Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty-Three
At dawn, Bridget found Gwen by her side. She shook the princess’s shoulder to half wake her, then guided her gently into the cot and left her there to sleep a while longer.
Bridget’s pain had lessened slightly in the night, each wave just enough now to make her breath catch for a moment before she exhaled through it and kept walking.
She liked these moments before everybody woke up, when hers were the first footsteps in the dew; it was almost like she didn’t exist yet, because nobody had seen her.
Later she’d put on her traveling clothes, and then her armor, and as each piece was strapped to her body it would feel like she was coming alive as an entirely different creature.
She’d always loved that. The transformation.
Her body had once been scrawny and lean; it had filled out now, after many years of effort and enormous dinners, but back then putting on armor had been the only thing that turned her into a shape that made sense.
The wide sweep of pauldrons, strengthening the lines of her shoulders; the breastplate, making her flat and broad; the gauntlets, giving her bigger, clumsier hands, not made for delicate work.
She walked differently with it on—out of necessity, as everybody did—but she liked that too.
The anonymity of it, the warrior’s silhouette, genderless and solid.
There was a smoky blue haze over the camp as she looped the perimeter, the fires burning low, the dark sky cracked at the horizon to reveal the orange yolk of the rising sun.
Bridget breathed in wet soil and trampled grass and burning wood, that morning-camp smell, and then as she approached the tents again she noticed that Arthur was now sitting on a chest outside, a cup of something steaming in his hand.
He didn’t look up as she approached, and just said, “Gwen snores.”
“No she doesn’t.”
“Love,” he said sadly, “has deluded your ears. It’s not a big snore, it’s more of a delicate, ladylike whistle, but it’s bloody annoying when you’re trying to get back to sleep.”
Bridget sat down, and they were quiet for a while until he got up and returned with another cup of something bitterly dark, and handed it to her.
“It’s coffee. It was incredibly expensive and I don’t have much of it because someone has to carry it across land and sea all the way from Ethiopia, so if you don’t like how I’ve made it, just spit it back out and I’ll drink it.
It’s probably the only thing keeping me alive. ”
Bridget took a sip. It was bracing. She needed to be braced today. “It’s good.”
“I know it’s good,” Arthur said, his voice heavy with exhaustion. “I’m regretting being nice and giving it to you already.”
The next person to awake was Sir Bowen. He came out of his tent looking well-rested and ready for the day, bid them a polite good morning, then went to find food.
He returned with Sir Leonard, who looked like he’d slept under the wheels of a carriage.
Between the four of them, they created a makeshift breakfast table out of luggage.
“Wait,” Leonard said, trying to untangle his hair with one hand and eat grapes with the other. “Delacey, do you have coffee? Give it. Now.”
“No. It’s mine. And that was the last of it. And I don’t like you.”
“Oh, how he lies,” Sir Leonard hissed. “You’re besotted with me, little lordling.”
Arthur smiled sweetly at him. “Visiting with the elderly is just one of my charitable endeavors.”
Leonard, who was elusive about his age but couldn’t have been much more than thirty, narrowed his eyes, abandoning his detangling to point at Arthur accusingly. “Nasty. Wretched. Take it away.”
“I wish the two of you had never met,” said Sir Bowen.
They continued to trade insults over breakfast, but later, when everybody was beginning to pack up, Bridget walked past Arthur’s tent and saw that he was combing out and braiding Sir Leonard’s hair for him while Sir Leonard drank some of his coffee, so apparently all was forgiven.
Gwen was gone from the temporary infirmary, and when Bridget saw her again, it was apparent she’d found somewhere to bathe.
She looked well-scrubbed and pink, the ends of her partially braided hair damp.
Handsome. Vital. Bridget wondered if she smelled like herself, or like river water. Probably a little of both.
“Feeling better?” Gwen asked, as she hefted some of her own things onto the wagon, much to the dismay of the page behind her, who mimicked the motion with his empty hands like he was trying to help from a few feet away.
Bridget leaned against the wagon bed, partially out of necessity, partially because it brought her into closer proximity to Gwen, who glanced over at the page and smiled. “Thank you, I’m fine here. Go and help Sir Arthur with his kitten, I’m sure he needs it.”
“The, er, kitten is being sent back to Master Torres at Camelot,” the page said, with some relief. “I believe it has already departed.”
