23. Lissy
LISSY
The carriage rolls into the courtyard at dusk, and Torgan comes down moments later, waiting on the steps, waiting for us.
He must have watched us come up the road. He stands in the torchlight with his hands at his sides, but he doesn't come down to meet us.
Why not? Because he knows what I know now?
He looks like a man waiting for his sentence.
Lady Ishara appears in the doorway before anyone speaks. She takes one look at all of us and starts giving orders.
"Brynna, your father wants the ledgers in the study. Saskia, Ysolde, take your sister to the kitchen and feed her."
Then she looks at me, and she bristles, but doesn’t move toward me. "Lissy. You're welcome in this house. That hasn't changed."
My throat tightens. "Thank you, my lady."
She moves her daughters inside. Mirelle goes inside without looking back, still looking like she’s floating through life.
The doors close, and the courtyard empties until there is only torchlight, Torgan, and me. I climb the steps until we're level. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my fingertips.
"You look terrible," I tell him.
“I feel terrible,” he admits.
We stand there awkwardly for a few moments, and everything I planned on the way over here is gone. I don’t want to have this talk.
"Lissy..."
I hold up a hand. "No. I talk first."
He doesn't flinch. Of course he doesn't. And now that I’m here, I can’t find the words to say what I’m thinking.
So I just say, "Why?"
The word comes out louder than I mean it to.
I lick my lips, trying to gather my scattered thoughts.
"Why didn’t you tell me about the vial? Why didn’t you get rid of it?
You had a hundred chances. The courtyard.
The storage room. The pavilion.” I comb a hand through my hair.
“Gods, Torgan, I told you that was the best night of my life!” My voice wavers.
“You held me while that thing sat in your coat forty feet away. Why?"
He's silent for a long moment, watching me in that eerie calm that he has. "Because you were there when I bought it." He holds my eyes. "You saw me do it. You never asked, and you chose me anyway. I used that as permission not to tell you."
I almost laugh, but there is nothing funny in me. Only a dryness that I can’t replace.
"Permission?"
"No. Not permission." His mouth tightens. "An excuse. If I told you it was for Mirelle, I stopped being the man you thought I was." He looks away for one second, then makes himself look back. "I liked that man better. So I let you keep him while I kept my shame."
The torches flutter in the wind.
I open my mouth with the next accusation ready, but it disappears.
Because I was there.
I stood in Noemi's shop and watched a stranger buy a secret. Then I spent so long saying nothing. Why didn't I ask who it was for? Why didn't I ask whether he used it? I could have asked over tea. I could have made it sound so casual. Hey, Torgan, whatever happened with that potion?
A hundred chances.
I had the same hundred chances he did.
"I never asked," I say. My voice comes out smaller now, which makes me hate it all the more.
"Do you know why? I've been telling your sisters it wasn't my business.
That's a lie. I didn't ask because I didn't want the answer.
In my head, I built a man I could love, and then I protected him from anything that might ruin that image of him. "
I clench my hands to keep them from shaking.
"So don't stand there and take all of this like it belongs to you. Some of it is mine, and I hate that. I hate it, Torgan,” I nearly spit the words. “I came here to be furious with you, and I can't even do that properly."
"Then be furious with me." His voice stays low. "You keeping quiet didn't put the potion in Mirelle's cup. I bought it. I carried it. I promised you the truth and lied in the same breath. Those aren't the same thing. Don't carry mine." He reaches for me.
"Don't tell me what to carry!" I shout, stepping back. My voice cracks across the courtyard. Somewhere in the Hall, a curtain moves at an upstairs window.
I put one hand flat against my chest and force myself quieter.
"Mirelle canceled her wedding dress in my shop this morning.
She smiled at me like I was a clerk she'd never met and counted out coins for a dress she has wanted since before I knew her.
I love her, Torgan. And that version of her was gone this morning.
She was standing right in front of me, and she was gone. "
My eyes burn. I blink hard.
"It happened with both of us watching over it. You carried it. I watched you buy it. Every silence you kept, I kept one beside it. Do you understand?"
He comes one step closer, then stops. Smart. I don't know whether I want him near me or whether I want to shove him down the steps.
"Lissy," he says. "What do you need from me?"
My throat tightens. "I don't know."
There. The plain, awful truth.
I look at him. His face is wrecked. This is still Torgan. The male who sat in the corner chair for all those fittings. The male who brought me pain medicine and drank the tea after pretending he wouldn't. The male who danced with me, kissed me, and held me like I mattered.
How can all of that be true at the same time as this?
"I think I love you," I say, my voice waving. "I think I've loved you since the courtyard. Maybe before then."
His breath catches at my words. Hope comes into his eyes so quickly that I have to look away.
"But women in my family have done this before. A Sunfell dressmaker loves a lord, and then everything breaks. I grew up believing it. This whole year, I've told myself it was only a story. Grammy's superstition. A reminder of what would happen if I ever left myself hope."
