Chapter 20 #3
The woman who turned her head was nothing like what Hallie would have pictured for Lamorat’s wife.
He’d suggested that she enjoyed a lively social life in their home city and would have found Vertiger insufferably boring, so Hallie had formed a hazy idea of a richly-dressed socialite.
Instead, the woman who rose to her feet and came towards Lamorat was a fraction shorter than her husband, with glossy dark hair in heavy curls across one shoulder, her outfit a modest and beautifully made two-piece of wide-legged dark chocolate trousers and a knee-length over-tunic in the same colour, with splits up to her hip revealing a milk-white lining.
She wore a single diamond suspended from a chain around her neck and more diamonds in her ears.
Her face bore faint laughter lines and her eyes, large and pale brown, were full of humour and life as she looked from Lamorat to Hallie.
“Is this her?”
“It is. My love, may I present Miss Hallie Talbot. Miss Talbot, my wife, Yselda.”
“I am pleased to meet you, Lady Lucas,” Hallie said. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to curtsey or offer her hand, so did neither and hoped that was not rude.
“The pleasure is all mine, Miss Talbot. But you must call me Yselda, and do come, sit. Lamorat, do be a dear and see if there might be some more of Cotovatre’s delicious lemonade for us?”
“As you wish,” Lamorat said, the faintest hint of a smile on his face. A man who knew when he was being dismissed. And also one happy to fulfil his wife’s request.
Without quite knowing how it happened, Hallie found herself settled on a chair next to Yselda, facing two other hochlen women who were looking at her with open curiosity.
“So, this is Cotovatre’s mysterious heir?
” The woman who spoke was far more in the vein of what Hallie had expected from a socialite.
She had exaggerated her brows and lips with make-up and wore a tight satin dress in a colour that Hallie thought probably had a very fancy name but which looked like rust to Hallie.
She also had platinum blonde hair piled high, giving her extra height.
More hair, Hallie thought, than one person should be capable of growing out of their head.
There were rings on her fingers and large, glittering earrings hanging below the pile of hair.
She had a striking bone structure underneath the make-up, and Hallie couldn’t help but feel that her face would be more interesting without the extra enhancements.
“Don’t mind Reggie,” Yselda said, leaning forward slightly, towards Hallie. “She prides herself on being the first to know everything, and your appearance took everyone by surprise.”
“But then, I suspect it took you by surprise too, yes?” the other woman asked.
With the exception of Cotovatre, she was the only hochlen woman Hallie had met with hair cut above her shoulders.
Hers was a mass of reddish-brown curls, framing a warm, pale face scattered with freckles that she had not tried to conceal with make up.
She had bright green eyes that were full of fun as she looked back at Hallie.
“This is Olwyn,” Yselda said to Hallie. “One of my dearest friends.”
“Yes, I was surprised,” Hallie said, answering Olwyn’s question. “But it was not a bad surprise.”
“I should think not,” Reggie said, voice and eyes sharp as she looked Hallie up and down. “You should be more than grateful to Lady Cotovatre for dragging you out of the slums.”
Hallie found herself gripping her glass tightly and forced her fingers to relax. It was hardly the first time she’d been insulted by one of the elite and it would not be the last, she was quite sure.
“Very true,” Hallie said, painting a smile on her lips. “The lady is one of the kindest and most generous people I have ever met.”
“I wanted to meet you, Miss Talbot, to express my thanks for keeping my husband safe,” Yselda said, catching Hallie’s attention again.
“Please call me Hallie. And I am not sure I did that, not really,” Hallie said. She remembered that Lamorat had been injured in the confrontation with the killer at Vertiger.
“Hallie, then. The way Lamorat tells it, you were the one responsible for uncovering the killer and seeing to it that she could not hurt anyone else,” Yselda said. There was an overlay of lightness in her voice, but Hallie could hear the sincerity behind it.
“The forensic team, medical examiner, and Investigator Abbott deserve credit as well,” Hallie replied.
“It was such a shock to all of us,” Olwyn said, the laughter gone from her face.
“We all knew Clarine for years. To think she’d been hiding such a terrible secret.
” Sagramour Webb’s third wife, Clarine, who had apparently been far younger than him, had turned out to be not only very much older than she appeared, but also a deadly shape-changer.
“I still don’t believe it,” Reggie said, glaring at Hallie.
“She was the gentlest of women.” Hallie was trying not to judge Reggie too quickly or too harshly, but gentle was not a word that came to mind about Clarine.
But then, the shape-changer had been masterful at adopting her disguise as a young hochlen woman.
So perhaps Reggie had seen her as gentle.
“I think she was a terribly sad person in the end,” Hallie said, remembering the pity she’d felt, kneeling on the floor next to the dying woman in Cotovatre’s library at Vertiger. “Quite lonely, actually.”
“And also a killer?” Olwyn asked, brow wrinkling.
“Also a killer, and needing to be held accountable for that,” Hallie confirmed, and shrugged. “People can be extremely complicated and are rarely one thing or another.”
