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The new inn was dreadful. The windows were small and covered in a film of grime. The mattress was filled with moldy straw. The privy was utterly beyond description in its squalor. Molly would almost have rather slept in a field somewhere. But this was all they could afford now, and soon enough they wouldn’t even be able to afford this.
Quincy had gone out that morning to join some men in a hunting party in the marsh. A few nobles were looking for officers to lead their levies, and Quincy had some idea that if he impressed them with his shooting, they might offer him a position. If they didn’t, well, the only thing left was to sell more land.
In the meantime, Molly had other plans. She was finally going to make up her mind about Duke Lukas’s offer. Today was the day when she would do it, once and for all: she would write to him. She hadn’t figured out what she would say, though, or even what her decision would be.
As she was getting dressed, there was a knock, and one of the housemaids said Molly had a visitor. Quickly tying off her bodice, she went to the door to find a young man in the livery of the Duke of Severn, carrying a small oblong box and a letter.
Molly quickly tore open the seal of the message.
Miss Coburn (or Molly, if you still count me a friend),
I saw this in a shop and thought immediately of you. It’s lovely, but if you did decide to join me on campaign and share my tent, it’s not exactly the sort of thing you could wear around a campfire. Luckily, we’re having a party for my retainers and officers on a barge on the river on the evening of the 25th. What you wear with this is up to you, but try not to make it anything too difficult to get out of.
Yours in anticipation,
Lukas
She looked in the box and found a gold necklace set with dozens of emeralds. “Holy Finster,” she gasped. One or two of those stones would keep her and Quincy in food and lodging for a year. She was strongly tempted to run straight to a jeweler and see what she could get for the thing. But that would be fatally short-sighted.
She didn’t show the necklace to Quincy, or the note, either. Brothers could be touchy. Quincy came back in mid-afternoon, having failed to find a position, and fell into a sullen nap. Once he was asleep, Molly took the note out again and read it over several more times.
If she went to this party, Lukas would want her to have sex with him. Molly found herself unexpectedly nervous at this thought. She’d been called a great many things in her life—a flirt, a tease, sometimes even a slut—but she’d never thought of herself as a prude before. In her mind, though, the ultimate goal had always been a real, solid, respectable marriage. Perhaps that had been foolish. Now that she thought of it, she was pretty sure that was an impossible goal for a girl with no real property or dowry to speak of. No, this was probably the best she could expect to get.
She was resigned, but she was still nervous. She went to the party on the barge, and within ten minutes of boarding the boat, she had drunk two glasses of wine to calm her nerves. It helped a good deal. She almost didn’t notice the angry glances some of the women were giving her. She found Lukas on the back of the ship—the high part with the rudder and such, whatever it was called. She had another half a glass before she approached him. All she could think was that it would happen that night, maybe right there on the ship. Perhaps in some romantic cabin away from the press and noise of the party.
Unfortunately, he had to leave almost immediately. He had enough time to tell her that her necklace was lovely, and to give her a kiss on the cheek. Then one of his knights came running up to say that he was needed in camp to deal with some logistical problem, and he went off in a little boat rowed by four of his officers.
That left Molly alone on the barge with a bunch of people who hated her, and she had no rowboat to take her to shore. She would have to stay for the whole blasted party. Eventually, she took a fourth glass of wine and sat in a quiet spot near the front of the boat, as far from the duchess as she could get.
As she was sitting there, fingering her new necklace and thinking about what it would be like to be a duke’s mistress, a pretty young woman in a blue and gold silk dress came and sat next to her. “Someone told me I absolutely shouldn’t come talk to you,” the girl said. “So of course I had to.”
“Very brave of you,” said Molly.
“It’s not a hard choice. These people are sheep. They do whatever they think will win them favor. You shouldn’t care so much about what they think.”
“Who says I care?”
