Agent of the Crown (23 page)

She heard a knock at the kitchen door. She
closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let a smile spread across
her face. Let the Princess have her day. Telaine retreated deep
inside. She didn’t want to watch this.

She opened the door for Ben. He looked good.
He’d cleaned up and was wearing, not his nicest clothes, but surely
his second best. He smiled at her, and she nearly lost her resolve.
“Hey there,” she said.

He offered her his hand. “Could we walk by
the lake?” she asked.

He looked puzzled, but nodded. “Something I’d
like to show you there, anyway,” he said. She linked her fingers
with his and pretended not to feel the electric tingle that ran
through her hand.

They walked through the woods to the maypole
and then beyond. Telaine hadn’t been down to the lake before,
having been too busy for sightseeing. It was wide and reflected the
blue of the evening sky, lined with rushes that at this season were
the dry yellow of straw. A breeze blew them so they bowed as if in
homage to that vast blue eye. Far at the other side, a pair of
ducks left behind by the migration huddled their heads into their
feathers against the breeze. On this side of the lake, the grass
ended several feet from the lakeside, and ripples lapped at the
rocky shore. Telaine stopped to admire the shadowed lake, the
beauty of blue sky, green pines, and yellow rushes making her heart
hurt more.

“Come over here,” Ben said, tugging gently at
her hand. He led her to a giant oak rising some sixty feet in the
air, a few dead leaves clinging to its branches, its trunk wider
than she could put her arms around. On the side facing the lake she
could see the oak was dead, or if not dead, probably should be,
because something had carved an enormous gouge at its base. It was
deep and tall enough for two people to sit close inside.

“Found it when I first came to Longbourne,”
he said. He released her hand, squatted, and turned to sit. “That
was a hard first year, not knowing anyone, so I’d come out here and
watch the ducks, or the water. Nobody comes here but me. And you,
now.” He reached out his hand. “Sit with me?”

Telaine turned her back on him and looked out
over the lake.
Try “oh, it’s too dirty, can we go back now?” Or,
the less ambiguous “I’m sorry but I’ve led you on.” Or you could
punch him in the face. You’ve never done it before, so this would
be a perfect time to learn. Throw what he’s shared with you back at
him. He’d thank you if he knew the truth.

“Lainie?” he said. She turned to face him,
opened her mouth, closed it again. He was puzzled again but not
unhappy, not yet. She looked at him.
This is a man I could
love
, she told herself.
I can lie to him about my name, but
there is no way I’m going to lie to him about something that truly
matters
.

She sat next to him, letting him put his arm
around her shoulder and taking his hand in hers. “I think it’s a
perfect place,” she said, and turned her face up to kiss him.

They were gone for about an hour, talking
quietly and kissing now and then. Ben, the perfect gentleman, never
tried to do more than kiss her, although Telaine, feeling wanton,
would have let him get away with a little more. He returned her to
the back door before sunset, kissed her again, and walked away
around the corner. She liked watching him go. She liked watching
him come back. She was at peace with herself and the world.

Aunt Weaver again waited for her at the
kitchen table. She arched an inquiring eyebrow at her “niece.”
Telaine had no idea if she’d seen that last kiss, or that they’d
come back holding hands. She drew in a deep breath.

“I know I can’t tell him my name or what I
really am,” she said. “Maybe that’s a lie. But it would be a worse
lie to tell him I don’t feel what I feel. I can’t lie to him about
the things that matter. And I want this, Aunt Weaver, I want to be
selfish and have something for myself just once in my life, and he
is what I want. So I’ll figure out the rest when the time comes.
And I’m not sorry.”
And if you are who I think you are, you’d
better not say anything about my decision.

Aunt Weaver looked her up and down. She
nodded. “Hold on to that, when it all comes crashing down,” was all
she said, and Telaine was too surprised at not being criticized to
ask what she meant until the woman was already up the stairs.

Emotionally overwhelmed by the events of the
day, Telaine went up to her room and tidied up. Then, although it
was early, she undressed, got into bed, and let herself be wrapped
in memories of callused hands and wonderfully soft lips.

