A Creature of Moonlight (16 page)

After the briefest of moments I push him back, harder maybe than I need to, and he trips over the steps and sprawls into the hall, bumping a servant who has her hands filled with coats, who loses her bundle and trips as well. The coats go flying in all directions, and the nobles suddenly find themselves busied with catching the girl and holding themselves up and turning around to see Lord Edgar on his backside and me, standing just outside the door in the snow, gaping at them all and looking as guilty as anything.

The silence spreads through the hall like honey over a cake.

Lord Edgar's laugh rings out. He's pulling himself to his feet, brushing off his legs as though it's all a great joke.

But I've never seen that look on his face before.

I've never told him no quite like this, neither.

He comes over to where I'm standing and reaches out a hand to help me up the steps. I don't want to know, somehow, what would happen if I refused it, so I let him pull me inside, though I drop it as soon as he eases his hold. “My lady,” he says, still with that laugh in his voice, but it's not the laugh I know, not the carefree joy when we dance or ride, not the surprise at what a different sort of girl I am. “I am sorry if I have caused you any offense.”

He's not keeping his voice down one bit. He's letting the whole court hear, and while my uncle isn't in the room, there are plenty who will tell him anything we say, so Edgar must not care that everyone will know our business.

There's a ringing in my head, and my hands are trembling something fierce. “No, my lord,” I say, and I can scarce hear myself. “I should be the one to apologize. I never meant to be so rude.”

He smiles at me, but it's a smile the way a winter gale is a warm breeze. “There are things a lady doesn't want the world to see,” he says. Oh, how they are listening now. He's kept us near the door, so it could be thought we're trying to have a private conversation, but in this silence not a scuffle of a shoe is private. “I understand. I will keep my distance until I can come again to your room tonight.”

And then, the knave, he's bowing to me and walking away. Walking away!

The rage is a freezing fire running through me, and for three seconds, four, I cannot move or speak or think, and he's on his way out, and all the court will believe what he wants them to believe, and he must know—oh, he must be so sure!—that I will do whatever he wants. That I will marry him tomorrow, even, just to keep them quiet.

And it won't be long before they know, because this court always knows such things, that he was in my room last night in truth, and that we were alone, long enough—long enough for whatever they want to say.

There's no dark river or bright sky or dragon against the moon in my mind now, only a clear, cold anger that throws me after him to grab his arm.

He's raising an eyebrow at me, so calm, so certain.

I don't bother with the ladylike responses I've been taught. I don't berate him with well-turned phrases. I don't give him a haughty glare. I don't even slap him across the face, as I've seen the Lady Elinor do to Lord Lesting when he became particularly forward after a few too many drinks at cards.

I am not a lady. I'm the heir to the kingdom if my uncle will ever admit it, and I'm my Gramps's only granddaughter, and I pull back my arm and punch him, as hard as I can, straight on the nose.

Now, I'm not one to condone pointless violence. But if there was ever a thing to show all those nobles that I'm not the sort of person to get myself into a romantic tryst, if there was ever a thing that would stop the rumors of how I'd thrown myself into this man's control, it's that savage punch, and the crack as my fist connects, and the blood that starts dripping at once.

He doubles over before pulling himself upright. I've never hit a man before, and I have to say I'm pleased with my success. He's holding his nose with red fingers and blinking at me, tearing up, I think.

“My Lord of Ontrei,” I say, and again I'm pleased, because my voice is steady, without a trace of fear. “I don't know who you think you are, but I'm the king's niece, and the closest blood he has left, and you'll keep a civil tongue or I will cut it out.”

I can feel them, the looks, the way nobody in the room is breathing just now. A serving boy has taken a step or two toward us. I don't know if he means to protect Edgar from me or to help me beat him up. The loyalties of the court must be all confused—the king's men will love to see Edgar brought low, but they won't want to support me in it; my men—well, are they mine or Edgar's?

Nobody says a word, though, and at last he bows to me, wiping his hand on a handkerchief from his pocket and holding that to the blood. “I am,” he says, “as always, your servant, lady.”

