The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1) (13 page)

Half-dressed, Isla poured water from the stoneware pitcher on her dresser into the provided bowl and peered at herself in the beaten brass disk that served as her mirror. They had no true mirrors at Enzie Moor; mirrors were made in the East, and too dear for all but the king and his ilk. Even their wealthiest neighbors had never seen one, except perhaps on a trip to the capital.

Taking a length of pliant green birch, she swirled it in a cup of borage and burnt rosemary until the tip was coated. Then, bending forward to get a good look, she brushed her teeth. After working the mixture into the crevices as much as she could, she gargled with fresh water and spit out the results into her chamber pot. She finished by wiping the surface of each tooth with a soft cloth. Oral hygiene was important; the only remedy for dental pain was extraction and that, apart from being painful, could lead to infection.

She braided her still-damp hair into several braids and swept them all back into a bun. She filed her nails with a slim metal rasp that Hart had given her for Solstice last winter. She splashed violet water onto her pulse points and went in search of something to eat.

Carrying the distasteful cloak over her arm, she walked the still-silent halls—Isla was an early riser and those others who’d gotten up early were already at work, most of them outside.

She wondered how much her father had paid for that tincture and if it was working. Rowena, to remove her leg hair, had been convinced by their stepmother to try a depilatory made of vinegar and cat poop. Isla wondered if
that
was working, too, but lacked the courage to ask.

She, personally, found waxing to be the least upsetting approach—certainly better than scraping the hair away with a pumice stone. Rowena removed her hair because the queen did, supposedly at least, but Isla was generally considered strange for her interest in hygiene. Morven wasn’t, as a kingdom, known for its hygiene and the Highlands least of all. Ewesdale, Isla sometimes thought, was one giant plague of bed bugs, lice, scabies and clinging mites.

By sheer chance, she happened to come upon Hart as he left the kitchen. “Here,” she said, thrusting out the cloak. “This belongs to the duke.”

Hart’s eyebrow shot up. “Getting a little friendly, aren’t we?”

Isla hit him. Hart, surprised, threw up the piece of bread he’d been chewing. One of his hounds darted in and claimed the prize, stumpy tail wagging.

Isla glared daggers at her brother. “Certainly not!” she replied, indignant. “And what are you doing, drinking ale at this time of morning?” She transferred her gaze to the tankard he held in his other hand, her disapproval evident.

“I’ve been up for hours!” he protested. “I’m hungry!” Both Hart and his equally verminous hound managed to look injured. “And fuck you very much,” he added, “if I’m concerned that my sister is evidently spending the night—if not with the duke, then with his clothes!”

“Oh!” Isla squeezed her hands into fists, impotent with rage at the unfairness of it all. “I hate you!” Deciding that breakfast was for fools, she stormed back down the hall in the direction from which she’d come. See if she needed to eat! She didn’t, if eating meant spending one more minute with Hart. Her stomach growled faintly for the bread and cheese she’d promised herself, but she thrust the desire—and the self-pity that accompanied it—out of her mind. She’d eat later. Next year, perhaps.

“I take it he was a disappointment,” Hart said prosaically, his voice following her down the hall.

Isla refused to dignify
that
comment with a response. He could damn well return the cloak to his new best friend—or take it to Hell! She didn’t care which. Isla might love Hart, but there were times when she also wanted to toss him out the window. This, she thought, seeing his vacuous grin in her mind’s eye, was one of those times. Spending the night with the duke’s clothes, indeed! That she had, and that Hart’s question was, therefore, perfectly reasonable, only incensed her more.

She’d gotten clear across the hall and all the way to the main library before she’d finally felt her blood pressure return to normal. A dull headache had begun to pound at her temples; but whether from lack of food or fury she couldn’t say. All she knew was that she was now doubly determined to learn the answers to certain questions that had been plaguing her since the small hours of the morning. Since she’d first woken up and, rolling over and staring at the ceiling, began to ask herself why certain facts weren’t adding up.

Seemingly unimportant facts, to be sure…but the longer she’d worked them over in her mind, the more convinced she’d become that she was missing some very important piece of information.

Critical, even. She pushed open the heavy, iron-banded door to the library and stepped inside. ill-used and even more ill-maintained, the thick oak squealed loudly on its hinges. The library smelled of mold and vellum and ink and old, dried out wood paneling and wax polish. Early morning sunlight streamed in through the window, describing a checkerboard pattern on the floor and warming the air to an almost bearable temperature.

Even knowing what she was looking for, Isla knew she’d have to spend a good bit of time searching. The library wasn’t well organized. She was pleased when she found her quarry after only a few minutes; no one ever looked at something as boring as records so, in consequence, they were right where they belonged. Most of the more interesting volumes were harder to find, because they’d been pulled out and haphazardly shelved—often over and over again. No one cared as much about this library as Isla.

Lifting the heavy volume free of the shelf, Isla brushed away the dust and nearly choked in the thick cloud that resulted. And she saw that she’d guessed rightly: no one had examined
this
volume in a very long time. Gasping at the weight, she carried her prize over to the enormous table that dominated the center of the room and laid it down as carefully as she could on the scar-pitted surface. One never knew, with these volumes, how fragile they might be. Often the ravages of time and bookworms left even sturdily bound works as vulnerable to the elements as rose petals.

She seated herself on the bench, and began to read.