“I can see it in your face.” The girl smiled. She was remarkably pretty, with big green eyes and dark blonde curls, and Molly wondered why she hadn’t seen her around town or at the palace before. She held out a hand weighted down with silver rings and gold bracelets. “My name’s Vittoria. You’re Miss Coburn, or so I’ve been told.”
“I imagine you heard some much less flattering names for me.” She took the girl’s hand and shook it. “My friends call me Molly.”
“Oh, good. I was so hoping we’d be friends.” Without warning, she turned Molly’s hand over and studied her palm intently.
“What are you doing?”
“Reading your fortune, obviously. It’s a trick I picked up on my travels. There. You see?” She tapped one of the lines on Molly’s palm. “You’re destined to find love and have a beautiful family. I’m quite jealous.”
Molly gave a rueful laugh. “I wish that were true, but I have my doubts.”
The girl stood up abruptly and curtsied. “I’ve got to go dance with some baron or other. I’d rather not, but I did promise him, and I never break my promises. Are you busy tomorrow?”
“Um...no. I doubt it.”
“There’s a tavern on Edderly Street, off the Great Canal, called the White Goose. Want to meet there for lunch?”
Molly agreed instantly to the rendezvous. She had no idea who this girl was, but she was starved for friendship. It had been so long since she’d had a normal conversation with anyone other than Quincy. And he only talked about money these days.
Later, when the wine had cleared from her head, and the barge had docked again, and she had made her weary way back through town, she got to the neighborhood of her seedy inn and realized Edderly Street and the White Goose were just around the corner. Did this Vittoria girl know where she was staying? Molly felt uneasy, before deciding it had to be a coincidence. And not really that wild a coincidence, either. Even in a big city like Severn, there were only so many taverns and inns. Especially if you didn’t want to spend too much money.
In any case, she had a short walk to lunch the next day, which was lucky, because it was raining heavily. The canal behind the inn flooded, and fetid brown water filled the common room to a depth of two or three inches. Molly was thrilled to have an excuse to leave for a while.
The White Goose turned out to be a nicer place than its neighborhood would have suggested, with clean tables and good ale and bar girls who looked as if they were there only to serve drinks and not to run a side business of their own, as it were. Vittoria had secured a corner booth and already had a mug waiting for Molly.
“You might as well start by telling me all about yourself,” Vittoria said. “I adore learning about new people. Everyone’s lives are so much more interesting than mine.”
Molly explained how she had grown up around Montgomery, in western Keneshire. She talked about her brother, Quincy, and told how their mother had died of fever eight years earlier. And how their father had died fighting on the Gramiren side of the war two years ago. She declined to mention how desperate she and Quincy had gotten, and she made it sound as if they had come to Severn to have a little fun. It wasn’t entirely the truth, but it was a version of it. A better version, like when a girl made herself up and did her hair and put on her best clothes.
“Now you,” she prompted.
Vittoria smiled and shrugged. “Like I said, my life has been really quite boring. The only interesting thing about me is that I was born in the Empire.”
“Oh, the Empire! I’ve always longed to go there.” All the best of everything—clothes, books, art—came from the Immani.
“Well, that’s where I was born, and that’s the most fascinating thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s a bit depressing to have peaked so early in life, don’t you think? Now I flit from city to city, spending my stepmother’s money and trying to land a titled husband.”
“So, did things go well with your baron last night?” Molly asked.
“As well as could be expected, I suppose.” Vittoria grinned. “Rumor has it you’ve caught someone’s eye, too.”
Molly tried to be discreet. It wasn’t in her nature. “I...may have someone, yes. A certain nobleman wants me to be his mistress.”
“H’m...I heard some rumors as to which nobleman it might be. Indulge my curiosity.”
“I really shouldn’t say...but I will.” Molly leaned over the table and whispered, “It’s Duke Lukas.”
“Rumor has it he’s leaving town soon.”
“Yes, I think he mentioned something about that. He wants me to go on campaign with him this winter.”
