She inclined her head to them and somehow kept her mouth shut.
Which was good, because it turned out that they weren’t even remotely interested in talking to her. They both only looked at Keith.
Lady Annabelle was direct: “Why have you broughtherhere?”
“As Councilors,” Keith said, so smoothly that Iris was betting Annabelle and Reginald couldn’t pick up on the anger pulsing through him, “I’m surprised you don’t know that Iris has been doing administrative work at the Council House for months. She’s worked with Lady Marianne. Of course she mourns her, just as everyone in Purity does.”
“Everyone but her murderer,” Reginald said icily.
“Which isn’t Iris. But if you have such pressing questions about the investigation, I’d suggest you direct them to my colleagues, Cooper Dawes and Simon—”
“We don’t have questions about the investigation!” Annabelle hissed. “We have questions about why, in the wake of Lady Marianne’s death, you’recozying up to—”
“Her protégée?”
Rage contorted Reginald’s face, turning it almost rubbery. He looked ridiculous. Iris belatedly remembered to imagine him naked, and then he looked evenmoreridiculous.
“Thisdisgracewas not Marianne’s protégée. She was Marianne’s mistake. She spent years in open rebellion against the standards of this community, and she’s not nearly as reformed as she likes to pretend—”
The angrier Keith got, the lower his voice dropped: there was no bluster to him at all, just cold fury.
“Don’t say another word. I’m done listening to you insult Iris and harass her. Walk away right now, and don’t come near her again.”
Annabelle almost snarled with frustration. “How can you care about her? How can you be this mistaken? What iswrongwith you? This blatant disrespect! You used to be a good, dutiful boy.”
Iris’s patience snapped. She couldn’t stand by and let them turn on Keith like this.
“He was a good kid, and now he’s a good man, but that doesn’t have anything to do with either of you.”
The intensity of her feelings was making it hard for her to concentrate on her speech, and all the old post-surgery tics were showing up again. She was slurring her words through stiff lips.
For the first time, she wasn’t embarrassed by it. When she made herself calm down and relax her facial muscles, it wasn’t to avoid their condescending stares. It was just to make sure they could understand every word she was ready to hurl at them.
“You raised him,” she said in a steely undertone, “but you didn’t care about seeing him when he finally came home, not until you could come over and harangue him about keeping bad company. You’re heartless. How dare you pretend you deserve his respect! Keith has more real goodness in his little finger than you do in your whole bodies.”
Reginald scoffed, and his lips parted to speak, but Iris overrode him, not allowing him to interrupt her.
“You’re both cowards. If Lady Marianne were still alive, you’d still be giving me polite smiles while I handed you photocopies and made you tea. If you actually cared about her, you’d respect her enough not to attack me at her funeral. You hate me, and you’ve been swallowing that hatred for months—not out of respect, but out offear. You wouldn’t have dared to openly criticize and doubt her, no, not the High Councilor. You saved that for today. And now you want respect? You—you—”
She couldn’t think of a good word. She’d already said “cowards.”
“Youwusses,” she finished furiously. “Youassholes. You’re everything that’s wrong with this place. Now step back before one of us challenges you to a duel.”
Lady Annabelle stared at them, so white-faced that her makeup stood out like clown-paint. Lord Reginald kept sputtering, lips pooching in and out in a way that really did make him look like a fish. Iris would have laughed at him, but they had managed to keep all this under the radar so far. She wanted it to stay there.
“You heard her,” Keith said. “Go.”
They went. Sure, they shot disapproving glances back at Iris and Keith over their shoulders, but they still left. That was the part that mattered.
Even more importantly, the looks they were getting from the rest of the funeral crowd were curious but not openly shocked. The conversation had been vicious, but it had also been quiet.
Or so she thought until Simon Park breezed up.
“You sure told them,” he said lightly. “Good for you.”
“You couldhearthat?” Iris said, horrified. “You were all the way over by the trees!”
“Don’t worry. You weren’t loud, I was just paying a lot of attention, and I have good ears.”
