chapter III
E VEN WHEN I WAS HEALTHY AGAIN, MY UNCLE’S manservant still came to see me. Marcus liked to read, it seemed. He brought me a book of poems and wondered if we might discuss them.
“It’s a new movement,” he said. “The scholars are all mad for it; they think it mixes sentiment with science.”
I did try. The new poetry seemed to have a lot to do with spheres: the motions of the heavens and the motions of the heart. But I’d never learned much about the motions of the heavens, except by observation. I thought of the glittering night skies at Highcombe, the keen air and the silence by the fire. I looked at the words on the page, and felt too defeated to keep at it.
Nothing was said about sword lessons, so I practiced on my own. The hall outside my room was long and no one much seemed to come there; after a while, Betty got used to checking before she turned the corner. I began not only to drill, but to construct opponents in my mind and fight my shadow self. Sometimes their style was like the master’s, as he was the best I knew. I wondered what it would be like to fight Venturus now. Sometimes I played that game, and then I always won.
I went out a lot, wrapped in coat and scarf and hat. Most people made Ginnie’s mistake, calling me “sir” because they could see nothing of me but clothes and sword. I did not have cause to draw it again; with the duke’s men so thick about the place, Riverside was not what it had been in the master’s day. There were guards and footmen and messengers in livery, but not all the duke’s people wore the Tremontaine silver and green. On the streets I recognized men I had seen in the house, and knew they were about Tremontaine’s business. Just what that business was I only got inklings of from Betty; it was all a lot of names I didn’t recognize, and money, and veiled threats, and threats enforced. When I mentioned Ginnie to her, Betty said, “Poor thing. You stay away from that Ginnie Vandall. She knows how to make herself useful, but not to you.” I didn’t ask her any more; none of it made sense, anyway. It was all my uncle the duke’s business, not mine.
M ARCUS BROUGHT ME A GOLD-CHASED CLASP.
“What’s this?”
“It’s for your hair. If you’re going to go around with hair like a student, you should at least do what they do, and tie it back.”
It was too rich to be a gift from Marcus. “Is it one of his?”
“He won’t miss it.”
“I don’t want it.”
Marcus grinned. “I thought you might say that.” He fished a bit of crumpled black ribbon from his pocket. “Here. Try this.”
Without looking in a mirror, I pulled the hair back from my face and tied it.
“Where are you going, anyway, Kate?”
“I don’t know. Out.”
“You could get lost down here.”
“I’ve been out. I always find my way back. It’s not as though everyone doesn’t know where this place is.”
“True.” He went over to the windows, started scraping patterns in the frost with his fingernail. “Last year, the river froze solid and we skated under the bridge.”
“I can skate. We skate on the duck pond, at home.”
“That’s right, you’re from the country. I’ve only been once. Hated it.”
“Why?”
He frowned. “Too noisy.”
I had to laugh. “Riverside’s not noisy?”
“Well…” Marcus scraped spirals around spirals. “But the noise here is—it’s only people. You know where you are.”
I said, “They never sleep. I hear them at all hours of the night. I woke up, went to my window last night, and there were men staggering by with torches.”
Marcus shrugged. “The duke gives parties. It’s different, here, from on the Hill. Especially in winter. The rooms here are smaller. Do you want to see?”
“Explore the house? I thought—I thought I was supposed to keep out of his way.”
“Did you?” He turned his plain face and brown, open gaze to me. “I don’t have any orders.”
He did it a little too well. I thought suddenly, Oh, you do too have orders. The duke’s personal servant wouldn’t be spending free time with me because he wanted to. I wondered, was he supposed to find out if I was mad or vengeful? To keep me distracted? To cheer me up?
“Show me your room,” I commanded. “You’ve been in mine. Now show me yours.”
A hundred years ago, when I was a girl at home, I would never have invaded a servant’s privacy. But in the Mad Duke’s house, who Marcus was and what I was were not so clearly delineated. And if Marcus was spying on me, I wanted some parity.
