The Privilege of the Sword (49 page)

“Rosalie’s?” It was a name he hadn’t heard in years: the tavern where he used to drink and wait with his lover, the swordsman St Vier, for a challenge or a fight.

“I thought you were a prince back then,” Rose said. “I made up stories about you. You and him, you was—you were like magic, something no one could touch. I wanted people to look at me like that. And the way you talked—oh, lord…Rosalie let me bring you a drink, once. You were dicing—”

“Probably losing.”

“Oh, yes, losing.” She smiled. “When I brought it, you said,
Look, a glass of fresh luck!
” She imitated him perfectly. “You took the drink, but the swordsman paid for it, because you were broke. I remember, he said—”

“No.” The duke held up his hand. “That’s enough.”

“It’s all right,” Rose said. “I never could do him the way I could do you. I used to make the other girls laugh with it….”

“What a good thing I didn’t know! I might have had him kill you.”

“Never.” The Black Rose smiled. “He didn’t do women, everyone knew that.”

The duke said, “Last year. I sent you my ring, with that note…. When you came here and saw me, you must have been surprised.”

“Oh, no, Alec. Not at all.” Her arms twined around his neck. “Why do you think I came?”

He ran his lips along her cheek. “Revenge on a crooked lover, I thought. Not that I wasn’t grateful. I put what you brought me to good use, I assure you. And I’m grateful yet. I won’t let Ferris chase you from the theatre.”

“No,” she said, “you won’t.”

Through pride and perversity he strove to keep her with him as long as he could, but in the end she rose from the tangle of clothes and said, “Farewell, my prince. Act heartbroken if you can; curse me if you must. I’d rather one curse from your lips than a hundred
boos
from an annoyéd crowd.”

He looked critically at her. “Someone else wrote that.”

“Of course. I changed it a little to fit the circumstances, that’s all.” She busied herself with the hooks of her bodice, and he did not offer to help. “I’ll do what I can to let them know we’ve quarreled. You do the same.”

On the stairway she found the duke’s niece, that peculiar girl with the sword. Rose straightened herself just a little more and adjusted her glow to become once again the Black Rose. “Katherine,” she said brightly. “How wonderful to see you again.”

“Oh.” The girl looked startled. “Hello, there.”

“I salute you,” said Rose. “You are the hero of the hour.”

“Am I?”

“The duke is very proud of you, and so he should be. Remind him of it, when you can. He’s sad,” Rose said. “I am a little, too.” She put her hand on the girl’s soft cheek, and Katherine blushed. “I know,” the Black Rose said. “It’s all so very difficult, until you get the hang of it.” She kissed the girl on her brow, and left the Riverside house.

I
T WAS NOT FAIR.
T
HE DUKE ALWAYS GOT WHATEVER
he wanted. What did he need the Black Rose for? He had the whole city to choose from. She liked me, I knew she did. Hadn’t she kissed me in the theatre?

It probably wasn’t her fault at all that she’d ended up with him. She was just an actress, and he had money and influence that she probably needed, while I had nothing to offer but my true heart and my sword. Girls were dying all over the city for her. And there she was, patting me on the head and telling me to cheer up my uncle and look after him. Why didn’t she tell anyone to look after
me
?

I didn’t go down to dinner; I did not want to see the Duke Tremontaine that night. I found some old biscuits in my emergency hunger tin and ate those. But it turned out I’d missed a meal for nothing; the duke, too, was taking his meals in his rooms.

Or so Marcus told me, when he banged on my door to see what had happened to me.

I opened the door a crack. “Go away,” I said. “You’re not supposed to be in here alone with me. Betty doesn’t approve.”

Marcus laughed. “Betty,” he said, “is making up to Master Osborne, who knew her back in the old days when he wasn’t good enough for her. You don’t have to worry about Betty for a while. He’s got the keys to the wine cellar, after all.”

“Well, anyway, I’m busy. I’m thinking.”

“So am I,” Marcus said insinuatingly. “I’ve been planning amusements and diversions. Want to know?”

“Tell me,” I said.

“I’ll tell you when I’ve got all the bits worked out. Maybe tomorrow, if all goes well. Meanwhile, I’ll have a tray sent up. You must keep up your strength. Then you can practice killing someone. It’ll do you the world of good.”

He was the most provoking boy.

