggerated sigh. “You never do anything for me.”

  She threw a dried apricot at Stefan’s head. It hit him in the middle of the forehead, and he stared back at her with an expression of astonished insult. Etan rolled onto his back and stared up at the blue sky as he laughed and laughed.

  Whatever his requests and protests had been, Stefan made no complaints later in the day as he cleaned the fish he caught, then built a fire and cooked the fish over it. In fact, he cooked happily and well as Vita produced wine and cups to drink it from out of the saddlebags, along with bread and cheese. They sat around the fire once the fish was done and shared the food around, eating with their fingers, talking as they ate.

  “Well, you look much more relaxed now,” Vita said to Etan as he refilled her wine.

  “See? The fishing did him good,” Stefan said with a grin.

  “What are you two talking about?” Etan asked, despite being almost afraid to know.

  “We’ve been a little worried about you lately, Etan,” Vita said.

  “You never really told us why your friendship with Tristan ended, and you didn’t have to,” Stefan hastened to add. “You didn’t really have to. We could guess.”

  “Oh?” Etan said, his mind buzzing at the sudden turn in what had been a lighthearted conversation. He looked at Vita. Had she told Stefan about Etan’s admissions to her about Tristan?

  Shaking her head, Vita reached out and squeezed his arm briefly. “You spent so much time with him, talked about him so much. It was easy to see how you felt about him.”

  “How I felt about him?” He wasn’t sure why he was stalling, wasn’t sure why it mattered. They were two of his closest friends, and Vita knew he’d loved Tristan, knew even that he and Tristan had started something between them. He didn’t know why he hadn’t told them more about what happened with Tristan before, except that he hadn’t wanted more people, even his friends, to see the grief he hadn’t wanted to feel.

  She tilted her head, sympathy warming her eyes. “You loved him.” She paused and her words, a repetition of those he’d said to her weeks ago, had time to settle over him, sink inside, echo in his mind. He knew what he’d felt for Tristan, but he tried not to think of it, didn’t want to hear it from someone else either.

  He nodded.

  “And something happened and you were hurt. I worried for you then, but you were doing better,” Stefan said. “You don’t seem better anymore. What happened?”

  Etan blew out a breath. “Tristan and I… started something, and it was just supposed to be a bit of fun. That’s what Tristan wanted. That’s what I agreed to. He hurt me before. Without realizing it, but he hurt me. Now he seems to have seen what he did, and he wants more than just fun, but I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I can trust enough.”

  He felt ridiculous saying it, but his friends didn’t laugh at him. Even Stefan who perpetually teased everyone was looking at him with nothing but concern.

  “Do you still love him?” Stefan asked, a simple question that didn’t feel simple.

  “Yes,” he said after a moment of just letting what he felt filter through him. “Yes, I still love Tristan.”

  “But,” Vita said, filling in the end of his thought.

  But he had been hurt before and Tristan hadn’t even seen it. But he couldn’t trust that it wouldn’t happen again. But.

  He didn’t say any of those things, but he thought Stefan and Vita understood anyway.

  “But you love him?” Vita asked.

  Etan nodded, and Stefan picked up the thought. “Then you have to decide whether it’s worth the risk of being hurt again to be with the person you love.”

  He thought about what his friends said as they cleaned up and packed everything into the saddle bags again. The trip back to Jumelle was quieter than the trip out of the city had been, and he worried briefly that his troubles had dragged the party down, but glances at his friends told him they were more tired than upset. Seeing that, he sank into his own contemplative mood, turning over and over everything they said, everything that had happened with Tristan, everything Etan felt for him as the sun set and Stefan and Vita talked in low voices and they approached Jumelle.

  They parted company back in the city, and hardly thinking about it, Etan turned his horse not for the palace but for Tristan’s house. When he arrived there, he realized he’d made his decision. He knocked on the door and was shocked as it was thrown open when his hand had barely left the wood. Tristan stood in the doorway, his hair disheveled, his eyes frantic. He flung himself into Etan’s arms with no warning. Etan stumbled back a step but closed his arms around Tristan and managed to keep them both on their feet.

