She stepped out of her wet riding clothes, cold to the bone, and hastened to draw on a heavy flannel nightdress that was only vaguely damp. Ninette had already done the same for herself and for Citrine, and was now warming water over the lamp.
It was a terrible night to be on the road. A storm had arisen when their small group traveling to the Norwood Grant was in between settled areas where they might have found shelter. There had been nothing to do but pitch the tents on the nearest rise of high ground and huddle within, soaked to the skin, but at least with a dream of getting dry. Elise thanked the Lynxùwho as a cat must set some value on being warm and dryùthat the escort her father had sent with her was so skilled.
She hoped that they were comfortable and in their own tents. The horses, who could not be put in a tent but had to settle for the shelter offered by a copse of trees, must be miserable.
There was something about the beating of the thunder, about the hard pounding of the rain against the canvas, that made anything outside of the pavilion seem less than real. Elise, Ninette, and Citrine might have been on some island in the middle of the ocean, cut off from everyone and everything.
Citrine, praise every ancestor in their shared lines, had not gone into one of her wild fits when the storm hit. Instead she had sat her pony like a doll, not even raising a hand to wipe the water from her face. Elise had set Ninette to mind the child while she did her best to help with pitching the tents and strapping covers over what remained in their wagon. The skills she'd acquired during last winter's journey into New Kelvin had been of some use, but she realized oddly that the greatest assistance she had given was by being willing to help. It had put heart in the baron's men to have their young mistress struggling with them against the elements.
And they needed heart, for Citrine's odd moods had sucked the spirit out of them far more than any attack by bandits or wild beasts would have done.
Superficially, Citrine was the same sweet-faced little girl she had been the year before, a touch thinner certainly, but that could be explained by a growth spurt, though at nine she was young for such. Yet more had changed than the acquisition of maybe an inch of height and a slimming of build. Even when Citrine was at her most peaceful there was a brooding cynicism in her blue-eyed gaze that should not reside in a child so young. At her wildest she was a screaming terror, flailing out at enemies that dwelled mostly within her own mind. Worse, however, than these screaming fits were the times Citrine turned weird and fey, saying things that almost made sense, couched so that the mind worried over them long after their speaker seemed to have forgotten what she'd said.
Thunder shook the pavilion once more, a basso rumble accompanied by a tattoo of hail beating the canvas. The baron's men had avoided the child, obeying his orders that she not be troubled so punctiliously that not one had as much as spoken a word to her. Elise had seen more than one touch their amulet bags when Citrine's oddly vacant blue-eyed gaze had turned their wayùa superstitious gesture Elise couldn't bring herself to rebuke.
Tonight's storm, so curiously violent, would not help morale. Elise resolved that when the rain let up some she would check on their escort, and began laying out a fresh set of traveling clothes in preparation.
Ninette looked up from adding tea leaves to the water heating over the lamp. She frowned slightly when she saw what Elise was doing, but didn't protest. Instead, she glanced up at the pavilion roof.
"If that hail keeps up, we'll have holes through for sure."
Elise nodded. There wasn't any use in pretending she hadn't had the same thought. The pavilion was one of the best in her father's store, the one he used himself, but even the thickest canvas couldn't take such punishment forever. Had their roof been of solider stuff, it might have already been pierced, but the canvas gave just enough.
"At least it's still watertight," Elise offered by way of consolation. "Freshly treated before we left, and to think I was muttering over my father's insistence. I didn't even think we'd need half the gear he insisted we take."
"Good thing he wouldn't give in," Ninette said, even managing a smile, "and that he insisted we lay in such varied stores. I'm glad we won't need to do without a solid meal."
Elise nodded. Citrine was sitting on a campstool, a blanket wrapped around her for added warmth, as blank-eyed as a doll. Haifa moonspan ago, Elise would have felt pity and a touch of impotent fury. Now she was only glad not to have any additional trouble.
