Chapter 11 – An Experiment in Lace #3
“Do not trouble to speak her name,” he hissed. “There are names for women like you, too, madam. Mercenaries in pretty gowns, padding their own purses, and nowhere to be found once the well runs dry. And the only reason you’re here is because you’re afraid I’ll get in the way.”
Mionet glared back, as if her heart wasn’t hammering in her throat. But this time, she was the first to look away.
“You will ruin her,” she said bitterly. “Scandal has a long tail. Thirty years from now, when you go to the capital, they will still whisper of your paramours. It doesn’t just dangle after you, you fool.
It dirties everyone you touch. She will pay for your reputation, just as your friends have. You make everyone around you filthy.”
“Then you should leave quickly,” he said, standing aside and waving his hand, as if she had bored him beyond bearing. “I should hate to sully anyone so pure as yourself.”
Fuming, Mionet slipped past, drawing back her skirts so they would not touch him.
* * *
To Her Grace Ophele, the Duchess of Andelin, at Tresingale Manor in the Duchy of Andelin, from Duchess Liliet Ereguil:
I hope all proceeds well in Tresingale, and thank you for your good wishes. I swear, half the household falls ill every time we move to the capital, but it passed quickly, and Laud is quite himself again, may the stars have mercy on us all.
The compromise Lady Verr suggested is a good one.
I think we must have some event for your debut, my dear, or we will leave too much space for rumor and speculation.
But an outdoor ball will be the very thing, with room enough for half of society, and we might place you and Remin in one of the pavilions, where it will be easy enough to set up a guard.
Do not apologize for needing one. I have told Remin all his life that I am a believer in placing the blame where it belongs, and it is not with him.
I was happy to hear that you resolved the trouble with your Benkki Desans.
I quite agree with Justenin that it is one thing to let people freely associate, or not, and something altogether different when they begin barring one another from trade.
We have experienced something like that in Ereguil, and more than once, I am afraid; we are rather pinned between Capricia and Noreven, and so there is frequent trouble between our merchants and theirs, and then they also have trouble with each other.
It may seem a small thing, but people write home, and if you treat the people from other lands well in your country, then you may reasonably demand the same in theirs.
You have asked for my advice, so here it is: you must think further ahead, my dear.
Do not consider only Tresingale today, but twenty or thirty or even a hundred years hence.
Why, when I was first married, I recall I commissioned Caprician artists to paint a few frescoes, thinking only that they would look well behind the palmettoes.
Well, other ladies happened to admire them, and they hired more artists, and now we have a Caprician Frescoists Association in the city who argues constantly with the local Imperial Painters Guild and Laud has threatened more than once to kick them all out.
Those are the scales that a lady must balance.
Do not play favorites with your own people, and still less between the merchants of other lands.
Your people have a right to expect impartiality from their duchess, and I have found that becoming too friendly with the merchants of one nation may result in problems of state with another.
And this will be my final piece of advice for you: be careful in asking your elders for advice, for they might just indulge you.
I really must fly. Take care of yourself and Remin and all those other dear boys, and kindly give the attached lists to Lady Verr.
You may buy anything you like when you reach the city, but time will be short, and it will be a relief to your heart to have the things you need from home ready to hand.
Affectionately yours,
Liliet Ereguil
* * *
One month until they left for the capital.
How had winter flown by so quickly?
It seemed simultaneously fleeting and endless, for Ophele’s days were busy ones, from the moment she opened her eyes.
A deluge of information from a dozen sources and still there was always more, twelve years of Imperial education compressed into four months.
And outside the windows the snow fell and drifted in great white walls, until she forgot there was any other color in the world.
The people of Ferrede arrived between storms and were welcomed, feted, and installed in the North Gate cottages, with very grudging gratitude. They were not happy to have been taken from their homes.
“Elder Brodrim.” In the warm confines of the solar, Ophele greeted Ferrede’s headman, a bearded old man who was a little hard of hearing. “Thank you for coming all this way. I am glad you arrived safely.”
