The Privilege of the Sword (41 page)

I
N THE MORNING, WHEN
I
WENT TO PUT MY JACKET
back on, I found my note to Artemisia still tucked up inside it. I opened it up and sat down and added these words:

S
weetest Lady Stella,

A challenge has been issued, and awaits but the turning of the tide to bear a bitter fruit—bitter for some, but sweet, I hope, to your tongue, and a balm to your sad eyes. I told you he’d regret it, and I wasn’t joking. Be of good courage—hold fast,
and keep faith, for I will meet his champion on the field of battle, and blot out your stain with his blood.

Not Fabian, but True and Faithful

I signed it with a flourish, and sealed it with several blobs of the duke’s best wax.

chapter
I

M
ARCUS WAS BETTER THE NEXT DAY, BUT THE
duke was badly hung over and didn’t want anyone near him whom he could hear breathing. I felt jittery about the challenge, jittery about the letter I’d written to Artemisia (which I’d sent by the simple expedient of charging one of the Tremontaine House servants to safely deliver it to her maid). I didn’t want Marcus to ask why. To distract us both, I proposed a little stroll down to what I jauntily referred to as “Lucius Perry’s Love Nest.”

To our silent delight, Perry was there, too. He was sitting on the sofa in a loose dressing gown, drinking chocolate and watching Teresa paint. He must have spent the night: the gown was a flowered print of yellow-gold on a dusky green that looked wonderful with her auburn hair, but didn’t do a thing for his complexion. Knowing he was wrapped up in one of her gowns, and that he was slight enough to fit in it, made me feel tremendously tender toward them both.

It was a very domestic scene. We watched as Perry reached for more chocolate, and then he felt in the pocket of the gown and pulled out a folded paper, its seal broken, and looked hard at it.

Teresa Grey had gotten a letter, too.

A
NOTHER ONE?”

“Don’t open it,” she said swiftly. “It’s just more nonsense: ravings and accusations, pleading and boasting…. I shouldn’t even break the seals anymore. I should just throw them in the fire.” Her fingers closed on his, forbidding him the paper.

“Why do they let him?”

“They don’t
let
him, Lucius, they force him to write. He doesn’t really want me. They egg him on, they keep him in drink until he’s all fired up and turns out his pages. I doubt he remembers a day later what he’s done.”

“But why? Why won’t they let you go?”

“Cruelty, I suppose. And oddly enough, I’m still their last best hope for an heir. If the marriage is dissolved, they’d never find anyone else to take him as he is now.”

Perry’s face contorted with revulsion. “An heir.”

“Well, we tried,” she said. “Before I left, we tried.”

“All right, that’s it.” He got up from the couch, hitching up his robe. “I’m an idiot. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner. It’s so much simpler, really.”

“What is?”

“I’m going to kill him.”

“You can’t kill Roderick!”

“Yes, I can. It’s simple.” He put one foot up on the windowsill, looking back over his shoulder. “I know exactly how it’s done. Find a swordsman, pay him to challenge poor Roderick to the death without warning, and
poof!
No more letters. No more husband. And you are free to choose…” he opened his robe “…another.” She giggled, and came to his arms. He closed the robe around them both. “Choose me,” he murmured, feeling her settle against him.

“No,” she murmured. He felt her smile against his neck.

“Or not,” he added agreeably. “You’ll be free, at any rate.”

“But really, Lucius, you mustn’t do it. You mustn’t think of it.”

“Oh?” He drew back, wrapping the robe around himself. “Do you harbor still some tenderness for this forest god of yours?”

“Don’t be disgusting. I harbor some desire to keep my privacy intact, and to keep you out of prison.”

“Prison? For what?”

“For
this,
Lucius!” she said angrily. “For playing with their property! I married their son; in the eyes of the law, I’m their property yet. Don’t you understand that?”

“The laws of challenge—”

“Yes, yes, I know. Your swordsman will slay him and then you’ll stand up in the Court of Honor and proudly tell everyone why you killed their son. And the Lords Justiciar will say, ‘Well, that’s all right, then, never mind; just take her and be happy.’ Is that what you’re thinking?”