None of the nurses, maids, guards, or other attendants Princess Sapphire had hired to take care of Citrine had volunteered to make the trip to the Norwood Grantùnot even when the princess had hinted strongly that she thought this would be a very good idea. Elise had stopped Sapphire from making her hint a direct command.
"After all," she had said, "when we go into New Kelvin, we will need to leave all those people behind. Best we begin getting used to each other right away."
And Elise and Ninette had done fairly well, but the reality was, Elise had never been a mother. Moreover, she was an only child, a rather privileged only child. She was not accustomed to having someone depend on her every hour of the day. Ninette was only slightly better prepared for the responsibility. She had siblings, but they were all older than her. She had never had to look out for them. It had been their place to look out for her.
A narrow trickle of water was working its way between the side of the pavilion and the ground cloth. Without really thinking about it, Elise set the wet blouse from her riding habit to sop up the flow and hopefully discourage it from going elsewhere. The hail shifted back to rain, then to hail once more, then back to rain. There seemed no indication that it ever intended to let up.
Elise ate the meal Ninette had prepared for them, a sort of porridge with dried meat suspended in it, this last adding flavor but rather too chewy to be good. The food was warm, though, and filling. As she ate, Elise alternated her own bites with spoonfuls for Citrine. The little girl ate automatically, showing no awareness of her surroundings.
I suppose it's one way to deal with the situation, Elise thought. I wonder if I need check on the men. It's still raining so hard.
She didn't want to go out in the rain, but she knew what was expected of her, what her father would think if she didn't go. Ninette didn't comment when Elise started changing out of her now warm and comfortable flannel nightdress into her spare riding clothes, so she must have arrived at the same conclusion.
The fabric of Elise's clothes was just slightly damp and extraordinarily clammy. It seemed to have acquired extra folds, all striving with great vigor and enthusiasm to get as close to her warm skin as possible. She could have sworn the damp chill had a life of its own and in contrast the rain outsideùnow driving down harder than everùseemed almost welcoming.
She draped an oilskin cape over the entire ensemble and stuffed her feet into her boots. Neither she nor Ninette had taken the time to scrape the mud off of them and they felt as if lead anchors had been sewn into the soles and hung around the ankles. Elise was raising the flap to duck outside when Citrine spoke:
"There's an ocean behind the wagon. Give heed or else you'll drown for sure."
Elise glanced at the girl. Her face was as wooden as before, but for her eyes, which moved to follow Elise's movement.
"An ocean?" Elise repeated. "Right. I'll keep clear of it."
"Mind you do," Citrine said in that same odd, almost inflection-free tone of voice, as if in spite of the caution she was offering, she didn't care one way or another.
Ninette shrugged.
"I'll make more tea," she offered, "and set your gown by the lamp to warm it."
With this comfort and Citrine's strange words still echoing in her mind, Elise ducked out.
The rain came down as if it had an intelligent desire to conduct an experiment as to whether a human being could really be soaked to the bones. Elise declined to participate. Wrapping her cloak more carefully about her, she made her way to where the other tentsùrounded structures, not as fan
cy as the pavilion, but comfortable enoughùhad been erected. If she went out of her way to avoid the area behind the wagon, she tried hard not to think about it.
Most of the men of her escort were crowded into one tent, playing cardsùa thing made rather difficult in that they were sitting so close to each other that honor alone kept them from reading each other's hands.
When Elise pushed the flap aside, the man nearest started to curse, thinking her one of his fellows who'd chosen to bed down in the other tent rather than play. He stopped in midword, seeing the pale face framed in its wisps of fair hair beneath the dripping hood.
"Just came to make certain," Elise said hesitantly, squeezing inside, careful not to touch the sides of the tent and give the water a way through, "that you all are all right."
Heads bobbed and even the man near the tent flap, on whom she was unavoidably dripping, grinned.
"Well enough, Lady Archer," their leader said. "Fairly dry, at least."
Now that Elise was inside, she could smell a thick, beery reek. Oddly, she felt relieved. If they had drink as well as something to eatùand she could see heels of bread and rinds of cheese from completed meals shoved here and thereùthen they should be content.
