5

The Dreadful Secret

We arrived in a prosperous little town just around sunset and followed Harwin to the inn he had recommended, having patronized it with his father. By this time, it had been raining steadily for two hours, and both Harwin and Darius were thoroughly soaked. So was the coachman, I imagined, but Gisele's maid had taken refuge inside the coach the minute the first drops started falling, and I had invited Dannette to join us as well. The four of us passed a rather pleasant afternoon playing cards with a dog-eared deck the maid had in her bag. She was a freckle-faced and friendly girl who didn't seem to understand her place, but I was too lazy to try to stare her down and Dannette wasn't the type to enforce class distinctions. I spent a few moments wondering how much we would have to bribe her to lie about Gisele's death before I realized that such a step wouldn't be necessary. This was a servant Gisele had brought with her when she married; this was a servant loyal to the queen. No doubt she would accompany Gisele as she set off for Newmirot or Amlertay. I felt a little better knowing Gisele would not be completely alone.

"I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you joined us when you did!" Dannette said to Gisele as we prepared to disembark in the courtyard of a very fancy inn, four stories high and faced with white marble. I started to glow with happiness just thinking about the luxuries awaiting us inside. "How lovely to sit in your coach on such an ugly day."

"I am glad that someone appreciates me," Gisele returned with a smile.

"Even I appreciate you today," I said, climbing out after the two of them. The maid clambered down behind me.

"Then I must call the journey a success," Gisele said.

I grinned at her and hurried in. Darius was still outside with the wagon, but Harwin had arrived ahead of us, and I could see he had already dealt with the proprietor. He stood near the front desk, a cluster of keys in his hand, and let water drip from his overcoat to the floor. Oh, surely in such a large hotel we would not all have to cram together in one room!

"The inn is quite full but I have bespoken three rooms," he said, pushing his wet hair from his eyes. "There are bunks in the servants' quarters for the coachman and the maid."

Dannette was glancing at the heavy tapestries on the wall, the brightly woven rug on the floor. "The place looks a little dear for Darius and me," she said quietly.

"I have paid for one room, and the queen's vouchers will cover the other two," Harwin replied, smiling down at her. "You will have a room to yourself for a change."

I mentally populated the remaining two rooms and instantly frowned. "Wait - you and Darius will share quarters, of course, but I should not have to sleep with Gisele," I said.

"And here I thought you had started to hate me a little less," Gisele remarked.

"It's just that - I can't sleep with other people in the room. I would so much like privacy, just for a night."

Harwin's frown was as heavy as mine. "Yet one of them must act as chaperone so that no one takes advantage of you in the night. If you do not want your stepmother, then Dannette must stay with you."

"Oh, let her have the room to herself," Dannette said. "You don't need to worry about Darius accosting her in the middle of the night, but even if he did have such plans, you'll be there to thwart him."

"Yes, Harwin, please, let me have the room."

Dannette laughed and patted me on the shoulder. "You don't have to plead with him. We'll just apportion the chambers as we like. He can hardly force us to rearrange to his taste unless he wants to bodily carry us from bed to bed."

Gisele and I both laughed at that, though Harwin looked embarrassed. "I am merely trying to make sure the princess is treated with the utmost care," he said.

Now Dannette patted him on the arm in the same friendly fashion. "And maybe you'll find that Olivia likes you better if you don't always make such a fuss," she said.

Darius swept through the front door, totally drenched and unrelentingly cheerful. His boots left wet footprints all the way down the hall. "Isn't this fit for royalty!" he exclaimed. "I've never stayed at a place so elegant! I like traveling with the queen."

"Harwin chose it," Gisele said with a laugh. "Not I." Darius rubbed his hands together to warm them. "Then I like traveling with Harwin! Who's hungry? I imagine the dinner here must be outstanding."

* * *

The meal was excellent - and Harwin paid for everyone's dinner, not even bothering to use Gisele's vouchers. I know, because I saw him do it. My room was splendid, heavenly, regal, private, and I even took a real bath in a hammered tin tub. I tumbled into bed and lay in the middle of the mattress, stretching my arms and legs as wide as they would go. I had peeked inside the other two rooms, so I knew that Gisele and Dannette had to share a bed, but Darius and Harwin each had his own. I imagined this would be the best night of sleep any of us had managed so far.

The morning brought sunshine and clear skies and all of us smiling at one another around the breakfast table. "I want to ride with Darius today," I said, for Gisele had been right yesterday. Sitting in the coach with her was not doing much to acquaint me with my betrothed. "Dannette, you can ride with Gisele. It's much more comfortable than the back of the wagon."