I go up close to him, until we're as near as we were last night, that moment before our lips touched and he almost swept me away from myself. “I'm not afraid of you,” I say, so that only he can hear it. I'm looking into his eyes so he knows I mean it. “And you can ask, and you can threaten, and you can start up whatever rumors you like, but none of that is going to make me marry you.”

He hasn't looked away; he barely seems shamed, in fact. “Marni,” he says, “I didn't mean—”

I don't let him finish. “You made a grab for power,” I say. “I can understand that. But I won't be used, Edgar, and I won't be rushed, and I won't be forced into anything I don't want.”

He's shaking his head. “I would never—”

“Or coaxed into it, or enticed, or what have you. I won't be
persuaded
.”

I hold his gaze. My blood still rushes, and my fists are itching to hit something more, but I keep them quiet.

At last he nods. “Yes, lady.”

It's not enough. I know it won't be enough for this man, and what's more, I know it won't be enough to keep me from him when my anger's ebbed, so I step back again and say, so everyone can hear, in the clear, calm sort of voice my aunt would adore, “For the last time, my lord, I will not marry you. Not for all the gold in the kingdom, not if wild horses were to drag me to it. You have not the slightest hope, and I wish you would stop trying.”

He's looking at me all stricken, and even through my rage my heart is near to breaking. I turn and walk away from him, and the nobles part to let me pass.

 

After that, there are only a few days left in the festivals, but they are the dullest, the longest days of the last two weeks. Lord Edgar does not come near me. I don't go to him. The court is still split, but it seems halfhearted, the way the nobles go to their opposite sides of the room and cast the others looks and whisper secrets. By the end of the second day, they've started to meld back together again, and I even see Lord Theodore, who was a staunch supporter of the king, laughing jovially with Lady Beatrice, who'd been part of Lord Edgar's circle. When Beatrice catches my eye, she flushes and looks away.

I talk with the lesser nobles and stay as close as I can to those from the country, who have the least to do with this drama. They are kind enough, and I smile more than not during these final dances, feasts, and games.

But the spins have lost their sparkle, and the stories, races, and sweets, which so excited me only days earlier, are bland, uninteresting. I let the nobles sweep me along from each event to the next, just putting one foot in front of the other.

My only joy these days comes late at night, when the others have gone to bed and the moon shines full through my bedroom window. Then I take out my bright knitting, and I dream of death. I don't see the dragon again, but I've no need. I can hear his roar all through my skin. When I close my eyes, I can feel my mother's hands, too, placed over mine, guiding me along as we finally, bit by bit, create her vengeance.

On those nights I can forget that I ever knew the Lord of Ontrei. I can keep from wondering, as I do on dark, cloudy nights when I've nothing to take me away from my thoughts, whether I did right, in truth, to reject him.

W
HEN THE COUNTRY
nobles have gone, when it's only the king and queen, the court nobles, and me, the real cold starts creeping in. Every other day, it seems, it snows, until our world is white. This is the snow that still looks fresh and clean. This is the snow we catch our breaths at, watching it from the floor-to-ceiling windows in the main hall.

The ladies and the lords go out into this snow, and they are like little children, throwing snowballs and kicking up great big drifts. The lords roll about on the ground with the real children, the ones the nannies usually keep hidden away in the children's quarters, and these boys and girls laugh and scream, thrilled to bits.

I walk by myself when I get the chance, smiling up into the sky as well. I know this is only the beginning. I know that by the time the river shudders and cracks, opening itself to the sun again, we will be well sick of it all. The snow will be gray. The cold will have entered our lungs until we're sneezing and coughing, every one of us, and we'll be yelling and snapping at the slightest irritation.

It was always that way with Gramps and me: the beginning of winter was glorious, and we smiled at each other more in the first snowfall than we did the rest of the year, almost. By the end, we'd keep to opposite corners of the hut, barely holding on to our tempers and our wits.

I guess the lords and ladies know it will be like that too, but none of us cares during the first big snows. We can't, can we? If we think about what's to come, we'll want to run off and hide ourselves under our covers, to sleep until spring. We've got to keep believing it will stay like this, even when we know it can't.

