Chapter Six A Night on Silken Sheets
Lord Draw brought me to a wooden door.
“I just...go in?”
“Well, you can’t expect me to accompany you into the Maidens’ Chamber, can you, Lady Mayfair?”
I don’t get my own room? He saw the grimace cross my face.
“It’s not as if the Dark Mage is hiding in there, just go in”—he waved his hand dismissively—“and the other women will help if you need something.”
It was the other women I was apprehensive about.
I tried to picture going to a sleepover with Sara and Gemma but couldn’t—and I’d known them for a year!
I needed to be likable if I was going to sway the plot.
I didn’t know how to do that much less come across as a reasonably social person for a whole evening.
Draw disappeared down the hall and I had no choice but to push the door open.
Eight single, wood-framed beds stood throughout the room.
Narrow, slitted windows broke up the stone wall sparingly and thick rugs covered much of the floor to stave off the cold of the stone.
On one end was a dresser set with a vase of woodland flowers and a golden tabletop mirror.
The women inside wore white nightgowns and were gathered around one bed, a few of them sitting hip to hip on the mattress, others in nearby chairs brushing out their hair for the night.
It looked exactly like the sleepovers I’d been terrified to go to in middle school.
“Um, hello. I’m supposed to sleep in here for the night.” I realized I was hunched over like a little mouse and straightened my back. I was supposed to be a witch’s apprentice, for goodness’ sake.
The women paused in their conversation, staring back at me, the intruder.
Then their faces lit up and half of them were on their feet.
“Welcome, Lady Dottie!”
“You can take this bed,” a woman with twin black braids said. “I’m Meg.”
“Lu,” a curvy redhead said by way of introduction. “We are so curious to see what else is in your bag. Quick, get changed and come sit with us.”
Somehow my brain made this warm welcome out to be worse than being ignored—I wasn’t expecting to be the center of attention! My palms were suddenly sweaty around my satchel handle. I set the bag on the bed that Meg showed me.
“I don’t know if I have nightclothes,” I said, trying to remember if I had seen any.
Meg looked at me empathetically. “Did a servant pack for you? I’m sure they included something.” Her skin was a beautiful bronze, like tribal descendants back home. Her frame was petite, and short too, almost as short as Sorrel.
Thankfully, Sorrel had foreseen the need for nightwear that covered my full bottom, and I was quickly settled among the other women, bag on my lap, passing around lip gloss for everyone to try on.
“Mmm,” Lu said, popping her lips. “It feels almost like honey. Sticky.”
A woman who had introduced herself as Denise wondered, “But it tastes like food?”
“Strawberries,” I said.
There were notes of appreciation all around.
“Lu,” Denise said, “finish the story you were telling before Lady Dottie came in.”
“Just Dottie,” I said quickly as they all had shared their first names with me.
I didn’t know what I had been so scared of.
Everyone was being kind. They must feel like a sisterhood, rooming together, looking out for each other in patriarchal times.
After all, unmarried women had their reputations to protect.
I’d only had a few brief clumsy college boyfriends myself, but these noble ladies had probably been forced to be chaste their whole youth.
Lu continued her story with a smile.
“I could tell he was much bigger than Ian when I slid my hand down the front of his breeches.”
There were gasps.
“Lu,” Meg with the braids chastised. “Ian was your betrothed.”
“It was arranged.” Lu shrugged. “And then he died of pox. I had my doubts he’d satisfy me my whole life, and look, twenty-three and he’s already a disappointment.”
Meg frowned at Lu.
Lu mockingly frowned back. “What am I supposed to do, spend my whole youth in mourning over a man who told me I’d whelp eight sons for him?”
If I wasn’t engrossed before, I was positively spellbound now. This was...wild. I hadn’t had many escapades and even if I had, I never would have been confident enough to talk about them with my girlfriends, which I also didn’t have.
“Dottie didn’t hear the first part,” Denise prompted.
Lu looked only too happy to comply. “There he was, leaning under the arch, looking pensive,” Lu continued, glee on her face.
“I stopped and”—Lu took an appropriately somber expression—“said how fortunate the queendom was for his services and if he ever had a need I could help with...Ironclaw said he had one big need in particular.”
Laughter rang through the room but my heart had stopped at the mention of Ironclaw. She’d flirted with him that evening?
“Well, I’ve never felt so bold. I moved right close—to pick a thread off his shoulder, mind you—and then carefully positioned my other hand between us as if only by accident as I leaned in.
