Agent of the Crown (50 page)

“Then you need to rediscover who that person
is. And you need to stop caring about how rude all those people
are.”

“I think, eventually, I’ll be able to laugh
about how steadfastly everyone didn’t look at me. Mister
Kirkpatrick’s was the only friendly face I saw tonight. Ironic,
since he was so antagonistic in court.”

“Cross-questioners have to do that, it’s
their job.”

“Well, he was very pleasant. We’re having
dinner together tomorrow.”

Julia squealed and hugged her. “Oh, he’s so
handsome! Tall and dark and he’s got those eyebrows that just,
oooh, they’re so attractive!”

“What are you babbling about?”

“Lainie, he wants to spend time with you.
He’s
interested
in you. Don’t you think that’s
exciting?”

A pit opened up in Telaine’s stomach. “I
didn’t know that’s what he meant,” she whispered. How could she
have missed that?

“Well, he did, and you’re going to have
dinner with him. And honestly, coz, you need something like this in
your life. You may think you’re putting on a good show, but you’ve
done nothing but mope since you got back from the east.”

The pit opened wider. That traitorous voice
told her,
Ben never wants to see you again. Do you want to spend
your life alone? At least Evan Kirkpatrick is interested in you.
You don’t owe Ben Garrett a thing.

“No,” she cried, and ran, ducking through the
corridors, taking turns at random. She didn’t realize she’d
unconsciously trodden a familiar path until she found herself in
the long hall lined with the portraits of the Kings and Queens of
Tremontane. With tears running down her face, she walked along the
line of merry or cruel or apathetic faces until she came to Queen
Zara’s portrait. Aunt Weaver stared back at her down her straight,
imperious nose.

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen,” she babbled
through her tears. “I should have broken with him the night you
told me to. That little pain was nothing to what I’m going through
now.” She sat down on the ivory carpet, wrapped her arms around her
legs, and buried her face in her knees.

“Lainie, what’s wrong? Please don’t run away
from me.” Julia knelt beside her cousin and put a gentle hand on
her shoulder. “It’s not something about Mister Kirkpatrick, is it,
because I was just teasing, you don’t have to do anything you don’t
want to.”

“I can’t talk about it, Julia,” Telaine said,
her voice muffled by her skirt. “Please don’t ask.”

The hand withdrew. After a moment, Julia
said, “I told you about Lucas. Every hateful thing he said. I gave
you all my secrets and I don’t understand why you won’t do the same
for me. You have to stop trying to do this by yourself, Lainie, I
can see there’s something eating you up inside but I don’t know how
to help you. Let me help you.”

Telaine lifted her face to meet her cousin’s
anxious eyes, and all her pain, all her worry, all her guilt turned
to tears inside her chest. “Julia—I can’t—” she began, then she
couldn’t speak for crying.

It felt as if the tears were being ripped out
of her, leaving her flesh raw, as if she’d never truly cried before
in her entire life. Julia put her arms around her and rocked her
gently as she sobbed, and as the tears flowed the knot of pain
she’d been carrying around began to loosen.

“Shh, shh, breathe now,” Julia whispered.
“Can you talk about it yet?”

Telaine shook her head. She took a few deep,
shuddering breaths, and said, “My face must look a mess.”

“Just a little bit. Nothing anyone will care
about.”

Telaine wiped her eyes. “Julia,” she said,
“I’m in love.”

Julia’s eyes went wide. “With whom?”

She took another deep breath. “Ben
Garrett.”

“Who—you mean, Jeffy’s Garrett?
That
Ben Garrett? Oh.
Oh,
Lainie. I’m so sorry.”

“He wanted to marry me—”

“Oh,
Lainie
.”

“And now he hates me. And I know, I should be
thinking about my future, and Mister Kirkpatrick is a nice man
who’s interested in me, and I don’t owe Ben anything, but it hurts
so much to know I destroyed my whole future and I was, Julia, we
were going to live in his house and I was going to have a workshop
and a bigger bed and—”

“Shh, shh, don’t cry. I can’t believe you
didn’t tell me any of this before. Why have you been carrying it
around with you all this time? Didn’t you think I’d understand,
just because you fell in love with someone who doesn’t have a
title? Your own father didn’t have a title. For heaven’s sake,
Telaine, he was a
Ruskalder warrior
. If the Crown could
endure that, I think it can endure your falling in love with a
Tremontanan commoner.”