He went to assist someone else anyway. Without him there, they were functionally alone, hidden from view by small mountain ranges of trunks.
“You came to see me,” Bridget said, leaning closer. “In my sickbed.”
“You were asleep,” Gwen said apologetically. “I thought I’d just sit down for a moment and see if you woke up, but…”
“Instead you slept there,” Bridget finished for her. “At my bedside. Like I was dying.”
“It was an accident!”
Bridget let her weight slide, so her shoulder bumped gently into Gwen’s. “Very dramatic.”
Gwen glanced around, shrewd eyes taking in the precise location of everybody in their makeshift courtyard, then kissed Bridget quick and hard on the mouth, pulling away before Bridget was ready and leaving her still leaning into empty space.
“I don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea for you to throw yourself at any threat that crosses our path,” Gwen said, “but unfortunately I also find it very attractive. Some failing of my morality, I’m sure. Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Mmm.” Bridget was still leaning in. She wanted more of this. Less thinking. More kissing. “Yeah?”
“I’m not saying you should do it. In fact, I think you should stop. But I just like it when your body is…”
She bit her lip, realizing what she’d said, and Bridget couldn’t stop herself from smirking, just a bit. It was nice to feel light and free and easy like this. It had been happening more often, around Gwen.
“Go on,” said Bridget.
“I was going to say ‘between me and danger’ actually, but you clearly think a lot of yourself.”
Her eyelashes were so devoid of color they almost looked translucent, just a hint of strawberries and cream against her freckled cheeks, or …
not quite cheeks, really, but the place between the cheek and the curve of the eye that Bridget couldn’t name but enjoyed very particularly.
She had wanted to kiss Gwen there before, and had stopped herself, because it was probably a weird thing to do.
She really had missed this. Her body missed it; her heart missed it. She’d forgotten that just standing with Gwen could feel this way: like catching her breath, or the momentary peace between bouts of pain.
“Ride with me today?” Gwen said, because she was too generous by half.
“Yes,” said Bridget. “Please.”
It was very evident when they all mounted up which members of the party had encountered wild boars, chronic ailments, and hound-sized kittens the previous day.
Most everybody else was relatively chipper, unblemished, and ready to face the journey.
Arthur had a long, fresh scratch on his face, just missing his eye, which could only have come from trying to “walk” his new pet, as he’d been threatening to do.
“Nobody talk to me this morning,” he said feebly when he passed Bridget setting out. “They’ve taken my kitten from me, and I am bereft. Besides … I’ve used all my words for the day already, there aren’t any left.”
“Can that be true?” Bridget asked Gwen.
She laughed. “No. Sometimes he tells me very officiously that he just wants us to coexist in my chambers or his in silence, both getting on with our own tasks, and he’s quiet for about sixteen seconds before he absolutely has to say something about the book he’s reading.”
“Sidney did say he’s been reading books.”
“Oh, yes. He’s been doing all sorts of alarming things. I think he’s trying to better himself. Noble, I suppose, even if it frightens me.”
“But you’ve been doing that too,” Bridget said, darting a sideways glance at Gwen’s expression as she did so.
Gwen wrinkled her nose. “Is that what you think I’ve been doing?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
“Hmm.” She took one hand off the reins to pull her hair away from her face, twisting it at the nape of her neck.
They were still riding through mostly forested land and it was humid enough that, warmed by her armor and the effort of riding, Bridget could almost imagine it was a poor summer day instead of a fine autumn one.
“I think I just realized I was … better at certain things than I’d thought.
And Gabriel needed me, so I didn’t have much choice.
But it feels good to be useful. It turns out that everything that makes me a terrible socialite is quite sought after in a strategist and a council member.
Apart from the bit where I have to try to convince people I’m making sense, because according to Lord Best, I am exceedingly rude and a horrible diplomat. But I like the rest.”
“You’re very good at it.”
Gwen seemed to be blushing, judging by the blotch of color Bridget could see in profile.
“I am.” She said it almost like a question, with uncertainty, but then repeated herself with more confidence.
“I am. Yes. And there’s been a lot to do.
Sorting through the political rubble after the uprising, trying to push ahead with some of Gabriel’s reforms, despite …
significant resistance. He has great ideas, but he crumbles the second somebody tells him no.