” Lu looked at her fingernails. “What I wouldn’t do to support my queendom.
Then ol’ Parable came rambling through, muttering to himself about moonstones, and I had to come here. ”
I couldn’t believe it. Ironclaw was ripe for the picking and I missed it.
“Weren’t you worried about,” I started hesitantly, then lowered my voice as if she could hear, “the queen?”
There was silence as if I’d said a faux pas. Then they all laughed.
“Why?” Lu challenged me. “It’s not like anything happened. Ironclaw should be more worried about what our fair queen is doing while he’s away in the forest.”
They weren’t true to each other. I had hope.
Yet that was between them. Was it wrong to chase him?
No, don’t fall into that trap. These are fictional people.
These women didn’t match the picture I had built in my head at all when I heard the phrase Maidens’ Chamber. “You all don’t have to, um, avoid touching men?”
Again, silence.
Then they cackled with laughter. Lu burst as if she couldn’t contain herself, “Those seas must be more melancholy than we knew!”
The door squeaked open to reveal Lady Ariana. I had been wondering—there were eight beds, but only seven of us. Ariana gave the group a small smile, as they greeted her. She was still in the pretty blue gown she had worn earlier that evening, but her eyes looked tired.
“So, you’re joining us, Lady Dottie?”
“Just Dottie.”
Ariana nodded back. “How wonderful, though I’m quite exhausted. I wish I could stay up to chat...”
“Of course,” I said. It must be difficult attending to such a temperamental queen every waking hour.
But something else had shifted in the room too. For as casually as they had spoken about Ironclaw, perhaps it wasn’t the best form of judgment to do so in front of the queen’s best friend.
Everyone was moving to their own beds, and I did the same.
As the candles burned low, the women drifted off one by one but not me.
I didn’t know how much longer I could expect to stay in the world of Landsome.
Sorrel had said I’d go home when I was ready and the thought occurred to me that if I had some kind of pure-of-heart moment in the morning, I might only ever get this one night.
Or, even if I was there longer, we’d be on the road soon with definitely less privacy.
And Ironclaw was out there, standing guard in those cold halls, and apparently open to random women approaching him...
I looked around at the quiet room, then crept from my bed, switched my nightgown for the maroon dress, and tied the knife to my side.
Because Issa’s abduction wasn’t a POV chapter in book five, I didn’t know exactly how things went down, but it stood to reason that the Dark Mage’s apprentice would come under the cloak of darkness and be gone quietly before anyone knew.
Like me.
I lifted the long, wooden plank that served as a lock and set it aside, shutting the door behind me.
I had the faintest layout of the castle in my head, but it took time to get out of the passages and into the cool night air of the stable yard.
It was a large rectangle with hitching posts and wagons around the perimeter and the stable on one side.
I skirted the battalions, then circled the thatch-roofed stable hopefully.
Through the dark stall openings, I could see horses dozing and I smelled hay.
He wasn’t there.
My heart sank. I didn’t know if I’d be able to find my way back—
Someone grabbed me by the shoulder. “Looking to kidnap the queen’s sister, witch?” a deep voice breathed in my ear.
He spun me, and I came face-to-face with Ironclaw. This close up, I realized for the first time how tall he was. He absolutely towered over me. He didn’t quite have a beard, but there was a shadow across his chin. His long hair was tied back.
I fought for words, squeaking out what I imagined Lu would have said. “I was looking...looking for you.”
“You already have half the court under your spell. What could you possibly have to say to me?”
“Just to offer my services to the queendom,” I said saucily, then promptly flushed. It was my...acting voice from read-aloud sessions. Not a way I’d ever talk to a real person. But Ironclaw wasn’t real, I reminded myself. I didn’t have to feel embarrassed talking to a character in a book.
I leaned into him, placing a hand on his elbow with intention, then looked up through my eyelashes the way I’d seen actresses do to tall, handsome men.
“Trying to seduce me, witch? You’ll uncover no state secrets through me.” He wrenched his arm back.
“I’m not a witch.” My false voice slipped. “I’m just helping the witch do good. The same way I am the queen.” Damn it, don’t bring up the queen now.
He leaned down. “A witch’s apprentice, wandering the same night the Dark Mage’s is sneaking about?”
“No, I—”
“She’s sleepwalking,” an amused voice came from behind me.
Ironclaw looked up. His mouth tightened in the light of a new torch. “Draw.”