by P. J. Fox
Right now, Hart’s eyes glowed with amusement as he watched his father struggle with the piglet.
“Oh, my,” Apple murmured under her breath.
Hart concealed his smile behind a goblet. “It’s a noble beast,” he offered magnanimously. “A very noble beast.” And then, “are you sure she’s quite dead? Perhaps you should stab her again. Or is she a he?” He sipped his wine. “What do you say, father, shall we flip her over and look?”
The earl shot him a look. Hart was a crack bowman, a more than able horseman, the ladies loved him, and he knew these things about himself. He suffered from no lack of confidence, other than that inherent in carrying his father’s name only on sufferance. If he was perhaps compensating for something, then Isla was the last person who’d point it out. She loved her brother in a way that she’d never loved either of her parents. Or her sister. She loved Rowena, but also felt responsible for her. Rowena was more of a child than a sibling; Hart, however, was an equal.
“Two guineas says it’s a girl.”
“You don’t have two guineas,” Apple said.
“Well now, that’s a bit rough,” Hart replied jovially. “Do you?”
Apple colored.
TWO
Isla was generally even-tempered. When she disliked people, it was usually only after long acquaintance and she tended to give them the benefit of the doubt long past the point where such magnanimity was deserved. As she well knew, not being a stupid person in the least. She even liked the fat, disagreeable cook, seeing in those beady little eyes a shrewd wit that most overlooked. The man couldn’t cook worth a damn and his foul mouth was legendary, but as Isla saw it everyone had faults. She certainly hoped that people would overlook hers, although none had so far. At least, not while still seeing her at all.
Dinner had passed pleasantly enough, she supposed, and she’d enjoyed her conversation with Hart. Even so, as hard as she tried she couldn’t ignore the man seated immediately to his right. He’d made an occasional comment to Hart, who was already showing the first uncomfortable signs of hero worship, even engaging her brother in a few minutes of quiet conversation between courses. Isla, he’d ignored entirely. And as chagrined as she was to once again be invisible, on this occasion she was also grateful.
The piglet was something her father had dreamed up in an attempt to impress the duke. Who’d commented blandly that a pig’s skin and circulatory system were identical to that of a man’s and indeed the two tasted identical. Although he preferred both a little less well done.
Isla saw her stepmother make a surreptitious sign against witchcraft. Not because he’d mentioned cannibalism, although that had probably figured in as well; but because the duke was speaking heresy. If Mountbatten noticed the fingers flashing up and down the table, he once again gave no sign.
It said something rather unfortunate, Isla thought, that her companions should be so much more distressed by the thought of this great personage rejecting the church than perhaps enjoying one of them later on as a light midnight snack. But at least their souls would be safe.
She exchanged a look with Hart. He, having been told his whole life that he was the product of sin and thus less entitled than other men, had little use for the Gods. And looked almost approving at the idea of roasting an errant guest. Isla felt a shiver dance up her spine. She didn’t want Hart adoring this man, who even now was studying her sister with casually predatory interest. Rowena, needless to say, hadn’t noticed.
Everyone knew, as Isla herself knew—or at least had been taught by the half-drunk old tutor her father had hired to give the girls their letters—that the body was regulated by humors: yellow bile, which was associated with the element of fire, black bile, which was associated with the element of earth, phlegm, which was associated with the element of water, and blood, which was associated with the element of air. Essentially, the theory of humorism, as it was known to scholars of medicine, held that the human body was composed of all these four basic elements and, consequently, all diseases were caused by their either excess or deficit.
Such deficits, in turn, could be caused by vapors that were inhaled or otherwise absorbed—such as, for example, by spending too much time outside in the summer, or breathing in night air. When Isla’s father became choleric, his personal physician bled him with leeches. Peregrine, despite being a man and therefore supposedly stronger of stomach, maintained a lifelong fear of knives and dreaded seeing the scalpel pressed to his veins.