“That’s true,” Yselda said.
Lamorat Lucas came back at that point, a server with him bearing a large tray with tall glasses of pale, cloudy liquid.
“The lady had some extra lemonade made especially for you, my love,” he told his wife. “She remembered how much you liked it.”
“Now, isn’t that just like Cotovatre?” Yselda said, with obvious delight.
She accepted a glass from the server, then lifted her face up to her husband.
Lamorat bent slightly and brushed a kiss over her mouth.
It was the briefest of touches, and one done without self-consciousness or for show.
They had a deep, mutual respect and affection for each other, Hallie realised.
She’d seen Lamorat’s side of it in Vertiger, and now she could see the whole of it.
It reminded her of the quiet, deep bond she could sense between Cotovatre and Emmet.
She wondered if she and Girard would ever reach that level of closeness and comfort, and silently hoped it might be true over time.
It was a deep and profound wish that had unfolded in her slowly since she had met Girard, and come to know him better.
Having spent most of her life focused on gaining her freedom and working single-mindedly towards that goal, this other wish felt precious and fragile.
Turning back to the group, she caught an unguarded, ugly expression on Reggie’s face.
The woman was jealous. Hallie couldn’t tell if it was because Lamorat and Yselda cared for each other, or because Cotovatre had remembered that Yselda liked the lemonade, or for some other reason that Hallie could not begin to guess at.
Olwyn on the other hand was looking between Yselda and Lamorat with quiet affection of her own.
A true friend, Hallie realised, and then wondered what Rosalia was doing at that moment.
Of the two of them, Rosalia was much better suited to being at a fancy party.
The server made his way around the small group, handing out the glasses he had brought. Hallie accepted one in exchange for her barely-touched drink and took a sip, immediately understanding why Yselda was so fond of it. It was cool, refreshing, with just the right blend of tart and sweet.
“Is there anything else you need?” Lamorat asked his wife.
“Nothing for now, thank you, darling. I am sure you have plenty of important matters to attend to,” Yselda said.
From another woman the words might have carried a bite to them, a hint of being neglected.
There was nothing of that in Yselda’s voice or manner.
She seemed proud of her husband and happy to support him in his work.
In fact, as Lamorat moved away, she turned back to Hallie with every appearance of being perfectly content with where she was.
“May I say what a beautiful dress that is, Hallie, and how well you wear it.”
“Oh, thank you,” Hallie said, not sure what the proper response was.
“Easy to be well-dressed with Cotovatre’s resources,” Reggie put in. Hallie paused and took a long look at the other woman. There was bitterness there, but Hallie heard what might have been a hint of sadness underneath it, as if the woman was mourning something.
So instead of an angry or biting reply, Hallie inclined her head a little. “The lady has been extremely generous.”
Her calm seemed to take Reggie by surprise, her brows lifting a little. What looked like a more genuine smile crossed her face. “You don’t have much interest in fashion, Miss Talbot?”
“Call me Hallie, please. And no, not really. I have spent most of my days chasing down fugitives so a good pair of boots and a leather jacket are far more important than fine cloth,” Hallie said, keeping her voice light.
“Oh, that’s right, you have a job,” Reggie said, as if Hallie was some exotic creature she had never encountered before. “How ever do you find the time?”
“Well, I enjoy it, for one thing,” Hallie said, and smiled. “I find it interesting to be out and about, meeting new people. No two days are ever the same.”
“Is that so?” Reggie said. The hard edge had softened and Hallie was beginning to see why Yselda and Olwyn might tolerate her.
“I am afraid we are about to lose you,” Yselda said, drawing Hallie’s attention. Her eyes had gone past Hallie’s shoulder. She turned to find Emmet coming towards them.
“Good evening, ladies,” Emmet said. “I apologise for disturbing you, but need to steal Miss Talbot away.”
“Of course, Emmet. It was a pleasure to meet you, Hallie, and I hope we will meet again soon,” Yselda said.
Hallie managed a thank you and said her goodbyes to the other women, getting up and following Emmet. To her surprise, he kept going through the room, which seemed even more crowded now, and out into the hallway.
“There are a lot of people who want to speak to you this evening,” Emmet said, glancing across with a smile. “Before they get hold of you, the lady thought that you would wish to pay your respects to Girard’s parents.”
“Of course,” Hallie said, wondering if there was another message she was supposed to read into his words.
He was telling the truth, that much was clear.
But was there some hochlen custom or tradition she was missing?
Most likely. Her stomach tightened at the thought of facing Verain Abbott again.
He had made his opinion of her perfectly clear at their previous meeting.
She was not good enough for his son. And yet Girard had chosen her.
She could hardly imagine he was happy about that.
She wondered if there was a polite way to refuse the summons and decided that, no, there was not.
So she squared her shoulders and tried to control her breathing as she walked beside Emmet into what she anticipated to be a very difficult meeting.