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Alice tugged at Elwyn’s skirt. “When Jennifer gets here, can she stay in my room?”
“I don’t see why not,” said Elwyn. “Though we’d probably better ask Mother, first.”
A great deal of news kept pouring in to Leornian, and nearly all of it was bad. To Alice, however, nothing mattered but the part about the Earl of Stansted being ransomed, and the earl’s decision to send his daughter to Leornian for safety’s sake. As far as Alice was concerned, being reunited with her best friend made up for everything else they had been through. In fact, it was a very bad sign—one of many—that the earl thought Keelweard was no longer safe for his daughter. But Alice couldn’t be expected to understand that.
Edwin, in contrast, was old enough to see how bad things were getting. People here at the Bocburg, the ancient castle of the kings and dukes of Leornian, still called Edwin “your majesty,” but he knew it was an empty gesture. He knew about the Gemot, and Elwyn had seen him studying a list of the nobles who had voted for Broderick. As far as she could tell, he’d been memorizing them all.
Rohesia tried to tell the boy it was neither healthy nor politically wise to hold grudges, but she was setting a poor example for him. One of the first things she had done, on seeing the news about the Gemot, had been to send a letter dismissing Sophie Byrne, daughter of Duchess Flora, as one of her ladies-in-waiting. Sophie hadn’t made the journey to Leornian with them, so it was mostly a symbolic gesture, but Elwyn was willing to bet that Rohesia would never speak to either Flora or Sophie again unless she absolutely had to.
As Alice talked about all the things she would do when Jennifer got there, she and Elwyn finished unpacking Elwyn’s clothes. Actually, Elwyn did all the work. Alice’s contribution was to sit on the bed and comment briefly on each gown.
“I like how that one sparkles,” she would say, or “You shouldn’t wear that one. Mother says it makes your chest look flat.”
“My chest is flat,” said Elwyn, chuckling. “Or very nearly so. There we are—that’s the last one.”
She stretched and looked around the chamber with its thick, white-washed walls and narrow windows. The Bocburg was much older than Wealdan Castle, and she’d never much liked staying there. But this was their home now, at least for the time being, and they had to get used to it. She took Alice’s hand.
“Let’s go see Mother now, shall we?”
The queen was down in the ancient throne room, a gloomy old hall with dark, polished slate floors and painted vaults overhead. She sat at a map table with the Duke of Leornian and the Earl of Hyrne, and they seemed to be discussing the fighting. As Elwyn knew, the war was going terribly for their side, but the earl still held out hope for victory.
“The trick will be recruiting men from Pinshire to join us,” he said. “We can mass troops here, and next Spring, we can move to Keelweard, and use that as our base to retake Formacaster.”
“The Duke of Pinshire voted for the usurper,” the Duke of Leornian pointed out.
The earl waved this objection away. “Only under compulsion, I’m sure. Anyway, the people of Pinshire are solidly behind us.”
“Do you really think so?” asked the queen, with a hopeful look at her brother.
“I’m absolutely positive,” he said, smiling.
Elwyn would have bet any amount of money that the earl had no idea about the loyalties of the ordinary people of Pinshire. How could anyone know such a thing at this point? No, he was just showing the same useless optimism that had gotten them all in so much trouble. Rohesia still thought he was their best general, but as far as Elwyn could tell, the man wasn’t fit to command a hunting party, let alone a whole war.
The three adults turned and noticed Elwyn and Alice approaching. “Did you girls need something?” Rohesia asked.
In a frantic, excited rush, Alice asked if Jennifer could stay in her room when she arrived.
Rohesia put on a thin smile, and she said to Alice, “It’s best if little girls have their own rooms. Jennifer will be right down the hall, but I think you’re too old now to have friends sleeping in your bed with you.”
Later, Elwyn found her stepmother alone in the garden, looking at the rose bushes, and she said, “Please tell me you don’t think there’s something improper about Alice and Jennifer staying together. Alice is 5. Jennifer is 6.”
“We still have to be very careful, even here, Elwyn. I intend to take a much firmer approach with you girls from now on. Speaking of which, you still haven’t responded to Aldwin’s invitation.”
Aldwin Dryhten, Earl of Stanmunt, was the eldest son and heir of the Duke of Leornian. He had—no doubt with considerable prompting from his parents—invited Elwyn to go hunting with him whenever she liked.