B
irths, deaths, and all other important events in the noble houses were recorded—for posterity, for who knew what reason. The Morva were record keepers and always had been, dating back to when Gideon the Conqueror had swept in from the furthest reaches of the North and established himself as king of what had then been a series of barely unified territories. Territories that warred with each other almost constantly and had, thus, been ripe for conquering. Which was why, almost immediately after his victory, King Gideon, First of His Name, had begun an ambitious project of data collection and organization that was still only half-complete at his death some twenty years later.

Since then, going back now almost three hundred years, everything one wanted to know and a great deal one didn’t was available in print. The lowly types, too, kept their own records: at local parishes, mostly, where priests made notes in the their parish logs on behalf of illiterate parishioners.

Isla’s own house, House Cavendish, had a long if not glorious history and the log book their own priest kept listed Isla’s birth as well as Rowena’s. Hart’s was not listed; his mother, Jasmine, had had him registered with the town parish and with the assistance of the priest who had been her confessor. And, some tongues wagged, her father. In any case, after a decades-long and unusually close relationship with his housekeeper, a poor but kind woman who’d escaped an abusive marriage and ultimately come into his employ after spending the better part of a year homeless on the streets with her young son, that much beloved man of the Gods had gone to his great reward. Isla would have liked to question him now.

His housekeeper, who had mysteriously become pregnant with Jasmine by an unknown man after living in the parish house for about two years, had moved away after his death. Isla didn’t know how to track her down, even if the woman would talk to her—which Isla doubted. And she must be very old by now. Jasmine, if she’d lived, would be almost fifty; which made her mother seventy at least.

The priest had been in his forties or fifties when he met Jasmine’s mother, who’d been in her early twenties—or so Isla thought. She wasn’t sure, and doubted if even Hart knew. Jasmine had never talked much about her family, to anyone. Including, or perhaps most especially, to the man she loved. Her erstwhile father, Father Leo, had died when he was almost ninety. A good many men, and women, lived a long time; but one couldn’t count on either extended years or firmity of mind. Especially not in a world where going into town meant taking your life in your hands.

Farmers had been attacked while bringing their produce into town from outlying farms, sometimes only outlying by a distance of a few miles—and in broad daylight, too. As Lord of Enzie, it was Peregrine’s job to police the roads and see that they were kept safe. That he wasn’t up to the task, anyone could see; especially the bandits who plagued their forests.

Robin of the Hood
, Isla thought darkly, referring back to the old fairy tale,
where are you now
.

She paged through the book, being careful to only touch the edges of the stiffened vellum. And finally, near the middle of the enormous tome, she found what she wanted: House Mountbatten. Their king, King Piers, was something of an upstart and his house, while old, had always been obscure. Until Piers had burst onto the scene a few years ago, sword in hand, and abruptly put an end to the civil war. No one, even if they remembered the name, remembered much about House Mountbatten, although in recent years there had been speculation about the source of its vast fortune. Wool…someone had made a fortune in wool…or something.

And in any case now Piers was the king so it hardly mattered where his ancestors had come from. He was a good king, if hard, and people of all classes were beginning to feel cautiously optimistic. He hadn’t been married long, so there was as yet no heir, but he was young and virile and had no shortage of female company. That he was enamored of his wife and visited her constantly was well known, even in a backwater like Enzie.

Isla blushed faintly, still turning the pages.

And then, eyes narrowing, she traced a finger down the page. One of the advantages of
their
books were that they were old books, begun long before anyone had even conceived of the current political situation. Often, she knew from her other reading, records of all kinds, especially those dealing with ah, more sensitive topics, were edited after the fact to preserve a certain…continuity, for lack of a better term. Illegitimacies and other embarrassments were fixed. Isla was sure that, whatever books of this kind said closer to the capital, they reflected the king’s will more than the truth.

But whatever poor monk had first put pen to page about House Mountbatten in Enzie had done so years ago, before Isla was even a thought in her mother’s mind. And so perusing these pages was, in a sense, like opening a time capsule.

Piers Mountbatten was listed as being the son of John and Celine Mountbatten, his legal wife. The
only
son. There was no mention of any other children, although that in and of itself wasn’t unusual. Hart, after all, hadn’t put in an official appearance either. But to Isla’s knowledge, Tristan Mountbatten wasn’t illegitimate. As frightened as people were of the man, news like that didn’t stay quiet for long—no matter what. Isla was enough of a realist to know that, one advantage to having grown up poor with a bastard brother. If there had been even the merest breath of scandal, news would have spread.

John Mountbatten’s parents were listed as Devon and Georgiana Mountbatten; his wife being the youngest daughter of a baronet from Perth, in the south. Devon’s parents were listed, in turn, as Spencer and Maude. Reading closely, and then rereading, Isla went back. And back. There were a smattering of siblings, all of whom had married and produced in turn. None of them had produced a Tristan. There were even a few
natural
births listed, as politer tongues were wont to call them. Those few men brave enough to take credit for their illegitimate offspring rarely did so more than dispassionately, but a few claimed them as openly and cheerfully as their other children. Often with a doting wife’s enthusiastic cooperation.

Isla couldn’t imagine living in such a happy home. Trying to picture how things might be different, she felt a brief pang of anguish. Oh, well. She redoubled her focus on her current project.

And, a few minutes later, wished she hadn’t. Her heart thudded in her chest. She blinked, rereading the last line.
That can’t be right
, she told herself. She just—what she was looking at wasn’t possible. She counted on her fingers, and then counted on her fingers again.
No.

She sat back on her bench, wide-eyed and staring at nothing as she absorbed this new information. The average man had children when he’d reached about thirty winters or, at least, thirty was a safe number to use for calculation purposes. A nobleman rarely got married much younger than that, and he did sometimes get married a great deal older.