“Thank you, my lady,” he said loudly. “I hoped to offer you the hospitality of Ferrede, rather than the other way around. I hope it will not be long before we can honor our lady in our home.”
“We share that hope,” Remin said beside her, with a rumble of warning in his voice. “Once it is safe.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Elder Brodrim bowed. Rollon’s quick wits had saved Ferrede from the horrors Remin’s other villages had endured, but Remin was right; best to put them with the other refugees and let them hear the tales for themselves.
Jaose offered a hand to help the old man kneel, and twenty or so members of his villages knelt behind him to make their oaths.
“In the light of the stars and before all here assembled, I swear my fealty and homage to House Andelin, His Grace Duke Remin, and Her Sacred Grace the Duchess Ophele. If I should ever violate this oath, or fail in their trust, then may my life be forfeit…”
Ophele had heard these words many times by now, but she still felt a fraud, accepting them.
“I will come and see all of you soon,” she promised when they were done, wishing there was time to ask their names and occupations.
She liked placing everyone into her mental map of town, and often thought with secret delight of who she would introduce to each other, trying to match affinities, like Mionet said.
“If you have any troubles, please ask after Sir Auber. Or the Mistresses Conbour. Amise and Lisset will be happy to help you.”
Most duchesses must be very standoffish, if everyone was always so surprised when she said that.
Ophele smiled, trying to look reassuring and harmless, and then puffed out a breath and slumped back in her chair, once the door closed behind them.
It was always frightening to have so many people looking at her.
“Well, we didn’t expect them to thank us,” observed Davi, slouching against the wall with his lanky legs crossed.
“I will be just as pleased to send them back.” Remin brushed a hand over Ophele’s head and pushed out of his chair. “Wife, have you company for luncheon today?”
“No?” Ophele glanced at Lady Verr for confirmation.
“I am always the last to have the attention of the Duchess of Andelin,” he complained. “It seems everyone else in the valley was invited to your salon first.”
“Will I have you and your knights to tea?” Ophele asked, tickled by the idea. “It’s been so long since we had supper together, hasn’t it? Why don’t we have everyone here?”
“I would like that,” Remin agreed, nodding for Leonin to take the other end of the long table to drag it back to its usual place. “A farewell banquet, before we leave.”
That departure seemed much closer on this side of winter.
Even as Ophele’s days went by in a flurry, Remin was working late every day, and Ophele did not think it was Valleth or the devils that kept him at the Court of War so early, or making him jerk awake in the wee hours of the morning.
Was it good that he was planning so carefully? Or worrying that he must?
Close as she was to the rhythms of the town, Ophele could not help noticing the alterations.
She knew who came and went from her solar, and yet Tounot was no longer among them, and his lute was left behind in her keeping.
It was hard to miss the massive form of Jinmin at the North Gate, but when was the last time she had seen him there?
Two weeks? Three? Justenin said they were building ports further downriver, but would they really do that in February?
And despite all this activity, Davi and Leonin were both sporting black eyes again, and Remin was so bruised and welted, it hurt just to look at him. They were back at practice, even more ferociously than they had been before the fever.
“I will leave you with Lady Verr today,” Justenin told her at breakfast the next morning, spooning up porridge with his left hand. His right was unbound now, used only with greatest care, and yet he had a brand new welt purpling on his cheek.
“Oh?” Ophele said politely. Remin had forbidden him to practice with his sword, so what had Juste been doing?
“Yes, I must speak to Guisse about the road down to the harbor. It’s going to erode rapidly if we’re not careful, between the wagon traffic and the spring rains…”
The harbor road was a matter dear to his heart. But it was interesting that they all seemed to go to the harbor so much when all the ferries were supposed to be docked for the winter…
Ophele glanced at Remin, who was halfway through his second platter of food and paying close attention to business.
She could not bring herself to worry him with her suspicions, but the only other person who might have explained it was nowhere to be found.
Sir Miche had all but vanished from the manor over the last week, and she found herself missing him dreadfully: that tilt of his head that encouraged her to try again, or the way he had of unraveling whole puzzles for her with a single word.