“The men,” the earl said indulgently, “need to talk amongst themselves.” He gave his wife a fond pat. “Which, I’m sure, so do the women.” The dismissal was plain.
Isla stood, relieved, and bid her father goodnight.
Apple, her expression frozen into a mixture of horror and contempt, said nothing. She was, no doubt, astonished that her husband planned to closet himself with the duke. For all her faults she, at least, did not support the proposed match between the duke and Rowena. And Peregrine was…notoriously easily led.
The earl stood, his gesture a signal that while the feast would continue on until the last guest keeled over insensible on his bench, those who concerned themselves with such things were now free to depart without giving offense. Enzie Hall’s central dining area was a large one, and stood as mute homage to better times. The main table, at which Isla and her sister had been sitting, occupied a raised dais that connected to the hearth of the great fireplace. The earl and his favored guests sat with their backs to the warmth. At the other end of the great hall, a twin to the massive fireplace did its best to compete with the endless drafts. Drafts that, given their state of repairs, sometimes felt like gales.
Although in truth the far end of the hall was much more comfortable, proximity to the earl denoted the degree to which one basked in his favor. His preferred courtiers sat at nearby tables, shivering and dosing themselves with substandard wine. The summer had been a short one and fall was upon them too soon. Isla wondered how things fared in the North, where the duke lived. There were no rumors of hardship from his lands, she thought, surprised at her own poor temper.
This sourness was unlike her, and she chalked it up to fear. The duke’s presence was like a constant weight, tugging on her, pulling her eyes in his direction. If she hadn’t known them to be utter bunk, she might almost have given credence to the whispered tales of mind control…and worse. Another gust of wind blew through the hall.
Those sitting below the salt, as it were, chatted on happily. The lesser personages who made up the household—everybody ate with everybody in the country, just farther apart—were having a fine time. The comings and goings of their betters mattered not a whit to them. Isla was, for a split second, jealous. Not that she wanted to spend her life in drudgery, or chained to some gap-toothed man who never bathed, but she did long for freedom.
Freedom that, she knew, was not a woman’s lot. She wanted the kind of freedom that Hart had: to go where he wanted, and do what he wanted, and make his own fortune in the world. Throughout their province of Ewesdale in the Kingdom of Morven, he had, if not a title, then the right to self-direction. He could stay here, or leave and take service with another lord. He could start his own mercenary company, an idea he’d toyed with off and on for years. He and Isla were of an age; she on the old side to begin her so-called real life and he far too young to do the same. Rare was the man considered full grown before he’d reached thirty-odd winters at least.
The duke, she mused, her thoughts returning to the man reclining negligently in semi-darkness, was unusual in more respects than one.
Of course, his brother was young to be king. Morven, after decades of civil war, needed a king and Piers Mountbatten happened to be in the right place at the right time. And with an army at his back, which helped. Having ensconced himself in the capital, he’d spent the next several years consolidating his hold on the immediate environs before expanding outward. The kingdom still roiled in turmoil and to call the roads unsafe would be a generous oversta
tement, but the king had a zeal for organization and men like his brother to help him achieve his goals. Men who, although ruthless, were more than capable.
She had no idea if Mountbatten looked like his brother. She’d heard that the king was handsome; the duke was not. She couldn’t say precisely what it was about him, though, that repelled her so. His features were regular enough, and on another man might even have been pleasant. And yet…wrong, somehow. She felt the instinctive revulsion for him that she had for her grandfather’s dead body, at his funeral.
The duke was tall, several inches taller than Isla, and broad-shouldered. His tunic and overcoat, both of which were cut from fine fabric, did nothing to disguise a form made robust and strong from hours in the practice yard. This was not some pampered lordling who lounged around drinking hippocras while he watched his men practice. He wore a sword at his side that he clearly knew how to use. His skin was pale, though, unusually so given his evident athleticism. His hair was as black as her own, but cut short and swept to the side in the northern style rather than worn long as was the custom among men in Ewesdale. His eyes were also black. He had a straight aquiline nose and a generously bowed—but not overlarge—mouth. His bone structure was pronounced. He was, in short, exactly the sort of man who normally brought blushes to the cheeks of ladies and sent scullery maids running off in fits of giggles.
