Chapter 25

Wren's POV

I curtsied to nobody in particular and followed the maid, because my feet knew how to do that much on their own.

It had gone out so fast. One moment she had said *come with me*, and the next I was being walked to the steward. I went over it and over it and couldn't find what I had done. Unless it was my face. She had looked at my face as if it were the thing that was wrong.

We went through an arch into a long covered walk. A man was coming along it toward us, tall, in a dark blue coat. The maid stopped at once and stepped aside and bobbed.

"Captain Hollis."

"Where are you off to?" he asked her. "Where's Mistress Dunne? Is His Highness in the outer study?"

"I'm taking this woman to the steward for her penny, Captain. Mistress Dunne's still in the side hall choosing nurses. His Highness is in the outer study, I think."

"They haven't found one yet?" A line came between his brows. His eyes went to me, and he looked at me the way you look at someone who has just been sent away.

I hadn't been listening properly. His voice had come to me as if through water. I made my curtsy because I knew I ought to, and lifted my head, and the blood went cold in me all at once.

I knew that voice. Low, and short with impatience. I had heard it from the other side of a carriage with the curtain drawn, saying *we don't carry passengers*, saying *it was nothing*. I had never seen his face. I had sat with my head down the whole way. But I had seen the line of that nose against the window, and I knew the voice.

It was him. The man in the carriage.

The wheel ruts by the grass. The road back into the city. And this house, which had found itself a pup three days ago and had been looking for a nurse ever since.

He had taken Sol. The little master they couldn't feed was Sol.

I dropped to my knees on the flags.

"Captain, I beg you. Speak to the mistress for me. Let me try, only try. I'll care for the little master, I swear it." I looked up at him, and I was already crying. "I've nowhere left to go. If I can't nurse, I'll scrub floors, I'll carry slops, anything. Please."

He stared down at me. The frown had gone deeper. I could see him thinking that a minute ago I had been a quiet woman with my eyes on the floor.

The maid had gone white. She caught at my arm. "Get up! Goody, get up, if anyone sees you you won't even get your penny. Come on. Please."

"I don't want the penny!" I pulled my arm free and stayed where I was. I couldn't stop crying now that I had started. "I don't want anything. I only want to stay. They've taken my child. Somebody's taken my child, and I don't want to live without..."

I couldn't finish it. I had hold of the maid's sleeve, and I wouldn't let it go.

"I swear I'll keep the little master like the apple of my eye. Only let me try."

"Goody, you'll get me whipped," the maid whispered, close to tears herself, trying to prise my fingers open. "The mistress has said. If you carry on like this I'll be the one in trouble."

The captain looked at me a long moment. Something in his face went heavier, as if he half believed me, and didn't like believing it. Then he looked away.

"Get up," he said. "If anyone comes by like this, they'll think something's happened. I'm sorry. What you're asking isn't mine to give."

I had asked the wrong man.

There was only one person in this house who could say whether I stayed.

And there was Sol's face, so close in front of me I could almost touch it. He knew people early. He knew me. At night he wouldn't settle unless he was right up against me, with his nose in my neck, breathing me in. Three days, now, in a great strange house, without me. How frightened he must be. Was he crying all the time? Was anyone holding him? Would he take any of their nurses at all?

The part of me that had wanted to give up went under, and didn't come back up.

"I want to see the Prince," I said. "Please. Will you tell him I'm asking?"

The captain shook his head, and walked on.

* * *

Evander's POV

Dunne stood below the dais with two women behind her and her hands folded at her waist.

"These are the best of them, Highness. Clean families, good milk. The young master won't suck for them yet, but he lets them hold him, and if they're given a little time with him, I think perhaps..."

I looked the women over. Plain, decent, keeping their eyes where they ought to be.

*Won't suck for them yet.*

I didn't like it. He was a month old. How many days could he go on drops off a spoon and a little barley water? We had no time to give anybody.

No. We would try them, and if they didn't do, we would try more, and keep trying until one of them did. If he would drink, the rest didn't matter.

I was about to say so when I heard it. A woman's voice, a long way off, somewhere along the east walk, pleading and trying to keep her voice down, and a manservant's low angry answer. Her heart was going so fast I could hear that too, uneven and hard, the way a heart goes when someone has been crying a while.

A moment later Dunne heard the voices, and her face soured. She half turned, ready to go and find out who was making a scene in the Prince's house.

"What is that noise?" I asked.

The room went quiet.