Chapter 2 #2
It wasn’t the steward himself. The voice was too young.
“Emrys?” Elloven tried to recall what Taven had said about the Skylarks on the ride home.
He’d inundated her with all the gossip she’d missed in her years away, as though she cared about anything so frivolous, but she’d caught some of it threading through her daydreaming, and she was reminded of the scandal that had rocked Riverchapel almost a decade ago.
Steward Mathias Skylark had experienced a fall from favor after it was revealed his youngest son, one of Gennady’s friends, was a product of his wife’s affair with Steward Edevane, in neighboring Oldcastle.
Then his wife died under questionable circumstances.
He’d gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal both ugly truths, including seeing a magus to remove his children’s memories.
“No, no, the other one.” Taven’s lower lip peeled downward. “The letch. Jesstin. Surprised he bothered to drag himself out from under his mountain of sins.”
She remembered now. Jesstin. Or had it been Jessie back then?
He and Gennady used to send walnuts through her open window with notes attached containing choice messages that would have made even a sailor blush.
She could almost hear their snickers trailing into the forest. How clever they’d thought they were.
“Move, move! Fucking move!” Jesstin hollered, his voice growing nearer. The rabble diminished, spreading farther away. Elloven folded her hands over her chest and tried to breathe.
The carriage door swung wide. She didn’t recognize the flushed and winded man standing before her, pointing a thick broadsword at the ground. “Lady Elloven?”
She nodded swiftly.
Jesstin gave her a brief appraisal. He swung his gaze to Taven.
For all his showmanship with the crowd, he looked quite bothered to be there.
“My horse is tethered near the fountain. Efrata, but she likes Effie too. All white but for a black line down her chest. Can’t miss her.
” He ran one finger down his breastbone.
“Ride to Nightwood. Tell Esmeray we’ll be there soon. ”
“Who? Not me.”
“Yes. You.”
Taven looked ready to fight, but his only power was over those weaker, and Jesstin had the air of a man who had nothing to lose and no regret of it. “I’ll do no such thing.”
“Some gratitude would serve you, Considine,” Jesstin said, his eyes skimming sideways in irritation.
He climbed in with a hard, wide look at the crowd before closing the door.
“The baroness asked me to escort her daughter, because she knows, I know, you know, and the Guardians themselves know how the village regards you, which is impressively worse than they regard me. Either I escort her through the crowd of malcontents to my horse, while you take the much safer carriage by yourself, or you can just do what I fucking said like a good little stable boy and go.”
Elloven was floored—and strangely amused. She’d never heard anyone speak to Taven like that.
“Insulting me? Now? You’re being ridiculous,” Taven argued.
“Why would we not ride together? Don’t tell me Esme wouldn’t want me here, because I know her better than anyone, including her children.
” His passing glance at Elloven was both unapologetic and insincere, though she suspected he thought they were neither. “Child.”
“Nah, it’s not that.” Jesstin clicked his tongue. “I just don’t want anyone to steal my horse. Effie’s my special girl.”
Taven sputtered. “You’re not serious?”
“Very. Choose.”
Taven snorted, huffing as he passed his indignance between Elloven and Jesstin in an uncomfortable pause. “You’re being awfully quiet, Ellie. Is this what you want? This ruffian to escort you?”
“What I want is to get out of this mess. So go. Please.” Every moment they tarried was one the mob might reconsider their obedience.
“We’re not done here. We’ll speak on this later.” Taven slipped out.
The second he was gone, Jesstin pounded on the roof and dusted the spot on the bench where Taven had sat before settling in. The carriage spurred to life. “Nothing too unpleasant happened?”
She shook her head. Her deep breath was easier than expected, and she realized she was beginning to feel normal again. “My mother sent you?”
“Yes.” Jesstin slipped his hand under his vest and withdrew a flask. He offered her a sip after taking one of his own, which she declined.
“She’s right about Taven, but why you?” Elloven wanted to look outside, to see if the danger had passed, but was more afraid of finding it hadn’t. That nowhere would ever be safe for her again. The sense of coming doom had barely eased.
“It’s exactly what I told the stable hand,” Jesstin said absently. “Respect. Authority. Things I’m light in and he lacks entirely.”
Was he even telling the truth? She’d trusted him so easily and was now questioning her rash judgment. “So why did you agree?”
“I told you why.”
“You told me why she asked you, not why you accepted.”
“Doing my duty as a Skylark.” His lip twitched. “Such as it is.”
“How do I know you’re who you say you are?”
He shrugged. “They stopped attacking the carriage, didn’t they?”
“For now.”
