The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1) Page 7

  Rowena looked up. “What?” she asked, disbelieving. Even with her nose red and dripping and her eyes swollen, she still managed to look lovely. Isla didn’t resent her for it; admired her for it, in fact. She’d always been proud of her sister’s beauty and charm. Both were sweet, natural, and uncomplicated.

  “I’ve spoken with the duke,” Isla told her, “and with our father.” She paused; for all that she’d thought of virtually nothing else since deciding to tackle this interview, she had no idea of what to say next. How could she possibly explain, in a way that wouldn’t hurt Rowena’s feelings?

  For all that Rowena wanted to marry the duke about as much as she wanted to be transmogrified into a slug, rejection still stung. The last thing she wanted Rowena to think was that she’d been thrown over for her unlovely older sister in some fit of pique.

  “Well,” she began, “our father has come to understand the error of his ways in attempting to separate you from Rudolph. He now believes that the best thing would be for you to follow your heart. The years weigh heavily on him, no doubt; I’m sure that he realized, when faced with the ultimate decision, that life is too short for true love not to be honored.”

  All complete bunk, of course, but Isla thought her speech sounded pleasant.

  “And the duke?” Rowena asked.

  “Is inconsolable, I’m sure.”

  “Naturally,” Rowena agreed, perking up a little. She straightened her back, pulling the fur more closely about her, and regarded her sister with something of a queenly air. Now that she was getting her own way again, Rowena seemed on the path to a marvelous recovery.

  Isla explained what had happened: that after deciding that it would only be fair to allow Rudolph to press his suit—and Isla was sure that, even now, Rudolph was en route to do exactly that—their father had offered the duke his other daughter as a poor second prize.

  “I hope you’re not upset.”

  “About what?” Isla ventured cautiously.

  “That you’re second choice.”

  “No,” Isla said, part chagrined and part relieved, “not at all.” On the one hand she was glad to avoid difficult topics—Rowena had clearly accepted both the story and Isla’s claim of every man’s devotion as her due—but on the other she was a bit put out that her sister was, even now, condescending to her. Rowena’s beauty might not have been such a burden to bear, if she had anything else going on in her head. But she kept her peace; if her sister wanted to think of the duke as pining for her, so much the better.

  “I’m sure he’ll come to realize that he got the better end of the bargain,” Rowena said consolingly.

  Isla laughed without humor.

  “No, I mean it.” Her sister’s tone became uncharacteristically serious. “Really. I know I’m beautiful,” she said artlessly, “but I focus on that because I don’t have anything else. I’m not smart, like you. I’m not educated. I can’t read very well, or figure sums at all.”

  “That’s not true. You’re smart, too.”

  “Not like you.” Rowena smiled. “And I think you’re beautiful.”

  “Really?” Isla asked, unexpectedly touched.

  “Yes, really. You look like the girl from the fairytale, the one who ran off into the woods so the evil queen wouldn’t eat her heart.” She brushed her fingertips along one of Isla’s pinned back braids. “As white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as a raven’s wing. Isn’t that the line?” It was, but Isla hardly thought such poetry applied to her. She returned her sister’s smile all the same. The comparison was, especially coming from Rowena, a good compliment.

  “You and Rudolph will be happy together,” Isla told her.

  “And you?”

  Isla shrugged. “I suppose.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “What do you mean?” Isla asked disingenuously.

  Rowena shook her head slightly, a small smile still playing about her lips. “Isla, I know I’m not brilliant but I’m not stupid, either. You caused this. For me. Why?” Rowena might, as she put it, not be brilliant, but she did have her moments of insight. As much as Isla had found her own argument quite compelling, Rowena plainly saw through it.

  She had, after all, grown up in the same house and knew their father also.

  And, Isla supposed, had realized that the same man who’d been willing to sell her into the hands of a madman wouldn’t suddenly discover the meaning of true love over breakfast. Or be struck by any sort of crisis of conscience; both ideas were equally ridiculous. Peregrine Cavendish was no doubt counting his new riches even as they spoke. One thousand guineas; Isla couldn’t even picture such wealth. Throughout Morven, an earl’s income varied greatly—from three hundred guineas per year to eleven thousand on some of the great estates. A duke, Isla had no idea what a duke’s income might be. There were numerous earls, but only a handful of dukes and Isla didn’t move in such rarified circles.

