Summers at Castle Auburn (17 page)

For an instant, she was so startled that her habitual mask of serenity dissolved in a look of amazement. She was not used to hearing her younger sister speak with such forthright authority. Then she laughed and put her arms around me again. Once more, I had the sense that she was drawing strength from me, and I willed all my considerable resiliency to travel from my body into hers.

“Oh, Corie, you
have
grown up,” she murmured into my hair. “No more secrets with Kent. And don't you dare go away yet. I've missed you too much.”

Kent did not stay much longer after that. Before he left, he paused to hug Elisandra briefly and ruffle my hair. I scowled; Elisandra smiled. No wonder she was the one he loved.

Though that was a very strange thought and would take some getting used to.

Elisandra had agreed that we should take dinner in her room, which did not please Greta when she was told.

“Your first night back, you should be in your customary place of honor for all the castle to see,” her mother said. “You should be reminding the wild young prince who his affianced bride is—”

“He knows very well who I am,” Elisandra said. “I'll deal with Bryan tomorrow. Tonight I'm tired, and I want to see Corie.”

Greta fought the decision bitterly but, in the end, Elisandra had her way. Daria and Cressida brought food from the kitchen and arranged it on a pretty table in the center of the room before quietly leaving. The two of us talked contentedly throughout the meal, catching up on the events of the intervening months. Gradually it occurred to me that Elisandra's news was more of the court and its visitors; she said very little about herself, her thoughts and her feelings. I was slowly beginning to realize that she never did.

Finally, abruptly, as she finished some light tale of a solstice mishap, I said bluntly, “So who's Borgan, and what did he say to you?”

She looked startled for a moment, then her face reverted to its usual composed demeanor. “He's Dirkson's son. Megan's brother. He gave me the shawl with the intimation that it was something he planned to give to his bride.”

“But you're going to marry Bryan.”

“And Borgan knows that.”

“Then why—?”

She tilted her head to one side, regarding me. We had never discussed political intrigue; it had never before occurred to me that there might be any. Everything had, for so many years, seemed to me to be exactly as it appeared on the surface.

“Dirkson is ambitious,” she said. “Tregonia is the largest of the eight provinces, and adjoins Auburn. He does not see why he should
not have some stake in the royal house, being so near the crown. Also, he does not care for Bryan.”

“Kent mentioned something of the sort,” I said.

“Did he? Well, Dirkson is not the only one, but he is the most vocal. He has said publicly and quite often that he will not accept Bryan as his liege. He has also said that he would be more malleable if there were some connection between his house and the royal court. He thinks to marry his daughter to Bryan and his son to me.”

“But
you're
going to marry Bryan,” I said again.

She gave me a strange, unreadable look. “We are not married yet,” she said.

I was bewildered and oddly panicked. “But—Elisandra—don't you want to marry Bryan? I mean—you have been betrothed to him forever—”

Again, the unreadable expression; her thoughts appeared to be turned inward. “What I want does not matter in the slightest,” she said softly.

“Of course it does,” I said impatiently. “If you love Bryan—”

Now she looked at me sharply. “If I love Bryan!” she repeated. “If I love anybody! My will is not consulted in these matters. I am a pawn, a bargaining chip. I am a possession to be laid on the dicing table. Matthew will do with me what he will.”

Now I was the one to stupidly repeat phrases. “Lord
Matthew
—”

There had been a surge of passion in her voice a moment before, but now she spoke in a completely calm and colorless tone. “I have no estate of my own, and my mother very little. All of the Halsing lands are held in trust by Jaxon, but they will not go to me, or you, until we marry. And even then we must marry a man of Jaxon's choosing. Jaxon supplies our household expenses at Castle Auburn, but we are here, all of us—you and I and my mother—at Lord Matthew's sufferance, because I am betrothed to Bryan. If he decides the crown would gather more glory by being bestowed elsewhere, he has the right to break my engagement to Bryan. And then my position becomes even more precarious.”

I felt my throat close, my lungs contract in a kind of fear. None of this had ever occurred to me; I had never considered her anything
but cared for and safe. “But surely Bryan has something to say about all this,” I said in a constricted voice. “Surely Bryan has always wanted to marry you—”

“Has he?” she said. “Who knows what Bryan wants?”

“And what do
you
want?” I asked desperately.

“I want—” She stopped abruptly, and then she gave a sweet but brittle laugh. “I want to talk about something happier,” she said, almost gaily. “I want to talk about you and your visit here and how we have three long months together.”

I was not yet ready to abandon the subject. “But if you did not marry Bryan—if you did not marry anyone—Jaxon would still provide for you,” I said. “There would be a place for you at Halsing Manor.”

“Maybe,” she said. “I've never been sure.” She gave me a quick, direct look. “I have always envied you, you know, because you have another life to go to. But if I do not marry to please the regent and my uncle, I do not know what will become of me.”

“You'll come live with me,” I said instantly, “in the cottage. I'll teach you all my spells, and you could be a witch as well.”

She did smile at that. “I'd like that,” she said. “A country witch.”

I leaned over, putting my hand upon her wrist. “Elisandra,” I said. “Do you
want
to marry Bryan?”

But she had done with secrets. She smiled and jumped to her feet. “I forgot! Your present! Come see how lovely it is.”

She would not say another word on the subject that would trouble me for the rest of my stay at the castle. Instead, she ran to the closet and pulled out a large bundle wrapped in the softest paper. When I folded back the tissue, I found yards and yards of crimson silk shot through with glittering strands of gold.

