NICK came for Lark at midday, to carry her home in the oxcart, with Tup trotting along behind, and Molly allowed, as a treat, to ride in the cart. Students and horsemistresses were saying farewells as they drove off in their families’ carriages or phaetons. Only the third-level girls were allowed to fly home alone, after receiving stern warnings from Headmistress Star about the changeable summer weather, about flying too far or too high, about taking chances.
Everyone at the Academy was sleepy and red-eyed, having stayed up far too late the night before. They had clustered in the stables, in the library, on their cots in the Dormitory, talking, exulting, asking anyone and everyone what they knew. No one, it seemed, had suspected anything, not even Headmistress Star. No one knew that Philippa Winter had meant to disappear with Winter Sunset, but no one was surprised.
They had behaved as one united body before the Duke and Lord Islington. Even Petra Sweet had been shocked by the ruling against Mistress Winter. It helped, of course, that not one of them had the faintest idea where the fugitives had gone.
Lark, though she was as tired as everyone else, felt she must be glowing like an unshaded lamp. The sunshine that had seemed so joyless the day before now seemed almost unbearably bright. She could hardly wait to see Deeping Farm, and Brye, and Edmar…she even looked forward to seeing Peony. With the weight of grief lifted from her heart, she felt so light she thought she might float right off the cart.
Nick grinned as they trundled out to the road, Molly swaying behind the high seat, Tup trotting happily behind. “Take a blink at you!” he said to Lark. “You must be that glad to get away from this place.”
“Nay, nay, Nick.” Lark laughed. “’Tisn’t that at all! Wait till I tell you!” And as they rode toward the Uplands, with the nuthatches twittering at their passage and squirrels scolding from beneath the hedgerows, she told him all about the Council of Lords, and Mistress Winter’s defiance of Duke William, and the awful decision that had come down from the Rotunda.
They reached Deeping Farm just as the sun set behind the hills to the west. Lark was nearly speechless at the sight of Lord Francis himself waiting for them in the barnyard, a pitchfork in his hands and one of Brye’s battered hats on his head. He looked sun-browned and strong. In his woven shirt and trousers, he looked more like an Uplands farmer than like one of Oc’s nobility.
Once Tup and Molly were stabled and fed, and everyone sat down at the long table to eat Peony’s fine pottage, Lark had to recite Mistress Winter’s entire story again. Brye frowned throughout, his face like a thundercloud, and though Peony and Edmar and Nick clapped at the end, at the delightful discovery that, somehow, Mistress Winter and Sunset had escaped from the Duke, Brye still scowled in rigid silence.
Lord Francis said, “She should have sent for me.”
Lark answered him, “Nay, Lord Francis, she feared for your safety. Yon Duke is set upon his road, and no one can stand in his way.” She blushed then, and added hastily, “Begging your pardon, my lord. I forget, at times, that he’s your brother.”
“Where did she go?” Brye asked.
Lark shrugged, and laughed. “No one knows, and that’s the best of all! If no one knows, then no one can be forced to tell!”
“I hope she is someplace safe,” Brye glowered. “He’ll never have done searching.”
BRYE’S prediction proved true when Duke William clattered into the barnyard the next day on his lathered, exhausted brown gelding. Pamella came dashing in from the barn, sweeping up Brandon on the way, and hid herself and her son in the pantry. Larkyn called for Nick, who was in the coldcellar. Francis, who had been hoeing weeds in the kitchen garden, jumped over the blackstone fence to lend his support. He kept the sharp-pointed hoe in his hand as he stood in the exact center of the barnyard to face his brother. Larkyn was in the doorway to the stables, protecting her stallion. Nick Hamley brought the paddle of the butter churn up the steps, holding it in both hands like a club.
William leaped off his horse and tossed the reins to the ground. The gelding stood with his head down, his sides heaving.
“You’re going to kill that fine animal one day,” Francis said coolly.
“Francis,” William said. His face was red and his hair wind-whipped, but his tone was as icy as Francis’s own. “I’m surprised to see you looking so well. I understood you were somewhere dying.”
“I am far from death,” Francis said. “Which is more than I can say for your mount.”
William didn’t even glance back at his horse. “You, brat,” he said, pointing his quirt at Larkyn. “Cool my horse.”
Larkyn came forward gingerly, a wary eye on William, and took the horse’s reins. As he limped after her, Francis heard her speak to him in a tender voice. He said, “Not that you would understand, brother, but that’s the way to treat a horse.”
William’s lip curled. “You’re telling me how to handle horses, Francis? That’s odd, in view of my recent achievement.” He took a step forward, and Nick Hamley bridled at his approach, lifting the wooden paddle as if it were a bludgeon. William laughed. “Look at you, Francis! You and the farmer, prepared to do battle with your tools!”
Nick said nothing, but he didn’t lower the paddle, either. Francis felt a fresh wave of shame at his brother’s behavior. “What are you doing here, William? These good people have work to do. Come to that, surely you do, too.”
“Ah. Now you’re telling me my duty?” William slapped his thigh with his quirt. “Since you’ve been shirking yours, I hardly think that’s appropriate.”
“I’m going back to Arlton after Estian,” Francis said. “I have written to Prince Nicolas, and received a quite gracious letter in reply.”
William’s eyes narrowed. “He said nothing to me.”
“You’ve been to the Palace?” Francis said lightly. “My, you are busy, aren’t you. Deceiving the Council, destroying the bloodlines…quite an agenda.”
“I have business with Nicolas. He’s interested in my new bloodline.”
“Yes, he would be,” Francis said, suddenly weary of the whole exchange. “If he sees a profit in it. Is that what drives you, William? Profit?”
William took another step, close enough that Francis could smell the odd essence of his skin, that slightly sweet, slightly sour smell he had developed. “Where is she, Francis?” he whispered. “Where have you hidden her?”
