The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1) (40 page)

“His Grace has been good to you, then?” Apple asked directly.

“I am most fortunate,” Asher responded. Somewhat carefully, Isla thought.

She studied the boy, wondering. But Apple asked him more questions and he slowly relaxed, telling her about his hawk—who carried the improbable name of Fluffy—his horse and his chess set and how he bedeviled his masters at every opportunity. He’d grown quite good at escaping from his classroom, easing himself out through the narrow window and climbing onto the parapet outside. He clearly wasn’t afraid of heights—or of much. But he was afraid of
something
, though; Isla had seen that shadow pass over his face before. Asher, for such a small boy, already knew well how to guard his tongue.

“How,” Rowena interjected, “can you speak so highly of the man who killed your father?”

Asher froze. Apple’s mouth fell open. Isla blinked, wondering if she’d heard her sister right. Could Rowena really be saying this, and to a small child? Rowena, who’d never had a malicious thought in her life? Isla studied her sister’s narrowed eyes and white-lipped grimace, and then transferred her gaze to Asher. Asher said nothing, but his eyes were defiant.

Rowena met their stares, equally defiant. “Oh, come on,” she said, “don’t act like it isn’t common knowledge.” Isla was shocked at the venom in her tone. A chill seemed to infect the air, where before the breeze had felt pleasant. “All his men brag about it, in the practice yard. How he”—
he
meaning Tristan—”captured the man on the battlefield and dragged him, screaming, through the mud to the command tent. How he made him kneel down before him outside, in the rain, and beg for his life; and how, afterward, he ran him through with his sword.”

Rowena turned to Isla, ignoring Asher entirely now. Asher, who’d turned the color of milk. “His sword is named Morrigan, you know; the goddess of death who punishes oath breakers, in the North.” She sniffed. “Heathens.”

“Rowena,” Isla began, “I really don’t think that—”

“You don’t think. Well listen to that. He”—Brandon Terrowin—“didn’t die right away, you know. He lay moaning in the mud for hours, while life went on around him, and no one lifted a finger to help.”

Asher’s lower lip trembled. “My father—”

“You refuse to even carry his last name.”

Apple glared. “Rowena, enough!”

“Rudolph says that he was the
true
king.”

“Rowena!” Isla gasped, horrified. She reached out a hand, as if to silence her sister’s traitorous words.

She could scarcely credit what she was hearing. And if they were to be overheard by the wrong ears, if Rowena’s assertions of Rudolph’s loyalties were to be overheard, then that would ruin him. Sedition was a crime punishable by death, and tensions were high in a country just now knitting itself back together after a decades-long civil war. She heard movement behind her and froze, imagining that there stood a representative of the king’s. Or their neighbor the Earl of Strathearn’s. Or, even worse, Tristan’s. Her chest tightened so painfully she could barely breathe. She turned; thank the Gods, it was Hart. He looked as upset as she felt.

“Come on, now, what’s this?” he demanded. Looking around the glade, Isla saw with a sinking heart that the hunt had returned. Rowena was still carrying on, describing the once-heir’s death in gruesome—and undoubtedly imaginary—detail. She certainly hadn’t been there; how could she possibly know?

Hart took quick stock of the situation and, with a concerned glance at Asher, strode forward. “Enough,” he said firmly, pulling Rowena to her feet. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but—”

“Well if you’d been around, instead of leaving us all in the lurch while you were off gallivanting with the duke—”

“Rowena, stop!” He stepped back, studying his half-sister with a critical eye. Hart might have his moments, but he was no fool and he knew that something was badly wrong. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, in a softer tone. He sounded wondering, and Isla knew that he’d been just as shocked as she to see this chance come over their sister. She wasn’t…hadn’t been…herself. Isla, too, felt like she was staring at a stranger.

Rowena opened her mouth to respond and then, “hullo! Hullo! Capital day, isn’t it? How’s everyone enjoying themselves? I say….” Rudolph trailed off, his normally cheerful expression sagging into one of dismay as he realized that something was very badly wrong. “Rowena?” he queried. “Darling?”