“Sounds romantic.” Vittoria nodded. “Well, that would explain why the duchess and her ladies aren’t very nice to you. As if it’s your fault that you’re half her age and twice as pretty.”
“That’s kind of you to say,” Molly said, blushing. “But I’m wondering if I ought to take him up on the offer or not.”
“Why ever not?”
Molly couldn’t bring herself to say that she was a virgin and was nervous about sex. Vittoria seemed very mature and worldly for her age, and Molly didn’t want to look naïve in front of her. So she said, “I’m worried what it will do to my marriage prospects. Men might be put off by my history.”
“I doubt it,” said Vittoria. “When you and the duke end it, you’ll know how to please a man in bed, and you’ll have money of your own. In fact, I think you’ll find there are men who would be flattered that a girl who’d won the heart of a duke would even consider marrying them. On the whole, I’d say your marriage prospects would actually improve.” She winked. “Remember, I read your fortune in your palm. You’re going to find love and have a family. It’s your fate; you can’t escape it.”
Molly wasn’t sure she believed in palm reading, but when she returned to her grubby old inn and sat on the moldering mattress in the dank room, she spent a lot of time considering what Vittoria had said about marriage prospects. The more she thought, the more she was pretty sure the girl was right. Being the mistress of a duke wasn’t like bedding a farm boy or selling herself on a street corner. In many ways, it would raise her status, rather than lower it. Sure, the duchess would continue to hate her. But a lot of those court women would realize Molly had the ear of the most powerful nobleman in the country. They would find it useful to be nice to her. And the men.... The men would watch her at parties, in all the gorgeous clothes and jewelry that Lukas bought her, and they would want her for themselves.
For hours that evening, after Quincy had gone to sleep, she sat in her nightgown, hunched over the half-rotted little desk in their room, trying to compose a letter to Duke Lukas. In the end, however, she decided that simpler was better:
Your grace,
I accept.
Molly
She didn’t trust any messenger that she could afford, so she took the note to the palace herself the next morning. The chamberlain didn’t seem entirely surprised to see her. He took her note up to the duke’s private quarters and came back barely ten minutes later with a reply.
Molly,
You make me quiver with anticipation. Go to the Silver Trout in Aldcaster this afternoon at 3. Say you’re meeting Mr. Herzog. The innkeeper will know what to do.
Yours,
Lukas
It all seemed so exciting and exotic suddenly. Molly liked the name “Herzog,” and thought it might be some literary allusion or the name of some foreign god. Then she asked Quincy what it meant (without explaining why she was asking), and he told her it was the Odelandic word for “duke,” which made her laugh so hard Quincy asked if she had been drinking.
He went off to see some of his friends, hoping against hope that one of them might have found a way to get him a posting. Molly wondered what he would say when he suddenly got an offer to join the duke’s retinue. Would he be happy? Would he be ashamed of her? She didn’t see how she could conceal what she had done to get him the job, especially if Lukas was really serious about this notion of taking her along on his winter campaign. Quincy might not be the brightest candle in the chandelier sometimes, but even he would notice that his sister was sleeping in the duke’s tent.
That was a problem for the future. For now, she had to make herself ready. She paid extra for a bath and washed herself thoroughly until her skin was pink and raw. She put on her very best dress over her last shift and underclothes that didn’t have holes. Then she did her hair, trying a dozen styles before picking a dramatic look that piled most of her long hair on top of her head, accentuating her slim neck. Finally, of course, she put on the necklace he’d given her, and then she walked along the canal and through the city to the Silver Trout Inn.
It was a very fancy place, much nicer than the inn she was currently staying at. But she barely saw the velvet and polished brass and big, sparkling windows. She went upstairs, following the innkeeper. At the end of a long, narrow hall, he unlocked the last door and ushered her through into a sumptuous suite, full of gilded furniture and thick new carpets with hardly any wear.
And Lukas was there, too, already in a dressing gown, and holding two glasses of fortified wine. “That’s a lovely dress,” he said. “Let’s get it off you before we spill something on it.”