Rafe rubbed his chest and wondered if Micah might not be right, maybe he was coming down with something. “I make a rule never to have mathematical discussions before breakfast.”
“That’s silly,” Micah said seriously. “I think very well before breakfast.”
Rafe sighed. “In any case, I’m quite well, thank you for your concern. I’m only going to Tremontaine House. I’ll be back . . . well, with any luck I won’t be back tonight. You can tell me all about your progress with the spherical geometry when I return.”
Micah winced. “Rafe, I wanted to tell you—”
“You can still do it, right?”
“Of course! Well, the calculations are difficult, like I told you, and I’m not sure—”
“Then tell me all about it tomorrow!”
Rafe hurried out the door before Micah could find some way to detain him. He paused for one of Tom’s roast potatoes but did not stop at the Inkpot. The crowd was so large it would take at least half an hour to get his chocolate, and he found that the knots in his guts would not allow him to wait so long.
Will had been oddly distracted their last two days together. He jumped conversation topics with dizzying velocity and seemed unaware that he was doing so. At times, he had stopped speaking altogether and ignored Rafe’s attempts to restart the conversation. Rafe had found it impossible to do any real secretarial work, which he had assumed was why the duchess had dismissed him. And yet, why had she refused to tell him the exact nature of the duke’s illness? Sometimes fevers were known to cause delirium, but Will hadn’t seemed particularly hot or feverish. He hadn’t really seemed ill, when Rafe considered it—just confused. His delight at the news of their navigation discoveries had made Rafe feel as though he had finally found a good and true purpose in his life: to always be worthy of this singular man and to always make him so happy. He could not have failed already.
He entered the great house purposefully, as though he had been summoned at this early hour and had every right to be here. The gate guards just nodded at him. Once Rafe was inside, Duchamp twitched an eyebrow but otherwise extended the same bland greeting as always.
“The duke is in the library,” he said.
Rafe took this as a good sign. He had been fearing the news that Will was still bedridden. The library smelled of Will—of the lavender his laundress folded into his clothes and old books left open at key pages and piled atop one another like the wooden blocks of a careless child, overlaid with the clean and fragrant smoke of a cedar wood fire.
“Will?” he called. The open study by the hearth was empty, with its comfortable chairs and cheery colored light pouring from the long stained glass windows that arced with the vaulted ceiling. How many happy hours had he and Will passed there, discussing everything from planetary motion to the curious life cycle of the silkworm? The stacks of the library were well constructed but dense and narrow. It was possible that Will hadn’t heard him. He called again and then heard his name spoken by a voice rough with sleep, or distress.
Will was sitting on a banquette beneath one of the long windows on the opposite end of the room from the hearth. He still wore his sleeping gown; his knees were pulled against his chest. He regarded Rafe as he approached with that clear blue gaze, but he did not smile or reach for him or give any greeting at all.
Then you have killed him with— No. Rafe did not believe in nighttime visitations.
“Will?” he said firmly. “Are you well? Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
Will pursed his lips. “They gave me something to make me sleep. But it’s worse when I dream. So I spat it out and hid here. I used to hide in the library at Highcombe, you know. It would take Mother hours to find me.”
Rafe stopped, unable to go any farther. Will seemed exhausted, red-eyed and hazy. His hands were chapped and covered with faded brown ink, as though he had spilled a bottle on himself and scrubbed his hands raw trying to get it off. He didn’t seem to be sick in the way that Rafe had feared. He didn’t look feverish or pale or out of breath.
“Will . . . dearest, what has happened to you?”
Will sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t come here, Rafe. I prefer even the crow to you. It is so painful to see you in front of me, my love, and be unable to touch you or hold you or—”
The paralysis that had gripped Rafe burned to ashes. He knelt and pulled Will into a tight embrace. At first, Will merely rested his head on Rafe’s shoulder. Then he gasped and pulled back slightly. He put one chapped hand against Rafe’s wet cheek.
“Rafe . . . you’re really here? Truly?”
