Chapter 29 #2
“Careful with the teapot!” I bellow as he swings me around. I don’t think it’s very fragile; the guitar, at least, has survived much more than I would have expected it to. Still. Agatha likes her tea. I won’t let anyone ruin her pot.
It is at this moment, as the ruffian dangles me like a marionette and the duke sneers at my pathetic self, that someone knocks on the open doorframe behind us. I crane my aching neck and see the lady herself standing there watching us.
She smiles graciously.
I flush.
“Well,” she says, her voice as musical and intoxicating as ever, “here I am, husband.” I only wish I knew which of us she was referring to.
Agatha
Lem is here—poor Lem, with a nasty bruise forming under his right eye and a dribble of dried blood on his upper lip.
That nasty red-headed thug twists Lem’s guitar strap cruelly around his torso, pinching him until his eyes bug out of his head.
The teapot, I note, is slung across his hip, but I don’t have time to wonder if it’s still full.
I sweep into the room like royalty. The stiff-backed posture is from Melusine, but Lem taught me the air.
“There you are.” Duke Mansfield, face sullen, stands on the other side of the room and wipes his hands on his jacket.
Father and Count Chrestowine file in behind me.
“What do you want?” Mansfield snaps at them. His gaze lingers hungrily on me.
“Wine, if you’ve got a decent bottle.” Chrestowine seats himself on a sofa next to the unlit fireplace.
“We want nothing, your grace,” Father stammers. “Except your forgiveness. Here is the girl—”
I want to rush over and pummel the thug until he releases Lem, but the count raises a warning eyebrow. Best not to make things worse for him. I clasp my hands loosely in front of my bedraggled skirt.
Mansfield ignores Father’s groveling and crosses his arms. “I’m not giving you anything, you—”
“There’s a lady present,” Chrestowine says lightly, as Lem bursts, “Agatha! Why are you—you shouldn’t—be careful!”
There’s so much despair in his tone that my heart twists.
I keep my expression serene, but our eyes lock.
I try to say the things I can’t voice: Trust me.
I’m here for you. Lem blinks slowly, then gives me an almost-imperceptible nod.
His face is still set in its grim lines, but his right hand wriggles in its bindings to fidget with the belt my teapot is hooked to.
“Listen here,” Mansfield growls at Chrestowine, who relaxes on the sofa as if he owns the place, “I’ve already married the brat, so you can toddle off home.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I’m a brat?”
“You can be quiet,” he snaps. “And you, too,” he adds to Father. He jabs a thumb in the direction of Lem and the thug. “Is this the beggar you idiotically mistook for me?”
“That is surprising,” I agree. “He’s much better looking.” Mansfield does not like this, even though I use my most saccharine tone. I put my hand up to forestall whatever he’s about to say. “You can let him go, Mansfield. There’s no reason to keep him here now.”
“Agatha,” Lem starts, but I quell him with a look. He’s already half-strangled, silly man. What’s the point of irritating the duke further?
“So your father talked some sense into you?” Mansfield stares at me with those piggy little eyes. “Ready to submit like a good wife?”
I cannot answer this.
“She’ll be very good,” Father hurries. “Won’t you, Agatha? And we can forget all these unpleasant days.”
“She will not!” Lem says. The thug twists him tighter. “Agatha, you don’t have to stay here!”
“She does!” Mansfield snaps. “She’s my wife!”
“She is not! Her father married us!”
Mansfield stomps over to his cluttered desk and rustles through stacks of crumpled papers. “I know I just had it …”
My heart jumps. What if he lost the license? He couldn’t prove that we were married, and I could persuade Father not to agree to a second wedding, and—
“Here it is.”
My hopes dash just as quickly as they’d risen. Mansfield flicks aside an old newspaper and pulls out the marriage license. I can’t make out the words from here, but I can see that he’s spilled something on it and left a mysterious gray stain.
Lovely. If that isn’t symbolic of this marriage, I don’t know what is.
He waves the paper in Lem’s face, and I see the moment when Lem realizes what name is at the top. He doesn’t look relieved to realize he’s not saddled with me anymore. I thought he would be. Isn’t that what he’s wanted all along?
“So you see,” Mansfield continues unpleasantly, “she’s mine, and there’s nothing anyone can do to take her from me, and if she tries running away again, she’ll regret it.”
I could stop my eyes from rolling if I wanted to, but I do not.
Mansfield may as well know how I feel. “If I wanted to get away, I would,” I say coolly.
