“Why not approach the princess directly then? It would be the safest route.” Given the events of two years past, Jeanne thought, secret projects—even for the good of the realm—would be looked at askance.
The suggestion was dismissed with a wave of the hand. “A gift, not a commission. And what reason would she have to put that trust in me until the work is proven? You know the poor repute of alchemy. The work is sound; I know it. But I don’t care to puff it off until there’s something to show. No, I don’t want to approach her until I can present a gift valuable enough to redeem our name.”
“Is this all for family honor, then? What did the name of Chazillen ever bring you that you owe it so much?” Jeanne said, shaking her head sadly. “You would have left it behind at marriage—you may yet. Work for your own future, not that of a tainted name.”
Antuniet stood abruptly and said, “I thank you for your time—and for not throwing me out on the street at sight.”
“Tcha, there’s no need for that. I’ll ask around, if you wish. I might find someone who will take you on. Give me a week or so to try. What is your direction?”
There was an awkward hesitation. “My plans are not yet certain at the moment.”
Jeanne saw through the evasion, and all the humor and affectation dropped away. “Antuniet, how badly in need are you?”
She shrugged, which was answer enough from one once nicknamed “the proud.”
Jeanne crossed to her writing desk and drew out a box to count over a few notes. Antuniet bristled when Jeanne pressed them into her hand. “But chérie,” Jeanne pointed out, “you came here looking for a patron. This is nothing. Are you willing to swallow a horse but turn your nose up at a flea? Come back a week Tuesday. We can have a cozy little supper just us two and I’ll tell you what I’ve been able to manage.”
* * *
It was never Jeanne’s habit to sit quietly in contemplation, so after Antuniet left she sent for Marien to help her change into a walking dress. There was no time like the present to begin, and she had a few ideas of whom to approach first. How very interesting the Rotenek season had suddenly become!
There was no reason to hire a fiacre as long as she kept north of the river, and the day was fine for walking. She was approaching the Plaiz along the Merketrez when a carriage pulled up beside her and a pink-cheeked face framed by a precise row of tiny ringlets peeked around the lowered hood.
“Wherever are you going in such a hurry?”
Jeanne stopped and smiled. “Was I hurrying, Tio? I wasn’t paying attention. I’m off to Mesnera Chaluk’s.”
“May I come along?” Tionez asked. “I haven’t seen her since I arrived back in town.”
Jeanne said, with a carefully insouciant air, “It’s only tedious business, I’m afraid. You’d be bored to tears. But you may take me up and we’ll have all the way to the Plaiz Nof to chat.”
Tionez seemed little heartbroken by the refusal, for the moment the horses started up again, she moved closer on the seat and leaned over to whisper in her ear, “I’d rather have five minutes alone with you than an hour in company anytime.” Her eyes gazed up from under brows too straight and thin for the coquettish look to be truly successful, but Jeanne took the invitation and toyed with Tio’s gloved hand, kissing each of the fingertips in turn. Tio would never go further than such flirtation, but she loved to think of herself as scandalous. And there were few things more safely scandalous than to be rumored to be one of de Cherdillac’s amours.
“And where were you off to when I crossed your path?” Jeanne asked.
“My dressmaker. I’m having a daring new riding habit made. You’ve heard that Efriturik is taking a hunting party down to Feniz? You simply must get me an invitation! My husband is wild to go and I want to go with him.”
“But Tio,” Jeanne protested, “I know almost nobody in his set. Easier to get you tea with the princess! And I rather doubt it will be the sort of expedition where women are welcome.”
Tionez pouted. “Saveze is going.”
“Barbara is another matter entirely. But—” She considered the possibilities. One could propose the argument that including only Baroness Saveze was too particular an exception and that the addition of a handful of other women, respectable married women… she couldn’t repress a bubble of laughter at the thought of giving Tionez that label.
“Is the picture that humorous?”
“I have an idea. No promises, but I think it may succeed. In return you must take me to visit your grandmother tomorrow. Don’t worry, you needn’t stay! I have a matter I want to discuss with her and I’d rather it seemed by chance.”
“You’re all full of secrets and errands today,” Tio said, but her pout had faded. “I saw your friend Benedetta singing at Maisetra Sovitre’s the other day. She looked so much older off the stage; forty if she’s a day!”
“She’s thirty-eight, or so she says,” Jeanne replied tartly. “And I’m a few years more than that, you know.”
“Never! Surely in your heart you’re still seventeen.”