“I’m sorry, Julia. It was so tender…it was
like I’d been wounded, and I couldn’t bear to have it touched.”

Julia released her and sat back. “All right.
Do you know what we are going to do?”

Telaine shook her head.

“We are going to go back to your room and
take off our shoes, and eat cream puffs and chocolate, and you are
going to talk, really talk, about what happened in Longbourne.”

Telaine had begun to laugh, but that final
item drew her up short. “Julia, I don’t know if I’m ready—”

“You are past ready. You were past ready
before you came home. I think you’re taking on way too much guilt
over this Longbourne debacle.”

Julia pulled her cousin to her feet. “You are
guilty of concealing your name and title, and you are guilty of
being a spy. But you couldn’t
pretend
to be a Deviser, could
you? You didn’t
pretend
to rescue that little girl. I know
you. I know everything you did while you were there came out of
your own honest heart, and I’ll tell you what else—” she folded
Telaine into a giant hug—“I’m jealous of those people for being the
first to see what you’re like when you’re not playing a part. Past
time you stopped taking the blame for their inability to see things
straight.”

Telaine laughed and wiped her streaming nose
on her sleeve. “I may have ruined this dress.”

“It will wash.”

Telaine linked her arm in Julia’s. “You
know,” she said, “I believe it will.”

Three days later
Telaine witnessed Hugh Harstow’s execution. It did not give her
peace.

Three days after that, Telaine woke with a
headache and the remnants of a bad dream echoing behind her eyes.
She hadn’t slept well since the trial, having isolated herself in
the palace so she wouldn’t have to face all those people who hated
her now. Maybe she should leave Aurilien until the scandal had
faded away. The seaside resort in Eskandel she’d contemplated the
day all this had been set in motion was appealing.

She rubbed her temples, then the bridge of
her nose. No, tempting as that was, she’d been away from her family
for so long the idea of leaving again made her heart hurt along
with her head. She’d have to ride out the storm and see what
remained when it passed.

She dressed wearily and opened her bedroom
door on her nightmarish sitting room. All that pink. She hated
pink. It was a frivolous, detestable color. The Princess had loved
pink. She massaged her temples and closed her eyes. Blue, that was
a nice color, sapphire blue like the butterflies she’d once seen in
Veribold. Sapphire blue and gold, and light-colored wood, ash or
maple. She opened her eyes and looked around. Well, why
shouldn’t
she have a sitting room she actually wanted to sit
in?

There was a palace decorator, a thin, timid
woman who blossomed when she heard what Telaine had in mind.
Telaine suspected she didn’t have a lot to do most days. She
supervised the installation of a wallpaper patterned subtly in pale
gold over the pink and white paint and a hardwood floor with a
thick golden-brown rug from Eskandel. Telaine chose curtains to
coordinate with it, and elegant ash chairs and a long sofa
upholstered in sapphire blue to replace the awful overstuffed and
over-gilded furniture. The palace carpenters replaced the ugly pink
mantel with one of blonde wood that had been rubbed and polished
until it glowed.

The process left Telaine invigorated. She
energetically decimated the Princess’s wardrobe and asked Posy,
still doing duty as her maid, to dispose of the unwanted dresses
and gowns and boxes and boxes of shoes. She had trouble imagining
who might want them. A theater company? A nouveau riche family with
lots of daughters? At any rate, they were no longer her
problem.

She threw away most of her cosmetics and
beauty tools, emptied half the drawers in her dressing table, then
went out and bought more Deviser’s tools and supplies and put them
in the newly available space. Seeing them ranged neatly in what had
once belonged to the Princess made her feel triumphant. Cutting her
alter ego out of her life hadn’t left a hole; it had given Telaine
North Hunter space to finally breathe.

But there came a day when she reclined on the
sofa in her sitting room and realized she was bored. She didn’t
miss the Princess’s “friends,” but they’d made up her entire social
circle outside her family, and she didn’t realize how much she’d
depended on their invitations for her activities. She couldn’t
throw a party herself, and she didn’t like going out because it
still hurt to be snubbed in public. She was tired of reading, she
was tired of walking in the gardens, and she was tired of having
nothing to do.