“If you like.” My rudeness did not seem to bother him. But he was used to my uncle’s whimsies.
Some of the halls were white and new; others were strings of little old chambers, paneled in worm-eaten wood. As we passed from house to house what was under our feet changed, too: some floors were stone, some wood, some tile. There were steps and doorways to mark the passages, but you had to watch for the sudden shifts. The sounds of the street were muffled here, and there were closed doors everywhere. Once, though, we burst into the light of a gallery which ran the length of a courtyard in which people were drawing water from an old stone well.
I was fairly certain that Marcus was taking me the long way round to his quarters. I couldn’t blame him.
In a hall with diamond-paned windows, he stopped at a tall dark door.
“Here.”
I had expected a small room under the eaves, or at least at the top of the simplest of stairs, whitewashed and minimally furnished. Marcus’s room was larger than mine. The walls were polished oak, hung with contemporary landscapes and a couple of maps. There was a row of books, and a jet-and-ivory shesh set on a table by the window seat. The bed was new, as well, with good woolen hangings and a huge feather quilt, puffed almost to perfect symmetry at the corners.
I couldn’t say any of the things I was thinking.
There were thick cushions on the window seat. Marcus plopped himself down on one, utterly comfortable. The richness of the room did not embarrass him, nor my conjectures about his special status with the duke. Which could, of course, be wrong—
“Do you play shesh?” he asked.
“Only a little. I know the moves, but I’m not very good.”
“Sit down,” he said. “You’ll get better if you play more.”
I sat. He put a black and a white peon in either fist, and I picked for color and first move, and then we started to play. He watched me carefully, like a swordsman. It made me nervous, but I pretended to ignore it.
A blow on heavy wood made the sheshmen shiver. Through thickness of wall I heard a scream. I’d missed the other door to the room—bad observation, always dangerous, my master reminded me. Marcus just sat there, swinging his foot. He wasn’t pretending not to hear, but his only response was a little smile. There was a shout, and yet another crash on the other side of the door.
“I’ve got the room next to his,” he explained.
“Really?”
“In case he needs anything.”
It sounded as though someone had just dropped a sheet of glass. I put my hand on my knife, I couldn’t help it. “Do you think he might—need anything now?”
Marcus shook his head. “Naw. It’s just Raffaela. She gets mad when he lies on the floor and laughs at her. Then she starts throwing things, and then he does.” I jumped as another one hit. “I wish he wouldn’t. He’s always sorry afterward. He doesn’t really like things to get broken.”
You wouldn’t guess from the sound of it. “I thought he didn’t like women,” I ventured.
Marcus righted a shesh piece that had fallen over. “At this point, I’m not sure he can really tell the difference.”
“Oh.” They were making a lot of noise. “Doesn’t he ever stop?”
“Not since you came back. He’s been taking a lot of stuff, smoke and all, plus drinking. I have the feeling,” Marcus said, carefully positioning a piece in the exact middle of its square, “that he did not really have a very nice time at Highcombe.”
Now I understood. That was why he was sticking so close to me. Marcus wanted to know what had happened to the duke.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I was asleep through most of it. And I got sick.”
Marcus nodded. “So did you know he’d brought young Davenant and two friends down with him for Year’s End? Brought them, and abandoned them there in the Great Hall. Dark and freezing. No fire, no food, no beds, no light. They had to find their own way back to town.” He shrugged. “Of course, they should have known better than to go with him. Probably they did. That seems to be what draws them. Now Davenant’s father has sent him a nasty letter, and Galing’s lawyer is requesting damages. Which is very stupid; it’ll be all over town how the duke made fools of them. People do talk.”
Something was beginning to make sense to me. “Is that why he does it?” I asked slowly. “Because no matter how badly he behaves, no matter what he does, he always gets other people to be worse? Or to feel as if they were?”
Marcus looked at me as though I were suddenly more interesting than the sheshmen. “I think so. But something at Highcombe made him feel bad. I didn’t think it was Petrus Davenant.”