“I’ll keep it private. If I must, I’ll pay the swordsman to lie.”

“And Roddy’s family will swoop in with the truth. For all I know they’ve got spies on me already, and are just saving the juicy facts until they need them—which is to say, in case I ever try anything.”

“But—”

“This isn’t a game to me: the hiding, the being secret. I’m not doing it for fun, like you. If our liaison became public—and I assure you, if you challenge Roderick and kill him, it will be—then all that still makes my life tolerable will be taken from me in the wake of the ensuing scandal.”

“You’re a scandal already. You left your husband, you write trash for a living—”

“It isn’t trash. And that’s a secret. All everyone knows is that I live on the kindness of others, in a house provided by a sympathetic cousin. I make my pin money from friends who buy my china painting. That’s the life I live, and the world will put up with it as long as they don’t know any other.”

“
I
know it,” he said quietly.

“Yes. You do know. And I know yours.”

He smiled. “Do you think that’s why we get along so well?”

“You love your secrets. I merely require mine. It is why I trust you, though.”

“You can trust me with anything.”

“Can I trust you to be careful? You love danger, you love the sense that you could be caught at any time.” In answer, he kissed her hand, bowing low. She touched his hair. “You are my only luxury, Lucius. So far, the cost hasn’t been too high. Which is why there will be no challenge. Not from you.”

He straightened. “I am a noble of the House of Perry. I have the right to call challenge where honor has been offended.”

“Stop playing,” she said irritably. “If you won’t respect my secrets, have a thought to yours. Challenge him, and they will surely come out. You would hate it, you know you would. But if self-sacrifice is your current dangerous passion, spare a thought for how I’d feel watching them spend my dowry on their petty persecution of us both.”

“At least you’d get your dowry back in the end.”

“You think so? You’ve never hired lawyers, have you? And how would the rest of the noble House of Perry feel? Your family would cast you off, Lucius, they’d have to. Even if you’re enjoying the image of yourself as my noble champion, this is one role I won’t let you try out.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said softly. “It’s not as if I can’t support us both.”

“Oh, lovely,” she said, choking back angry tears. “You’ll pay for our room and board by selling your body in Riverside. I’d like that. And when you can’t work, I’ll support you painting flowers on china and writing drama for whatever theatre will take it as long as they can pretend they don’t know who it came from….”

“Intolerable,” he growled, “the lot of them. I’ll start with him, and then I’ll pick them off, one by one, see if I don’t.”

“You might kill my husband with some justice,” she said gently, “for his offenses against me. You cannot kill them all, my Lucius. And you would have to kill them all, to make the world a safe place for the likes of us.”

“
He
talks like that, sometimes,” Lucius Perry said thoughtfully. “When he talks to me at all.”

“No.”
She seized his wrist in her strong fingers. “Stop thinking what you’re thinking. I’m not having it.”

“He likes me. He says I’m not a hypocrite. I think he’d like you.”

“Lucius, no.”

“What’s the point of having the Duke Tremontaine as a patron, if he can’t do me any real good when I need him?”

“You haven’t thought it through,” she said, but she didn’t sound annoyed. Amused, maybe, and a little sad. “He’s not your patron, and he doesn’t mean you any good. He has you for the same reason I do; because you’re such a lovely secret.”

“I’m serious,” Lucius Perry said. “I would take on the world for you.”

“I believe you.” She kissed him. “And I’m not going to let you.”

M
ARCUS SNEEZED.

“Let’s go home,” I said. “I have to practice.”

chapter
II

A
CHALLENGE HAS BEEN ISSUED.”
R
OBERT
F
ITZ-
L
EVI
flicked at the paper with a well-manicured hand. “My dear sister, what does this mean?”

Artemisia glared at her brother across her room, not even rising from the chair she was sunk in, her tangled embroidery on her lap. “It means, my dear brother, that you have been reading my private correspondence without asking.”

“Mother read it. She asked me to come and speak with you.”