"I'm happy to do so, unless the queen prefers solitude."

"The queen prefers any company that is good-natured," Gisele retorted.

"Then Dannette is the one you want," Darius said with a nod. "There's not a mean bone in her body."

Scandals. Accusations in the dead of night. They must not have been crafted from cruelty, then. "Then we're all satisfied," I said. "Let's go."

Harwin was not satisfied, I could tell by his expression, but soon enough we were on our way. As before, Harwin took the lead on his bay gelding, followed by the carriage, followed by the wagon. After yesterday's extraordinarily comfortable coach ride, travel in the wagon was even more torturous, but I was determined not to complain.

"How much farther to your grandmother's house?" I asked as we set out.

"About a day and a half."

"Have you sent her a note? Is she expecting us?"

He laughed. "She knows that I might drop in on her at any time, so in some sense she is always expecting me, but she will be quite astonished to see you."

I smiled. "She didn't think you would marry a princess?"

He rubbed the back of his hand along his jaw. "She didn't think I would ever marry," he said. "I have never been particularly interested in the notion."

"Oh, with your blond curls and your handsome face, you must have had girls falling for you wherever you went," I teased.

He laughed. "I didn't say I wasn't interested in women," he corrected. "It's all the things that belong to marriage that haven't appealed to me."

I was a little deflated at that. "What don't you like about it?" I said.

"I'm not very good at staying in one place," he explained. "Even after a couple of nights, I'm itching to move on. The wagon broke down once just as I was leaving a small town, and it took a week to get it fixed. By that third day, I felt like I'd been shackled in a dungeon for a year. No sunlight, no fresh air. It was an awful time."

"But Darius," I said. "Once I'm queen, I'll need to stay at the palace, conferring with councilors and - well - ruling the kingdom."

"Yes, but not all the time," he said eagerly. "Wouldn't your subjects like it if you traveled around the country, meeting them in the towns and villages where they live?" He fluttered a hand over his shoulder. "We'd travel in something much finer than this, of course. We'd have a carriage like your stepmother's, and we could travel for weeks."

I thought it sounded both exhausting and impractical, but I didn't like to say so outright. Surely once we were married, Darius would see that he would have to give up parts of his old life. He would see how many responsibilities he must assume once he was king. "Well - that does sound delightful. I'm sure I would enjoy getting to know my subjects that way," I said, and was rewarded with Darius's blinding smile. "Perhaps we can take a honeymoon trip all around the kingdom," I added. "People will line up in every small town to greet us - "

But he was shaking his head. "No, no, for our honeymoon we should go to Liston and tour the diamond mines," he said. "You can pick the very stone you want from the bones of the land itself, and I'll chip it out for you and polish it by hand."

I yielded to a moment's worth of romance at the picture, but then - "Isn't Liston very far away?" I asked.

"Two thousand miles," he said with a nod. "Depending on the weather through Amlertay, the journey could take six months each way."

"But I can't be gone for a year!"

He looked surprised. "Why not?"

"I have to be ready to rule if something should happen to my father!"

"He looks pretty healthy to me."

"Even so! He could fall off a horse - or be felled by an assassin - or devoured by wolves - "

"Wolves? At the palace? His fighting dogs, maybe, but not wolves."

Perhaps I was too enamored of the idea of someone getting eaten by wild animals. "The point isn't how he might die. The point is that if something happens to him, I must be available. We must stay within the kingdom for our honeymoon, I'm afraid."

He was silent for a moment, something so rare for Darius that I feared he was angry. I was relieved when, finally speaking, he sounded disappointed instead. "Maybe I should go to Liston by myself one last time before we get married."

Now I was bewildered. "But that would mean we wouldn't be able to marry for at least a year. And I wouldn't see you that whole time."

He nodded. "I know. But I can't bear the thought that I'll never see Liston again."

"Surely you will," I said, having no real idea how to answer that. "Surely we will work it all out."

At that I, too, lapsed into silence. We watched the road ahead of us, lost in our own thoughts, and I imagined we were thinking about two very different futures.

* * *

By noon, the autumn sun was warm enough to make us forget we'd ever been chilly, all of us were hungry, some of us were cranky, and one of Darius's horses had thrown a shoe. Fortunately, we had arrived at a good-sized town with a central square that offered everything we needed at that exact moment: a blacksmith, a butcher shop, and a chance to switch passengers around. There was even a modest fountain in the center of town where Dannette declared she was going to sit so she could splash her face and cool her feet.

"How very common," Gisele said with a laugh.