“You’re practically prostituting yourself to him!” Rowena shouted at Hart. “You couldn’t stop licking his boots from the moment he arrived! What are you going to do next, you fool, suck his cock?”

“Rowena!”

Gods, Isla thought, would everyone just stop repeating themselves?

Rudolph looked almost as upset as Asher. Asher regarded the proceedings with stoic quiet, but Rudolph looked to be on the verge of tears. He hadn’t probably thought that his darling even knew such a word. Isla was a bit surprised, herself; she didn’t think any references to sucking cock appeared in
The Chivalrous Heart
.

“Now you listen here,” Hart began, “I will not—”

“Turtledove,” Rudolph pleaded, “buttercup, please, sit down. You feel unwell—I imagine, ah, the sun has been strong. I’ll fetch you some cider and then—”

“Moss?” Rowena returned her wrath to Asher, the pale-eyed, too thin boy who’d already suffered so much and who was bravely making the best of a terrible situation. In truth, Isla hadn’t known that it was Tristan who’d killed his father but she wasn’t the least bit surprised to find out. Tristan was an able commander and had been in command of the king’s troops at Ullswater Ford. He’d killed an enemy of the king’s; this was war. Did Rowena imagine that knights sang songs to each other on the battlefield?

“What,” she shrieked, losing what little grasp she still had on her last few shreds of self-control, “have you finally accepted the rumors and labeled yourself as the bastard you are? Why, I—”

Her head snapped to the side as Tristan hit her, knocking her to the ground. He used the back of his closed fist, connecting squarely with the side of her face. She cried out, clutching at herself as she stared up at him in shock. If he’d been wearing gauntlets, he would have broken her jaw. He glared down at her, his eyes full of the same cold fury that radiated from his tense, still frame. Everyone watched, transfixed, to see what would happen next.

“That,” he hissed, “is a child.” He could have shouted. That his voice remained so deadly calm was what made his response terrifying. Rowena trembled, her fit over as quickly as it had begun and aware suddenly, horribly, that she’d made a terrible mistake. She opened her mouth, and shut it again. Tristan made no move to help her up. He made no move at all.

She pressed disbelieving fingertips into her cheek. “You hit me.”

“Yes, and if you want to fight with someone who can fight back I’ll gladly hit you again.”

“But I’m, I’m—a lady!” she protested.

“I’ve seen no evidence of such a thing.” Tristan’s voice was cold. “It is only as a favor to your sister that you’re not dead. I suggest that you be grateful.”

“Rudolph thinks you’re a traitor.” Rowena sounded like a mulish child.

“What?” Rudolph protested, dithering. “I do not!”

Asher, standing next to Isla in the now-silent glade, two spectators among many, pressed his lips together in a thin line and said nothing. He looked so horribly too old in that moment. Isla placed her hands on his shoulders and pulled him back against herself, holding him. He let her. Neither of them spoke.

“I support the king,” Rudolph continued, “which you know perfectly well. What you claim I said, lady, you’ve gravely misrepresented. I merely meant that—”

Tristan waved his hand, silencing the man. Isla, too, believed that Rudolph was telling the truth; he was too stupid for treason, and his outrage seemed genuine. People, of course, pretended other than their true loyalties all the time but Rudolph wasn’t that good of an actor. From the beginning, he’d shown nothing but enthusiasm for an alliance that would bring his family great opportunities—economic and otherwise.

Which was, perhaps, Rowena’s problem: did she
want
her future husband to be the king’s enemy? To be Tristan’s? And why in the Gods’ names would Rowena suddenly hate Tristan—hate them all—so much? Isla couldn’t understand it. She wished, more than ever, that she had Cariad to talk with. But Cariad, like so much of Isla’s former life, was gone forever.

I
sla’s father had agreed, finally, to go ahead with the funeral.