“Anyway, you’re welcome.” Jesstin spread his arms over the top of the bench and leaned his head back. The way his dark hair caught the moonlight gave her the same fluttery familiarity of a memory, but the wearied man sitting across from her was nothing like the shy boy her brother had played with.
“Why did you kick Taven out? The other driver could have minded your horse.”
“Don’t like him.”
She blinked slowly. “You kicked him out because you don’t like him?”
“Do you? Because you seem relieved to me.”
Elloven was taken aback at his reading her, but she didn’t fully understand Jesstin’s motivations yet, nor was he entitled to hers. “You were Gen’s friend.”
Jesstin’s cool demeanor flickered briefly. He licked his lips. “Yeah.”
She hadn’t realized how much she needed to talk about her brother until he showed his reluctance to it.
To conversing at all, really. But the noise outside had calmed since Jesstin had intervened.
No more hands tapped the carriage; no rotted cabbage had hit the windows.
Whatever else was true, he’d pacified the rabble, and being close to someone who had loved Gennady made her feel close to her brother again too.
Elloven studied him in the shadowy silence.
She did remember him, but the last time she’d seen him, he had still been so small and timid.
What sat before her was a man, muscled and tall and assuming.
.. handsome in a way most women would find appealing.
Though he couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen, the lines around his eyes and mouth contrasted this, revealing more about him than his guarded words.
He looked more like his sister, Rhiain, than his brother, Emrys, but she could also see the startling lack of Mathias in him and the inclusion of Edevane blood.
.. a family she had her own sordid history with.
“Are you close with my mother?”
Jesstin’s eyes opened. “No, not really.”
She detected the lie, but not the size and shape. “She could have gone to the steward himself. That would have been proper protocol.”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“You seem quite put out, is why I’m wondering.”
“Is my demeanor a factor in whether or not you make it home safe?” The scabbard of his preposterously large broadsword banged against the floor when he shifted around on the bench.
Elloven nearly laughed. What an absurdly moody savior. It had been a while since someone had challenged her expectations. “I’m neither home nor safe yet.”
“A fact which would have remained true indefinitely had Taven been your escort.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You really don’t like him.”
Jesstin snickered. “No, and neither do you.”
Her feelings toward Taven could not be so easily summarized, but in trying to figure out the person sitting across from her, for the first time in a long while, she was...
Calm.
“Are you going to ask me if I did it?”
Jesstin scratched his nose. “Did what?”
Elloven laughed. “You know.”
“Killed those men?” He smirked, lifting both of his shoulders. “They probably deserved it.” Then he angled sideways and stared out the window.
She afforded him the silence he seemed so determined to uphold, and said nothing else. A half tick of the moon later, they pulled down the winding, oak-canopied road leading through the forest, toward the Nightwood estate.
“Have a trunk?” Jesstin asked, leaping out before the carriage had even stopped.
“We left in a rush.” Elloven paused at the coach’s exit to take in the quiet night, the cherished trill of crickets and frogs.
For the time being, at least, the villagers had obeyed Jesstin’s orders, though it was unlikely they’d come all the way out to Nightwood.
Most people who knew anything about the Hawthornes had the good sense to fear crossing Esmeray.
Taven stormed from the main door, stomping his boots. “I’ll take it from here.”
“Sure you will,” Jesstin said as he made his way to his horse. He glanced back at Elloven. “I’d stay out of the village for now.”
“I assumed I’d be locked away here for the rest of my life,” she retorted, feeling lighter than expected after all that had transpired.
“You can leave now, Skylark.” Taven drew up beside Elloven and slid an unwelcome arm around her. “I’ll ensure Esme sends you the appropriate stipend of gold for your sacrifice this evening.”
Jesstin shook his head in amusement as he mounted.
He gathered his reins, then paused like he’d forgotten something, his eyes bright with mischief as he turned them on her.
“If you’re looking for somewhere to go, where no one cares about murdered lords or deadly wives, Mythgarde welcomes all, judges none.
The next few nights in particular should be interesting. ”
“The village of vice?” Elloven was intrigued he would even suggest it. She’d never been. No one respectable would ever admit they had either.
“Don’t listen to this deviant,” Taven retorted. “He’s just as corrupt as both of his fathers.”
Jesstin laughed. “More.” He clicked his tongue at Efrata, winked at Elloven, and rode off into the night.
“Don’t listen to him, about anything. Ever,” Taven said again, with more force in his command.
His hold on her tightened as she followed Jesstin until he disappeared into the darkness and dust. “I mean it, Ellie. He made his wealth exploiting the virtue of others, and he’d have no qualms exploiting yours. ”
That would make Jesstin no different than most of the men she’d encountered, except for one critical difference.
He’d given her a choice.
Elloven broke away and went to greet her mother for the first time in over seven years.