  “I wanted you to be happy,” Isla said.

  Rowena sniffed. “Do you really think that—that Rudolph is coming to see me?”

  “You sent him a note, didn’t you?”

  Rowena colored, confirming Isla’s suspicions. “How—how did you know?”

  Isla shook her head slightly. Because I’m not stupid, she thought.

  “Because I’ve known you these sixteen years,” she replied. And Rowena, for all her outward appearance of frivolity, wasn’t one to sit passively by as things happened that she didn’t want. She’d no doubt written to Rudolph, or made Rose do so—Rose knew her letters a little better than Rowena did—as soon as she’d had the chance and then retreated into her room until he arrived to save her.

  If Rowena had run off with Rudolph, if she’d been able to somehow talk him into doing something so stupid, if love or lust or whatever he felt had made him take leave of his senses to such a degree, then his house and hers would have faced a catastrophe of epic proportions and one that neither House Cavendish nor House Bengough was strong enough to withstand. Apart from the wrath of the duke, and the king, there would have been the issue of Rudolph’s inheritance. Even if he’d still been allowed to inherit, after a near mortal insult to the king’s own brother in stealing his bride literally from underneath his nose, how could Rudolph’s father leave his estate in the hands of a man who’d shown such judgment? Isla thought it more likely that Rudolph would have come, pled his case within the confines of the law and, when he was rejected, done the honorable thing and left.

  She thought back to her father’s words, about Rudolph being a weak link. Was he right? What would the duke have done, in a similar situation?

  The duke, she realized, would never have found himself in such a situation in the first place. If he wanted a woman, for wife or otherwise, he’d take her. If he’d sat where Rudolph was sitting now, he’d have married Rowena last summer.

  Suddenly Isla wanted very much to speak with her brother, the only man on this accursed estate with any sense.

  TEN

  Hart was in the practice yard, stripped down to his breeches and hammering some poor slob with a quarterstaff. He feinted, landing a glancing blow, and then turned to the side. Hart, sensing his opponent’s weakness, fell for the oldest trick in the book and leapt in for the kill. Two seconds later he found himself flat on his back in the mud, staring up at the sky and clutching his crotch. “Motherfucker!” he yelled at no one in particular, furiously but without rancor.

  His opponent, one of the estate’s men at arms, laughed. “Teach you to call Alice a whore,” he said good naturedly.

  “But your sister—ah!”

  “Is a virtuous woman,” the guard finished pointedly.

  “Very virtuous,” Hart gasped, tears standing out at the corners of his eyes.

  A pig ambled over to sniff at him, no doubt wondering what a fully grown man was doing lying on the ground. Hart tried to push the beast off, but to no avail. Pressing her wet snout into his cheek, Bessie waited to be patted. She liked having the coarse bristles u
nder her chin scratched. She was a good pig, all eight hundred pounds of her. Pigs, unlike men, were fastidious animals; they rolled in the mud because it acted as a natural sunscreen to their sensitive skin. But, all things considered, they preferred to be clean.

  Hart, meanwhile, seemed oblivious to the mixture of churned up dirt, bilge water and excrement that made his bed of the moment. The practice yard was a good deal more convenient than the river, and no one was contaminating their drinking water by tossing scraps onto the hard-packed dirt. The only other dumping ground within easy distance was the earl’s private fish pond, and half the manor drank from and bathed themselves in those waters. Not to mention, tanning chemicals might kill the fish.

  Sitting up, Hart ran a dirt-grimed hand through his equally dirt-grimed hair. That he was blond like Rowena was, at this particular juncture, impossible to tell. Seeing Isla, he waved.

  She came to the rail and, leaning over, favored him with her most condescending smile. “What a lovely perfume, brother. Is that pig shit?”

  “Men don’t wear perfume.”