And now here she was. She shifted uncomfortably on the hard bench, her hands folded in her lap and her back aching, and wished this beastly exercise were over. The smell in the chapel had been bad to begin with, and with each passing minute was growing nigh on appalling. The hunt had only been the afternoon before last, but Isla felt like a thousand years had passed since then. The same handful of unseasonably warm, summer-like days that had brought her so much pleasure had brought them to their present pass. And her memories, once so beautiful, now tasted like ashes in her mouth. What was she doing?

Meanwhile, their own parish priest droned on.

He extolled Father Justin’s virtues, a man he’d little known except to loathe. The dead, Isla had noticed, were often reborn in their eulogies. However wretched they’d been in life they were remembered, once gone, as sterling examples of humanity. Inconvenient facts were discarded, new ones invented, and what truth managed to survive embroidered almost beyond recognition. So it had been with her own mother. Hart’s mother, alone of all of them, had deserved every bit of praise that could be offered a woman. And received none of it.

Isla sat next to Asher, behind Tristan and his retainers and across the aisle from Rowena. The earl and Apple sat in the front as well, in front of Rowena and across the aisle from Tristan. Isla and Rowena, being unmarried women, were personages of lesser importance. Beside her, Asher said nothing. The already solemn little boy had been even quieter than usual of late. His easy, joking manner in the glade had been something of an aberration—one all too soon cut short. Isla had been so hopeful, that afternoon, that he’d emerged from his shell at last. She spared a quick glance at Rowena. She and her sister hadn’t spoken much, either. In truth, no one had spoken much to anyone.

In a vain attempt to distract herself from her discomfort, and the stench—it was almost noon, and shaping up to be another unseasonably warm afternoon—she thought back over the chain of events that connected Rowena’s outburst to this moment and to their present predicament.

Peregrine Cavendish had had little other choice, in the end, but to accept Tristan’s offer to see to the burial as gracefully as he could. His own inaction had forced his hand. A messenger had finally arrived from their neighbor, the Earl of Strathearn, politely but firmly declining the honor of burying Father Justin. And a burial was expensive, leaving Peregrine the Impoverished, as he was sometimes called behind his back, few options.

The messenger, unluckily for him, had arrived at Enzie Hall just as the hunting party was returning home.

Tempers were still high and the messenger was very nearly run over by the earl himself. Always an indifferent horseman, he had apologized profusely. And then taken the vapors. So that, in the end, it was Hart who spoke with the messenger and Hart who relayed the dismaying news to his father. The earl feared the church, and mistrusted it, and the last thing he wanted was one of its former representatives moldering away in his dairy. He’d been counting on some more important, less impoverished person taking the responsibility—and, thus, any attendant ill consequences—off his hands.

And so one had.

Once the earl recovered from the messenger’s arrival, the family met after dinner for a conference of sorts. The messenger, too, had recovered; he’d had his horse seen to and was undoubtedly enjoying a plate of stew in the kitchen with one or several enthusiastic scullery maids. Isla, seated next to Tristan on the pillowed bench, wished most devoutly that she’d been there instead of where she was.

The conference took place in the women’s gallery; the earl’s office was eschewed by a common, if unspoken consent. Someone had at least lit a fire, but a small one and the gallery was cold. Tristan, after beckoning her to sit with him, put his arm around her. She shivered. He felt, surprisingly, warm. He hadn’t been at dinner; she had no idea where he’d been, as she’d barely spoken to him all afternoon and not at all during the evening. There simply hadn’t been an opportunity. Or he hadn’t made one; he’d been very busy, and then he’d been gone, and she couldn’t say whether he simply
had
been too busy for even a few minutes’ conversation or whether he’d avoided her.

But he was—as he always was in public, where he had an audience—the absolute height of solicitation now. Which, she’d immediately scolded herself, was unfair; he was solicitous in private as well. And hadn’t he kissed her, and told her that he wanted her? He’d given her no reason to believe otherwise, apart from the faint coldness that was part of his nature. Because, as loving as he was—and, truly, no fault could be found with his treatment of her, apart from the occasional off-color remark—Isla got the distinct feeling sometimes that her lover was playing a part.