by Jenna Glass
Zarsha’s eyes widened. “Gods, no, that’s not it at all!”
“Then why?”
“Because a lot has happened between us since last you saw him, and I was afraid…” His hands rubbed restlessly up and down his legs. “I was afraid you might remember what it was like to have an uncomplicated lover and that I might suffer by comparison.”
Ellin surprised herself—and Zarsha—by laughing. And once she started, she found she couldn’t stop.
“What did I say that’s funny?” Zarsha asked earnestly, but his own lips started to twitch even as confusion swam in his eyes.
Ellin shook her head at her husband. “Zarsha, dearest,” she said, barely keeping it together, “I wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do with ‘uncomplicated’ these days.” Then the laughter faded and she sighed, feeling exhausted with emotion. “I have even less in common with Graesan now than I did when we were together. I would have liked to have seen him so that we could say goodbye properly as we didn’t before, but that’s all.”
Zarsha nodded, staring at his hands once more. “I will arrange to send a talker to him so that you can confirm I didn’t bury him in some secret grave.”
Ellin rolled her eyes. “I might have suspected you of such a thing once, but not anymore.”
He shrugged. “Then I’ll do it so you can have your proper goodbye. Please forgive my moment of insecurity. And…my other sins.”
She smiled softly at him. “As you pointed out, your other sins, as you call them, have been and will likely continue to be of great use to me. I cannot say I am entirely comfortable with the notion, but it would be hypocritical of me to criticize when I have every intention of taking advantage of your connections should the need arise. I object only to the fact that you kept it secret from me.”
“For that, I apologize,” he said. He rose from his chair and came to sit on the sofa beside her, taking her hands and rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “Gathering and keeping secrets has given me power when I once felt I had none, and I’m afraid I’ve allowed it to become something of an addiction. I will do better. You have my word on it.”
Ellin accepted his vow by leaning forward and planting a kiss on his lips.
CHAPTER NINE
Alys examined her companion out of the corner of her eye as the two of them walked back to the palace after visiting the Well. Duke Thanmir—youngest brother of the Sovereign Prince of Grunir—was by far the highest-ranking individual who had ever deigned to visit her fledgling principality, and though his visit had already lasted the better part of a week, she still wasn’t entirely certain of its purpose. She was getting rather weary of playing hostess—especially when she did not understand his motives—though she would never be so foolish as to show him anything other than the utmost courtesy. She had hoped that with Delnamal off the throne of Aaltah, Grunir would become a more eager trade partner, but so far the sovereign prince had proven less accommodating than she would have hoped. Insulting his little brother would not be the way to win his support.
When they returned to the palace, Alys invited the duke to join her for tea, rather hoping that he would decline. Her hopes were dashed, and though she had many more pressing matters she should be dealing with, she found herself in the parlor of the royal residence chatting with a man who had as yet made no indication of how long he intended to stay.
Politics was a game of subtlety and deceit, and ordinarily Alys considered herself fairly skilled at it. But for reasons she could not entirely fathom, the subtlety was grating on her nerves, and she eventually lost her patience with the game entirely.
“Forgive me,” she said, putting down her teacup and looking Duke Thanmir directly in the eye, “but I’m afraid my curiosity is getting the better of me, and I have to ask—”
“Why am I here?” he interrupted, his smile showing off the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. He was not a traditionally handsome man, with his thinning hair, thick torso, and short legs, and yet there was something very warm and appealing about him. She suspected he was a man with whom many people shared confidences they shouldn’t, and she was wary of stumbling into the same trap herself.
Returning his smile, she raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Well, yes. Women’s Well doesn’t tend to attract visitors as exalted as yourself, and I cannot imagine that you are here merely as a tourist.”
“I’m not so exalted as all that,” Thanmir demurred. “My father had to cobble together a dukedom for me, as it had been a long time since a sovereign prince of Grunir had managed three sons. I am comfortable and not without influence, but I have not the authority to speak for my brother and formally represent my principality.”
Alys’s eyebrows drew together in puzzlement, and she stifled a sigh of disappointment. So much for her hopes that Thanmir might help her establish a trade agreement with Grunir.
“I am here on a more…personal matter,” he said, and a little of his self-assurance bled away. He glanced down at his tea, swirling it around in his cup while failing to take a sip. “I don’t know how much you know about my…circumstances.”
It was Alys’s duty as sovereign princess to familiarize herself with all the royal families in Seven Wells, but the degree of her knowledge correlated closely to those family members’ influence. As a royal duke, Thanmir was, as he’d said, not without influence; however, he had never been what she would call a major player, so she knew only a little about him.
“I know that you’re a widower,” she said, then her throat tightened and she had to swallow hard before she could say the rest. “And I know that you lost a daughter.”
It was a pain she knew all too well, and just saying the words was enough to cause her grief to rise up and try to strangle her. Technically, she should be putting aside her mourning wardrobe now that the one-year anniversary of Jinnell’s death had passed, but she had not yet done so. The grief was still painfully near the surface, ready to strike the moment she let down her guard.