I thought of the duke’s face, lit by a tentative wonder and by the Year’s End fire.
“No. I don’t think it was.”
“Marcus!” It was the duke shouting. “Marcus—show the lady out!”
“Oh, no.” Marcus shook himself. “Not me. Last time I took hold of that one, she got me. She scratches. I’m calling the guards; they’re dressed for it.”
I sat alone in the middle of the sun-drenched room. Pointless to try to ignore what I could hear clearly enough: the woman screaming, “Bastard! Bastard! I hate you!” and the old wall shuddering as something struck it. I stood by the door, wondering how tiny a crack I could make opening it, but not quite willing to do it for fear of what I would see. “I’m not some nobody, you know! Who’s good enough for you, bastard, if I’m not?”
I closed my eyes, listening in the dark as my master had taught me. The duke tripped over something, fell hard and cursed.
I thought suddenly, I’m training to be his guard. Should I rush in there? Would I be expected to stand watch over these—proceedings, someday? I snorted. What could I do with his discarded mistresses, skewer them from a standing thrust?
Then Marcus arrived with real guards, and I heard how it went. Definitely a job for someone else.
At last the next room was quiet, and Marcus sat back down on the window seat.
“Is she beautiful?” I asked.
“She’s a singer. Famous, I think. Anyway, he heard her at a party, and next thing you know…!”
“What happened to Alcuin?”
“Who? Oh, him. Gone. Right after you, actually. He was a piece of work.”
Marcus took a pear from a bowl, and handed me another. We ate in silence, then I said, “Let’s go out.”
Marcus shook his head. “Can’t. He might need me.”
I looked around at the luxurious room with its many diversions. “Do you want me to stay?” I tried not to let my reluctance show. “We could finish the game.”
But to my boundless relief, he said, “No, better not. There’ll be a lot of cleaning up to do.”
“Don’t the chambermaids…?”
“That’s not what I meant. You go on, Kate. Have you tried the pies at Martha’s yet?”
I felt myself dismissed, but was not sad to go.
L ADY ARTEMISIA FITZ-LEVI, INTENDED BRIDE OF Anthony Deverin, Lord Ferris, sat alone in her window seat with papers spread all over her lap, drawing up lists for her betrothal party. Her mother had tried to help her, and she had chased her mother out, certain she could do a better job herself. But it was harder than it looked, these questions of seating and decorating and precedence.
She was relieved when Dorrie told her Lucius Perry was at the door, and she admitted her cousin at once. He leaned over to kiss her cheek. “Congratulations, my lady! You’ve taken the prize, and no mistake. Everyone is pleased as the devil.” He looked at her strained face. “But how are you?”
“Taxed,” she said. “Lucius, I used to think all our friends were so agreeable, but here’s Petrus Davenant and Albright Galing barely speaking to each other.”
“Betrothal has sobered you up, I see.” He sank gracefully into the chair by the window. “How sweet of you to be worrying about two unattached young men.”
“Well, they used to be attached to each other, everyone knows that. And I wanted to invite them both to my betrothal party, as they’re so amusing, but now if one of them is in the room, the other leaves it.”
“Oh.” Lucius Perry fiddled with his cuff. “That.”
“Are you going to tell me, or are you just going to work at that buttonhole until you ruin it?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “If you invite only one it must be Petrus Davenant, because his father is an associate of Lord Ferris, and if you invite Alb Galing, old Davenant won’t come.”
“I know that, goose. I just want to know why.”
“Because Dav’s father is going around telling everyone Alb corrupted his son.”
“The hypocrite!”
“Not because they were ‘attached,’ but because the attachment led Dav to everyone’s favorite opponent of all that is good and decent, the Mad Duke Tremontaine.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh. It all came to a head when the Mad Duke dumped them both in the country at Year’s End, leaving them to get home by themselves.”
“My mother would say it served them right. I should think Dav’s father would be pleased.”
