Agent of the Crown (45 page)

She didn’t care for the sandwiches, which
were dry; they were just a good way to keep her mouth full so she
would have an excuse not to speak. She’d always known the
Princess’s acquaintances were shallow, but she’d never realized
they were thoughtless and cruel as well.

She wished with all her heart Uncle would
return from the front so she could resign her commission and…what?
She couldn’t simply stop being the Princess; it would destroy nine
years of concealing her true identity so she could spy for the
Crown. But being trapped in this guise for the rest of her
life…

She smiled brightly at something Stella said
and ate another sandwich. Her uncle would have to have a solution.
The alternative was too awful to contemplate.

When the party was finally over, Telaine went
back to the palace, passed through her ghastly sitting room with no
more than a small shudder, and wearily began to undress before she
remembered she should have called her maid to help her. She put on
a simpler, more comfortable gown, then stood for a moment staring
at her vanity table.

Finally she reached out and opened the
drawer, pulled out the false top and looked at her Deviser’s gear.
It seemed to belong to someone else. She needed to get rid of it.
She couldn’t bear to get rid of it. She dropped the tray back into
the drawer and slammed it shut. She didn’t have to look at it.
Perhaps in a week, or a month, she’d be ready to give everything
away. Someone else would appreciate it.

The Waxwold Theater was unnaturally stuffy,
hot and smelling of ozone from the light Devices spotlighting the
stage. It made Telaine’s skin itch, as if she could rub against her
velvet-upholstered chair and shed it like a snake. That might make
her cooler.

She scooted the chair back from the edge of
the royal box. It wasn’t as if it were that high above the floor of
the theater, and she wasn’t afraid of heights in any case, but she
felt everyone was watching her. Maybe it was just that Clarence
Darbeneau’s latest play was flat and dull, and
she
wasn’t
watching it. Or maybe she’d gotten used to relative anonymity over
the last nine months. She hated the idea of being stared at.

“Stop fidgeting,” Grandmama said in a low
voice, her lips barely moving.

“It’s a boring play.”

“Then at least show some respect for the
traditions of the theater.”

“I can tell you’re bored too. You’re
twiddling your thumbs.”

Grandmama’s hands stilled. “I am not. And
this isn’t about me.”

The curtains fell, the house lights went up,
and a scattering of applause went up from the audience. Telaine
clapped absently, her eyes scanning the crowd. She was usually
thronged with visitors whenever she went to the Waxwold Theater.
Hopefully Grandmama’s presence would dissuade them tonight. She
wasn’t just bored, she was edgy, restless, and she said, “Let’s
go.”

“I can’t. Clarence is here and it would hurt
his feelings if I left at intermission.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Telaine shoved her
chair back farther.

Grandmama eyed her closely. “If you’re going
to back all the way to the door,” she said, “you should move the
other chair out of the way.”

“I don’t like being watched.”

“Telaine, is something wrong? You’re usually
so eager to be off to see your friends.”

Telaine tried to summon up an airy laugh, but
it seemed so much like work she couldn’t bring herself to do more
than smile. “Oh, of course! I’m just tired of being asked to tell
the same story over and over again. Wouldn’t you be?”

“I suppose.” Grandmama stood and shook out
her silk skirt, figured all over with white roses. “I’m going to
use the facilities.”

When she was gone, Telaine slumped in her
seat. It was harder every day to play the part of the Princess,
laughing and flirting as if her whole life weren’t shattered beyond
recognition. Grandmama knew something was wrong—Alison North was
too observant not to recognize a change in her oldest
granddaughter—but she was too polite to pry, and Telaine didn’t
feel like enlightening her.

A knock sounded at the door. “Am I
interrupting anything?” Edgar Hussey said, smiling his arch smile.
A knot of tension tightened at the base of her neck. Anyone but
Hussey.

“Of course not!” she said with a smile, and
allowed him to kiss her hand. “How lovely to see you. You can see
I’m quite alone.”