“Yes,” Thanmir said, and though he remained composed, she could not fail to hear the matching grief in his voice. “I lost my eldest daughter just a few months before you lost yours,” he said. “Are you aware of the circumstances?”
If Thanmir had been of more prominent standing, Alys was certain half of Seven Wells would know all the gory details, for there was certainly a sensational story behind the mundane facts. “I know that an inquest found that her husband habitually beat her and that she managed to fatally wound him the last time he did so, although her injuries were too severe to survive.”
Thanmir closed his eyes, his hands visibly clenching so that she feared he might break the teacup. Then he let out a long, slow sigh and opened eyes that were now shiny with suppressed tears. “How I wish that son of a bitch had survived so that I might murder him with my bare hands. I will never, ever forgive myself for allowing Zallee to marry him. But she and I—and the rest of high society—were all fooled by the face he put on in public.”
Alys understood what he was thinking, what he was feeling. She clasped her hands together in her lap to hide the trembling as she fought off the terrible memory of Jinnell’s head hitting the ground at her feet. A memory that often jerked her out of sleep soaked in sweat and with a racing heart.
Thanmir sucked in a deep breath and blinked a few times. The pain was still visible in his eyes and etched into the lines of his face, but his voice was steady. “There are a great many details about what happened that are not publicly known. And that is why I am here.”
Alys was far from eager to hear those details, but she could hardly say so.
“May I tell you something in strictest confidence?” he asked.
Alys cocked her head at him. “You would share a confidence with me on such short acquaintance?”
“There’s a reason I did not mention the purpose of my visit until I’d had a chance to speak
with you more than once and to get to know Women’s Well. I had reason to believe that you could hear my daughter’s story without putting the blame on her shoulders, but she is very dear to me, and I could not risk trusting the opinions of others. I had to see for myself.”
Despite no fair amount of dread—clearly the confidence Thanmir planned to share was an unpleasant one—Alys could not deny she was curious. His daughter was dead, so why should it matter if Alys placed blame on the woman’s shoulders or not?
“Unless sharing your confidence would be vital to the protection of my principality,” Alys said, “you can rest assured that I would mention it to no one.”
Thanmir smiled faintly at her equivocation, but she thought it only fair to be completely honest.
“I can live with those terms,” he said, then fidgeted with his teacup. The nervous gesture once again piqued Alys’s curiosity. He lifted the cup halfway to his mouth, then put it and the saucer down again without taking a sip.
Thanmir cleared his throat, then seemed to steady himself. “Zallee was killed because she caught her husband in the act of…” His face flushed with what Alys could immediately see was rage, rather than embarrassment, “of violating my youngest daughter.” His eyes flashed, and his fists clenched in his lap.
Alys gasped in sympathy, covering her mouth. She knew that Thanmir had a son and heir, and she’d known about his murdered daughter, but she hadn’t realized he had a younger one, as well. “H-how old is your youngest?” she asked, her insides clenching.
“Shalna was thirteen at the time. Word was only just then getting out about the existence of women’s Kai, and only a select few of the nobility knew about it. I was one of them, and I had told both of my daughters—despite the sovereign prince’s strict orders that I share what I knew with no one. I did not for a moment imagine that either of my daughters would ever need to use women’s Kai, and yet I felt it my duty as their father to protect them with this knowledge.”
Thanmir cleared his throat again and looked away. Alys chose not to push him. As terrible as the story of his daughter’s murder already had been, clearly the situation was even worse than she’d imagined.
“My girls were very protective of each other,” Thanmir continued. “I know that Zallee had endured a great deal of abuse from her husband with a stoicism that broke my heart. I offered to spirit her away from him under a false identity, so that she might start again elsewhere without fear of ending up in the Abbey, but she would not hear of it. She feared her disappearance would cause a scandal that might damage Shalna’s marriage prospects.” He rubbed at his eyes. “How I wish I’d ignored her objections. I should have taken her away by force if necessary.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Alys said, her heart aching with sympathy as she thought about her own never-ending self-recrimination over leaving Jinnell in Aaltah while she’d studied in Women’s Well. She knew that there was no comfort to be had in logic.
Thanmir offered her a thin smile. “Perhaps not everything,” he conceded. “But I did know Solgriff was a danger to Zallee, and I did nothing to protect her. I will never forgive myself, have no desire to forgive myself.
“But I have yet to finish the sordid story. When Zallee caught her husband in the act, something inside her snapped. She’d endured so much abuse herself, but she’d done it for Shalna’s sake, so that Shalna might have a better future.”
Thanmir shook his head. “She attacked him with a fireplace poker, but he was a great deal bigger and stronger than she, and he wrestled it away from her. Then he beat her to death with it while Shalna screamed and screamed.”
Thanmir’s lips twisted into a fierce snarl. “But Solgriff had not learned the secret of women’s Kai, and Shalna had. My fierce little girl used her Kai against the murderous son of a bitch. Dropped him dead, though less painfully than he deserved.”