“You forget my Gifts. I’m Clever enough to do what I want.
But,” I add, as Mansfield’s face regains that strange angry-orange hue, “I am choosing to stay here. Marriage is, after all, marriage.”
“But it’s not a marriage,” Lem objects. His face is more scowly than ever.
“You may not like our customs, but it’s quite legal according to Candori law,” I say.
Count Chrestowine unfurls himself from the sofa and lazily walks over to the duke, holding out a hand for the document. “As an interested party,” he says, voice scrupulously polite, “may I inspect the license? We had a wager on whether or not you’d get her, you remember.”
For a moment, I think Mansfield will refuse on principle, but then he shoves it over. “I remember. See for yourself,” he growls. “She’s mine.”
Ugh. Imagine living with him for the rest of my life. Does he have any vocabulary besides that phrase?
“It’s perfectly in order,” Father chitters. “You’ll find that it’s perfectly in order. Agatha is a duchess now. Everything is just as it should be. Perfectly in—”
“—order? Yes, you mentioned that.” Count Chrestowine finishes scanning the paper and begins reading it out, a smile playing under his mustache.
“Hereby marrying Virgil Mansfield, Duke of Glen Violet, with Agatha Montberger … dated very properly … signed by you …” He looks up.
“Virgil, old friend, I regret to inform you that you’ve lost our bet, after all.
” He leans toward the duke and points at the bottom of the page.
“Hard to see beneath that smudge—you’ve really got to hire a better housekeeper! —but the groom’s signature, here …”
The room buzzes. The groom’s signature. My eyes lock with Lem’s, who almost un-scowls. For my part, I smile, dizzy with relief. The duke didn’t sign that license, and without his signature, it’s not valid at all.
Mansfield swears and tears the paper in two before turning to Father. “Idiot! Idiot! You swore she’d be mine!”
“I—I thought it was in order!” Father protests weakly.
“Marry us again!” Mansfield stomps a foot. “Now!”
“Certainly,” Father stammers. “Er, you have a register somewhere …?”
Lem makes a violent, though ineffective, wrench against his bonds. “You can’t be serious,” he says to Father. “You’re still willing to sacrifice your daughter to this pathetic—” The thug silences him with another twist of the guitar strap.
“You’ll see who’s pathetic, you idiot!” Mansfield thunders. “Montberger! Marry us!”
“No,” I say. Though the room is loud, my voice is louder. The men stop their bickering and look to me. “No. I will not marry this man.”
Mansfield makes a motion to the thug, who tightens his choking grip on Lem. “You will.” He sneers at me, uglier than ever. Nausea roils in my gut. I hate him. “I don’t think your beggar here can take much more squeezing.”
Lem’s jaw clenches with pain, and I realize very suddenly that I love him—that I adore him—that I’d give anything to see his scowling face at peace—
“Fine.” My voice is ice and I am terrible in my graciousness. “But let Le—the minstrel go first. That scowl will bring bad luck.” I don’t look at Lem.
“Toss him out,” Mansfield directs his thug. “We don’t need him anymore.”
The thug loosens his grip so Lem can breathe normally again, but keeps his hand on Lem’s shoulder. “Finally,” Lem mutters. “We’ve been trying to get this annulled the whole time. If only we would have known there was nothing to it to begin with.”
My heart twists. I shouldn’t be surprised by this. I’ve always known his feelings.
“Unhand me, you brute,” he says to the thug. “Good luck, and good riddance.”
The thug does not unhand him, but steers him across the room. I’m standing near the door, and my heart stutters when they draw close. I can barely bring myself to look at Lem, but if this is to be the last time I see him …
He winces as he crosses the room, gaze not meeting mine until the last possible second. “Ready to run?” he says under his breath.
I stare, not understanding.
Then he bends, presses a kiss to my temple, shoves my teapot into my hands, and shimmies out of the thug’s loose grip to throw himself back across the room. Mansfield grunts as Lem crashes into him, but the thug is quick, shoving me aside to resnatch Lem’s guitar strap.
I don’t think, swinging my still-warm teapot at the back of his head. It connects with a sharp crack, hot tea arcing over the tussling men as the teapot shatters.
The thug grunts, Lem yelps, and Mansfield turns to me with wrath on his face that immediately melts into … confusion? Horror? He lets out a cry, prompting Lem to twist in the thug’s arms, and even his scowl slips into an expression of surprise when he sees me.
Mansfield finds his words. “What on earth happened to your face?”