And yet his mouth was cruel, his eyes cold. Even the reddish glint she saw in them from time to time did nothing to warm them. He’d remained quiet through most of dinner. But he sat, not with the poise of a man intent on absorbing his surroundings, but the unnatural stillness of a corpse. There was nothing alive there, nothing at all.
Her eyes flickered to his hands. Only one was visible, resting negligently at the base of his goblet. The appendage itself was normal enough, broad and strong. The toughened skin and sinews of a man who wielded weapons in combat, and who wrote letters, and who held a horse’s reins. Only a priest’s hands were soft, or a very young child’s.
But it was his fingernails that arrested her attention, and made the bile rise up in her throat. How she’d missed them before, she’d never be able to fathom. His fingers were long and thin and very strong, the fingers of an aristocrat. Hart’s fingers were similar and ended in short, square nails that he kept trimmed with a knife. He used that same knife to clean under them, claiming with good enough humor that no girl would let you touch her if your nails weren’t clean. Isla figured she’d have to take his word on this, having never felt the inclination to touch another woman in that fashion.
Mountbatten’s fingers ended in claws.
They were just on the cusp of what might be considered normal, which was what made them so upsetting. Isla had seen men less concerned than her brother with their personal grooming, of course, and who let their nails grow out to rather astonishing lengths. The eunuch who served her stepmother had nails as long as a woman’s. This was not that. His nails—if they could be called that—were much stronger than those of a normal man and curved from the tips of his fingers in a manner similar to what she’d once seen on a wolf’s paw. His fingertips had a bluish tinge, too, particularly around the nail beds. She wasn’t sure how long they were, not more than an inch or two, but they seemed enormous. They curved slightly into points.
She glanced at them now, and swallowed.
Then, mercifully, she got to leave.
Rowena, still laughing, led the procession out of the room. Isla followed her, across the flagstones and up the stairs to the long and narrow mezzanine known as the women’s balcony. They gathered here, the women of the court, around their own smaller fire to chat and sew or read to each other while the men sat downstairs and smoked.
Isla didn’t look at the duke when she left. More problematically, neither did her sister. Isla resolved to discuss with her sister the extreme lack of wisdom in ignoring this man. Especially if, as appeared plain, she was soon to be his—third? Fifth?—wife. Not that Rowena believed such a thing, even for a minute, despite the gossip. She’d never been brooked before—on anything—so why should she expect different now?
If Mountbatten minded, he gave no sign. Even at the foot of the stairs, Isla felt his presence beating against her back like a wave of heat from a roaring fire. He radiated an aura of evil; as dramatic as such a statement sounded, there was none better to describe the sense of crawling…disgust he inspired. That Rowena had ignored him, as much as anything, told Isla that there was something wrong. The duke was a well-made man after his own fashion and since she’d been about ten years old Rowena Cavendish had ignored almost nothing with a pulse. Including men twice her age and three times as fat.
Shivering again, Isla hurried after her sister.
THREE
“I won’t do it!” Rowena shouted, her hands balled into tiny little fists at her sides as she stormed into the room.
Isla sat bolt upright in bed, adrenaline snapping her wide awake.
“Won’t do what?” she asked, clutching the covers against herself for warmth as Rowena yanked back the bed curtains, letting in the frigid air. Cold, antiseptic light poured in as the younger girl twirled and stormed back across the room. As she did so, she continued to rant.
Isla gathered, as consciousness slowly came back to her along with her wits, that the subject of this morning’s diatribe was Rowena’s planned engagement.
“I won’t do it,” she repeated for the tenth time, “and he can’t make me.”
He—their father—certainly could, but that was beside the point.