Dannette had already perched on the edge of the basin and trailed her fingers in the water. She laughed back. "I never pretended to be quality," she replied.

We had left Darius, the coachman, and all the vehicles at the blacksmith's shop. Harwin was eyeing the butcher's storefront, where a sign promised fresh meat, smoked meat, and meat pies. "I will undertake to purchase our luncheon if you ladies would like to stay here," he said, glancing down at Dannette. He added, "Amusing yourselves."

I had spotted lengths of fabric and ribbon in another storefront. "Ooh, let's go look at pretty things," I said to Gisele, tugging her in that direction. "I don't have any money, so you'll have to buy me anything I like."

She followed willingly enough, her maid at her heels, but said, "I thought you were worried about my finances?"

"Oh. That's right. Well, we'll just look at things and feel sad that we can't purchase them."

The shop was small and crowded, with bolts of fabric piled up in no discernible fashion and knots of ribbon covering the walls like the most chaotic and jubilant pattern of wallpaper. Women that I assumed to be the shopkeeper and her daughters darted among the seven or eight customers who were probably the high-ranking gentry of this county. Gisele and I looked bedraggled enough that I was glad we were both plainly dressed; I wouldn't have wanted anyone to recognize me at this juncture. But, aside from giving us speculative glances because we were clearly strangers, no one seemed to notice us.

I strolled between aisles, rubbing the velvet between my fingers and letting the silk pour through my hands like falling water. "Look at this blue," I said to Gisele as I unwrapped a few inches of a cobalt-colored wool. "Wouldn't I like a cape made of this!"

She had been right behind me up till this point, but somehow I had lost her attention. "Olivia," she said, staring out the window. "Someone's approached Dannette, and she looks afraid."

That brought me right across the shop so I, too, could peer outside and see that two men had accosted Dannette. It was clear she had made good her promise to cool off in the fountain, because the front of her dress was spattered with water and her shoes lay on the ground. One of the men had hold of her shoulder, the other was leaning down and shouting in her face, and Gisele was right: She looked afraid.

"Where's her brother?" I demanded as I charged for the door.

Gisele grabbed my arm. "You can't endanger yourself - Olivia, you are too valuable to go brawling - "

I gave her one incredulous look, broke free, and raced outside. Behind me I heard the rising murmur of women's excited voices, and the sound of Gisele's footsteps as she followed. "Get Darius!" I called over my shoulder.

But that wasn't necessary.

I didn't see where he came from, but suddenly Harwin was on the scene, crashing into the interlopers and sending one cartwheeling to the ground. Gisele caught me from behind and held me in place, while her maid grabbed one of my arms. Nonetheless, we were close enough to hear the other man's oath as he whirled around to confront his assailant. Harwin already had a sword drawn and a look of menace on his face. He appeared to have shoved Dannette into the fountain to get her out of the way, for she was splashing around in the water, dripping from head to toe.

"Step away! Leave this young woman in peace!" Harwin thundered.

"You wouldn't be defending her if you knew what kind of soiled goods she was!" shouted the man who had been knocked to the ground. Unfortunately, he was now on his feet.

"I would defend any woman, no matter how debased, from someone as contemptible as you," Harwin snarled in reply.

I had to admit, that surprised me a little. That he would say such a thing, and about a woman he scarcely knew - and that his size, posture, and attitude indicated he would be able to make good his boast.

"Would you?" sneered the other man, and then he leaned in to hiss some kind of accusation in Harwin's ear. I noticed that Dannette, floundering about with her wet skirts, suddenly grew very still.

Whatever he said didn't impress Harwin unduly. With his free hand, he shoved the man hard in the chest, knocking him into his unsavory companion. "Leave her in peace," he said. "Now, unless you truly want to contest her virtue against my sword."

The two men growled a few more insults but slouched away, glancing back over their shoulders twice. Half turned to watch them leave, Harwin extended his free hand to Dannette to help her out of the fountain. I shook off my captors and ran over to Harwin just as Darius came racing up from the stables. In a moment, we were all huddled together around Dannette, and Darius was stripping off his jacket to put it around her shivering shoulders. Only then did I realize that we had gathered a small audience of townspeople, standing in the corners of the square and peering out from the surrounding storefronts. All of my companions ignored them, so I did, too.

"What happened? Who were those men?" Darius demanded.

Dannette gave him one despairing look. It was an unfamiliar expression to see on a face that was usually so merry. "They were from Borside," she said.

It was a town toward the western edge of the kingdom. I supposed it couldn't be far from where we were now.

"They recognized me," she went on in a halting voice, "and they said things - "

Darius looked around in swift fury. "Where did they go? I'll turn them both into toads."

