She was, as Will had noticed long before this, a remarkably pretty girl. She was particularly appealing now, flushed and still breathless from her climb upstairs.
And Will had never been one to resist feminine beauty. “Willie—” she began, and was again interrupted, when he tossed the pistol down on the table, took her impetuously into his arms, and covered her mouth forcefully with his own.
Eulalie returned his kiss with enthusiasm, molding her slim body against his. But then she seemed to remember why she had come; she gasped and pulled away. “It isn’t safe. There was a fire down below that weakened some of the beams, and the house could collapse at any moment.”
Will let her go at once. “A fire—here?” That explained the lingering scent of smoke. Then he reached out again, with both hands, and took her roughly by the shoulders. “Was it an accident, or did somebody try to burn down the house?”
She twisted out of his grip and moved toward the door. “Not now, Willie. I told you, it isn’t safe.” As if in confirmation, the entire building shuddered convulsively.
Convinced that at least some of her story was true, he picked up his coat and hat, retrieved the pistol, then followed her out the door and down the steps to the alley.
“Now,” he said, when they stood on solid ground. “Tell me exactly how it happened.”
She gave a slight shrug. “A coal from the stove rolled onto the floor; the next thing we knew, the room was ablaze.” Eulalie made a grimace of distaste. “Would you mind putting that thing away? I don’t quite care for the look of it. And why on earth should you suspect that somebody tried to burn down the house?”
He slipped the pistol into a pocket of his coat. “Because I have a low mind—as you of all people should know.” He was at least suspicious enough to wonder if she was telling the truth even now.
Though he ought to be able to trust her. They had been sharing a bed together, on and off, for about a year: a pleasant arrangement that seemed as much to her liking as it was to his. Pleasant and profitable, Will reminded himself, remembering some of the expensive gifts he had given her.
“Eulalie—do you love me?” Even as he spoke the words, he wished them back.
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you want? Would that make things better?” In the dim glow of the flaring blue gaslight it was difficult for him to decide if her expression was angry, calculating, or just surprised.
“No. Of course it wouldn’t make things any better.” Because if Eulalie loved him, he would be a villain: seducing the girl with his gifts and his flattery, deceiving her about his name, his rank, his background.
If he had deceived her. Will sometimes wondered if he had been less clever than he intended. Besides owning the house, Eulalie’s father made wigs for the nobility. Every now and again, Will casually recommended the wig-maker to his friends. Perhaps by doing so, he had indirectly revealed his identity; or perhaps Eulalie had known all along and had encouraged his advances merely for the sake of a connection at court.
She moved toward him now, sliding her arms under his coat, pressing the palms of her hands against his back. He could feel the heat of her skin through his thin cambric shirt. That he was filthy, reeking, seemed to bother her not at all. He bent to kiss her, but without much enthusiasm.
Because suddenly, painfully, standing there with another woman held tightly in his arms, Will wanted Lili. It was senseless, confusing—Blaise, he supposed, would call it perverse—but there it was.
Except that Lili was a hundred miles from Hawkesbridge and had never loved him, anyway. With that thought, his hold on Eulalie tightened, the kiss deepened. And Eulalie was a clever girl, she knew exactly how to arouse him. As his hands moved over her, she made tiny, encouraging sounds.
Pishing the one woman up against the side of the building, Will pushed the other one just as deliberately out of his mind, and abandoned himself to the pleasure of the moment.
Three-quarters of an hour later, Wilrowan was again on his way to the Volary. He was avoiding the crowded streets, and had taken to the winding alleys, hidden stairs, and other back ways that led just as surely in their roundabout fashion uphill to the palace.