Isla’s bed was a large, square, canopied affair that had belonged to her great aunt. Furniture was dear and never replaced unless absolutely necessary. Even in the richest households, a few key pieces often formed the better part of a woman’s dowry. The heavy velvet drapes that formed the bed’s canopy kept out the worst of the chill but now, robbed of her cocoon, Isla decided to just take her lumps and get up for the morning. It was early, earlier than she normally rose, but still a perfectly reasonable time to rise. The sun was only now emerging fully from the treetops but most of the household had been up for hours.
Wrapping a robe around her, Isla padded over to the window where acre after acre of fallow fields served as a constant reminder of the poor harvest. And miserable winter to come, undoubtedly. Isla had seen famine before; she had no desire to see it again and knew that, for all his failings, neither did the earl. An alliance with House Mountbatten would mean relief, if needed—when needed—during the coming months of privation and hardship. The duke would be honor bound to do nothing else, to say nothing of the king.
No, this alliance was necessary. Isla saw it, even if her sister didn’t. The earl did, too.
She said nothing while Rowena ranted: about herself, about their father, about the charming and desirable Rudolph, her childhood crush, and the equally non-charming and non-desirable duke. It was Rudolph, Rowena was certain, that she was meant to marry.
“But Rudolph,” Isla said finally, “hasn’t even declared himself. Has he?”
Rowena turned, eyes flashing. This was a sore subject with her and one that Isla usually had the sense not to mention. But certain issues would have to be discussed, no matter how unpleasant, if this issue was going to be resolved. “Rudolph loves me,” Rowena said defensively, “I know he does. He hasn’t declared himself because he has to make his way in the world first. He can’t just come in and carry me off.” She sniffed, pulling her own robe about her slender shoulders. “He has time—or should. He’s young yet, you know, not twice my age like that revolting so-called duke.”
That revolting so-called duke was the most powerful peer in the realm. Isla once again lapsed into silence, stymied by her sister’s intransigent refusal to see the realities of the world in which they lived. A world in which a woman’s choice was effectively to sell her body to the highest bidder or watch those under her care go hungry.
Rowena had ignored the duke, both the implications of his visit and the man himsel
f, and their father had done nothing to stop her. She’d had her heart set for years now on the supposedly glorious Rudolph, the oldest son of a minor baron who paid homage to the Earl of Strathearn. Rudolph was also their next door neighbor, and the first real man that Rowena had ever laid eyes on. She’d been smitten with him since she was ten and he a few years older; now she was sixteen and he twenty-one. Not an unreasonable age for a man to consider marriage, Isla supposed, if he cherished no other ambitions.
That Rudolph was ambitious was part of his charm. And, Isla decided, there must be something almost like true love beating in her sister’s strangely vacant heart. Over the past year, she’d rejected any number of suitors while waiting for her intended to gain his courage. Whether he had in fact approached the earl was anyone’s guess, although certainly nothing approximating a formal contract had been suggested. The earl might, as Isla suspected, have received Rudolph’s suit and rejected it out of hand in the hopes that a better match might appear. He had two daughters to marry off, and so one might argue that one daughter’s marriage was no great loss, but he like everyone else considered Isla to be unmarriageable. Rowena was his one great hope.
Rowena assumed, naturally, that her father was holding off out of respect for her wishes and that dear Rudolph—who was painfully shy—hadn’t yet pressed his suit. She assumed, furthermore, that this dalliance with the duke would be like all the others: he’d come, make his advances, and leave when she told him to.
Shoring up her claims of genuine affection toward Rudolph was the fact that many of these rejected suitors had born greater rank as well as far heavier purses. Rudolph wasn’t poor, but he hadn’t the income to pull Enzie Moor out of its disasters. Few men did, save perhaps the king and a handful of his cronies. One or two merchants, maybe, but the earl himself refused to consider such a match. Despite his wife’s lowly origins, he believed firmly that the common folk were beneath him. At least the male common folk. The earl, as Rowena had never noticed, wasn’t much of a one for women’s liberation and viewed women far more as ornaments than legitimate people.