From another, Jeanne might have thought it mockery. Tio might not be serious, but she was sincere. And she couldn’t know she’d touched an old scar that could still give pain. “My heart will never be seventeen again,” Jeanne said, thinking on those days. “An eternal twenty-five, perhaps.” She gave Tio’s fingertips another lingering kiss. “You remind me a great deal of myself when I was twenty-five.” Tio had that same reckless passion, however misdirected it might be. Nothing was as attractive as that inner fire and she was drawn to it as a moth to flame. “Here we are, and now I must leave you.” She lifted Tio’s fingertips to her lips once more as the carriage steps were let down.
Alchemy, Jeanne thought, returning to her purpose as she climbed the steps to Emill Chaluk’s door. How in the world did one even begin to broach the subject without seeming a fool?
Chapter Four
Barbara
An invitation—or perhaps, more accurately, a summons—from the Dowager Princess did not carry the same weight it once had. When young Aukustin, her son, seemed likely to be named his father’s heir, Elisebet, his mother, had been a power in the court. But when the council threaded the shoals of the succession controversy by electing Annek, Prince Aukust’s widowed daughter by his first wife, Elisebet’s star had been eclipsed. Many of those who had once supported her now kept their distance, but Barbara saw no reason to ignore her request. Elisebet was still an Atilliet and mother to one of the potential heirs. There was loyalty owed for that, despite the conflict they had come into during the succession debates.
Barbara arrived promptly at Elisebet’s private apartments at the stated time, and was surprised to see they were to be alone.
“Mesnera,” she said, curtseying with the proper degree of respect and trying to guess from the strained expression on the princess’s face what would be asked of her.
There was a time when Elisebet Atilliet had been counted a beauty, but the years had coarsened her features. The delicately pink cheeks were now merely ruddy and the dark-eyed glance that was said to have pierced hearts had turned sharp. Even before she had watched the crown slip from her grasp, the confident pride had become a brittle haughtiness. Persuading others to her plans had never been one of Elisebet’s strengths. If it were, likely Aukustin would sit the throne today. So it was no surprise that she began with no preamble and no subtlety. “I understand Friedrich has included you in this expedition to Feniz.”
It was a small thing, the insistence on calling Annek’s son by his Austrian name and not the Alpennian version he now used. A small thing and it only made her look petty rather than reminding others of the boy’s foreign birth. “Yes, Efriturik has done me that honor.”
“He asked Aukustin to accompany him and I didn’t dare refuse.”
“Surely your son is of an age to enjoy riding to the hunt. How old is he now? Fourteen?” She spoke of him as if he were still in leading strings.
“I would
like…I would ask…could you watch over him? See that he comes to no harm?”
“Mesnera, if you think your son still needs a nursemaid, then you would be advised to keep him at your side. And if you think he needs the protection of an armin, then hire one. I don’t follow that profession anymore.”
Elisebet’s eyes darted back and forth and she leaned closer as if fearing spies even here in her own chambers. “Saveze, my son has enemies—I dare not name them. The sudden hiring of an armin just now and at his age would be tantamount to an accusation. Many things can happen during a hunt.”
Barbara’s patience with her had long since worn thin, but it had not yet shredded entirely. And it would take more than shredded patience to push her past hard counsel into naked rudeness. Respect was due to the princess’s rank, if not her sense. “You do your son no favor by teaching him to fear his cousin. Some day—God forbid it be soon—one of them will sit the throne and Alpennia will be better served on that day if they are friends, not rivals.”
“On that day all I ask is that he still be alive.”
Barbara sighed. The threat might be illusory, but her fear was real. What harm could there be in easing it? “I’ll keep my eye on him, but I can’t promise more than that.” She was embarrassed that Elisebet caught up her hand and kissed it in gratitude.
Lake Feniz was a small lapis jewel, caught up in a fold of rising ground on the skirts of the mountains. There had been a time when adventurous souls had tried to scratch a living on its shores, leaving a small cluster of cottages where the narrow road—barely more than a track—came in from the valley below. But the stony fields had long since been abandoned back to trees where they would grow, and patchy meadows where they would not. In the summer, the cottages were taken up by herdsmen bringing goats up from the valleys. And with the returning forests had come red deer and cunning wild boars and smaller game, picking their way through the ruined stone walls and feasting in the bones of abandoned orchards. They had brought a new crop to the land: a scattering of hunting lodges ringing the shore. In the autumn, when the goats had been sent back down, the goatherds’ sisters and daughters moved into the village to tend to the cooking and cleaning for those who rode out from Rotenek for the pleasure of the hunt.
The baron had purchased one of those lodges. It was useful to have a private space to entertain those whose attention he wished to have to himself for a spell. The property had passed on to Margerit, but on the advice of LeFevre, her estate manager, she had found a buyer. Hunting was not in her style and the place produced no other benefit. Count Mainek had purchased it and now he, too, used it as bait to gather up the rising, the bold, the quiet decision-makers, those who might be of use now or in the future.