D
AVID
A
LEXANDER
T
IELMAN
C
AMPION,
D
UKE
Tremontaine, knew that he had annoyed a lot of people. It wasn’t fair to blame everything on Lord Ferris. He set his network to make inquiries, first through the usual channels: the University and Riverside. Riversiders got around. Some were virtuoso housebreakers and pickpockets, still others had climbed up the social ladder to become house staff of various kinds. Servants, all but the most disciplined, talked. So did scholars—outrageous gossips all, even those who now worked as tutors and secretaries to the nobility, many of whom Tremontaine had helped out in their starving student days. Spread his nets wide enough and something would turn up that he could use—and, as usual, a number of things he hadn’t been looking for that could be useful later would come to light as well.

The question was, how serious were these strikes against his friends? Did his enemy wish only to annoy, or was this the prelude to something worse? It was not the first time Tremontaine had been under attack. When he’d inherited the duchy quite a few disgruntled contenders had tried to alter the succession through means foul and fair. And there had been others since then. He was well defended, now, with swordsmen and lawyers and everything in between. But what was he to defend against?

He made a list of possible serious foes. Heading it was Anthony Deverin, Lord Ferris. It wasn’t just that Ferris currently had legitimate grudges against both Tremontaine’s lover for spying on him (if he’d found out) and his niece for challenging him. It was also a matter of style. The petty cruelty, particularly directed toward vulnerable women, smelt very familiar.

In the old tales, things always came in threes. So who was next? The duke made his best guess and doubled the guard on certain people who, with luck, need never know that it was there at all. And he sent once last time for the Black Rose, to come in secret and speak to him in his Riverside house, and he asked her to go as his messenger to Highcombe.

A
RTEMISIA BEGAN GOING OUT AGAIN TO SELECTED
parties. She held her head high, even when she had to sit out dances without a partner. She refused to flirt with any of her old beaux. If the ones who had once clustered around her begging for a smile now thought themselves too good for her, so much the worse for them. She had won her challenge. She was free and in the right. Lydia Godwin’s father always made a point of dancing with her, gracefully and superbly, and so did Armand Lindley. Lydia would take Artemisia’s arm and walk around the ballroom with her in open declaration of affection. Jane Hetley often joined them, though Lavinia Perry, now betrothed to Petrus Davenant, was making herself scarce. It was going to be that way, Artemisia realized: they would be friends in future only if their husbands got along.

She found herself hoping more and more to see Lucius Perry at these events. Lucius would always talk with her, easy and amusing. He made her feel like herself. He was a good dancer, too, and he never failed to claim her for a dance and bow deeply when it was over. Even when he was on his way elsewhere, he seemed to make the effort to drop in where he knew she would be. He would stay long enough to dance with her twice—but the third dance, the one that declared him a serious suitor, that Lucius Perry never gave her.

Once, just once, it almost happened. The music being over, Artemisia held on to his hand that little bit longer, and as the next tune started up they nearly merged back into the dance. She saw him pause, and look at her, and realize. He kept her hand, though, as he guided her back in the direction of her seat, and so doing, he slipped his arm around her waist, drew her a little closer to him—She didn’t mean to flinch and pull back, she just did it.

“What a clumsy dolt I am!” Lucius said smoothly. “Always stepping on people’s toes…”

She felt a rush of great warmth for him then. Lucius understood. As she watched his back disappear across the ballroom floor, off to whatever his next engagement was that night, Artemisia realized that she would marry him if he asked her. She would take good care of him. She’d make a beautiful home, and invite his friends to dinner, and she would see to it that there were always plates of his favorite biscuits, the brown crispy cinnamon ones. They would attend the theatre together, and give musical afternoons, and on quiet evenings she would sew and he would read to her. And he would never, never do anything to her if she asked him not to. Surely he never would.

R
OSE HAD NEVER KNOWN A CARRIAGE RIDE TO
be so exhausting. It was ridiculous, really; here she was in the lap of luxury—the duke hated traveling, he said, so tried to make his carriages as comfortable as possible, and as far as she was concerned, he’d succeeded. His footmen, in plain dress (as was the carriage, with the duke’s escutcheon covered), were attentive but not presumptuous, and the basket of provisions abundant. It was the opposite of what she usually had to put up with on tour, and she should have been luxuriating in it. But all she wanted to do was sleep.

It was especially annoying because she had lines to learn. Henry had decided to mount a new production of an old romance,
Lord Ruthven’s Lady
. It was a difficult play, seldom performed, being neither wholly tragedy nor comedy; but based on the success of
The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death
, Henry felt
Lord Ruthven’s Lady
would draw crowds.