  “Then perhaps you should wash.”

  “I washed last week,” Hart protested, scandalized at the suggestion. “Although,” he added, with a wicked grin, “I suppose I’ll have to wash again for your wedding.”

  “You’ll have to wash, if you want a wedding of your own.”

  “Why? Alice….” At a look from his friend, he trailed off. “What I mean is, I’m a man of the world. I neither want nor need to get married.” He stood up and shook the worst of the mud from his sweat-slicked form. Clearly, his exertions had so far kept him from feeling the chill. “Besides,” he added good-naturedly, reaching for his shirt, “I’m a bastard. I don’t have to worry about such things as passing on the glorious family name I don’t have.”

  Isla didn’t respond. She knew her brother’s situation bothered him more than he let on. Probably at least part of the reason he’d been fucking his stepmother these last six months; anger was a difficult beast to control, once awakened, and beneath Hart’s studied indifference lurked a fearsome monster indeed. Isla wondered, and not for the first time, if their father knew. Or cared. Or was capable of doing anything about it if he did care. She frowned slightly. She loved Hart, but she worried about him.

  “They promote on merit in the North,” the guardsman said. Isla thought his name was Rand. She wasn’t sure. He worked as a ranger, and spent most of his time lost in the forest.

  Hart ran his hand through his hair again and stared out at nothing. Around them, the manor was hard at work. The competing dins made it sound like a fairground: shouts as people called out to one another, or haggled, or bickered, the ringing out of hammers at the forge, the bleating of sheep and the lowing of calves, the snuffling of pigs as they roamed the grounds in search of food. When one owned a pig, one had no need of a maid to scrub the floors. Squealing in delight, Bessie found a mushroom that had grown up in the shadow of the fence post.

  Standing here in the brilliant fall light, Isla almost felt normal. The pall hanging over them, in turn, seemed unreal. Surely nothing bad could happen, on such a gorgeous day? The world didn’t feel like it was ending. And Hart’s bland acceptance of her new status only added to her sense of unreality. He acted, indeed, like her marrying this man was the most normal thing in the world. “I like him,” he said, helping himself to a long drink of water from the skin he’d left sitting on the bench next to his shirt. “He knows a lot about horses.”

  “I don’t care about horses.”

  “That’s because you’re a girl.”

  Isla swatted him. Rand laughed. Rand was right, too, about the North, or so Isla had been told. In much of Morven and, indeed, much of the known world, title counted more than brains and a fat purse counted most of all. Opportunities for a smart man were few and far between, unless he had a great deal of determination. Although with Piers on the throne, this was potentially changing—much to the chagrin of the peers who’d helped to put him there and who, jealous of their own power, bitterly resisted any attempts at modernization. They were, Isla supposed, frightened that their own deficiencies would finally be revealed.

  “I envy you,” Hart said suddenly.

  “Why?” Isla asked, taken aback.

  “Because you’re leaving. I hate it here. I want to leave, too.”

  “Talk to the duke,” Isla found herself saying. She hadn’t even known what she’d been about to suggest, before she spoke. But now that the words were leaving her mouth, she discovered that she meant them. As much as she, too, wanted to leave Enzie Moor, she wasn’t too keen on being a stranger in a strange land. In the North, for however long she lasted there, she’d know nobody. The idea of a familiar face sounded as appealing as a rope might to a drowning man. She hadn’t allowed herself to admit, until now, how truly terrified she was. Until, with the idea that Hart might come too, that terror abated a little.

  She smiled weakly.

  “I’m doing this for me,” he told her confidently. And disingenuously. “If I do it, I mean. Come north with you.”

  Isla heard a giggle and turned to see Rose watching them. Watching Hart, rather. She had something of a crush on him, along with half the other girls at Enzie Moor. Not a serious crush—Hart and serious weren’t concepts that went together, at least where matters of the heart were concerned—but few women remained immune to his charms for long.