She smiled at
Ben as she passed the forge the next morning and got a real smile
in return. “Lainie,” he called to her when she’d almost walked
past. She turned around. “You’re going to the manor,” he said. The
direct, searching look was back.

“I’m going to be careful,” she assured
him.

“Can’t help thinking you’re making a mistake,
with Morgan there,” he said.

“I can take care of myself.”

He frowned. “Nothing you could do if he
decided to carry you off somewhere.”

“I’m not going to let myself be alone with
him to give him the chance.”

“Wish you’d let me do something about it.” He
took her hand in his, rubbed his thumb across the back of it, and
looked dismayed when he left a smear of coal dust. She laughed and
gripped his hand tight when he would have removed it. “I ought’n’t
touch you when I’m all over dirt,” he said. He sounded ashamed. It
warmed her heart.

“You listen to me, Ben Garrett,” she said in
mock sternness. “I would rather have your work-dirty hand in mine
than the lily-white hands of any shopkeeper or…or anyone else whose
work leaves them with lily-white hands.”

She dimpled at him, for the first time in her
life using her nicest feature to reassure a man instead of
captivate him. His eyes lit up, and without seeming to care that
they were practically in the middle of the town square, he leaned
across the rail and kissed her, lightly. “If it worries you, I
carry a handkerchief,” she added, taking it out and wiping the
smudge away.

“Don’t think you’ve made me forget about
Morgan,” he warned, but he was smiling.

“I know. I really think, as long as I’m not
alone with him, I’m safe.” She remembered the way Morgan had run
his hand down her spine and suppressed a shudder. Ben gave her a
resigned look, but the smile was still on his lips as she walked
away.

She waved at Hope, playing in the yard next
to the forge, and smiled sweetly at Eleanor, whose wide eyes and
slack mouth told Telaine she’d witnessed Ben’s kiss. She bought a
fresh roll from the bakery across from the Richardsons’ and stopped
to see Maida about returning for dinner before setting off down the
road. It was a beautiful day, and everything was right with the
world.

After just over a mile she saw a horse and
rider approaching her. Her heart sank. Morgan. And after she’d
assured Ben she wasn’t going to be alone with him. Suddenly it
wasn’t such a beautiful day anymore.

She kept walking, choosing to ignore him
until he drew up his horse a few feet from her and forced her to
stop. “Miss Bricker. And without me coming to fetch you,” he said,
smiling his feline smile. “How very…eager…of you.”

Telaine dipped her head in a bow. “I
shouldn’t have been so forward, but I heard something I thought the
Baron ought know.”

“The Baron? Not someone else?” Morgan
chuckled. “
i’m crushed
.”

“I’m sorry, Mister Morgan, but I told you I
wish you wouldn’t take such liberties. I can’t think about such
things right now.”

He slid off his horse and approached her,
reaching out to tip her chin so she would meet his eyes. “Can’t, or
won’t?” he mused. “Miss Bricker, I find you utterly fascinating.
you don’t have anything to fear from me.
I can wait you
out.” The pointed smile widened, never touching his eyes, and he
slid the backs of his fingers down her throat to caress her
shoulder.

She looked at his hand, then back at his face
with her widest, most innocent gaze. “I’m flattered you find me so
interesting,” she said, projecting that same innocence with her
voice.

He ran his eyes over her body while she
pretended not to understand what his attention meant, then tossed
her behind the saddle, mounted, and pulled his usual trick of
kicking his horse into a gallop so she’d throw herself against his
back to stay upright. Her gorge rose to think of him enjoying her
body pressed against his.

It was all part of his game. He loved the
chase, loved tracking down his prey and putting them at his mercy.
He would wait for her to show awareness of what his attentions
meant, then fear, then submission, which he would interpret as
love. But she could only go on acting the naïf for so long before
he realized it was a game. She had no idea how he would react at
that point.

She did, however, have a good idea what he
would do if he found out about Ben. Morgan already thought of her
as his rightful prey, and if he thought Telaine’s affections were
engaged elsewhere, he would eliminate his “rival” in a way that
would punish Telaine for spurning him. She could never, ever
suggest to Ben that Morgan’s attentions were becoming persistent.
He would think he had to go after Morgan, and Morgan would kill him
without thinking twice.