“Of course I am. Will . . . I don’t . . .”
Will’s sudden embrace threatened to squeeze the air from Rafe’s lungs. Which was probably for the best, because it distracted him from his knotting terror.
“I thought you had abandoned me. I was so sure. Perhaps she told me so—I can’t remember. I know she said that she had dismissed you.”
“Your bitch of a wife,” Rafe said, knowing it was unwise and relishing every syllable, “can do nothing of the sort without your permission. I would never abandon you. I will always be here, as long as you wish it.”
Will shivered and put an ink-stained finger to Rafe’s lips. “You must not speak of Diane that way, my love. It isn’t worthy of you.”
Heat rose to Rafe’s cheeks, some poisonous mixture of anger and shame and futility. He broke away from Will’s embrace and staggered to his feet.
“Will,” he said, and could hear in the broken timbre of his voice the tears that insisted on blurring his vision. “William Tielman, you are the Duke Tremontaine. God, you are one of the most powerful men in the land, and yet you insist on letting that little blond nothing rule you and your affairs. She should be grateful that you deigned to pull her from obscurity all those years ago by marrying her. She shouldn’t be dismissing your personal secretary and abandoning you to the library while you’re ill!”
“I’m afraid that I might have told her about the nature of our relationship, Rafe. We were fighting, and I lost my judgment.”
Rafe felt the distinct urge to throw something, but as the only objects near to hand were Will’s beloved books, he contented himself with pulling hard on the frayed ends of his neckcloth.
“And so?” he said. “If you haven’t had lovers before now, that was your prerogative, and in some manner I must pity her for her jealousy, but you are hardly doing any harm to the family. Being with me causes no scandal. If she’s upset, let her cry to her maid and refrain from meddling in affairs that are none of her concern!”
Will sighed and smiled with exasperated fondness, so that for a suspended moment all of the wrongness of his aspect seemed to evaporate like dew in morning sunlight.
“I always feel more myself in your presence,” he said. “It’s odd. Even when I disagree with you—perhaps especially then—your very passion recalls me to myself. Perhaps that was why you visited me so often. I knew that I needed to see you. To . . . better apprehend the world. Though it seems that there is so much more in it than I ever suspected. Rafe, love, did you know that even the stars can talk?”
And then it all returned, rushing upon Rafe with the inevitability of water through a breached hull. Will might seem physically healthy, but he was desperately ill. There was something wrong with him—not just his body, but that unparalleled mind. And even in this state, Will seemed to know it. To be both on the edge of madness and heartbreakingly aware of it.
Rafe bent down and pulled Will to him.
“Never leave me, Rafe.”
“Of course not, of course I won’t.” Rafe heard his voice as though at a distance. He sounded so calm. His skin tingled, and his own consciousness of it seemed to retreat and advance, so that he was at once a small boy being held tightly by someone much larger than himself and some grotesque stretch of skin as wide as the sea, capable of enveloping Will but not helping him.
“Come,” said Rafe’s voice. “Come, stand up, Will. Let’s get you to bed.
”
“No, no . . . I told you, it’s worse when I sleep—”
“My love, you must rest.”
He got Will out of the library, somehow. Duchamp was waiting by the door. He had probably heard every word of their exchange. Another time, Rafe might have worried about the consequences. Now he merely said to the steward, “He needs to rest. Can you get him to his rooms?”
Duchamp held his gaze for several moments longer than strictly proper for a household servant and then nodded. “Of course, Master Fenton.”
Will had been staring at something on the ceiling, but at this he looked sharply at Rafe. “Are you leaving?”
“No, I’ll be right there. I have something to discuss with your wife first.”
Will allowed himself to be led away, muttering, “But I won’t sleep. Not until I’ve negotiated the treaty.”
Rafe found a looking glass and rearranged his neckcloth. Duchamp wouldn’t be but a moment. He checked to see if he had started to cry again, but his eyes were quite dry. His fingers felt as thick as sausages. He tried again. Eventually Duchamp returned and, without a word, gently removed Rafe’s old cloth and replaced it with one of Will’s, which he tied expertly.
