Chapter 42
Oh, by the great green dragon, I was. Heat floods my face. I’m shaking, and I do the only thing I can think to do to give myself time to compose myself: I curtsy.
“Mother, Father. Honey. I was…” I say, and then, unwilling either to lie or to admit the truth, I stop. “This is Bash. Sebastian,” I offer instead. “He’s a sailor.”
“Is he?” my mother says, in a tone that conveys every opinion she has about (a) sailors and (b) men caught with their lips scant inches from her daughter.
I hear heavy clomping overhead; Sasha and Amaritha are running downstairs. I don’t blame them; I wouldn’t want to miss this show, either. If I weren’t the main attraction, that is.
“Is this where you live?” Mother says, sounding utterly aghast. She glares around, and I can’t help but follow her gaze.
Up until this moment I’d thought I’d gotten the bookstore looking pretty good, but suddenly every dust bunny, every crumbling book, every damp patch and exposed brick, leaps out at me.
Has it ever felt this small inside? I shift in my clothes.
They suddenly feel very tight. Mother glances at me, and her lips tighten. “And what are you wearing?”
I take a breath, unsure how I’m going to answer, but she shakes her head and carries on speaking.
“Aestaeben warned me,” she’s saying, “but I couldn’t really believe it.”
Above us, at the top of the stairs, I see Sasha and Amaritha appear, eyes huge.
“It’s so tiny in here,” Mother finally says.
“It’s not…” I begin.
“And cluttered,” she continues. “We must arrange to have all these books cleared away immediately, Rothal,” she says, turning to my father. “Honeyrose, take note: We’ll have the books removed and some proper furniture brought in immediately. And more rugs. And hire a plasterer.”
“No!” I gasp.
Mother turns her head, slowly, and takes me in, really takes me in: my old and faded clothes, my hair, half undone and cascading down my back. I don’t look remotely like the royal daughter she raised, and we both know it. I’m in breeches, for the love of the great green dragon. In public.
“You can’t,” I continue, a little abashed. “It’s my bookshop. It was left in my care. And so were the books. They stay.”
“Your bookshop,” she repeats. The emphasis she puts on both “your” and “bookshop” conveys a lifetime of judgment.
“I live in the back,” I offer. “I have a very cozy room and a lovely little garden.”
“A room,” she repeats. “In the back.”
“It’s really very nice,” I say, softly.
“And this…person?” Mother says, indicating Bash with a lift of her nose. “I suppose he lives in the outhouse.”
“No,” I say. “He just visits.”
“Is he part of the curse?” my father says, sounding a little less judgmental and more confused than my mother.
“Not…really,” I say. “Though he is cursed.”
“Ah,” Honey says, the first word out of her mouth since they stepped into my bookshop.
“Where does he stay?” Mother says. Her voice has a new edge to it.
“Not here,” I say, a little desperately. She’s unlikely to think highly of someone who sleeps in a barn.
“Where does he sleep, Tanadelle?” she says, very softly.
Yes, of course I knew that’s what she meant, but my mother won’t like the answer. “Well,” I say. “He doesn’t have anywhere else to go, you see.”
This was entirely the wrong answer; I can see that immediately as my mother’s face turns nearly purple. She opens her mouth to speak.
“He lives in a barn,” comes a voice from above. We all turn and look up the stairs. Sasha is turning a dark green, but carries on speaking. “It is apparently very drafty, and he has to muck out stables.”
“We all call him the Barn Pirate,” Amaritha adds.
“And do these two children also belong to this…bookstore?” Mother says, turning back to me.
“Children!” one of them gasps.
“No, these are Sasha and Amaritha. Sasha’s my shop assistant and Amaritha’s the person who repainted the sign outside.” I pause. “They’re my friends.”
“And she’s my girlfriend,” Sasha adds. I peek up the stairs, and she blushes again. “And Bash is nice. Weird, but nice.”
“The sailor,” my father suddenly announces. “That’s the sailor from Tandy’s letters. The one with the water curse.”
“It’s an ironic curse, actually,” Sasha, our expert in ironic curses, interjects.
“Water magic,” Bash adds, his first words. “Ironic curse, water magic.” His voice is cool, steady. You’d never know we’d been about to kiss. We had been about to kiss, hadn’t we? Would I have kissed him, had the door not been flung open?
Mother waves a royal hand. “Meaningless unless it’s connected with Tanadelle’s curse. And I notice that you have not answered my question, Tanadelle; and so I put it to you, young man.” She turns the full force of her gaze on Bash. “Where are you sleeping?”
Bash, a man I know to have faced down a sea witch and at least two hungry sea serpents in his time, at least according to his own stories, quails ever so slightly.