“My dear Artemisia, try to see the full picture. It’s political as well as personal: Lord Davenant and the duke are adversaries in Council, and Petrus Davenant knew it perfectly well when he took up with him.” Artemisia gave him what she hoped was a knowing eye, but Lucius Perry was looking out the window. “It’s the old story: boy comes to city, boy disobliges family, family hears about it, ructions ensue. Dav was lucky to have someone else to blame.”
“Dear me!” Artemisia leaned forward in a rustle of striped taffeta, her papers forgotten. “I imagine Albright Galing doesn’t think so. Is this politics? I suppose I am going to have to learn all about it, if I am to run Lord Ferris’s household, and throw parties and all. Now…explain to me again just who hates who, and why?”
A S THE WINTER WENT ON, MARCUS AND I WORKED on our shesh. I was never going to beat him, but at least we could have a good game, now. If letting someone else get ahead is cheating, he cheated: sometimes I’d feel him watching me as I went move after move in the direction I’d planned, and just when I was congratulating myself, he’d swoop down with something that confounded all my strategies. I didn’t mind, though. It was only a game. I had a real dueling partner, now: a sober young swordsman named Phillip Drake, who turned out also to have studied with Venturus.
Phillip demanded that I practice even more. He showed me no mercy in our bouts, and was always very happy to point out what I’d done wrong and what I might do to improve on it. When I did well, he only asked for more. As there was little else for me to do with my time, I practiced hard between lessons. I grew less and less tired at the end of our grueling bouts, and Phillip Drake had less and less to criticize. He said I had a long way to go, still, before he’d be happy contemplating me actually dueling a real opponent—“You’re not as good as all that yet,” he’d say; “but every once in a while, you do something…”
I did not tell him St Vier had been my other teacher, but he usually knew when I was departing from the ways of Venturus. When I broke through his guard, he’d stop, whistle, shake his head and say, “Well, it works, I guess. It isn’t stylish, but it works.”
B ECAUSE I WAS OFTEN WITH MARCUS I DID SEE MORE of the duke, who required him to be close by where he could find him. And so I saw my uncle drunk and otherwise incapacitated, and I also saw him doing very normal things like going over accounts and dictating letters and approving dinner menus and ordering new curtains. He never spoke to me of Highcombe, or of swordplay, or much else. He tended to treat me like some friend of Marcus’s who had dropped in for a visit and might as well make herself useful while she was there. I helped Marcus to run errands, and began to learn my way around the house and around the city. I also took his lead on when to disappear; there were certain moments in Tremontaine’s life, and certain visitors to the Riverside house, that no one was invited to witness.
We were sitting in the hallway outside a very splendid room hung in shades of azure and violet silk. That room always gave the impression of dusk, like twilight over a mountainside. We sat out in a sunlit embrasure, waiting for Marcus to be called for, and played knucklebones; Marcus didn’t seem to know it was only a game for girls and was quite good at it.
A slightly built man with sleek black hair and fashionable clothes brushed softly past us on his way to the twilit room. Despite his finery, he moved like someone who knew how not to be noticed; he looked like a very stylish otter, swimming through the halls. So I looked hard at him, seeing the nice rings, the soft shoes, the very fine velvet and very wrinkled linen and the hair a little long, clearly tended to stay just that way. Hands that he held very still, even while he waited at the door to be admitted. I looked, and it occurred to me that I had seen him somewhere else, if only I could remember where.
“Who’s that?” I whispered to Marcus.
“Who do you think?” When the young man had safely closed the door behind him, Marcus elaborated, “It’s one of his fancy-boys. From Glinley’s.”
“Glinley’s what?”
Marcus cleaned dirt from under his fingernail, saying casually, “Glinley’s Establishment of Try-and-Guess…. Well, why would you know, a nice girl like you? It’s the finest brothel in Riverside. That fellow comes here once a week to pay a little visit. They won’t be long.” I stared at the door. “I like the way he looks harmless, don’t you? But my dear, he is riddled with vice. He takes money for engaging in sexual congress with strangers. Are you shocked? Say you are shocked, Katie.”