  “Etan. I’m so glad you’re here. Have you seen her?”

  It wasn’t the greeting he’d imagined. “Have I seen who?”

  Tristan seemed to wilt in on himself. “Bria. She’s missing. Someone’s taken her.”

  TRISTAN DIDN’T question Etan’s arrival on his doorstep after what had passed between them at their last meeting, but he had no room for hope that Etan might have decided to trust him, to love him, again. He couldn’t, not when he was filled with sick, choking terror.

  His baby girl was missing.

  “What? What happened?” Etan exclaimed, shock evident in his voice, but he didn’t loosen the hold of his arms around Tristan, something Tristan was pathetically grateful for. He found safety, support, in those arms, and the assurance, true or not, that Etan would help him figure out what to do next.

  “Wait,” Etan said before Tristan could answer his questions. “Not here on the doorstep. Come inside.”

  Tristan looked out onto the street over Etan’s shoulder, as if he could conjure Bria from the air, but let himself be bundled back into the house, the door shut firmly behind him. Etan kept an arm around him as he did so and left it there as he urged Tristan into the parlor. After getting them both settled on the couch, Etan turned to him again. “Now tell me what happened.”

  Sitting up straighter, he scrubbed a hand over his face. “When I returned home this evening, Bria wasn’t here, and the house was in an uproar.” Or as close to one as it could get with such well-trained servants. “Bria’s nursemaid said my sister came late this afternoon to visit. Sanna left Selene with the baby, and when she returned, both of them were gone.”

  “I take it Selene hadn’t taken the baby for a turn in the back garden.”

  He shook his head. “The nursemaid thought so at first, or that she had gone somewhere else in the house. They searched, and were searching again when I arrived home. It’s not that big a house.” He swallowed down a strangled laugh. “Maxen was with me. He thought maybe she’d taken the baby to the park, but we searched there too, and she would have told Sanna, probably would have taken her on an outing like that. She didn’t tell anyone she was going somewhere.”

  “But Selene did leave the house on her own?”

  “Yes. I went to Mother’s. Selene wasn’t there either, but Mother was worried.” That’s when he realized what must have happened, or what was supposed to happen. “She admitted she’d told Selene to come here and take the baby. To bring Bria back home with her. She always thought Bria would be better off with her than with me.”

  Etan cursed viciously, but his hand rubbed gentle circles over Tristan’s back. “She has old-fashioned ideas. I take it Bria wasn’t there.”

  Rage at his mother had almost eclips
ed his fear when he realized what she’d done, but he’d seen her worry too. Selene should have been back by then with the baby, and with Tristan’s appearance, Mother had to stop pretending that Selene had been delayed at Tristan’s house or distracted in her walk by something pretty in a shop window. “No, they never made it there.”

  “Could she have gotten lost on the way?” Etan sounded skeptical of the possibility though he brought it up himself, as was Tristan, but he answered anyway.

  “It’s not so far, and she knows her way. She’s made the walk before.”

  “We should still search.”

  “It’s been hours, but my brothers are out searching anyway. I stayed in case she came back or someone heard something about them.” And he’d never felt so helpless, alone in this house, pacing the floors and waiting for news. News that never came.

  He shot to his feet at the sound of the front door opening and rushed out into the entry hall. Etan was right behind him, so close that when Tristan skidded to a stop Etan collided with him, his hands closing over Tristan’s waist to steady them both. Tristan barely noticed the closeness as he looked at Maxen. “Anything?”

  Maxen shook his head. “Nothing. I didn’t see a sign of her, and no one I asked had either.”

  Tristan sagged back against Etan, the brief flash of hope draining away and taking Tristan’s energy with it.

  “We’re still looking. I’ll go back out,” Maxen said, his words fast, emphatic, and not at all reassuring to Tristan.

  “Wait,” Etan said. “Have you called for the city guard?”

  “No.” Tristan shook his head. He should step away from Etan, but Etan’s strength at his back began to feel necessary to keep Tristan on his feet. “We wanted to search first. Just in case she had gotten lost or stopped off along the way. But we should call them now.”