I take a step back.
"Then I finally let myself want something. One thing. You. And three days later, Mirelle walks into my shop without a heart. Is this it? Is this how the story starts?"
He shakes his head. "No," he whispers it like a prayer.
I stare at him. "You don't know that."
"Neither do you."
"Exactly." My voice shakes. "I don't know what I believe. And until I do... I can't… I can’t…"
He goes very still.
I hate that I know what that means now. I hurt him. The knowledge lands in my chest, and I still can't take the words back.
"I can't," I say again.
I turn toward the doors and hike up my skirts, taking the steps two at a time. I’m running away, but I don’t care. Because to stay would be to complicate things even more than they are.
He doesn't follow me. He doesn't call my name. Somehow, that hurts worse, because it means he thinks I should leave.
And maybe I should.
And maybe the curse is real and we’re being pushed away by force I can’t even comprehend.
Later I find Brynna in Lord Garran's study, alone at the great desk. Her ledgers are stacked in three neat towers, and she copies figures by lamplight like the numbers have personally offended her.
She doesn't look up. In fact, her pen keeps moving as she pointedly refuses to look up at me. "You'll want a room. Ask Harek." She’s cold, and the worst part is, I completely understand why.
"I want the ledgers.” My voice comes out a little hoarse, and I swallow. “The ones that you researched."
The pen stops. At least I have her attention
"I'm going home in the morning," I say, feeling a little stronger.
"And I'm taking your research with me. My suppliers are in those pages.
My friends' landlords. My street. You did this work for the trade council and the Crown, and I know you’re trying to go about this the right way.
But the people being strangled by it are women who have never seen a shipping manifest in their lives.
They deserve to know what's being done to them before some magistrate does. "
Brynna sets down her pen.
She looks at me for the first time since we left my shop. Her face is cold. Her eyes are red around the edges, but I know that she would rather eat the ledger than admit she's been crying. Every one of the Oakenshade women are strong.
"You had months to ask him," she says.
"Yes."
She sits back and crosses her arms, her gaze hard and pointed at me.
"I sat in your shop with my notebook. Twice a week, sometimes.
You matched my thread." Her voice doesn't rise.
Brynna's voice never rises. It just gets more exact, like honing a blade or sharpening a quill. " I told people you were the most honest craftswoman I’d ever worked with.”
I fight the urge to flinch.
Brynna must see that, because she averts her eyes, like she’s disgusted with me. “I don’t know what to do with the fact that you were too afraid to ask one question."
The words hurt. They should.
"I know."
"I don't forgive quickly." She folds her hands on the desk and glances back at me. "Perhaps I am built wrong for it, but I need you to understand that before you ask me for anything from here on out."
I hold her eyes, even though every part of me wants to look away. "I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'm asking for the numbers." I lean forward and put my hands on her desk, putting my gaze closer to hers. Regardless of how pissed she is at me, I need to know those numbers.
"Hate me when you have time, Brynna,” I say. “But whoever hollowed out Mirelle bears the same name as the family buying my street. You've proved half of it. My friends are living the other half. I want to put everything in one room and let us see the whole thing."
Brynna watches me for a long moment. Then her gaze moves to the three towers of paper. There’s the evidence.
"Which room?" she asks finally.
The question catches me by surprise. Her asking at least means she’s considering it.
"My grandmother's cottage. Thistle Lane." That gets her attention. "My friends deserve to know. Starling Vale deserves to know,” I say, stronger. “They deserve to be there to see everything. I want them to be there, and Grammy’s is the most neutral place.” It’s not my shop, where I think even Brynna would raze it to the ground, and it’s not at Oakenshade Hall, which would require them to travel.
Not to mention, I don’t think I’d be able to handle the Oakenshade family’s scrutiny while we go over the ledgers.
I need to do this on my own.
“If we're mapping what they've bought, we start with the one property they couldn't buy. And that’s my Grammy’s.”
Brynna's eyes sharpen. She is still angry. Good. Anger is useful, especially when you’re searching for a needle in a haystack.
"And then what?" she asks.
“And then we have our evidence to do something about Voss Textiles. We have retribution for what happened with Mirelle.”
She frowns. "This doesn't mend anything between us."
My heart drops. "I know."
"Good." She dips the pen into the ink. "Go to bed, Lissy. I'll have copies ready by morning. You'll need the cart."
It isn't forgiveness. But she's thinking about my ride home, and from Brynna, tonight, that's as close to a truce as I'm going to get.
I stop at the study door and look back at her, small and straight-backed in the lamplight, the only Oakenshade whose anger I understand from the inside. I don't say thank you. She'd hate it.
I find Harek and ask for a room. I don’t look for Torgan.
In the morning, I take the ledgers home.