Havemercy (21 page)

If only he would take my hand, I thought, or give me some sign. Then my thoughts contradicted themselves; I told myself that for certain he was only being cautious, as at any moment William or Etienne might have rounded the corner, or Mme herself, or any one of the servants. We were certain to talk about my foolishness; Royston was merely waiting for the appropriate time.

I bowed my head. I couldn’t bear to look at Royston’s face again only to find it so foreign to me. Yet, despite my fear, I followed him through the halls and back to his room, as per the chatelain’s instructions, where Royston paused with one hand upon the door and pointedly didn’t look over his shoulder at me.

“Hal,” he said.

It was as if my own name had been turned into a spell to be used against me however Royston wished. I knew he wouldn’t harm me, and yet I felt suddenly as if I were being harmed, all the same. After all, I’d made an enormous blunder; had assumed too much from his expression, had asked too much of his experience and his patience. He’d done such things before, perhaps more times than I could imagine, while I knew only what I’d read in books—and, until now, had been content to know only that. I seemed very foolish to myself, and very young.

I should have been more circumspect.

At last, I managed to speak. “Yes?” I said, barely hearing the sound of my own voice as it passed my lips.

“We must speak, at some point,” Royston said. His voice and his words were all very careful; they seemed to me to be a precarious tower of cards, which the slightest breath of air would send tumbling all at once to the ground. “Whenever you are ready.”

I was ready now, I thought stubbornly, but I reminded myself that we both needed warm baths and fresh clothes and some breakfast. “Shall I come to you tonight after dinner, then?” I asked.

My voice sounded as careful and as tentative as his. I didn’t know what game we were playing. All I knew was that I didn’t like it and missed the honest companionship we’d shared before.

“Yes,” said Royston. “Tonight.”

I spent the rest of the day in a jangle of nerves. No matter what I did, despite the hot bath I ran for myself and my fresh, warm clothes, I couldn’t coax warmth into my fingertips. I tried to read: I could not. I spent time with William and Alexander: I was too distracted. Emilie remarked that I looked as if I’d been spirited away by a faerie circle—and was that where I’d been last night?

Royston was nowhere to be seen; I assumed he was inside his room, though whether it was because he too was cold and tired, or because he didn’t want to face me, I had no way of knowing.

I dined with the children and he with Mme and the chatelain. We didn’t seek each other out in the halls as we were lately accustomed to doing, nor did I make an excuse to bump into him before our appointed hour for reading.

“Something’s the matter with Hal,” I heard Emilie say to Mme.

“Perhaps he’s caught a cold from staying out all night in the rain,” Mme replied. “Keep away from him the next few days. You don’t want to catch it from him, do you?”

“No, Mama,” said Emilie.

At long last it was half past nine, which was when we usually met in the evenings. We’d been in the middle of discussing an anthology of Ke-Han war verse that Royston had brought to the country with him when he left Thremedon, and though his thoughts on rhythm and assonance were thrilling, it was not the book I wanted to discuss this evening, however terrified I was of the new topic to hand. I had to promise myself to be calm, to be receptive, to be polite.

I rapped twice on the door, which was our signal, and from within I heard him say, “Come in.”

It was too much for me.

All at once I was inside, breathless, helpless; I craved reassurance, and felt that without it I would break all to pieces. If only I could know that our friendship wasn’t lost to us for good. “Please—Royston—” I began, but he lifted one hand to stop me, and I all but bit savagely into my lip to keep myself quiet.

Fool, fool, I scolded myself. Let him speak; don’t trouble him so!

“Hal,” Royston said. His voice was warm but guarded. I pushed away from the door and walked uncertainly to sit at his bedside in what I’d so presumptuously come to think of as my chair. Of course, it wasn’t. It was Royston’s, and should he no longer want me sitting in it night after night listening to the long, refined cadence of his Thremedon vowels, I would obey his wishes not simply because he was so greatly my superior but also because I cared so greatly for him.