If it weren’t for a few of us on the council who back him up, someone would have said, ‘I don’t think you should open secular schools,’ and he probably would have said, ‘Oh yes, so sorry, don’t know what I was thinking,’ and shut it all down entirely. And then there’s … succession.”
Bridget had wondered. It was impossible not to. It featured so heavily in the lives of nobles and royalty, it was the sort of thing you were supposed to be planning for practically from birth.
“So the council knows…?”
“Oh, most of them don’t know the intimate details of Gabriel’s private life, but he’s made it clear that he has no intention of marrying or having children with anybody.
Lord Best kept insinuating that a bastard was better than nothing, and then when it was clear that wasn’t going to work, he switched tack.
Apparently I’m the de Gray line’s last great hope. ”
Bridget almost stopped her horse, which would have caused an unfortunate equine pileup. Jealousy flared in her, surprisingly fierce. “You? They want you to marry? To carry the heir?”
Gwen snorted. “Just wait until you hear who they want to father him.”
“Arthur,” Bridget said at once, her heartbeat pounding in her fingertips.
“Yes indeed, my erstwhile fiancé—the father of my child, apparently. Lord Best and the archbishop can’t understand why we haven’t married each other by now.
They gave us a bit of leeway after the battle, but they thought the plan would still be on, because …
it still makes sense, even with Arthur’s father in exile—makes it clear we’ve forgiven the cultists, even after all that’s happened.
And if I had a son, Gabriel could name him heir, raise him at Camelot, everyone’s happy. ”
Bridget hadn’t realized how hard she was gripping the reins until Fiona tossed her head in protest, and she eased up.
She tried to reason with herself; Arthur was better than some vile stranger.
Just because this sounded like hell to her didn’t mean it was hell to Gwen.
Just because it was horribly dangerous and the process of growing a child sounded tantamount to physical torture; just because she’d have to … and with Arthur—
“Bridget,” Gwen said. “Unclench your jaw. I’m not going to do it. I don’t want to, and Arthur doesn’t want to, and Gabriel looked like he was going to pass out when Lord Best brought it up, so that’s that.”
“Oh.” Bridget took a breath. “So what will your brother do?”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to work out. But it’s not the end of the world. He could take in a ward. Adopt. There are options. Oakley and I have been trying to talk to him about it.”
Even from the little Bridget had seen of Lady Oakley, she seemed a force to be reckoned with. “You like her? Oakley?”
“Oh, she’s incredible,” Gwen gushed, perking up.
“We meet every day. She’s just so clever, and she knows exactly how much of that cleverness to hide and how much to give away, depending on her audience.
She never takes no for an answer but she’s so good at tricking people into believing things were their idea.
Gabriel is a bit frightened of her, I think, which is great.
My mother hates her more than anyone else in this world.
If I even mention her name, polite conversation is dead in the water. ”
“Why?”
Gwen shrugged. “Because we’ve never got on that well, I suppose. She thinks I’ve chosen a new mother I prefer. I said one too many nice things, I should have pretended I was only tolerating her. I just … I don’t have time to play these silly court games.”
“No,” said Bridget. “It seems you’ve been busy.”
Gwen raised her eyebrows and put back her shoulders. “Well, what did you expect? That I’d mope and pine after you? Waste away, sitting at the window, lamenting? Oh, when will my knight return from the tourneys?”
Chastened, Bridget said, “No.”
Gwen’s posture wilted a bit. “I did, a little. Not sitting at the window, but I thought about you. I missed you. But then I just … got on with things.”
“I thought about you all the time.”
“Oh, yes? Just not enough to write.”
Ouch. But she deserved that. “I tried not to think about you, because if I did, you were all I’d think about.
And then I’d think about Camelot, and last year, and everything got …
complicated.” It was like she was making sense of it as she spoke.
“But I felt horrible for not writing. The more I put it off, the more guilty I felt. And after a while … it was almost like you weren’t real.
A princess in a castle, waiting for me to come back? Yeah. Right.”
When she looked at Gwen, Gwen was looking back at her, eyes cool and steady. “Well. I was.”
Bridget felt a stab of fear, and spoke without forethought. “I’ll make it up to you. I swear I will.”
Gwen looked away. “It’s all right.”
But Bridget knew of course that wasn’t true.