At last he emerged on one of the public boulevards. A vast and complex jumble of buildings, of towers and domes and odd projecting balconies, loomed up before him. The early rulers of Mountfalcon, products of an age noted for its appetite for knowledge, had been virtuosi: scientists, explorers, inventors, collectors. In adapting the ruinous shell of the old brick-and-timber Maglore palace to their own uses, they had added a glassed-in observatory, a planetarium, a dozen greenhouses, two museums, a menagerie, a great aviary full of wild birds, as well as numerous dizzying wall-walks and high observation platforms intended for star-gazing. Many of these structures were slowly collapsing into disrepair—the greenhouses and the garden mazes overgrown, the hundreds of glass panes in the observatory cracked and dimmed with age and weather—but the menagerie and the aviary were still well stocked. As evening and the feeding hour approached, the impatient roaring of lions, the screeching of hungry hawks and owls, could be plainly heard for a quarter of a mile.
Will entered through a gate on the south, moved down the Fountain Court, where marble men and monsters sent jets of water hundreds of feet into the air, and eventually penetrated the gloomy central pile of the palace itself.
Part palace, part museum, part zoo, that was the Volary—or, at least, so the newly betrothed Dionee had declared on her first visit, three years ago, as she wrinkled her pretty nose at the philosophical kickshaws in which the Volary abounded, as she took in, with ill-disguised dismay, the faded grandeur of the chilly state chambers, with their vaulted ceilings and queer scientific murals. A month after her wedding she asked if she might redecorate her apartments, and the king (whose own rooms were located in another wing, where his cherished peace would not be disrupted by the renovations) gave his consent, with the one restriction that she not alter the historic fabric of the palace in any way.
So, away went the moth-eaten velvet draperies shrouding the windows; silken hangings came in to conceal the peeling frescoes; richly figured carpets went down to cover the cold marble floors. Ruthlessly, Dionee plundered the other apartments of their prettiest and quaintest furnishings: lacquer tea-chests, ormolu tables, chairs of gilt and ivory. She brought in statues, and flowering plants in marble urns, and tiny songbirds in dainty cages of silver wire. When it was all done, the sober Rodaric had shaken his head at his young wife’s reckless extravagance, but he had said nothing.
Arriving, at last, outside this unusual set of rooms, Wilrowan nodded to the green-coated guards stationed to either side of Dionee’s bedchamber door, scratched on the painted panels to announce his presence, and walked boldly in without waiting for an invitation. He found her dressing for supper, surrounded by her pretty young attendants, as well as a dozen or so of the dandies and officers who made up her admiring court.
As Will crossed the room, a battery of quizzing glasses rose up to follow his progress. But a gesture from the queen, a whispered instruction to one of her maids-of-honor, and the ladies dropped curtsies, the men made elaborate bows, then they all filed discreetly out of the room—though not before several of the more ardent gentlemen cast darkling glances in Will’s direction. The last one to leave rather pointedly left the door slightly ajar.
Undaunted by this reception, Wilrowan swept off his disreputable hat, went gracefully down on one knee, and raised one of Dionee’s little white hands to his lips. It was all very prettily done, but his cousin stepped back with a shudder of distaste.
“Will, you wretch, you look positively g-ghastly! And I can’t even begin to say what you smell like.”
Will grinned up at her, far from penitent. “I smell like a prison—or perhaps like a brothel.” Eulalie’s perfume lingered on his skin, along with the effluvium of Whitcomb Gaol. “I beg your pardon. I would have cleaned up before inflicting you with my presence, but I understood you wishe
d to see me immediately.”
She began to pace the room, picking up a trinket here and there, examining it briefly, then setting it down in a new place. Wondering what it was she found so difficult to say to him, Will sat back on his heels and waited for her to speak.
After several minutes, Dionee settled at a goat-legged dressing table. “I suppose I should warn you. You’re in utter disgrace, and I don’t even like to think what might happen if Rodaric sees you. He is absolutely furious over this latest escapade!”
“Escapade?” Will’s eyebrows rose sharply. “Dionee, I haven’t done anything wrong. It was just a stupid mistake by a company of inexperienced guardsmen.”
“That’s not how Barnaby and Pyecroft tell the tale. They told Rodaric it was all your doing, insisting that Sir Rufus fight you. They say they told you it was quite unfair, as you were permitted to enter a duel without a warrant, but none of them were so fortunately situated.”