"Then I'll just leave you to your game," she said, ducking out once more. She didn't stop to listen to what they might say about her. Lady Aurella had taught her that what one overhears is rarely pleasant.
BY THE NEXT MORNING, the storm had spent its fury, leaving a muddy road partially obscured by large spreading puddles. The woods and fields within sight were sopping, but the trees were unfolding new leaves as if encouraged by all the wetness.
Elise imagined that the sky looked vaguely embarrassed for having made such a fuss.
What she didn't imagine was an especially broad poolùnearly an ocean if one was feeling poeticùthat spread from beneath the wagon to its rear and across the road. It was so wide that there was no easy way to avoid it unless they wished to abandon the wagon entirely.
Elise warned her escort to be particularly careful about this puddle, suffering slightly under their condescension as they obeyed. She knew they were humoring her. However, her care was repaid when one of the less perfectly obedient decided to lead one of the horses through the edge of the pool.
The murky water proved deceptively deep and the horse sank nearly to its chest in the clingy, clay-suffused mud. They lost a fair amount of time getting the horse out without injury, and then Elise suggested that they take shovels and dig a few channels to divert most of the water.
"This pool could prove a hazard to other travelers as well," she said. "We owe their care to the king."
There were no condescending glances this time, and the menùall but the driver and one delegated to continue the packingùdug with a will. The majority of the water drained away readily, revealing a deep hole, far deeper than any of the road ruts they'd seen thus far.
The leader of Elise's escort poked down into the remaining water with his shovel, three-quarters of its length vanishing before the blade rang against stone.
"I recall there was a big rock flush with the surface of the road just where we pulled the wagon off," he said. "Must have been loosened by all the water last night and fell down into some animal den or such. Good thing you told us to be careful, my lady. We could have lost a man down there."
Elise nodded polite acceptance of his praise, but her gaze shifted to Citrine. The little girl sat her pony, almost as motionless as she had been the day before. Today, however, her gaze was animated, and she looked faintly amused and quite superior.
The expression was familiar and Elise struggled to place it. After a moment she did so, but she felt no pleasure in the memory. Citrine's expression was a perfect match for that of her mother, Melina, the sorceress.
THEY ARRIVED at the Kestrel estate on the Norwood Grant a few days later than expected, but, given how wet the weather had been, the duchess had not yet ordered search parties to find them.
However, Elise did not think it was a complete coincidence that Edlin Norwood, the earl's eldest son, had chosen to take his afternoon ride down the road along which they could be expected to arrive.
Edlin was in his very early twenties, a handsome enough youth if one liked loose limbs, and a somewhat rangy bearing, accompanied by a beaming smile. There had been a time when Elise had quite liked all those things, enough to overlook how unfashionably short Edlin wore his curly black hair and the cheerful irreverence in his laughing grey eyes. Elise's fancy had passed, but had left her with a fondness for Edlin that had been intensified by their shared trials in New Kelvin.
Accompanied by a half-dozen of the red-spotted white hunting dogs that were one of his great enthusiasms, Edlin rode forward. The horse he was mounted on was a rather flashy liver chestnut with a flaxen mane and tail. Elise felt certain she would have remembered the horse if it had been part of the Kestrel stables the previous winter and decided that here, as with her own Cream Delight, she was seeing the end result of doing business with Prancing Steed Stables.
Fleetingly, she wondered where Derian Carter and Firekeeper were now. Had they even turned back from the western lands? What if King Tedric was wrong and Firekeeper intended to winter there? Could Elise manage this proposed expedition without their aid?
Edlin reined in, swiveling the liver chestnut around so that they were all headed in the same direction. He shouted commands at the dogsùeach of which seemed to find the wagon endlessly fascinating, though they took care to avoid the horses.
"Ho, you pack of worthless dogs! Away from there, Dancer. You'll have a hoof through your head! Back, Spangles!"