"No!" she cried, and grabbed his arm. "Harwin was here to defend me, and I don't want to cause any more uproar. Let's just go."

His arm still in Danette's grip, Darius gave Harwin a stiff little bow. "If there was ever a debt between us, it is canceled now," he said with unwonted formality. "Thank you for coming to my sister's aid."

Harwin shrugged. "Any man would have done the same. This erases no imbalance between us."

"To me it does," Darius said.

"Let us discuss who owes whom at some later date in more privacy," Gisele interposed. "Come. Let's gather all our conveyances and go."

Darius was unwilling to be separated from Dannette, and I did not want to intrude on her unhappiness, so we completely redistributed ourselves. We swathed Dannette in a cloak and bundled her into the coach, Darius beside her. Harwin parceled out the meat pies he had just bought for all of us, then took the reins of the wagon. Gisele rode Harwin's horse.

I sat beside Harwin, getting to know the wrong potential bridegroom.

But I didn't mind because I was dying to ask him a few questions.

"How do you know how to drive a wagon?" were the first words out of my mouth.

He was negotiating around a narrow turn, the last little kink in the road before we were able to leave this benighted town behind, but he had attention to spare to cast me a sardonic look. "Why wouldn't I be able to? It's no harder than driving a team, and you know I keep my own stables."

"Well - but - I never thought about it," I said.

"Imagine how surprised I am," he said dryly.

I bounced a little on the hard seat. "What did those men say to you?" I demanded. "Did they tell you whatever Dannette's dreadful secret is?"

"I suppose."

"What is it? Tell me."

He gave me another look, this one considering and troubled. "I'm not sure it's my place to repeat it."

"Are you going to make me ask her?"

He thought it over and then, in a voice completely devoid of emotion, he said, "It seems that when she lived in Borside, Dannette was found in a compromising situation - with another woman. There was a scandal because the girl was the daughter of a prominent local lord. Apparently this was not the first time Dannette had been known to take women as intimate companions."

It took me a moment to comprehend exactly what he meant with his delicate phrasing. Then I said, "So?> She prefers women. Who cares?"

I could tell I had surprised him, but I didn't know why. "You seem singularly free of shock," he said. "You live a life so sheltered that I would have thought you would find the concept hard to grasp and perhaps revolting."

I shrugged. "My father's apothecary and her assistant have been sharing quarters since I was born," I said. "And there are days I like them better than anyone else at the palace. But I don't see why anyone would care - me or you or those men who assaulted Dannette or anybody."

"No," Harwin said, clucking to the horses to encourage them to improve their speed, if only a little, "neither do I."

"I would have thought you would be even more conventional than I am," I said. "And yet, you don't seem offended."

He considered a moment. I had always found it irritating that he often paused to think over his replies, but now I found myself respecting his unwillingness to give an easy or incomplete answer. "I have seen too much damage caused by individuals who were certain that theirs were the only ideas with merit," he said at last. "It has engendered in me a passionate desire to extend tolerance to anyone who does not seem to be harming anyone else by his or her actions. I am not always quick to adopt new or unfamiliar behaviors - but I am slow to condemn them."

I sat back against the bench. "But that's admirable!" I exclaimed. "Why do you say it so apologetically?"

I thought I caught the faintest trace of humor on his face. "Perhaps because you dislike so many of my opinions that I always feel apologetic when I am talking to you."

I felt a hot blush spread over my face. "No - not that - well - I think perhaps I have not always extended tolerance to you," I said in a rush.

"You think me dull and lumpish, and you think that being married to me would seem like a lifetime sentence in prison," he said calmly.

"No!" I exclaimed, feeling even worse. Because of course he was exactly right - except it didn't seem quite so true as it once had. "It's just that - perhaps I am silly and shallow, as Gisele has said - "

"But you're twenty-one and you think life should offer a little excitement and romance," he said, nodding as if that was a perfectly legitimate expectation. "And I do not seem to embody those traits."

I didn't know how to answer that, so I unwrapped my meat pie and took the first bite. Neither of us made the obvious remark. Darius embodies both those traits, and quite beautifully, too.

"Well," Harwin said, clucking at the horses one more time, "perhaps this trip will give you as much excitement and romance as you can handle, and then you might assess how much of it you really want in your life."

I thought he was probably right on both counts.

* * *

We didn't stop again until nearly nightfall, when Gisele circled back for us on Harwin's horse. We had long ago lost sight of the faster carriage, but Gisele had moved between the two vehicles a couple of times during the afternoon. By the pleased expression on her face, I could tell she relished the freedom of riding in the open air.