“Shall I,” I began, licking my lips. “Shall I begin where I left off ? With the war verses, that is; we’d just come to the time of—”

“Hal,” Royston said again, more gently. “There is—I know it may be uncomfortable for you, and I’ll not allow it to continue this way.” There was a strain behind his words, which informed me at once that my presence here was troubling him, making the corners of his eyes crease. Some more dramatic part of me wanted to fall to my knees and beg for his forgiveness.

“I should not have acted the way I did,” I said, picking my words with excruciating care, “and if I’ve—If I’ve done something that can’t be fixed—”

“Is that what you think?” Royston swore under his breath, a city curse, and beneath the anger in his eyes I saw familiar sadness. “I’ve made you feel that way, haven’t I? I didn’t think—No, Hal, this is very hardly your fault at all.”

“Must there even be a fault?” I asked.

“You were very cold, and very close,” Royston informed me, as if I hadn’t also been there. “I felt a certain . . . instinct, a certain desire, and I found myself almost incapable of restraining myself, until I forced myself to consider the repercussions of my actions. I led you to believe I wanted—even required—something in particular from you. You acted upon that cue I gave you. It was a most ignoble thing for me to do, being so much older than you, and—I think it’s safe to say—better versed in the subtleties of these entanglements, though obviously no wiser for my experiences, as my recent actions have so deftly proven.”

He was hiding behind the comfort of words, as he often did when he was most unhappy with himself. I reached out—impulsive, clumsy, but unable to stop myself—and quickly took his closest hand in both my own. For a moment, I feared he’d shy away or pull back as if burnt, but he did neither of these things and merely allowed me to hold him, though all the while I could see how wary he was of it.

“If you can find yourself capable of forgiving me,” Royston went on, still picking his way across the landscape of his words as if they were eggshells, “then I hope we can continue as we were, forgetting my, ah, indiscretion.”

I wanted to tell him that I most certainly would not forget it, feeling suddenly fierce and protective of what had very nearly passed between us. It had almost been ours. Was I to give it up so easily?

“If you wish,” I said finally, my fingers tightening against his. “There is nothing to forgive.”

Royston watched my face closely for a moment, and though I tried to conceal my feelings, I felt as though he could read them as easily on my face as if they were words on a page.

“I know it is very much to ask of you,” Royston said. “Are you sure that you can forget it? You must know this: I’m not saying that I took advantage of you, not entirely.” I could detect a note of panic in his voice, as if this wasn’t progressing the way he’d rehearsed it. “You’re twenty years old, fully capable of looking after yourself, a very clever young man, and I hold you in the highest regard possible. If it were within my power, I would take you from here to Thremedon, where you could learn as you so clearly crave to do. It is a . . . different matter here.”

“You didn’t take advantage of me,” I said carefully, “because nothing happened.”

“Ah,” said Royston. “I—Ah. Yes. Well—Not entirely, as I said.”

“And I’m not one of the children,” I added, knowing full well how foolish that claim must have seemed, blushing as I was to the tips of my ears with the compliment he’d just paid me.

“No,” said Royston. “But Hal, you are still quite inexperienced. I find myself in a curious position, keenly aware of your promise as a student, and—” He cut himself off then, shook his head, and said no more.

I sought to reassure him somehow. “It’s all right,” I said. “Nothing happened. We were cold, we would have both caught fever if you hadn’t acted as you’d done. I’m grateful for it.”

All these things were true—Mme had once told me I was no better at lying than a child of three or four, and what was more, I didn’t want to lie to Royston. I felt a strange kindling longing in my chest, but I was so enamored of his friendship that I knew then and there I’d do nothing to endanger it.

“Thank you,” Royston said at length. “Thank you, Hal.”

“Is it all right, then?” I asked uncertainly. “It isn’t—I haven’t ruined anything?”

Royston reached out to brush the troublesome fall of hair out of my eyes. “No,” he said. “Though if you continue to ask that question, I shall become very angry. Not with you,” he amended quickly. “With myself, for giving you cause to think such preposterous scenarios have any merit to them whatsoever.”