“You don’t have to do that. I know you’re not a valet, Duchamp,” Rafe said.
Duchamp smiled slightly. “I used to perform that duty for the duke’s father, Master Fenton. I have a good enough hand at it still. Now, you wish to speak to the duchess? I’m afraid I don’t recommend that.”
Rafe froze. “Why not, Duchamp?”
“Because if she knows that you are here, she will forbid you to come again. And this time she will warn the gatekeepers.”
They stared at each other silently, both aware of words that could not be unsaid. Duchamp was at least three times Rafe’s age. An aging, loyal servant, with the family his entire life. He could see what was happening to the duke as well as Rafe could. And he did not like it either.
“Duchamp,” Rafe said very carefully, “has a phyician seen the duke?”
Duchamp lowered his voice. “Yes. Two days ago. He let some blood and pronounced him physically healthy.”
“But he’s not healthy!”
“No,” Duchamp said. “But whatever ails him was beyond that physician’s expertise.”
Rafe swallowed thickly. “Thank you, Duchamp. I’ll go to him now. Will you tell the duchess about my visit?”
“It is my duty, Master Fenton. But I might delay doing so until she has returned from her engagement this afternoon.”
Rafe clasped the older man’s shoulder, breaching etiquette in a rush of gratitude and grief that he could hardly contain. Duchamp nodded. And then Rafe turned and ran, pelted up the stairs and through the carpeted hallways. He would find a way to help Will. He had to. But before the duchess exercised her control over them all and forbade him even seeing the duke, Rafe had to give his dear, sweet Will as much pleasure as he could, before even that was beyond them.
Kaab’s aunt Saabim was now far enough along in her pregnancy that her feet had begun to swell, and so the younger female family members took turns massaging them with oil of cacao and the seeds of jojoba. Kaab volunteered herself for this duty the afternoon after her visit with Lady Ernestine. The last several weeks had been uncomfortably quiet at the Balam compound. Productive, certainly—and her uncle was inclined to think that the projected profits on new cacao sales might be sufficient inducement to keep the duchess quiet about the implications of any mathematical studies; why should she rock the boat now that she had what she wanted? But Kaab and Saabim weren’t convinced. The Duchess Tremontaine might have no interest in navigation, and if someone else here did, she did have the power to suppress and discredit the results of one scholar’s research, but she wouldn’t do so for a short-term tax deal.
It was a warm and sunny day, not as warm as it would be at home, but tolerable, for once, to sit outdoors. Saabim sat with her back against some cushions on a straw mat they had laid out in the garden. Kaab had picked a location beside one of the small waterfalls, where three adolescent Muscovy ducks were splashing and beating their wings. It would be difficult to overhear them here.
“You have been very busy of late, Niece,” her aunt said, with an upward tilt to her mouth that meant she was disposed to be understanding, but that Kaab would have to be elegant and precise in her explanation. Kaab knew the expression because her mother’s interrogations had often been prefaced by that exact same smile, hard as southern soil.
Kaab took a dollop of the fragrant cacao oil from its gourd container and lifted Saabim’s left foot. “I have been investigating the duchess, as we discussed.”
Her aunt closed her eyes and leaned back against the cushions. Kaab, however, was no longer a young sapling, to let this fool her.
“And your investigations have led you to the Riverside district quite a bit, have they?”
Kaab ground her molars, but kept the pressure of her fingers on Saabim’s instep steady. “I am training with the Local weapons. And I have a lover there. My wise aunt already knows that.”
“Your wise aunt wonders if her impulsive niece will once again let her physical pleasure undermine family business.”
Now Kaab’s hands jerked. She hadn’t forgotten the possum in her window in the middle of the night. Perhaps one had snuck on board the most recent ship. And yet, if so, where had it gone? She had asked the gardeners before she left in the morning, but they had been insistent that no possum was rooting around the gum trees. “It wasn’t—what happened with Cit—the Lord Itzcoatl’s wife—”
Saabim sat up and put her hand around Kaab’s. “It was not entirely your fault, little bee,” she said softly. “I know that. But if you had thought of your family first, you might not have put us all in such great danger.”