Will tried to remember. “I suppose someone may have said something like that. It wouldn’t have stopped me. The only thing on my mind at the time was how much I wanted to murder Macquay.” He scowled at the memory. “And did Pyecroft and Barnaby also tell Rodaric that Macquay spent the entire evening trying to provoke a quarrel—until he finally hit on the one insult I couldn’t ignore?”
“Yes,” said Dionee. “I don’t believe they meant to make trouble for you. They even said you had hardly been drinking. Though I suppose, in the end, that went against you.” Wilrowan nodded morosely. It never seemed to count in his favor that he invariably committed his follies stone-cold sober. “And, of course, they were much too discreet to tell the woman’s name.”
Will groaned and struck his forehead with the palm of his hand. “But not so discreet they failed to mention a woman was involved?”
Dionee gave a sarcastic little laugh. “Do you really think anyone would have supposed otherwise—no matter what story they might invent?”
He glanced up angrily. The elation he had felt on leaving Eulalie was rapidly fading. He was sliding toward depression, an all too familiar reaction. At Dionee’s words, he began to wonder: had he truly become a byword for loose behavior? Or—worse—a joke? Between the man of many easy conquests and the hardened rake there was an ugly distinction. Had he, without knowing it, crossed the line? He was opening his mouth to ask the question, but Dionee forestalled him.
“Look at this, Wilrowan.” She picked up a tiny blue glass bottle, pulled out its silver stopper, and sniffed the contents before she passed it on. “Do you think it pretty? It was a gift from your grandmama. And only imagine how clever—it’s not really perfume, though it smells so divinely. Try to guess what it is.”
Will declined to guess, with a shake of his head and a sinking sensation. Lady Krogan was the only grandparent they did not share in common; true to her Rowan heritage, she was always sending him potions and powders; that she sent similar gifts to his cousin he had never imagined.
“Well then, I’ll tell you, since you are too stupid to guess. It’s invisible ink. Isn’t that cunning?”
“Very,” said Will, with an inward sigh of relief. His grandmother’s gifts to himself were seldom so innocent.
He rose to his feet, began to pace the floor. “But Dionee—how far do you think I should go to avoid meeting Rodaric? And for how long? Just how angry is he?”
“In a vile temper. He’s done nothing but lecture me the last two days, on your follies and my own. He almost refused to sign that letter authorizing your release, and he said that he wished he might not see your face again for at least a fortnight.”
“For at least a fortnight?” Only once in his life had Will seen the king so angry it took more than a day for him to cool down. “What have you done to put him in such a temper, during my absence? You’ve been flirting again, I suppose, and that’s put down to my bad influence. Though Rodaric should know—”
“—that you lecture me even more than he does,” Dionee finished for him. “I expect he will remember that, given enough time. Right now, he seems more concerned that you nearly got Finn and Pyecroft arrested.”
Will thought about that. He had never perfectly understood Rodaric, who seemed to waver between regarding him as an ally, because of his influence over the queen, and resenting him for that same reason. But then he remembered that Pyecroft and Finn were the sons of two of the king’s cabinet ministers. He could easily imagine the shock and dismay of those two highly respectable gentlemen, if their sons had been obliged to join him in Whitcomb Gaol.
“But this is dreadfully inconvenient for me, my dear. Letting you go off, precisely when I need you.”
Will stopped pacing and cocked his head, instantly suspicious. “How inconvenient? You need me how?”
“Did you forget that you promised to go with me to the birthday fête at the embassy?” She picked up a fan of painted chicken-skin, unfurled it, and began to flirt it with practiced ease. “There’s to be a picnic on the embassy roof, and fireworks at sunset—I thought we would have such a lovely time!”
Yes, he had forgotten, in the recent press of events, but now that he remembered, he was reminded, too, of a persistent worry. “You spend too much time with Lord Vault and those people from Nordfjall. You pay far too much attention to all the ambassadors. If you’re not careful, everyone will start suspecting you of foreign intrigues.”