“He’s 14, mother,” sighed Elwyn. “And when he gets nervous, he talks too much.” The boy had a bad habit of blurting out whatever came into his head, like observing that Elwyn was a lot shorter than he remembered.
“If he talks too much, then it’s only because you’re making no effort to converse with him. Now I want you to go riding with him tomorrow after church, and that’s final.”
“Just one week,” thought Elwyn as she walked away. “Just one week without this sort of nonsense would be nice. But apparently I won’t get even that much.” She remembered Cousin Broderick warning her that her family would “sell her off” in marriage as soon as they could, and apparently he had been right about that.
For a little while, for as long as they had been on the road, she had felt unusually close to her stepmother. Elwyn had been very sad about losing Lily, and it had seemed as if Rohesia was allowing her to grieve. Sometimes the queen had given her looks that were very nearly sympathetic. But perhaps that had been Caedmon Aldred’s influence.
Now she knew Rohesia viewed her the same way a merchant might view inferior and defective goods. Goods that needed to be unloaded as quickly as possible before they were irretrievably spoiled. Elwyn was constantly made aware of the fact that she now had a scandal attached to her name, since she had broken her engagement with Young Broderick. And she was never allowed to forget the other, secret scandal the queen knew about. Maybe Rohesia thought 14-year-old Aldwin was the best Elwyn could hope for.
But Elwyn didn’t want Aldwin, even as a hunting partner, and she didn’t want people plotting to get her married. She wanted Lily back. She wanted to hold her and lie naked in bed, watching the rain. She wanted to make love to her again. More than anything, she wanted Lily to say, “I love you, too.”
In her idle moments, Elwyn fantasized about running away to the Empire and finding Lily. It couldn’t be all that difficult. Moira would know where Lily was, and Moira was apparently one of the most popular and powerful ladies at the imperial court. All Elwyn had to do was get to Albus Magnus.
At that thought, she sank down onto a bench and put her head in her hands. “Yes, that’s all I have to do,” she said miserably to herself. “I just need to get out of here, make it through Gramiren lines, and travel two thousand miles alone. No problem.” It was completely hopeless.
She spent that night, as she spent all her nights now, dreaming of Lily, and she went to church the next day feeling highly aroused and more than a little frustrated.
Not surprisingly, her ride into the countryside with young Aldwin didn’t start out especially well. Contrary to Rohesia’s instructions, she made no effort at all to talk to the boy. And as a consequence, he spent the better part of their first hour telling her about his interest in beekeeping.
As they made the turn for Welmont, one of the duke’s lesser estates, where they were to have lunch together, she decided to be frank with him. “You realize why my mother and your parents are so eager for us to get to know each other, don’t you?”
His smooth cheeks reddened. “Yes. I’m sorry. It wasn’t my idea, you know. I’m sure you’re still sad about losing the person you love.”
“What?” She nearly fell out of her saddle. “Um, I mean...um, what did you say?” He couldn’t possibly know about Lily, could he?
“I mean Sir Broderick. Or I guess he’s Prince Broderick now. Everyone says he’s so brave. I can see where I’m a bit of a disappointment.”
“You’re not a disappointment,” she said, stretching the truth a bit. “I’m not interested in marrying anyone right now.”
He looked thoroughly relieved. “Oh, thank Earstien. Neither am I.”
They got on much better after they’d established that, and they formed a little conspiracy between themselves, whereby they went riding together every once in a while to make sure their families left them alone.
Aldwin had a number of friends who were a bit older than him—young knights from the city and some of the ladies from the castle. One week after Elwyn and her family had arrived, two of these knights came up to her in the garden of the Bocburg and, rather shyly, asked if she would like to join them and Aldwin and the ladies for a boat ride up the Trahern and a picnic lunch. It was the first party she’d been invited to since leaving Formacaster, and if they’d asked her even a day or two earlier, she would have refused the invitation out of hand. She had been too preoccupied with her sadness over losing Lily and her bitterness toward Rohesia.
But now she thought, “Well, why not?” Life went on, and all she could do now was try to make the best of what she still had.
So she went on the picnic, and even though she did not fall in love with any of the young knights, or any of the young ladies, either, she still had a marvelous time.