"Darius has found an inn for the night. It's not very big, so there might not be three open bedrooms - but he's reserved a private dining room," she told us. The chill afternoon wind had whipped color into her face and she looked very pretty. I wondered how my father could prefer Mellicia to Gisele. "I think he doesn't want to expose Dannette to any more chance travelers who might recognize her."

Harwin glanced around. We were in farm country now, and no mistake. Stretching in every direction for limitless miles were flat, brown fields filled with the dying clutter of harvested crops. "Might there be many people here who know her?"

Gisele nodded. "His grandmother's house is half a day's ride away, he says."

"I thought he couldn't afford a private dining room," I piped up.

Gisele looked genuinely amused. "I think he's found a way to pay for it."

Indeed, twenty minutes later, after we'd found the quaint little inn, turned our horses over to the grooms, and strolled inside, we found Darius in the taproom performing tricks. He turned one man's hound into a tomcat and then changed it back. He passed his fingers over a woman's dull gray hair and made it a vibrant gold, not neglecting to make her eyebrows match. He waved his hand over the back wall of the taproom, and it ran with vivid autumn colors, cranberry, then ochre, then frosted pumpkin. The patrons were murmuring their delight, while the proprietor stood behind his bar, nodding and smiling. It certainly looked like a performance that merited some remuneration in return.

"The servants are already settled in the kitchen, but we're down this way," Gisele said, leading us through a narrow hallway to a small, smoky room. The ceilings were low and the paneling was so dark as to create an air of foreboding, but the prospect of a private meal among the five of us made the room seem welcoming and warm. Dannette was pacing between the table and the far wall, a matter of about six steps, and she turned jerkily to face us as we stepped through the door.

Afraid of what Harwin might think of her, afraid of how much he had told me, afraid of how she might be judged.

I crossed the room to kiss her on the cheek. Then I took hold of both her shoulders and held her at arm's length to inspect her. The look on her face was one of profound relief, and she couldn't quite keep the tears from spilling over.

"You should have told me," I said. "All this time I was thinking how you might make the perfect wife for Harwin, and now I have to abandon those excellent plans."

She laughed a little too long at such a feeble joke, and it was clear she was still feeling shaky. She accepted Gisele's hug with melting gratitude, but continued to watch me over the queen's shoulder. "I don't know that I trust your judgment in matters of the heart so much that I would let you pick someone out for me," she said, attempting to tease in return.

"She is singularly blind to both good and bad qualities in other people," Harwin agreed. "But now and then she allows her natural intelligence to assert itself, so I don't quite despair of her."

I gave him a mock scowl, though I thought his assessment was fairly accurate. "I'm hungry," was all I said. "I hope Darius ordered food before he went off to astonish the masses with magic."

"I believe he did," Dannette said, wiping her eyes and attempting to restore herself to her usual state of sunny serenity. Just then the servants' door opened, and two scrawny young housemaids stepped in, bearing platters. "And here it is."

There was the usual jumble of scraping chairs and bumping bodies as the servants set the table and we found our seats. Gisele asked Harwin something about driving the wagon and he answered, while Dannette began pouring water into all our glasses.

And the whole time, I sat there determinedly keeping a smile on my face, while I felt as though my stomach had been opened up by a rough hand and scraped out with a jagged blade.

How could I feel so relieved at the notion that there was no chance Dannette might fall in love with Harwin?

* * *

Oddly, that mediocre dinner in the cramped room of a slightly run-down roadside inn was the most delightful evening I had spent with this group of travelers so far. I couldn't exactly tell why. Maybe it was because Dannette was so grateful to be relieved of the burden of her secret among people who did not think it was such a shameful thing. Maybe it was because surviving a threat brings you closer to anyone with whom you've shared it. Maybe it was because Darius was in high spirits, or I was, or Gisele was, for the three of us laughed a great deal, while the other two smiled at us benignly.

Maybe it was because, for no real reason that I understood, I suddenly had an overwhelming sense that each person in this room was in some way a dearest friend. Even Harwin. Even Gisele.

I didn't even mind that there were only two rooms available to the five of us. I made Gisele and Dannette share the bed while I piled pillows and blankets on the floor. A hard night's rest, but at least there was no thrashing bedmate to contend with.

Dannette's nightmares did wake me up once, sometime in the dead of night. It took me a moment to remember where I was and why I lay on such an uncomfortable bed. While I was working it out, I heard Gisele's voice, soft and comforting in the dark. Everything is all right. You're safe here. You're with friends.

And since that was true for me as well, I instantly fell back to sleep.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***