“Well, you would be, wouldn’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

Hussey lowered his voice. “The rumors, of
course. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard them.”

The knot drew tighter. “You know I never
listen to rumors, Mister Hussey.”

“Well, you should listen to this one, because
it’s about you.”

Of course. This was inevitable
. She
let her eyes go wide. “About me?”

“That you’re an agent of the Crown, my
dear.”

She held her astonished face for a second
longer, then forced herself to burst into laughter. “Why, Mister
Hussey, how absurd! Me, an agent of the Crown? Do I look like a spy
to you?”

“If you were a good agent, you wouldn’t look
like one, would you?”

“That’s ridiculous. Who’s spreading these
rumors?”

Hussey shrugged.
“who knows how these
things get started?
You probably should do something about
them, though.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea how to combat
such a thing. You know what rumors are like. But I can’t bear to
think of my friends believing it.”

“You can imagine why they might be so
distressed. You might have been spying on them, after all.
Fortunately for me,
i have no secrets worth ferreting
out.
”

As if his secrets mattered. “I depend on you
to counter these rumors wherever you hear them, Mister Hussey,” she
said, lowering her lashes and looking up at him through them. “I
know I won’t be able to do it alone.”

“
you can count on me to defend your
honor
,
” Hussey said. “Now, do you—”

The door opened. “I beg your pardon,”
Grandmama said coldly. “I did not realize you had company,
Telaine.” Grandmama wasn’t any fonder of Hussey than Telaine was,
and Telaine envied her freedom to express that dislike. She
withdrew her hand from Hussey’s and simpered at him.

“I was just leaving, milady Consort,” Hussey
said, bowing. “Until later, your Highness.”

When the door closed behind him, Grandmama
said, “You should have given him a solid push out of this box and
see if he comes nosing around you again.”

“Grandmama!”

“I despise men like him. Your grandfather had
a friend—but that’s an old story, and not one you’ll care about.”
Grandmama settled herself into her seat. “And I apologize for
meddling in your business.”

“No, I don’t mind. I just—” She couldn’t
exactly say
I need him to protect my identity
.

Grandmama leaned forward and waved to an
acquaintance below. “I understand you’re an agent of the Crown,”
she said.

“I am not,” Telaine said automatically, then
tried to cover her mistake with an airy laugh. “That’s just what
everyone’s saying. I can’t believe how foolish people are.”

“They are.” Grandmama was looking at her, her
eyes narrowed. “Of course it’s untrue.”

“Do I look like a spy?” Telaine said with
another laugh.

“I don’t know what spies look like.”

The lights went down, sparing Telaine another
response. She realized she’d clasped her hands tightly in her lap,
so tightly she couldn’t feel her fingers, and made herself relax.
You should tell her
, she thought,
she’s already
guessed
, but the idea made her whole body feel as numb as her
hands.

She had to wait for Uncle to return from the
front. Let him make the decision. In time, people would forget the
rumors if she didn’t try to refute them. Unfortunately, since these
rumors had truth behind them, it was possible those truths would
simply reinforce the rumors until they reached a point where the
two became one. But there was nothing she could do about it except
wait, and hope her uncle had a solution to this problem as
well.

Telaine reclined
on the overstuffed pink sofa in her sitting room, too tired from a
long day of socializing to remember how much she hated the room.
She had come far too close to breaking character today, when one of
the Princess’s acquaintances had begun talking about the war as if
he knew anything about it, criticizing the defenders of Thorsten
Keep for failing to maintain the fort’s defenses and not having a
unified strategy of attack, whatever that meant. She’d had to leave
the room and walk rapidly around the garden to regain her calm.
Then she’d left as gracefully as possible and come back to the
palace. It was a mark of how miserable she was that this room was a
pleasant escape.

Someone knocked on her door. “Your Highness?
The King requests your presence in his study at your earliest
convenience.”

Telaine leaped from the sofa and ran,
somewhat awkwardly thanks to her skirt, to the door. “Right now,”
she said to the astonished messenger when she opened the door in
his face.