Then, only a few weeks after the festivals, the real cold settles in, the bone-freezing cold, the kind that seems near alive, we get to hate it so. The snow doesn't stop falling. The mountains are mounds of white, scarce distinguishable from the nearer mounds that cover the castle lawns, the river, and the streets of the city. The winds come down from the north, howling around my tower room all night long. All day they blow, too, whipping the world until it's as though nothing exists but the castle, as if beyond our triple layers of clothing and our foot-thick stone walls is only a white, frozen void.

Nobody goes out; nobody comes in. If our entire population of villagers and farmers has gone and died, we'd have no way of knowing. If the army from the queen's country has taken up the notion to invade, its soldiers could be knocking at our door before we would realize they'd entered the kingdom.

The king keeps to his rooms, and the queen attends him there. The nobles gather in the main hall every afternoon, though our breath freezes there and tinkles onto the floor as so many icicles. Yet there's something more awful about staying in our rooms, each with our own servants, reading or sewing the endless hours away. The nobles near loathe one another now, and when they're not talking of the weather, they're picking fights, lashing out in ways they'd never do on a warm, sunny day.

Edgar stays on one side of the room; I stay on the other. My knitting comes to an all-out halt. There's no moonlight to spin, what with the clouds and blowing snows.

It's on the tenth day of this cold, when the winds die down for the first time and some of the city folk make their way to the castle to beg for coal and to deliver our flour and milk, that the rumor starts.

It's midmorning. We've all gathered, impromptu, in the hall to catch up on the news from the city and to marvel over the white, sun-sparkling heaps that we can see now, near up to the hall's windows. I've just come down from my rooms; I'm walking toward Lady Susanna and Lady Hettie, who are talking together by an eastern window. They grow quiet as I walk up, even though a minute ago they were whispering to each other something fierce.

I reckon it's some secret love affair; there've been a load of those the last week and a half, what with there being nothing better to do. But when I tell them to let me in on it, they shake their heads and won't meet my eyes.

“I won't tell anyone,” I say. “You know I can keep secrets.”

“It isn't anything,” says Hettie.

She's so willing to spread the juiciest rumor, usually, and she loves to tell me things, to be the one who lets the princess know. “Come on,” I say, “give it up. I've been bored all morning. What—has Lady Flan finally given in to Lord Theodore?”

Hettie gives Susanna a panicked look. I can see it poised on the edge of her lip, the rumor, her desire to let it out. Susanna grabs her arm, and she smiles at me, her sharp, sweet court smile. “Isn't it a wonder, lady, how the snow has stopped at last?”

I scowl at them, folding my arms just as the queen says I'm never to do, and Hettie gives a little yelp and takes herself away, murmuring about promising Lady Charlotte a ride in her sleigh through the fresh snow. Susanna continues with her smile, though it's growing more brittle by the second. I sigh. “Something personal, then? All right, I'm sure I'll hear it somewhere else soon enough.” I let her talk about the weather for as long as I can stand before moving off.

It isn't just Hettie and Susanna, though, who are acting odd today. The ladies aren't meeting my eyes, or are moving away as I get near, or are stumbling over their words. And the lords are giving me looks like to turn me to stone, and speaking only in short, clipped sentences, and laughing at none of my jokes. Not one! Even though you'd think now that Ontrei's out of the picture, they'd be trying again for that marriage and the kingship.

In the end, it's Edgar himself who tells me what's gotten into them all. The king and the queen have come down to dinner for the first time since the deep cold began, and there's an air of festivity in the dining hall, or there would be if the nobles didn't keep glancing toward me and away again with something like fear or suspicion—I can't tell quite what. When the king gets up to leave, and we all stand with him, he says, as if he's decided all of a sudden to make a speech, “We will support those who aid our cause. Those who are against us needn't look to us for help.” Except it's an odd sort of speech, if that's the whole of it, and as he says it, he's looking at me with that same fear or suspicion, and there's a scattering of applause at the end, as if the others know what he's talking about.