Chapter 15

Adrian's POV

The door opened onto a small room smelling of bitter herbs and clean linen. The woman on the bed began at once to struggle up onto her elbow to greet me, slow and awkward with the weight of her belly, and the girl beside her caught her arm.

"Gently, sister. Master Aske said to lie still."

"Please don't get up." I put out a hand to stop her. "I've come on my uncle's behalf, and my aunt's, to say we're sorry. Their servants forgot themselves. They frightened you and hurt you, and if it weren't for Master Aske it might have been far worse. I'm sorry for it."

I said all of it properly, and all the while I was looking at her.

There was nothing to see. Skin burned brown by the sun, a coarse gray dress let out at every seam, a kerchief over her hair, swollen hands folded on a belly so big she must be near her time. A farm wife from somewhere outside the walls. I had passed a thousand like her on the road home.

Except for her eyes.

They were gray-green, and very clear, like water over pale stones. The fright had left the rims of them red, but it hadn't clouded them at all. I had seen plenty of beautiful women. I couldn't think of one whose eyes were as clean as that, or who looked at me so straight while giving away so little of what lay underneath.

They didn't belong in that brown face. That was what held me.

My wolf shifted under my ribs, the way it does toward a scent it can't place. I held it down and looked away.

"You'll need rest," I said, and set my purse down by her hand. "This is for your keep until the pup comes."

She pushed it back toward me with two fingers. "You're very kind, my lord. But the house has paid us already. We don't need more."

I didn't know what to make of that. I had never met anyone, high or low, who sent money back. She was close to her time and still taking in sewing, and the Green Lamp's fees weren't small.

"Take it," I said. "It isn't the Hales'. It's mine. And you shouldn't be working at all now. Stay at home and wait for your pup. That's what matters."

She lowered her eyes and said nothing, which was not the same as yes.

"May I ask your name, mistress? You're not from Silverkeep, I think. You sound as if you came up from the Lakelands."

It was only there in a word or two. A softness in the vowels that I had heard in the south, in the boatmen on the lakes, where they draw their words out slow. I wasn't sure she knew she had it.

"My lord must have misheard," she said. Her sister helped her sit up the rest of the way. "We've been gone from home a long while, and our people will be worrying. If you'll excuse us, we'll go."

"Then let me see you home."

I heard myself say it and wanted it back at once. A Lord Marshal of the realm, escorting two farm women to their door. Half the street would have it by supper.

But she was looking at me with those eyes, frightened and determined at once, and I found I didn't want it back after all.

"My uncle's business isn't finished," I said, more steadily. "If anything happened to you on the road, it would be laid at his door and at mine. Let me send a man with you, at least."

"My lord, if you came yourself it would be a procession, and people would talk, and we're plain folk who don't want talking about." She shook her head. "And there's no need. The shop's boy has gone to hire us another cart. The stone's been found and the women have been punished, so the matter's closed. If it eases your mind, I'll take your purse, and thank you for it." She closed her hand over it. "When we go out, I'll tell the Prince's man that the Hales have done right by us and there's nothing between us any longer."

Every word of it was sensible, and I couldn't find one thing in it to argue with.

"Lord Marshal." Theo was standing in the open door with his hands folded in front of him. I hadn't heard him come. "Master Aske says the lady is out of danger, so long as she takes her draughts and rests. The cart's outside. I must go back to His Highness." He turned to the keeper behind him. "Everything for this lady today, and any physic she needs after, is to go on the Prince's account. He'll settle it." Then to her, more gently: "His Highness says, if you're ever in trouble, send word to the side gate of his house."

So the Prince meant to keep her under his hand. I remembered what my mother had said in the carriage about the woman in the Lakelands, and I found I didn't like it.

"Thank His Highness for me," she said. "We're more grateful than I can say."

She got herself to her feet with her sister's arm under hers and curtsied to Theo, and as she bent her head, a strand of hair slipped out from under the kerchief and fell back behind her ear.

The skin there was white. Not brown, not even sallow. White as the inside of a split walnut, where the stain hadn't reached.

I went still.

Then she was past me, moving slow and heavy along the passage, and I stood there long enough that the keeper had to cough. When I reached the street door, the road was full of carts and porters, and none of them was hers.

* * *

My mother put her hand on my arm when I climbed into the carriage. "Well? She looked steady enough on her feet when she came out. And the Prince's man has gone. I don't suppose we'll hear any more of it."

I made some answer. She talked of the binding to come that night, of my cousin's gown, of who was already in the hall. Then she said, "You're not a boy anymore, darling. You must think of your own binding. The princess would be a very fine match. Everyone says so."

"A man who released his first mate, and then buried her?" I said. "I can hardly aim so high as a princess."

She pressed her lips together.

I watched the street go by. I saw the white skin behind that ear, and her eyes, and the great curve of her belly under the gray dress.

"Mother," I said. "When Wren went, how far along was she with the—"

I stopped. She was dead. What did it matter now how many months?

My mother's face changed. "Don't speak that name to me. That girl was nothing but bad luck to this family. If it hadn't been for her grandfather and what we owed him, and the scandal, do you think I'd have let her off so lightly? She was born to an ill fate, and it found her, and that's the end of it. I won't have her spoken of in my hearing again." She pressed a hand flat to her breast. "My heart, Adrian. Every time you say her name, it's my heart."

She had gone pale, and she leaned back against the cushions as if she might faint.

I had heard her heart. It had jumped when I said the name, before she ever lifted her hand to it.

I said nothing more. I looked out of the window at the street running backward, and I knew that I would find out who that woman was.