There were his words again. He had an entire library of them for keeping the rest of the world at bay, and I wondered if this was the sort of tactic one was required to learn in the city. I’d never met anyone with the propensity for it in Nevers; men like the chatelain, who preferred to avoid uncomfortable matters, did so generally by clearing their throat and changing the topic with gruff, inexorable insistence. (I knew this much from the time I’d sought to get the chatelain’s permission for securing Etienne further schooling with his art, a natural talent the chatelain seemed determined to ignore.)

The silence between Royston and me grew awkward without warning; it did so at approximately the same moment his fingers became stiff in mine and I wondered if I’d once again presumed too much.

I didn’t know where the boundaries were between us. Nor did I know what we were to each other, too informal to be tutor and pupil, too close to be mere friends, and not yet close enough to be anything more.

That was the purpose of this conversation, I supposed: to establish what it was we actually were to each other.

Even as I watched him, I caught him stealing glances at my face. The sight filled me with inexplicable hunger, and the more I sought to suppress it, the louder it clamored to be acknowledged. I felt my cheeks grow hot, yet though I looked away, I refused to release Royston’s hand.

“What are we to do, then?” I found myself asking uncertainly.

“Things have indeed been very . . . unusual between us,” Royston conceded. After a moment, he even shifted his hand so that our fingers were twined together, and from that small movement I gleaned disproportionately large relief. “The plan—at least, my plan—for this evening was that we might attempt to explore the nature of our peculiar friendship. I would like it very much,” he added gravely, “if you would trust me and allow us to continue to meet this way.”

“And discuss your books?” I asked, feeling breathless at once. For a moment my eagerness eclipsed my disappointment.

Nothing had changed because, as I’d said already so many times, nothing had happened. This would have to be enough, I told myself firmly. I would be certain not to mistake Royston’s intentions again.

“Yes,” Royston replied. “And discuss such matters as I think you already quite capable of discussing.” After a moment’s pause, he added, “But we must be careful, you realize.”

I couldn’t entirely understand it, and I looked at him in perplexity before I grasped at a possible explanation. “I remember that I was once reading a collection of more . . . common verse,” I said, “and Mme said that I mustn’t read such garbage where her children might be able to see it.”

Royston lifted a brow. “What did she do with the book?” he asked.

I’d never quite been able to forgive Mme for her reaction. “She tore the pages out,” I whispered, shaking my head sadly. “Tore all the pages into little pieces and threw them into the fire.”

“Ah,” Royston said, and turned to look at me fully.

Royston’s eyes were very dark, and I’d known it for a long time, but close to the center there was a light in them, warm and wondering. I felt a sort of wildness skip below the surface of my chest, as though I’d do anything to get him to look at me this way again.

No, that was a lie. I could do nothing at all and I knew it.

I was the one who broke the gaze first, and Royston cleared his throat a few seconds later.

“That is precisely my point,” he went on smoothly, as though nothing at all untoward had passed between us in that moment. “If we are to learn—and learn properly—my brother and his wife must be completely unaware of our studies. There are many cases wherein they would assume, through whatever prejudices they are content to harbor, that the nature of our studies is unfit for their household, and certainly unnecessary for your education. In their minds, you are to be a children’s tutor and nothing more. They have no sense of learning for its own sake, of learning for the beauty inherent in the struggle.”

I wanted to kiss him again. I settled for gripping his hand tight within my own. “Yes,” I said. “Would you—Will you teach me?”

“If you’ll have me as your teacher,” Royston replied. “But as I said, we must keep it private. My brother and his wife see only a single goal before them and, I admit, would suspect me of foul play.”

“Foul play?”

“They might think I was training you to leave them,” he replied slowly, as though he were struggling to explain it simply. “In the city, certain Margraves—certain magicians—have had much use for an assistant, a pupil, whose intellect and honesty they can trust as much as they trust their own.”

More than anything, I wished to be that person for Margrave Royston; but at the same time, I knew that wasn’t all. My desire had a baser connotation, something less pure and less loyal, and one that betrayed all our arrangements even as we made them. I fought it down again, until at last it curled around my heart and remained there, taunting me. I needed to find some way to silence it.