To her surprise, Morgan passed the turnoff
for the manor and continued along the road to the fort, which was
exactly where Telaine wanted to go. It amused her that her
carefully planned ploy wasn’t necessary after all. Then she became
worried. Why would the Baron need her there?

The fort was as dour and grim as the manor,
as if everything the Baron touched turned to lead. The fortress
outer wall was made of upright timbers, each a foot around and
sharpened like spikes at the top, and extended in both directions
for hundreds of feet. It was a lot of timber all in one place, and
Telaine had to remind herself the trees had been sacrificed for the
kingdom she loved. They served Tremontane just as she did, which
was an unsettling thought. She hadn’t been called on to give up her
life, thank heaven, and she wasn’t sure what she would do if she
was.

A gate made of squared-off logs sat in what
Telaine guessed was the center of the wall. It was open and flanked
by two of those grubby soldiers Telaine had seen on her first night
in town. Morgan passed through the gate without acknowledging them.
They looked up at her where she sat behind Morgan with a complete
lack of interest, as if she were a bundle of cloth Morgan had for
some reason decided to haul around with him. It was unsettling and
comforting at the same time; she didn’t know how much leering she
could endure without shouting at someone.

The space beyond the gate was long and
narrow, almost an alley between the fort’s two walls. Though the
fort stretched out for hundreds of feet in both directions, it was
no more than seventy or eighty feet from the outer wall to the
inner one.

Stone buildings, these made of much larger
blocks than those used in Longbourne, stood against the outer and
inner walls, some of them short with slate roofs, others tall and
round with pointed tops. They looked like giant versions of the
type of buildings a child might construct, down to the impractical
cones perched atop the towers.

Directly ahead of the gate, flush against the
high, crenellated inner wall, stood a stone keep only two stories
tall. It looked even more like a child’s plaything, complete with
soldiers striding casually along the top of the wall with their
weapons swinging loosely by their sides. The inner wall also
extended out of sight in both directions, curving as if holding the
pass cradled in its grasp. Telaine guessed both walls ended where
the mountains began. Thorsten Keep looked like it was meant to plug
this gap in the Rockwild Range.

Morgan dismounted and held out his hands to
catch her; she endured his hands on her waist and managed to look
innocently grateful instead of disgusted. She could feel his
attention on her as she turned away.

“It’s not what I expected,” she said
honestly. Only a few of the soldiers seemed to be properly turned
out, clean and careful of their weapons. She saw no women among
them, which was unusual. Maybe women were better at getting out of
postings as bad as this one. Everywhere she looked seemed dirty,
depressing, or oppressive.

Morgan bowed her toward the keep, where
another unkempt soldier stood; he opened the door for them as if it
were an imposition on his busy staring-into-the-air schedule. The
door opened on a short hallway with a low, curved ceiling of stone
that looked and smelled like a tunnel deep inside a mountain, wet
and loamy. The passage led to a square room, two stories tall, that
looked as if it had simply been hollowed out of the granite blocks
the keep was made of; it was perfectly cubical, with a flight of
stairs with no handrail rising along one of the walls to an open
balcony on the second story.

The floor was covered with a mildew-stained
Veriboldan carpet with a yellow and red pattern, and the whiffs of
sourness that sprang up wherever Telaine stepped warred with the
stink of old smoke from the sconces high on the wall. They burned
steadily, but were inadequate to light a room this size; an iron
chandelier full of ancient candles hung from the ceiling, unlit, as
if the keep’s deficiencies would be worse if they were clearly
visible. Soldiers in untidy green and brown uniforms stood at
inattention here and there throughout the room.

A table like a discus, with its edges rounded
off with wear, and several chairs with threadbare padding occupied
the center of the room. The Baron stood at this table, talking to a
man who wore a captain’s insignia. He was one of the few who looked
like he wasn’t playing soldier; his uniform was clean, and his
boots were polished and his blond hair cut military-short the way
her cousin Jeffy’s had been the last time she saw him. Neither man
paid any attention to Morgan and Telaine as they approached.