She sighed and left her room. Perhaps she
should go into the city and look for employment. Would Mistress
Wright see it as a benefit or a drawback to have it known a
Princess was working for her?

Jessamy was kicking his heels in the drawing
room. “I’m bored,” he announced.

“So am I,” Telaine said. “We can be bored
together.”

Jessamy sat up and glanced around. “Or we can
do something else,” he said. “Are you an actual Deviser?”

Telaine raised her eyebrows at him. “You
mean, do I have the ability, or do I have the certificate? Yes, on
both counts.”

“Oh.” He looked around again, then whispered,
“You want to help me with a project?”

“Did you become a Deviser when I wasn’t
looking?”

“Don’t tease, Lainie, I’m serious. Come
see.”

He led her through the palace to the Royal
Library. Telaine had been inside many times, was familiar with the
three stories of shelves and the soft carpets that silenced the
room, but Jessamy took her to a door she’d seen but never opened.
She tried not to laugh at Jessamy’s exaggerated whispers and
gestures for silence; they were funny, but she knew Jessamy had
gotten into trouble more than once for exploring in the library.
Grandmama had strict rules about who was allowed into her domain,
and where.

Unlike the rest of the Library, these stairs
were uncarpeted and looked old. They were probably part of the
original rooms Grandmama had appropriated for the Library almost
fifty years ago. Telaine couldn’t imagine anyone using them. Anyone
but Jessamy, that is. They climbed four stories’ worth of stairs,
which left Telaine breathing heavily. It wasn’t as tall as Willow
North’s tower, but it had to be close. “Jess, is this really worth
it? What exactly are you showing me?”

“I found this a couple of months ago, right
after Wintersmeet. It was cold and wet and boring outside,” he said
stubbornly, as if expecting her to criticize his disobedience.

“So what is it?”

“Just wait. I want you to see it before I say
anything.” He pushed open a door at the top of the stairs. The hall
beyond was little more than bare, unfinished wood, with a door
standing ajar to the left. Jessamy passed it and went down the
hall, which made a left turn not quite at right angles. Telaine
followed him until he came to a door that looked like all the
others. Jessamy grinned at her. “You’re going to be amazed,” he
whispered.

He opened the door and waved her in. Telaine
stopped a few steps inside the door and gasped. Her mouth hanging
open, she took a few steps and then stopped again. “Jessamy, this
is
incredible
,” she whispered.

She stood before a giant chandelier, taller
by far than she was and big enough around that she and Jessamy,
linking hands, could circle it only if they also had Jessamy’s
brothers Edward and Mark along. It lay tilted on its side, the
massive chain coiled next to it still threaded through the ring on
the ceiling from which it had hung. Scatterings of white dusted the
floorboards beneath it, something Telaine took for bird droppings
until she realized they were flakes of wax. The candle arms still
bore most of the wax stubs they had contained when it had been
pulled up for the last time.

Telaine climbed onto it and found its arms
sturdy enough to support her weight without bending. From that
vantage point she could see where the floor had been filled in
around the chandelier when it was hoisted and stowed for the last
time. Even the winch and the stay-rods were still there.

“I’ve been chipping out the wax,” Jessamy
said, “but it takes a long time.”

“You want to light this again. Turn it into a
Device.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“I’m agreeing with you. It’s outstanding.
Have you spoken to Grandmama?”

Jessamy scowled. “She’d just say no. Besides,
I’d rather it was a surprise.”

“More surprise to us if we put all that work
in and it turns out she doesn’t want a chandelier.”

“But—”

“Slow down, apprentice. Give me a moment to
think.” Jessamy glowed in the light of the word “apprentice.”
Telaine mulled it over. “All right. I’m going to ask Uncle to help
us with this. He might know how long the chandelier’s been up
here…maybe Grandmama doesn’t even know about it. And then you and
I, my boy, are going to make some light.”

With her uncle’s approval, Telaine and
Jessamy began work. Her uncle’s approval was so unqualified she
wondered if Julia had told him about her failed love life, and if
he too believed she needed something to distract herself. She
didn’t care. For the first time since denouncing the Baron, she
felt joy. Everything else in her life was ambiguous, but you were
either a Deviser or you were not, and there was no third
ground.