“May I impose upon your hospitality, Your Grace?” my mother asks.
“You are family now, m’lady.” Isabeau bows deeply to my mother. “What is mine is yours.” She gestures at the castle. “Any time you want to pause on the way to the city, I can have a bedroom permanently set aside. I will have someone ready it now and ...”
Isabeau catches the eyes of several people. “Tobie. Gin. Alain.” She looks at me. “Alain was my father’s steward, and he is indispensable to me.”
“Your Grace.” He bows to her. “I was not expecting guests or ...Wächtersoldiers.”
Isabeau updates him on the plan, and then while he coordinates with Nolan, she motions to the two people she’s called Gin and Tobie. “Tobie is my valet in the city; Gin is my lady’s maid. Things are rather more complicated, being a woman in suit coats.” She flashes a wry grin at me. “Gin, I need you to look after the countess and Lady Rylan.”
Gin, a bosomy auburn-haired beauty who can’t be any older than Rylan, curtsies to Isabeau and then to me. Then she sighs and murmurs, “Proper ladies! I wonder if they will let me do their hair ...” She shoots a sassy look at Isabeau and then goes off to whatever tasks she now has. “Tobie! Their trunks!”
“She’s been worried, Your Grace,” Tobie says quietly before scurrying after her. He is handsome and strong, and his gaze is fixed solidly on Gin’s person even as he hefts a trunk and carts it off.
“We will figure this out,” Isabeau tells me as we watch theWächtersoldiers and her domestic staff make quick work of the tasks. Horses are led away, and the carriage is taken into the stable.
I nod, but the mundane tasks are not where my mind is.
After an awkward throat-clearing sound, Isabeau asks, “Are you emotional about your ... about the innkeeper ... about him, what with him being your former lover? Do you need to stay here too? You could take the night to mourn.”
I squeeze her forearm in my hand. “He was a friend, Isa. I would feel the same way if any other person from the village was dead. They are my people, my duty, more so than the nobility. They are a weekly part of my life.”
She watches as Woede is led toward the stable by a stableman who looks resigned to exhaustion. The massive stallion is similar to Imp in form, but he is not complacent for anyone but Isabeau. She has a way with difficult creatures, and I feel empathy with Woede. We both benefit from her tenderness toward feral things.
“I must see the duchess,” Isabeau says quietly. “Would you like me to stay here or come with you?”
I cannot tell herwhyI do not want her to stay here at her own castle without me. I would shatter her heart with my doubts. I shatter my own heart each time I allow them to rise. I hope that I am wrong, but the fear that I am right makes my voice rawer than I like as I ask, “Come with me. Please?”
“Anywhere. Everywhere.” Isabeau smiles, looking so hopeful as she says, “And maybe we can look at the stars together tonight.”
“I would love that,” I whisper. I truly would. I hope that she is in my arms as the woman I know, not transforming into something monstrous that I must kill.
My mother and sister are off to get situated; the soldiers are as well. The Maudite garrison is far grander than ours. Here, the garrison juts like a watchtower, stabbing into the sky as if it wants to touch the clouds. The view from inside stretches as far as the eye can reach.Although the staircase that twines around the building is uneven and the windows are near impossible to open, Isabeau and I played there as children—and kissed there when we discovered that the door was rarely locked.
Instead of tugging her into one of the many empty rooms, I follow Isabeau into the castle, hoping that soon I will make my home here with her. Admittedly, the thought of sharing my home with the stern dowager duchess is daunting, but even that is less intimidating than thinking of my love as a murderous beast.
“Mother has been unwell,” Isabeau says softly as we walk through the foyer and take the grand staircase to the second floor, where the bedrooms are. “She took a fall, and her leg does not heal.”
I hold fast to Isabeau’s hand and follow her.
The door to the duchess’ rooms is propped open. “Isabeau?”
Isabeau pauses in the doorway, keeping me behind her. “Are you uncomfortable, Your Grace? Shall I summon a nurse?”
“Book.”
“I have brought my future wife here to the house, Your Grace.” Isabeau takes a step into the room, pulling me with her.
The dowager duchess coughs. She looks nothing like the imposing woman I saw when Father and I were last here. Her disdain is sharper now, too. She skewers me with a look. “Of course, you would marryher.”
“Mother!” Isabeau releases my hand and storms toward the dowager duchess. Her voice is low, but I hear her all the same. “You will respect my betrothed. I can send you to a carriage house or to the city, if you prefer, but if we are in the same place, you will speak to her kindly.”
The dowager duchess shoos Isabeau aside. “She can’t have planted a bastard in you, what with being a woman, and you have plenty of money. What do you want with my daughter, Lady Fleuriste?”
“I want to make her happy,” I say simply.
The Dowager Duchess of Maudite points at a shelf. “That one.”
Isabeau follows the gesture toward the heavily laden bookshelves and stands there. She glances back at her mother. “The Countess of Fleuriste and her daughter Lady Rylan are staying at the estate tonight. I could take you to the Great Room before I—”