“Isn't this lovely?” Elisandra murmured, holding a fold to her face. My fingers were lost in it; it was like stroking moonlight. “I'm sure we have enough time before the ball to have it made into a gown. It will look perfect with your dark hair and eyes.”

It would have looked perfect with her own. It was a sumptuous gift. We rolled the yards of material into one long shawl and I threw it over my shoulders to go prance before the mirror. “My,
Lady Coriel, don't you look superb,” Elisandra said, bowing low. “May I be so lucky as to have this first dance?”

We joined hands and did the first few steps of a minuet. “Nobody ever calls me ‘lady,'” I said. “I'm not.”

“It's how Matthew has been referring to you in the past few months,” Elisandra said, dipping regally with the imagined music. “So the fashion has taken hold. My mother does not care for it, as you might guess, but the other day I heard her correct Angela for
not
calling you by the title, so she seems to have reconciled herself to your elevation.”

“So Matthew wants to use me as a chip as well,” I mused.

Elisandra dropped her hand, and the pretend music came to a sudden halt. “He always has,” she said. “It is the reason my mother has spent so much time with you. Matthew has required it of her. He intends to see you advantageously placed.”

I shrugged. “I think,” I said grandly, “the regent might be disappointed.”

Her laugh trilled out, so happy and so genuine that it made me smile as well. “I know,” she said. “And that is such a source of satisfaction to me.”

I grinned back. “You are not as dutiful as you seem,” I said.

Her face settled into its more composed expression. She gave me a searching look. “You are joking,” she said, “but that is really true.” Before I could pursue that avenue any further, she turned brisk and efficient. “Come, let us put this carefully away. In the morning, we will have you measured and the seamstresses can begin on your gown. Do you have a style in mind? Something not too prim, not with that color—”

We sat side by side on her bed and looked through sketchbooks the castle tailors had put together, trying to decide on a fashion. We had not been doing this very long when I sensed a great weariness in Elisandra, a bone-deep exhaustion that made it hard for her even to hold the pattern cards in her hands.

“You look tired,” I said. “I think it's time I left so you could sleep.”

She smiled sadly. “I
am
tired, but these days I do not sleep well,” she admitted. “Perhaps that is why I am so tired.”

I jumped to my feet. “I'll be right back,” I said, and ran from the room. I was back in a few minutes, my satchel in my hand. Elisandra had laid the sketchbooks aside, but otherwise had not moved from her place. I climbed up next to her again.

“Are you having trouble falling asleep, or do you wake up in the middle of the night?” I asked in my best professional voice. “If you cannot sleep through the night, are you wakened by dreams or bodily pains? When you waken in the morning, do you feel sluggish and stupid, or is your mind clear and active?”

She laughed at me, amused and a little impressed. “I cannot fall asleep, and I wake in the middle of the night and cannot sleep then, either,” she said. “I have no physical pains, and my mind is very clear.”

I nodded. “Good. I will give you an herbal powder, and you will mix one half of a teaspoon in a glass of water every night before you go to bed. It will rock you gently to sleep and help keep you in that state the whole night long.”

“I would be glad if that were so,” she said, “but I doubt it.”

I was shaking out callywort into a shallow bowl she kept on her nightstand. “Try it and see,” I retorted.

I could hear her lifting and shaking various vials from my satchel. “This looks interesting. And this one. Oh, and this is a pretty color of blue. What's it for?”

I turned to see what she was holding up to the candlelight. “That's halen root,” I informed her. “It reduces pain. But you can only use a tiny amount of it, because too much will kill you.”

She quickly replaced the vial in the bag, then continued to stare down at it dubiously. “Really? How much?”

I replaced my other jars of herbs after stoppering them tightly. “There's enough in this little jar to kill a dozen people,” I said. “But it has a somewhat salty taste, so you couldn't really administer it in someone's wine or water.”

“I thought your grandmother didn't teach you the blacker magics,” she said dryly.

I grinned. “This isn't magic, it's herb lore. You can find halen root at any apothecary's shop from here to Faelyn Market, though
it will cost you something once you get out of Cotteswold. You have to be careful with it, and always have the antidote on hand.”

“The antidote? What's that?”

I picked up another vial. “Ginyese,” I said. This powder was white and fine, so pale it was almost translucent. “Also to be found at any apothecary's shop.”

She took it from me and held it up to the light. In her hands, it seemed to have a backlit, milky glow. “And does it taste salty, too?”

“No, no taste at all.”

“And how much is necessary as an antidote?”

“If you swallowed a teaspoon of halen root, you'd need only a few grains of ginyese,” I said. “Actually, ginyese is a wonderful antidote for most poisons, if you take it quickly enough after you've swallowed the toxin, because the body rejects it. So it rejects everything else in your system. Some people even use it for fevers, because they think it cleans the blood.”

She laid the bottle back in my bag. “You do know the most interesting things,” she said. She picked up another jar, a small clay pot with flowers inscribed on the sides. “What's in here?”

“Love potion,” I said with a smile.

She looked at me. “Not really.”

I nodded. “Really. I was dispensing some the other night, in fact.”

“You were dispensing—and to whom? Did it work?”

Now I was grinning widely. “To a lovesick guardsman on duty at the castle gates. We fell into a conversation. I don't know yet if it's worked, but he seemed quite hopeful.”

“And how much of
this
do you have to take to be successful? And is there an antidote?”

I laughed. “And why would you want an antidote for love?”

“If you changed your mind. If the man wasn't quite who you thought he was.”