Francis laughed. “I haven’t hidden her anywhere!” he said. “The first I heard of the whole affair was three days ago. Apparently she’s disappeared.”
“I’ll make these people suffer if you don’t tell me.”
“No, William.” Francis took two long steps forward to stand face-to-face with his brother. He gripped William’s arm and felt the skin give beneath his fingers. He experienced a rush of pride in the labor he had done in the past weeks, work that had made his hands hard and his shoulders stronger than they had ever been. “No, you won’t,” he repeated. And in a tone so low only William could hear, he said, “Because if you do, I will tell the Council, and Mother, and all of Oc—indeed, all of Isamar—what you did to Pamella.”
William’s eyes widened, though he quickly controlled them. He couldn’t control the rush of blood to his face, though, that burned over his cheekbones in two angry red patches. “I don’t know what you mean,” he grated. “If our sister became a slut, it was none of my doing.”
“I don’t know yet,” Francis said through gritted teeth, “if you forced her or seduced her. But I can see for myself who fathered the boy. And I will—I swear by our father’s grave that I will—expose you if you trouble these citizens at all.”
“You’re mad,” William said, but his protest was weak.
“Quite the contrary,” Francis said. “I am the only sane one left in the family.”
William sucked in a breath and wrenched his arm free of Francis’s grasp. “I will call your bluff,” he said. “You haven’t the nerve for this sort of thing.”
“No,” Francis said. “You won’t. And in this case, I do have the nerve, and more. I won’t have our legacy besmirched any more than it already is. What will the Council think of incest, added to your other offenses?”
Larkyn had come near them as she walked the gelding to cool him. She froze, staring at William. Francis nodded to her. “Get the gelding some water, will you, Larkyn? My brother is leaving now.”
William lifted his quirt, and Francis thought he might try again to strike him. But this time, with a sidelong glance at Nick Hamley, and with awareness of Francis’s newly acquired health, he dropped it again. He feigned a laugh and adjusted his hat. “You will regret this one day, Francis,” he said. “My memory is long.”
“Yes, I know that,” Francis said. “It is your character that is short.”
William’s eyes glittered with madness, but there was little he could do now. Larkyn was bringing his horse back, and Nick had come close enough to stand beside Francis, to hear what he had to say. William took the reins of his gelding and put his foot in the stirrup. When he was mounted, he looked down on them all, his lips pulled tight across his teeth. “Have a care, all of you,” he grated. “Diamond will soon fly, and when she does, there will be no one in Oc who will dare defy me!”
He yanked the gelding’s head around, making the poor animal grunt, and he put spurs to him before the horse had taken more than two steps. The exhausted gelding galloped down the lane toward the road, his pace labored and uneven.
Larkyn said sadly, “He will ruin that lovely beast.”
“Aye,” Nick said. “And he wants to ruin the Hamleys.”
Francis sighed. “There’s little enough honor left to the Fleckhams,” he said, “but upon what there is, I swear to you, he won’t take your farm. I won’t allow it.”
ON the eve of Estian, Francis walked with Larkyn to the river that formed the northern border of Deeping Farm. She pointed to a shallow place where the water ran as clear as crystal over the blackstones of the riverbed.
“She stood right there, my Char,” she said. “Up to her hocks in the water, every bone showing. I hardly thought she would make it to the barn.”
“What a shame you lost her,” Francis said.
“It was terrible.” She turned her eyes up to his. They were the violet of hyacinths, he thought, or delphiniums like the ones that edged the paths at the Palace. “Lovely sweet she was, Lord Francis. But Kalla brought her to me so she could live long enough to give me Tup.”
They strolled along the riverbank, where long grasses dipped into the swirling water. Butterflies, gold and white and black, flitted near a willow tree. “Your family has done mine a great service,” Francis said. “I owe my recuperation to your brothers. And—” he laughed, “to Peony’s pottage, I think!”
“You do look strong now,” Larkyn said, brightening. “’Tis wonderful to see you working around Deeping Farm.”
He chuckled. “When I first came,” he said, with a little laugh, “I felt as out of place as a fish tossed out of this river.”
She smiled. “Aye. ’Tis different to what you’re used to.”
“That it is. But I began to feel better almost immediately. And I have come to love the Uplands as you do. I think even Pamella may one day heal if she stays here.”
Larkyn bit her lip, then said, in a rush, “My lord—I don’t know what you’ll think—but I believe Edmar means to marry her!”
Francis stopped where he was, staring at her. “What?”
Larkyn laughed a little, and the ready color surged in her cheeks. “It seems my quiet brother loves them both, Pamella and Brandon. Edmar wants to marry her, and take Brandon as his own son, but he fears—well. She’s a duke’s daughter, and Edmar only cuts stone in a blackstone quarry.”
“And what does Pamella say?”
Larkyn shrugged. “She says naught to me, my lord. But it seems she and Edmar speak enough to come to an understanding. And Brye approves.” She grinned. “Someone of the Hamleys should marry! And though Peony tries so hard, I don’t think it will be Nick!”
Francis started walking again, shaking his head. Even after all these months, he still could hardly reconcile the quiet hardworking woman Pamella was now with the flighty young sister he remembered.
“Do you disapprove, then?” Larkyn asked quietly as she walked beside him.
“No, it’s not that at all!” Francis said quickly. “I am just startled by the idea.”
“You’re the only family she has to ask a blessing of,” Larkyn said.
He smiled down at her. “It will be an honor to see my sister become a Hamley,” he said firmly. “I have never known a more upstanding family.”
She glowed with pleasure. “I’ll tell Brye, then,” she said with relish. “And he can break the news to Edmar. You must return to Willakeep for the wedding, my lord!”
“I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”