“I may be less awkward, but I am still mooning, I fear,” Isabeau says softly.
I can see Mother sip her coffee silently for several moments, glancing at me with a smile that makes it clear to me that she knows I am eavesdropping.
Hunter hearing is a useful thing.
“I saw you declare interest in my daughter at the palace. I see your interest in your eyes even now,” Mother says baldly.
When Isabeau doesn’t answer, Mother continues, “I do not disapprove of you courting my child. I never did. I did not know until years later that my husband sent you away with lies when you came to court her.”
Rylan catches my shoulder with her next strike. “Eavesdropping?”
“Mother just gave Isa her blessing to court me,” I say, barely concentrating on the sword that slashes toward me. Instinct guides my body. We’ve sparred so often I think I could do it without seeing my sister. Fortunately, my father never asked me to do so.
My mother carelessly tells Isabeau, “The earl wanted her to marry a man, to bear a child, to carry on his legacy.”
“Does Rylan not have a womb for that?” Isabeau bites back.
“Bothmy daughters will choose their spouses,” the countess stresses.
“My apologies.” Isabeau’s voice is heavy with shame. “I simply have longed for her since ... since I first remember. Her temper and her mind, her heart and her spirit, everything about Gabrielle is perfection.”
“Spoken like a woman in love,” the countess says plainly. “Yet I know why you come to our village, Maudite, and it was not to see my daughter. Violence brings you here.”
“Call me Isabeau, please. Not even my mother uses my title that way,” Isabeau interjects. “I would have come to see Gabrielle after I met with the Hunter.”
“Because?”
“I love her. She has my heart, and I want to make her my wife if she’ll allow me.” Isabeau’s words are so low that even with my hearing I almost miss them.
“Good. Now, let us speak of your reason for coming to Fleuriste. You seek the Hunter. Why?”
“Do you know who—”
“Of my daughters, Gabrielle is more understandable to me than Rylan. Her heart is large, and she wants to fulfill the duties that frighten her, though she denies it,” Mother continues as if the aside on Isabeau’s real reason for being in the village was never uttered. “Gabrielle is the worst of both her parents, and the best of what Rylan pretends to be.”
Awkwardly, Isabeau says, “Could we speak more of the Hunter?”
I can hear the laughter in Mother’s voice, as if an indelicate guffaw is bubbling up. She says, “We could.”
Mother stands, and with their attention on us, I focus on the fight. Rylan laughs as I land a strike on her side. She counters, sword tip almost grazing my throat, but I step to the side. “Show-off.”
“Back at you.” Rylan lunges, bringing her pommel upward as if to strike my face.
“As if!” I move out of range.
Isabeau’s words fill me with joy as she says, “They’re both good. Gabrielle says the Hunter trained her to fight. Did he train Rylan too?”
“Gabrielle trained her sister. The Hunter endangered Rylan by refusing to teach her.”
I preen at my mother’s words. I never wanted a rift between my parents, so I kept my arguments with him to myself. However, I argued bitterly that he was failing Rylan; he would not hear me. The thought of not keeping his second daughter safe filled him with grief—even as training her would make her safer.
So I did it. I taught her the drills he made me do, made her read the journals, insisted she learn weapons and poisons. I wasn’t as harsh as he was with me, but she will not be defenseless if I die.
“Please understand, Your Grace. My daughters will marry whom and when they choose. They will—as you well know—choose whose beds they enter. Or which libraries they frequent with cursed dukes.”
“She chose to join me,” Isa says awkwardly. “To be clear.”
“And I hope you left her with no regrets, Your Grace. There will be no one taking their choices from them on marriage. Not on anything I can command or influence.”
