Her mother did not clarify, but her light blue eyes softened as they finally took a slow look around the greenhouse. The sharpness to her voice fell out of it as quickly as it had filled it up. “When I was your age, I had been your mother for three years. I was married at nineteen. Most noble women are, Ammalie.”
Though she wanted to spit out that she wasn’t grateful for a freedom that should be awarded everyone, Amma bit her cheek and kept it in. Her mother had never spoken ill of her station, and even now there wasn’t disappointment in her words, but pride. It had been easy for Constance Avington, she always said, so it should have been easy for Amma too. “But you love Father.”
“Eventually,” the baroness reminded her, “yes, I did, and I still do. But when things were decided for us, we didn’t even know one another. I’ve told you how painfully shy and awkward he was back then. And, to be quite honest, he wasn’t even terribly interested in me which is just…I mean, look at me, Ammalie.” She held her hands out, slightly cocking a hip and making the gown she wore sway. “Imagine this thirty years younger.”
Amma stared back at her, stony, but then her mother gave her hips a wiggle, and that forced the flicker of a grin onto Amma’s face.
Her mother tittered and then stood poised yet again. “And your father was nothing like how Marquis Caldor is with you. You’ve been lucky enough to be courted by him, to have the chance to get to know him. That man already adores you, and with time you will adore him as well.”
Amma’s grin fell. It was absolutely true Cedric was nothing like her father, but her mother had no idea just how true. Getting to know Cedric—really getting to know him—hadnotbeen a boon for their relationship. A tick in her chest urged her to lay everything at the baroness’s feet just then, a squeezing in her throat to blurt out words she’d been too afraid to say. She’d wanted to tell her mother many times in the last six moons since her engagement that it was so much more complicated than simply not adoring someone, but then the only two possible outcomes always came back to her. A heart would be broken either way: her mother’s if she were told how cruel the man she’d been pushing her daughter to marry truly was, or Amma’s if, when her mother found out, she decided none of it mattered and Amma should marry him regardless.
Baroness Avington had taken a step closer, feet silent in the greenhouse, only the sound of her gown swishing slightly to pull Amma from her melancholic thoughts. “I assume you have had your fun and are finished wallowing in the mire now. Here.” She offered her a small, satin pouch that Amma hadn’t noticed had been in her hand all along.
When Amma’s fingers crushed the sachet slightly as she accepted it, she recognized the smell of the herbs inside at once. Her stomach turned over at the memory of Laurel acquiring this specific blend for her years ago and then again more recently, but did her best to play at being completely oblivious. “What…what is this?”
Her mother raised one brow only slightly. “Even if you’re wed in the next moon, I doubt you’ll be able to pass that stranger’s baby off as Cedric’s. This will take care of that problem for you.”
Amma thrust the sachet back at her mother. “I didn’t sleep with him.”
The baroness’s eyes only flitted upward in disbelief.
“I didn’t.” Amma’s arm and voice fell, watching her mother’s face, but there was no faith there, as if nothing she could say would change her mind. Her fist tightened around the herb, getting another whiff of it and feeling a flood of guilt and pain, but vindication in her decision to not share any other truths. She stepped toward a bench and collapsed onto it, defeated.
“I know you have been through a great ordeal, Ammalie, but the timing…it just could not be worse.” It was strange how Constance Avington could do that with her voice, how she could make it seem so kind, how she could very likelyintendto be kind, and yet say something that felt completely bereft of thoughtfulness.
Of course there was no time for whatever this was going on with Amma—the baroness had only been saying so for over a year now.
“Darling, you know how deeply I love you,” she said, and there was an earnestness in her strain as she picked up a discarded linen, wiped off the seat beside Amma, and actually sat. “And you know how deeply I love Faebarrow. I may not have been born here, but this place has been my home, and it has been so very good to me. It has given me comfort, your father, and it has given me you.” She hesitated but then took Amma’s dirty hand in both of her own. “Your father and I have done our best, but we have made some mistakes, I think, in following the decrees so closely all these years. We have considered discussing things with the council, perhaps taxing the liathau differently—”
“You mean taking it from the people?” Amma’s heart sped up. She had never once heard her mother or father discuss that.
She faltered. “It does grow on Avington land, Ammalie.”
“Thattheywork.”
“The consideration has weighed on us heavily, but coin is not what it used to be, and when the crown demands more,wemust make up the difference, not the people of the barony.”
“The crown’s apparently getting what they want regardless. And Brineberth March too. You’ve been giving it away.”
“The greenhouse will be replenished and the orchard reseeded next season,” she said wearily, hands tightening on Amma’s as she glanced around at the empty greenhouse as if seeing it for the first time. “This is just…just the result of an intense harvest. The crown needs the enchanted timber, and the Caldors have been ordered to deliver it on our behalf.”
Heated rage bloomed in Amma’s chest. “The crownwantsthe timber, they don’t need it, just like you want your comfortable life. Marquis Cedric Caldor is already acting as though he and I are married and the two of you don’t exist. You know he’s functioning as the lord of this place, and you and father are letting him. You let him bring his forces here, you let him imprison our people, you let him—” She choked on the words, not even sure what they would have been, if she could have been brave enough to say more than the honesty she had already blurted out.
Her mother’s eyes had gone glassy, but she didn’t allow a tear to drop. “You said it yourself: we can’t tax the people, so what are we to do other than allow this in return for his gold?”
That was it. That had always been it. Things in Faebarrow were different, it was always said. Amma worked in the greenhouse alongside the people, and so she knew it was true. But the crown never liked any of it, not the barony’s reluctance to over harvest, not the way the noble family shared profits with the people, and not the fact the liathau could be so much more powerful if only they could get their hands on more of it. But coin—coin could change everything. It could even convince a set of parents to give away their daughter.
“So, that’s it?” She heard herself speaking, the words easier now, though she would have never said them before. “You’re selling me off like cattle?”
“It’s not a sale, Ammalie, it’s just what happens.” Her mother tipped her head, brow knit as if she felt sorry that Amma was too dense to understand. “It’s what happened to me and my sister and perhaps someday to your child too.”
Amma sat staring at the single liathau sapling left in the greenhouse, its twisting stem doing its best to reach up out of the dirt it had been packed into. It was small and alone and had so much work to do, the odds against it almost impossible.
Her mother put an arm around her then and pulled her against her chest. Constance Avington was always thin with sharp joints and a hard ribcage, but when she hugged Amma to her like this, none of that discomfort mattered. She was still her mother, after all. “Youcanmake the best of it, Ammalie. You are too bright for your own good, and you are beautiful and so well loved,” she whispered into the top of her head. “Whatever the marquis says, whatever he does, don’t blame his failings on cruelty—”
“—when ignorance is the much more likely cause,” Amma replied, finishing what her mother always touted as a firmly-held truth.
It had been Amma’s truth too until she had put it to use in trying to talk to Cedric. Unfortunately, she had learned that it wasn’t ignorance that made Cedric tell her in private she had no business getting involved with how her home would be run, nor was it ignorance when he threatened her with the death of her loved ones if she didn’t accept his proposal, and it certainly wasn’t Cedric’s ignorance when he forced her into his bed so she could not back out of their wedding without being publicly ruined. He must have wondered how she had not fallen pregnant yet. Her hand gripped the sachet of herbs tighter, the smell batting up against her memory like a moth singeing itself on a candle, and she wasn’t sure if she should thank or curse the gods for oblivious men who needn’t be aware such things even existed.