Alys wondered if getting revenge like that had done anything to heal the wounds the monster had formed on the poor child’s soul. She could not imagine going through that at any age, much less at thirteen.
Thanmir unclenched his hands, and there were white crescents in his palms from where his nails had dug in. “I helped my girl cover up the full truth of what happened by beating the body enough so that it looked like he died from the battering. I know there were questions asked at the inquest, but because no one knew about women’s Kai, they never truly suspected Shalna. However, there are a few people who know the whole truth. For the most part, I trust them, but…” He shrugged. “Well, it’s a dangerous secret.”
“Ah,” Alys said, finally understanding his purpose in coming to Women’s Well. To Alys’s way of thinking, only a monster would blame Shalna for what happened to her. However, when the girl went on the marriage market, her lack of chastity could be a severe impediment. If Thanmir didn’t reveal it, he ran the risk that his daughter would be repudiated on her wedding night and sent directly to the Abbey. But if he did, then high society would in all likelihood shun her, no matter how unfair. “You’re hoping that when she comes of age, we might find a husband for her here in Women’s Well.”
“Well, yes,” Thanmir said, twisting his ring again in a way that clearly said that was not the whole of it. “But she will not come of age for years yet, and for all that time, we will run the risk that someone might talk and ruin her—or even level an accusation of murder against her.”
Alys sucked in a breath, for though social ruination in Grunir might not damage the girl’s marriage prospects in Women’s Well, an accusation of murder—and a possible prosecution for it—could lead to her imprisonment or even death.
“But then…I don’t understand what you want from me,” Alys said.
Thanmir sighed heavily. “When my wife died bearing Shalna, I had no interest in ever remarrying. She was the love of my life, and there is no room in my heart for another. My title and estates are secure, and I am not in need of any financial assistance, so there seemed no point. But now Shalna’s future is very much in doubt, and…”
Alys’s heart thudded against her breastbone, and she wondered at herself for being so terribly dense. She had been receiving marriage proposals off and on nearly the entire time she’d been sovereign princess. It had always been easy to politely decline those proposals, for she had most of the time been in mourning, first for her father, then for her daughter. And because of the tenuous place of Women’s Well in society, not one of the proposals had been made by a man who was truly suitable to marry a sovereign. But a royal duke…
“Are you…” She cleared her throat as her voice caught, her whole body clenching with anxiety. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
He smiled at her, those laugh lines at the corners of his eyes making a return appearance, although his expression was still shadowed with sadness. “I am aware that it is possibly the least romantic marriage proposal in the history of Seven Wells, for I refuse to make it under false pretenses of any kind. I am not in truth looking for a wife, and from everything I’ve heard of you, I doubt very much that you are looking for a husband, either. Nonetheless, a match between us would have many advantages for both of us—and for both our principalities.”
Alys wanted very much to reject the proposal out of hand, as she had rejected every other proposal that had come her way. She had told Tynthanal once that she was resolved to the idea that she would one day have to marry again, as was expected for a widowed sovereign. Her visceral reaction to Thanmir’s proposal suggested she’d been lying to both her brother and herself.
“I—I’m still in mourning,” she said, though technically that was no longer true.
Thanmir nodded. “I understand. I don’t believe I will ever be out of my own mourning, no matter how much time passes. And I will not pressure you to answer me, nor will I put the proposal in writing unless and until you tell me you are willing to entertain it.”
“What you real
ly want is to bring your daughter to Women’s Well, is it not? I would happily welcome both of you to our principality. There is no need for a marriage.”
Thanmir reached for his neglected tea, taking a sip although it had surely gone cold and unpleasant by now. “I’m a royal duke,” he said. “I cannot uproot my family and move to Women’s Well without a reason. Not without causing irreparable harm to my son and heir, who is not yet wed. My brother would not openly condemn me as a traitor for abandoning my homeland, but he would certainly feel betrayed by it, and the rest of the court would follow his lead.” He shook his head. “No, I would have to have a legitimate reason, and marriage to a sovereign princess is the only reason I can imagine my brother accepting.”
Alys prided herself on her ability to make decisions based on what was good for her principality, her ability to set aside her personal interest in order to do her duty. Her mind knew that accepting the duke’s proposal was the logical choice. If she had to remarry someday—which she had already determined she must—then why not someone like Thanmir? His lineage was impeccable, he would help her forge an alliance with Grunir, he would not come into the marriage expecting a loving and dutiful wife, and he was not in need of an heir. Not to mention that she actually liked him. There were far too many men in Seven Wells who would have already sent young Shalna to the Abbey in disgrace for the sin of being attacked.
“I’m so sorry,” she found herself saying, in spite of all the arguments of reason, “but I’m…” She sighed and shook her head. Refusing him was foolish and selfish. She fell silent as her duty and her grief fought a vicious battle within her.
“But you’re not ready to think about marriage yet,” Thanmir finished for her, nodding.
The sympathy and understanding in his eyes made Alys feel even more of a fool for balking. She dried her suddenly sweaty palms on her skirts. She fixed her gaze on the unadorned, solid black expanse of silk, unable to bear that sympathy.