“Shut up, Marcus,” I said automatically; but then, because I really did want to hear more, “I am shocked, I guess. But not because of that. I don’t think he’s really a—one of those brothel people. He’s a nobleman. I’ve seen him before.”
“Re-eally? Where?”
His drawl made me giggle. “You can’t imagine who you sound like.”
“What do you mean?”
But I did not have to answer him, because the door opened and the young man stepped out, his linen a little less disheveled. His back to us, his hand on the doorframe, he bowed into the room and said one word: “Tremontaine.”
Then I knew where I’d seen him.
I clutched Marcus’s sleeve, but said nothing because the man was turning towards us as he closed the door. I lowered my head and busied myself picking up knucklebones so he would not see and recognize me. He had laughed at me at my friend Artemisia’s, when I went to her for help. Maybe it was his fault she’d never answered my letter. Maybe he was her brother, or one of her beaux. If so, she had no idea what he truly was.
It was Marcus who spoke up, bold as brass. In the duke’s house, he feared nothing. “Do you need help, sir, finding the way out?”
“I know the way,” he said mildly.
“Can I summon you a chair?”
The man’s voice smiled. “I’ll walk, thank you.”
He turned down the hall away from us. As soon as he turned a corner, “What’s his name?” I hissed in my friend’s ear.
“I don’t know it. Shall we ask the duke?”
“No! I’m going to follow him.”
“You’re what? Why? Katie, whatever is the matter with you? Why are we whispering?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
I noted which corridor the man turned down, and left the house by another door where I could see him leave and catch his direction. Marcus was right behind me. I gave him a Go back! glare, but he just grinned.
Our man crossed the Bridge into the lower city. It was a warm day for winter and the city stank. But dipping and dodging the people and puddles behind the mysterious man sent me back to the stalks with the master, the green green fields and trees, the silver sky, the cool wind’s breathing and the musky deer waiting. It was strange to be in both at the same time. We left the docks behind, heading for the newer part of the city. The wider streets, more light, more air, made it harder to stay in the shadows, but there were more people and distractions to hide amongst.
Our young man went quickly. He seemed used to walking, and he knew his route well. He never checked behind him, and he did not stop to look at anything or to shop. Marcus stayed just behind me, only sometimes reaching out a hand to caution when I started to move forward too fast. It was hard not to be distracted by the shops with their displays and tantalizing smells; here was a part of the city I’d never seen before, and I liked it very much. We seemed to be heading toward the Hill, though; perhaps he was leading us to his noble family’s house, and then what? Maybe even back to Artemisia’s…? But, no. He turned down a side street full of pretty little houses and gardens.
Marcus and I fell back on the quiet street, and sank into a doorway when our quarry stopped suddenly before a little gate. He had the key. We watched him slide it from inside his jacket, look up and down the street, then turn it in the lock, and slip like an afterthought through the gate and into the house.
We shot down an alley around the back. There was a garden wall, with a fruit tree limb hanging tantalizingly overhead. “Boost me up. I think I can—” But the tree branch wouldn’t hold me, and I tumbled ingloriously back to earth, smudged with whitewash from the wall.
“You have to go over the top,” Marcus said, uncharacteristically dancing with impatience. “Country girl, climbing trees. Anyone can see you’ve never tried to break into a house before.”
“Don’t come all Riverside with me,” I growled. “You never have either, and I’ve skinned my palm.” He produced a clean handkerchief. “Do you want to try again?”
“Not now,” he said. “Maybe at night would be more…”
“Discreet?”
“Just so.”
We noted the house, and started back downhill.
“That was fun,” said Marcus, brushing whitewash off his knees. “Now are you going to tell me why we did it?”
“Marcus…do you remember that day, my first day on the Hill when you found me all lost and took me back home? I’d gone to see a girl I met at the duke’s party, a girl my age who was there on a dare or something. When I went to visit her, that man was there, sitting in her day room. He said something nasty about Tremontaine House, I remember now.”