The richness of the cacao oil mixed with the light floral scent from Saabim’s loose hair made Kaab feel twelve years old again, when her mother was pregnant with her youngest brother. She remembered the comfort of being pressed against her mother’s breasts, that indefinable musk of pregnancy. And her mother would have said the same. No, her mother would have judged her more harshly.
“I swear to you, Aunt,” Kaab said, “I have reflected on my actions, and I will never allow such considerations to jeopardize the family again. I am a first daughter dedicated to the service. It is my entire life. My lover in Riverside . . . she is no one for any Balam to worry about.”
“And if she becomes so, despite your reasonable expectations?”
Tess’s image flashed in Kaab’s head: her beautiful face caught in laughter, a red curl caught in the sheen of sweat on her forehead. And if she becomes so?
“I would leave her, of course,” Kaab said as steadily as she could manage. Her aunt merely looked at her. They were both thinking of other, occasionally necessary measures to protect the family. But surely Tess was safe from that—that possibility neither Kaab nor her aunt would tempt into existence by speaking aloud.
“And this business with the duchess,” Saabim continued smoothly. “If you do not find something soon, Kaab, I think we must reconsider our plan. If the Fenton boy hasn’t shared his discovery with his father, that’s our luck. But I think we must consider who else we can bribe or induce to discredit Master Fenton. Whatever means we choose must be thorough. The opportunity has passed for assassination—which I suspect would have been unwise, in any case. Anyone who has even heard of his discoveries would suspect our family, and we do not have such a stable position in this land to be able to kill scions of rich trading families with impunity.”
Kaab wished she never had to think about killing anyone again in her life. But such a sentiment was beneath her. She merely nodded.
“Might we wait a few more days? I just discovered a strange connection between the duchess and a highwayman . . . perhaps a reason for her to have murdered Ben, that man in Riverside. I’m not sure, Aunt, but I feel as though I am close to something. . . .”
Saabim co
nsidered this for a minute while Kaab dutifully worked the swelling from her feet. “I trust your instinct, Kaab. You may have your time.”
Kaab thanked her, so relieved that only her training kept her hands from trembling.
A short time later, a guard approached their mat from the direction of the east gate.
“Lady Ixkaab, there is a Local man here to see you. His name is Rafe Fenton.”
Kaab nearly dropped Saabim’s right foot. They exchanged a startled glance. “Have you seen the boy recently?” Saabim asked.
Kaab shook her head. “He has been very involved with his lover, the duke. That’s why I thought he must have told him, but . . .”
“If he has, nothing has come of it,” Saabim finished. “Well, go see what he wants, child. We will speak again.”
Kaab hurried behind the guard to the high wall of the east gate. Rafe was standing just inside the guardhouse, his normally unruly hair so wild that it seemed to give him an extra two inches of height. His eyes were red and swollen, his jacket was only half buttoned, and he seemed to have lost his neckcloth. The sight of him was so alarming that Kaab’s first instinct was to embrace him. But of course she couldn’t do so in front of the guards.
“What has happened, Rafe?”
He gave a short laugh so hollowed of humor that Kaab flinched. “Why, only that I told my love of my great discovery—the one you took such great pains to hide from me—and it has driven him mad.”
“The d— I mean, your lover has gone mad?”
Rafe ran a hand through that mane of hair, but his fingers couldn’t get past the tangles a few inches in. “He thinks the stars talk! That there is a crow that follows him through the windows and tells him ugly stories about dead bodies and highwaymen! Half the time he thinks I’m some kind of phantasm as well, and then he realizes—” He choked on a sob.
Kaab decided that the guards could think whatever they liked of her. A Balam woman dedicated to the service could not be judged by their commoner standards. She took Rafe by his elbow and led him to the nearest corner of the garden, where their conversation would not be so easily overheard.
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