When she entered her uncle’s study, he was
standing facing the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back. He
said, “If I had known how this would turn out, I still would have
sent you.”

Tears came to her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she
said, “I did everything wrong, it all nearly fell apart because I
was so slow—”

Her uncle turned and embraced her. “None of
that.” He released her, looking into her eyes and, by his
expression, not liking what he saw there. He drew up two chairs
before the fire and bade her sit. “I know this will be a long
story, and I don’t think you should have to stand for all of it,”
he said. “I had some of it from Major Anselm’s report, enough to
know about your very public denunciation of the Baron, and more of
it from the agent who received your telecode about the invasion. I
want to hear it all from you, in order, nothing omitted.”

Telaine sat and stared at her hands, trying
to organize her thoughts. “Why didn’t you tell me who Aunt Weaver
was?” she demanded.

Uncle Jeffrey’s face went still. “So you
know.”

“I guessed. It was a tremendous shock.”

“I thought, if I told you, it would be a
distraction. Mistress Weaver’s secret isn’t a trivial one for this
family. She warned me you were likely to figure it out, but it was
a chance I had to take. And I suppose on some level I might have
hoped
you’d figure it out. I know it’s necessary, but I hate
that she’s so isolated from her family.”

“She was helpful. I wish I’d taken more of
her advice.” Telaine took in a deep breath and let it out, slowly.
“After I arrived in Steepridge, it took me a few days to get the
Baron’s attention…”

Despite his instructions, she did not tell
him everything. She glossed over how she’d become part of
Longbourne. She said nothing about Ben or her weird relationship
with Morgan or rescuing Sarah. Those things were private, and
painful to recall. Leaving all that out made a much shorter story.
When she reached the end, having described her race to Fort Canden
and the garrison’s moving out, she fell silent. It was his turn to
ask questions.

“You had no choice but to reveal your
identity,” he said.

“I didn’t think so. It was either that or
risk losing precious time or having the Baron weasel his way out of
his guilt.”

“I agree. That wasn’t a criticism. You were
incredibly brave.”

“No, just incredibly desperate.” The memory
of Ben’s final words to her burned in her heart. She would give
anything to have had another option.

“And you think you didn’t act quickly enough
on the news about the invasion.”

“Every time I review my actions, I realize I
acted as quickly as possible, and it was just bad luck the storm
came in when it did. But if I’d gotten that message out
before—”

“You’re not thinking about this the right
way. You didn’t learn about the earth mover until after the pass
was closed, so if you’d made it down the mountain before the storm,
we would have known about the invasion plans but assumed we had
plenty of time to stop them. ‘Ifs’ can go both ways, you know.”

Her spirits lifted. “You’re right, I hadn’t
thought of it that way.”

“You didn’t say you’d killed a man.”

She hadn’t expected that to come up. “I—he
was going to kill someone, and I had to stop him.”

“I was unaware you knew how to throw
knives.”

“I picked up the skill while I was in
Longbourne.” Did
every
memory of Longbourne have a memory of
Ben attached to it?

“Fortunate for the person you saved. Are you
all right? It’s no small thing, taking a life, no matter how
despicable or vicious that life might be.”

“I…sometimes dream about my last sight of
him, with the knife sticking out of his eye socket. But I feel at
peace with my actions. I saved a good man’s life.”

“A friend of yours.”

“He
was
. I don’t think the good people
of Longbourne like me much right now. They believe—” she
swallowed—“believe I pretended to be their friend so the Baron
wouldn’t suspect me.”

“Didn’t you?”

“I…” What was the truth, and what were the
lies? “I liked them. Genuinely liked them. Some of them became my
close friends, real friends. It’s true I wouldn’t have been there
if not for the mission, but the only one I manipulated was Baron
Steepridge. And speaking of him, please tell me the Ruskalder
didn’t kill him? I want more than anything to see his
execution.”

“The Baron is on his way here, in shackles.
There will be a trial. And you—” the King cleared his throat—“you
will be the chief witness against him.”