“Did he? What a nerve. He’s been coming there since last year, at least. And I don’t see signs of him finding it especially nasty.”
“Perhaps we ought to warn her. If he’s a relative, or he’s even courting her…don’t you think she’d need to know he’s doing this?”
“Living in a house near the Hill? It’s not an outrage, that.”
“First of all, we aren’t sure he lives here, he’s just got a key. Second, you know that’s not what I meant. If I were betrothed to someone who worked at Glinley’s, I’d want to know it!”
He said, “Oh, I’m sure it won’t come to that. Your uncle’s weird, but he’s not that weird.” I ignored this. “Is your friend betrothed to him?”
“She’s something to him, or he wouldn’t have been with her that day. Maybe he’s her brother, I don’t know. But I think it’s important. You’re sure,” I demanded, “about Glinley’s?”
“Oh, yes.”
“But are you sure about what he does there? Maybe he just does—other business.”
“There is no other business at Glinley’s.” Marcus was smug. “I’m sure.”
“But why would he work there if he didn’t have to?”
“Maybe he does have to. Or maybe he’s just bored,” Marcus said airily, sounding more like the duke than ever, “and too lazy to relieve it any other way.”
“Lazy? You think that’s lazy?”
“Of course. Or he would take the trouble to learn something new. As we have. Everyone already knows how to copulate.”
We had to be quiet while some people passed us: other servants, carrying baskets and looking harried.
“Well, why would he go all the way down to Riverside to do it?” I persisted.
“Glinley’s,” Marcus explained importantly, “is a very particular establishment. It is expensive, and caters to specialized tastes.”
I did not know what he meant, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. “Then I’m surprised the duke doesn’t live there,” I said tartly.
“He doesn’t need to. He’s part owner. Our man was bringing him his share of the take.”
I drew breath hissing in between my teeth. “That’s disgusting.” We were passing into the part of the city with all the lovely shops in it. “Marcus,” I said suddenly, “do you have any money on you?”
“A little. Why?”
“Could we go in somewhere and eat cakes? And drink chocolate?”
“We could.”
“Well, I want to.”
He said, “People are going to take you for an actress.”
I looked down at my legs, encased in breeches and high boots. “As long as they let actresses drink chocolate, I don’t mind.”
We found a place called the Blue Parrot where they served us excellent cakes. When we’d eaten and drunk all we could afford, we went to the Ramble by the river and watched children running races with hobbyhorses. Then we were hungry again, and bought gingerbread with some coins I found in the bottom of my jacket pocket. We watched a trained dog jump through hoops, and heard a fiddler playing “Maiden’s Fancy,” and whistled it all the way home.
The duke met us on the stairs of the Riverside house. He looked sober and displeased. “Do you have any idea what time it is? No, I suppose you were off courting murder and mayhem, and couldn’t be bothered to wonder whether any was occurring at home.”
“We went out for gingerbread.” I offered him the bag. He took a piece and ate it.
“Well, I’ve been calling all over for you,” he said, licking powdered cinnamon off his fingers. “I can’t find my—” For the first time, he looked fully at Marcus. “Why is there dirt on your knees?”
Marcus looked down. “I dropped my money. When we were buying the gingerbread. I had to pick it up.”
“Oh? And did Lady Katherine drop hers, too?”
My own breeches had a smear of whitewash from the wall we’d climbed, plus mud from where I fell. “I was helping.”
“Nice try.” The duke was smiling with the pleasure undoing a knotty problem gave him. “But a couple more questions, asked of you independently, and your whole story would unravel. You see—” he crouched down so he wasn’t towering over us—“it’s not street dirt, for one thing; it’s whitewash and garden mud. Your palms are scratched. And this is Robertson gingerbread, with the cinnamon, and that is not sold on the street.”
I felt at once very annoyed, and thrilled with the sort of challenge that a good swordfight gave me. “Some boys knocked us down and ran off.”