My father clears his throat. “Perhaps a question best addressed in private, Clotilde, my dear,” he says, gently.
My father is the only person alive I’ve ever seen who is able to get my mother to back down a bit; this she does, clearly unwillingly. “We’ll discuss this matter later, Tanadelle,” she says.
A stay of execution is, I realize, ultimately more torturous than simply being marched to the scaffolding and put out of one’s misery.
“A barn,” I squeak out. “Upon my honor, he sleeps in a barn.”
“Barn Pirate,” someone upstairs whispers.
“Not here,” Bash adds.
Mother sighs and looks around again. “Don’t you have anywhere to sit?” she says.
She’ll hate it, but the only alternative is the big table up on the third floor, where the Coven of Conviviality meets.
“Why don’t we retire to my room?” I say.
I glance first at Bash and then at the girls, huddled on the stairs.
Bash gets my drift immediately, but Sasha and Amaritha look like they’re on the verge of hysterics.
“Sasha,” I say, “perhaps you’d close up for us? ”
“Yes,” Sasha says, sounding a little strangled. “Yeah, of course.” At my mother’s glare, she coughs and adds, “Your Majesty.”
“Now, Clotilde,” my father says, “we’re not being very polite.” He turns to the girls, and then to Bash. “Perhaps you’d care to join us?” he says, a little hopefully.
“Oh no, I should…go,” Sasha says, turning a very, very deep green. “Your Majesty.”
“Me, too,” Amaritha says. “Homework.”
“Perhaps the sailor might join us for tea,” Father says. “Always so interesting, sailors.”
“I hardly think that’s appropriate, Rothal,” Mother says. She turns a gimlet eye on me. “Unless there is some reason we should be aware of for this man to join us in your…room…to discuss your situation?”
The last thing I want is for Bash to be anywhere near my parents.
But it certainly wouldn’t be polite to speak for him, so I take a fortifying breath and turn toward him.
“Sebastian,” I say, willing him to forgo his instinct for perversity and instead make his excuses, “would you care to join us for tea?”
“Thanks, but no; must go do some mucking,” he says lightly, then turns his gaze to me and bows, one of his ridiculous low bows. “Your Most Serene Worship.”
“Young man,” Mother says. “You take liberties.”
“Please, Mother,” I say. “It’s fine. We’re friends.”
“He may be your friend,” she says, “but I am his queen. And he does not treat you with the respect bespeaking your rank and station in life.”
“He does!” I say, a little desperately. “He just teases. It’s his way of showing affection.”
The room goes suddenly very cold, and very still.
“Affection,” Mother repeats, sounding outraged. “Is that man your lover?”
I feel heat flooding my face. How does one answer this question?
If a lover is one who makes love, what constitutes lovemaking?
And if someone is making love to someone else, does that make them lovers?
Why, when every tragic romance I’ve ever read refers to everything from whispered platitudes to full sexual congress as “lovemaking,” is it so difficult to know whether one has a lover?
He flirts with me; is that lovemaking? It’s not like any lovemaking I’ve ever read about; that’s generally made up of sighs and whispered promises and the occasional outright declaration.
Quite a lot of weeping, usually. We’ve never even kissed.
Surely having someone tease one isn’t lovemaking.
No one ever teases anyone in my tragic romances.
Surely someone has to be in love with you in order for them to be your lover.
Does he love me? Do I love him? Do I love Bash?
I risk a horrified glance up at my mother, whose expression grows darker with every moment I fail to answer her question. Do I tell her he’s my lover if I love him? He doesn’t love me, so does that make him my lover? Or am I simply his lover, by the act of being in love with him?
Am I in love with him?
My gaze travels over her shoulder, to where he’s watching me, his expression carefully blank.
Oh no; if I love him, and he doesn’t love me, perhaps that makes me his lover, but he isn’t my lover.
I can feel panic bubbling up inside me as the realization overtakes my thoughts: I’m in love with him.
How long have I been in love with him? When did it start?
How can I be in love with him? All he does is tease me and steal cobwebs and old teacups from me.
And he doesn’t love me; he can’t possibly.
“No,” I burst out, and it’s the closest approximation to the truth—at least, the emotional truth—of the matter. “He’s not my lover.”
Something flickers across his face, some emotion I can’t name, but it happens so quickly I barely have time to register it before it’s gone. I look back at my mother, and she can see the honesty in me, I think, because she sighs and puts a hand to her chest.
“Thank heavens for that, at least,” she says, glancing over at my father. He’s gone quite pink in the cheeks and shrugs in response.
“I should go,” Bash says.
“Yes, young man, I rather think you should,” Mother says, and with another impenetrable glance at me he’s gone, through the door and into the night.