Despite Edlin's flurry of commands, the dogs were actually fairly well behaved and fell to sniffing along the side of the road orùin the case of a particularly serious-seeming pairùsetting themselves to lead the procession toward the house.
Edlin wiped his arm across his forehead. His tricorn was set at a jaunty angle rather far back on his head, doubtless to permit just this. Elise couldn't help compare Edlin with his far more serious father and wondered, not for the first time, how well they got along. Nor was Edlin terribly like his mother, Lady Luella Kite.
A cuckoo's chick, she thought, meaning no disrespect to either of Edlin's parents, for though he lacked the distinctive hawklike nose, Edlin was clearly Kestrel.
Edlin bobbed something like a bow from the saddle.
"Greetings, Lady Archer! Wet road, what? Guessed as much from all the mud on the wagon. No real trouble though, right?"
"Not much, Lord Edlin," she replied. It occurred to her that Edlin had as much right to be called Lord Kestrel as she did to be called Lady Archer. Both of them were past their minority. However, on Edlin the youthful form of address seemed to have stuck.
"Wonderful! Wonderful!" he replied happily. He maneuvered his horse so that it drew alongside Citrine's pony. "And how are you, cousin?"
Elise held her breath, her hands tight on Cream Delight's reins. Citrine had adjusted to the presence of the men in the escort by refusing to acknowledge their existence. However, one of the worst moments along the road had come when a fellow traveler had offered the child a cheerful greeting. Citrine had screamed so that it had been a blessing when the man's horse had bolted.
After that, Elise had tried to get Citrine to ride in the wagon, where she could be screened from casual observation. The child's tantrums at that suggestion had been so violent that Elise had never dared make it again.
Citrine, however, took no offense at Edlin's words, nor at his proximity. She bobbed her head in a shy, childish fashion and positively twinkled at him.
"I'm well, cousin," she answered softly, offering her hand. "That's a pretty horse you have."
"Name's Moonkissed," Edlin replied. "New come to our stables. I like her too. Want to ride with me?"
In reply Citrine held up her arms and, to the unconcealed amazement of all, permitted Edlin to lift her from her pony's saddle to sit in front of him.
"Make Moonkissed go fast!" the little girl giggled, and Edlin, always impulsive, obliged, urging the mare into a gentle canter.
His dogs ran after, a few barking as if on the chase.
Elise stared after them, amazed and yet curiously unsettled. As far as she knew, Citrine and Edlin were mere acquaintances. Certainly, they knew each other, but over ten years separated them and so those social occasions when they would mix would have been rare. Citrine had only been permitted to attend adult gatherings maybe the last two years and at those her family's seat would have been lower than the Kestrels'.
Yet here was Citrine treating Edlin as if he were her dearest friend. From the muttering of the rider who came forward to gather up the pony's reins, Elise wasn't the only one unsettled by the girl's spontaneous friendliness.
I should be happy, Elise thought. Relieved. Surely if Citrine has taken to Edlin it will make our journey easier.
She remained unsettled, though, and tried to make herself believe that all she was experiencing was a spate of petty jealousy at being replaced as "best cousin." Try as she might, in her heart of hearts, Elise was not reassured.
WE'RE PUTTING YOU in a nice house about an hour's walk from this one," Duchess Kestrel said. "It has been a dower house in its time, also a place where more than one young couple of the family has first set up. It's large enough for you and Citrine, your maid, Wendee Jay, and some servants.
"I've handpicked those," the duchess went on, "for their skill and discretion. You won't be entertaining, so I didn't bother with a butler, but you'll have a housekeeper, cook, several maids, a gardener, groundkeeper, groom, boot boy…"
"So many!" Elise gasped. "You won't have any servants left for your own household."
"Nonsense. We have more than enough to go around and a few who will be happy to prove their worth in a new establishment. Laundry, however, will need to be sent here. I have been informed that the tubs at your house are in need of repair and scouring before they will suit."
The Dragon of Despair Page 17