Amused, the duke’s eyes glowed green deep behind his crinkled features. “The gingerbread bag was closed at the time? And where did they push you down?”
“On the West Bank,” Marcus said, “by the river.”
The duke unfolded himself back up to his full height. “It is very annoying, I know,” he drawled, “to have to account for all your time to someone older than you are. Very annoying. But I take care to be an annoying person.”
“I give you my word,” I said earnestly, as I had heard my brothers do when they’d been caught out, “we didn’t do anything—”
“Gingerbread,” Marcus overrode me coolly. “Katie told you.”
Tremontaine’s hand flashed out and gripped his shoulder. The sudden movement had sent my hand to my swordhilt; I admired my friend’s ability not to flinch. “Marcus,” he said, “I had a visitor this afternoon. You offered to fetch him a chair, and then you disappeared.”
“He didn’t want the chair. If you heard me asking, you heard what he said back.”
“Katherine, please take your hand from your sword. It’s a bad habit to get into; it makes people think you’re about to start a fight.”
I saw Marcus press his lips against the sharp grip on his shoulder. But I took my hand from my hilt; I did, indeed, know better than that.
“Do you know this man’s name?”
“No,” I said, and the duke lessened his grip on Marcus and turned to me.
“Then why did you follow him?”
I looked at Marcus; Marcus looked at me.
“You were seen,” the duke said, “leaving the house after him.”
I shrugged. “We lost him in the city.”
“I’m going to ask you again. Why did you follow him?”
I drew in my breath, opened my mouth to ask him the questions only he could answer—and then I shut it again. He had plenty of his own secrets already. This one was ours. “For a test,” I said. “I’m learning to be a swordsman. This is part of it.”
“Did Master Drake assign you this test?”
“No.” I stared him in the eyes, telling him where I had learned it, and from whom.
The duke looked away. “Well, then,” he said. “If you lost him so easily, you’d better practice harder. Just not on my guests, that’s all.”
We started to turn away, but the duke’s voice stopped us, hard and serious. “Understand this, both of you, about people who come to this house. Their business is my business. Their secrets are my secrets. Stalk whom you like, but not my guests. Like just about everyone in the city but you, it seems, that man is not supposed to be here. It would go very ill for him if anyone outside this house learned of his presence here. Do you understand?”
Marcus looked down at the floor. “We’re sorry.” I nodded in agreement, looking penitent as a good niece should.
“Where’s the rest of that gingerbread?” my uncle asked.
We shared it out, and then went down to the kitchen together looking for more cake. The pastry cook was creating little icing flowers to decorate something. The duke appropriated the flowers and bore them and us off to the library, where we saw the sun down playing a complicated gambling game using them as tokens, joined by a couple of resident scholars. Winners got to eat their own sweets; Marcus occasionally was sent down for more plates of flowers to keep the game going. No one wanted any supper—instead, the scholars started quizzing each other on points so obscure that the joking guesses Marcus and I threw out were sometimes right. Candles were lit. The duke scrambled up and down ladders fetching volumes to adjudicate between them.
The night went on, the candles burned down and we sent for more, and the kitchen started sending up jellies and syllabubs, along with cakes decorated with the little flowers. The duke’s homely friend Flavia came in, looking for a book, but she refused to play. She picked a few flowers off the cakes, listened for a bit, and then said, “I didn’t know it was possible to get drunk on sugar, but I think you’ve managed it,” and went off grumbling. She may have been right, though. One moment I was screaming with laughter, and the next it was all I could do to keep from falling asleep on the window seat.
“The untroubled dreams of youth,” one scholar said, and the duke asked me, “Where did you learn so much about the Battle of Pommerey?” and Marcus said, “Bedtime, Katie.”
I felt faintly sick, and altogether happy. Before he shut the library door behind me, I got the chance to whisper to Marcus, “There’s something going on! He doesn’t want us to know. I’m going to find out—are you with me?”
“I’m with you,” he said softly, and shut the door.