  Isla was protected, in this instance, by being his sister. She’d never thought of him in that way and couldn’t if she tried, but she understood in an intellectual sense that he was handsome. And Hart certainly enjoyed their attentions, although he was conscientious enough to make sure that no one mistook his preening for interest. He might be a bit of a whore, but he had a good heart and he’d never misled a girl about his intentions in order to see her naked. Which made him all the more popular.

  Seeing Rose, his smile broadened. His shirt hung open, revealing an expanse of smoothly muscled chest. That his idea of bathing included dunking his head into a horse trough and washing his hands before dinner seemed to bother girls not a whit. He wasn’t a modest man, and a good many of his admirers had seen him naked. He was as vain as Rowena, Isla thought fondly. Just smarter, which made him more dangerous. And Isla loved them both, even though—or perhaps because—neither of them was anything like her.

  “Hello, beautiful,” Hart said. Rose blushed. “Come to offer congratulations?”

  Rose turned her shy smile on Isla. “I’m pleased, mistress, but we’ll all miss you. I wish you weren’t leaving, even though”—she made a self-deprecating gesture—”I’m sure you’ll be very happy.” She giggled. Such seriousness was unnatural to her, and she was unable to maintain it for long. Joining Isla at the fence, she whispered, “he really is very good looking.”

  “Who, Hart?”

  “No!” Rose jabbed her with an elbow. They didn’t stand overmuch on ceremony at Enzie Moor; with little difference between ruler and ruled, there was no point in such useless affectations. “Your husband-to-be,” she clarified. “And I’ve heard he….” Rose lost her words in a fit of giggles.

  “What?” Isla asked, alarmed.

  “I’ve heard he….” She broke down utterly now, howling with laughter. Seeing her, Hart made an illustrative gesture and arched an eyebrow in question. Rose laughed all the harder.

  “Well what are we talking about, here?” Hart broadened his hands wider. Rand, returning from the trough where he’d been sloshing water on himself along with Bessie, informed Hart that the duke was a man and not a bull.

  “You’re just jealous, because you’re so small.” Hart held up his finger, letting the first joint droop. “Well at least it’s not like this.”

  “Speaking from personal experience?” Rand asked.

  Hart cuffed him on the side of the head, but good-naturedly. “Well at least she’ll be able to find it on her wedding night,” he informed Rose, who was still unable to form a cogent sentence for laughing. “I
mean really, can you imagine?” He took another pull from the skin, and poured some on his head. “Years ago, the old sergeant at arms—you know, Rand, the one who got gored by a fire boar?—told us a story about a fellow he’d been with in the war.”

  “Which war?”

  “Which war do you think, you great clod? Anyway,” he continued, deigning now to lace up his shirt, “that’s not relevant. What I’m telling you is—”

  “With you,” Rand cut in, “the intelligent part never is.”

  Hart glared. “Do you want to hear this story, or not?” After a minute, seeing that he at least had an appreciative audience in Rose, he continued. “He’d been anxious to get with this particular girl for a long time—the friend, I mean, not the sergeant at arms—and she’d been pretty resistant I guess. He took her out, bought her dinner at a tavern, picked her some flowers, all that shit that girls like and, finally, she relented. So one night, after getting her good and liquored up, he took her back to his tent. Which he shared with a couple of guys, one being the sergeant, but they’d prudently absented themselves for the occasion and I guess were outside by the fire smoking and pretending not to see anything.

  “No sooner does he get her inside and get his breeches unlaced then she takes one look at the package inside and bursts out laughing.”

  “What did he do?” Rand asked interestedly. “I’d have disemboweled myself on the spot.”

  “He ran out of the tent, and the next morning he got skewered by an arrow.” Hart winked, his green eyes glittering with amusement. They were as clear and guileless—or apparently so—as emeralds and Rose sighed appreciatively, no doubt imagining a night in his tent. Sometimes, the fact that Hart got so much female—and occasionally male—attention wherever he went could get a little tiring. For Isla, if not Hart.

  “Don’t worry,” Hart told her, turning, “it’s no worse than being poked with a stick.”

  “Gross!” Rose made a face.

  “What’s your basis of knowledge for evaluating this analogy? Oh, I forgot.” Hart gestured at Rand. “How was his stick?”