She dismissed his warning with a light laugh. “What is the purpose of foreign ambassadors if no one is allowed to know or visit them, for fear of starting that sort of talk?”
“All very well, but there is a difference between knowing such people and visiting them occasionally, and living in the ambassador’s pocket. Fire and Thunder, Dionee! I wish that I might escort you, if only to keep you out of mischief. But Coffin and Polmaric will have to serve in my place.”
Then, as Dionee made a wry face over the fan, he asked sharply: “They’re my lieutenants. Who else would you have me send?”
“Coffin’s so old. And as for Polmaric—such a plain young man I’ve never seen, and he has no conversation at all.” She dropped the fan, left it lying on the table with her ribbons and other trinkets. “I’ll be bored to death in their company.”
Will realized that he was growing weary of hearing his men criticized. First for laxity by Blaise, now for dull respectability by Dionee. He began to consider the prospect of leaving the city with real enthusiasm. “Do you mean to tell me that I should choose my officers for wit and for beauty rather than ability?”
“Well, why not?” Dionee picked up a delicate crystal hand-mirror set with glass roses; examining her reflection, she made a slight adjustment to one silvery curl. “They tell me the Queen’s Guard in Tholia is entirely made up of handsome, strapping young men, all of them remarkably fair-spoken and accomplished, for she chooses them herself.”
“Then the King of Tholia is remarkably forbearing. You had better not share this information with Rodaric; not if he’s already in a jealous rage.”
Dionee said nothing, just went on rearranging her curls, spoiling her hairdresser’s careful work. Several minutes passed, during which she seemed to forget his presence entirely.
Will waited as long as his patience could bear, then cleared his throat loudly. “Am I dismissed then? May I go?”
“Well, of course,” said Dionee, with a wave of her hand, though she immediately cancelled the effect of this airy dismissal by asking a question. “But where will you go?”
“I suppose I’ll go home,” said Will, without thinking.
His cousin raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “Home to your papa? You’ll distract him from his books, as likely as not, and you know how cross that always makes him.”
“I meant that I’ll go to visit Lili at Brakeburn,” said Will, with icy dignity. Dionee was beginning to bore him. Worse, he was beginning to despise her, and that always meant that he despised himself, for they were much alike.
But Dionee failed to recognize, or perhaps just ign
ored, the dangerous note in his voice. “Wilrowan, you are just too amazingly funny. Now why should you say ‘home’ when you mean Brakeburn Hall? You’re practically never there and you hate your in-laws.” She gave a trill of laughter.
He shook his head, not certain what impulse had prompted him. Except that he somehow needed to see Lili, and that he would not feel comfortable again until he had done so.
“At least you should give her fair warning. Send a messenger ahead, so she can prepare for your visit. Why—she might not even be there.”
Will was astonished. “Where else would Lili be, if not at Brakeburn? If she wanted to go anywhere else, she could visit me here.”
Dionee gave him a roguish glance over one shoulder. “You’re mighty possessive for so careless, so wayward a husband. I wonder how Lili endures you, how she accepts your infrequent visits with such complaisance—if she really is complaisant.”
He returned her smile with a bewildered frown. In her words, he had detected a faint echo of Macquay’s insinuations, three days earlier. “Lili is always happy to see me. What have you heard to make you think otherwise?”
“I’ve heard nothing,” said the queen with a shrug. “I’ve heard nothing, but just like anyone else, I can speculate.”
She turned back to her mirror. “And really, Wilrowan, it would serve you right, you wicked boy, if you dropped in at Brakeburn some day and found Lili not waiting, but off having romantic adventures of her own!”
8
On a Ship Sailing the Northern Seas—Eight Weeks Earlier
29 Vindémia, 6537
Dawn was just breaking as the Pagan Queen sailed out of Zutlingen harbor. A cold, sleety rain had fallen during the night, freezing on the shrouds and the bulwarks, casing the ancient vessel in ice, but a dim red glow that began at the horizon and spread across the sky like wildfire promised a day that would be cold but clear.
The Queen's Necklace Page 9