The expedition to which Barbara had been invited was Efriturik’s party only in name, for he had no property of his own yet. It was awkward for him, having no title to give him status beyond being Annek’s son. But title-lands didn’t fall from trees and though there were several dormant titles held under the crown, it was a more delicate matter to negotiate fixing one of them to Efriturik’s person.
Barbara wondered sometimes what he truly thought of the whole affair. It had been his Austrian foreignness rather than his youth that the succession council had found hard to swallow. And now he seemed to have staked all on the hope of becoming Alpennian by the time the matter would be considered again. It had been one thing for Annek to return to the Atilliet surname. Had it been his choice or hers that he had traded Friedrich von Maunberg for Efriturik Atilliet? Had the attractions of being a younger son in his brother’s shadow back home been so few, or were those of someday becoming Prince of Alpennia so great?
It was odd to come to Feniz as a guest, Barbara thought. The luggage and horses for the hunt had been sent ahead and this time there was no need to participate in the complex dance of arrangements and security that such an endeavor required when those of high rank gathered, even for what was purely a pleasure trip. And that was what this was—as much as any activity around the court could be for pleasure. The guests had arrived throughout the previous day in twos or threes, though the call-up at dawn was the first time they were all assembled together. Most were young. These were men who might someday be Efriturik’s allies and advisors—or Aukustin’s, for that matter—and a sprinkling of the more adventurous of their young wives. It was not an event calculated for flirtations; she found herself the only unmarried woman to be included. And Aukustin was the youngest, clearly struggling between the excitement of his first grown-up hunt and the desire to behave with dignity.
Barbara watched carefully as Efriturik greeted his cousin, addressing him familiarly as Chustin with apparent affection, tousling his hair as one might a younger brother. And when Chustin grinned back she could see something like hero worship in his eyes. Well, there was one answer for Elisebet’s concerns. They could have been brothers to all appearances—half-brothers perhaps. Old Aukust could be traced in both faces, in the straight line of the nose and the slight cleft of the chin. But Chustin had his mother’s heavy brows and dark hair, while Efriturik… Barbara could only guess that it was his father’s blood that leavened Annek’s brooding features on him and left a touch of gold in his hair. Even without the attractions of rank he was a handsome man, though it seemed not to have made him vain or self-satisfied. He leaned closely to Aukustin to say something for his ears alone and the boy flushed slightly and nodded. No, there was nothing of concern on that end. From what she’d seen of Efriturik, he might be impetuous and inclined to careless pleasures, but there was nothing of duplicity in him.
The scouts had been sent out into the hills before dawn to find signs of quarry worthy of their sport. The hunt itself would be carefully planned and directed. There were no formal boundaries up here claiming territories for the lodges, but there were still customs and courtesies to be followed.
As the light grew toward sunrise, the courtyard began to fill with pairs of panting hounds held in close check, and grooms busying themselves with the horses. There were carriages for some of the women and a few of the older men that would carry them more easily to where the kill was planned. A stag hunt at Feniz was far more choreographed than most of the guests might be aware.
Barbara rechecked the girths and shoes of her own hunter purely out of habit before swinging up into the saddle and circulating among the other mounted guests. She made her courtesy to Count Mainek and then to Efriturik before looking around to see who else she knew. There was Count Peskil and his son and old Chozzik. She knew Count Mainek’s friends well, for they had been in the baron’s circles. But there was a new wave come into the court. Efriturik’s closest companions were not old enough to feel the pressure to marry, nor yet for the most part to have come into titles and lands. And then there was a scattering of those nearer her own age, falling between the two groups. She saw a bias in Mainek’s selection for the diplomatic set: all of them the young noblemen who would soon be taking up government posts and gaining the experience to serve in Efriturik’s government, should that day come.
She sidled close to greet Iohen Perzin. “I thought you were off to Paris,” she said, searching through her memory for what she knew of his duties. His long, oval face looked too serious for the pleasures of the day. He wasn’t one of Efriturik’s inner set. In fact, she knew of no ties he had to either of the competing parties.
“No, it’s been put off until spring,” he replied. “Albori says the French mustn’t think we’re too eager. And I confess I’m scarcely eager myself to leave Rotenek so soon.” Warmth transformed his expression as he looked past her, and she followed his gaze to where his young wife was settling on her own mount as he continued, “I understand you’re to blame for Tio’s new ensemble.”
Tionez Perzin wore a bold fashion indeed. A tall beaver hat topped her round face, made even broader by a fringe of small, precise curls, but it was her habit that caught the eye. The dark gray serge was sober enough and the cut fell short of the almost mas
culine style that Barbara affected for active pursuits, except in the lines of the coat, but Tio’s skirts were cut full enough for riding astride and high enough to show off a pair of bright red Hessian boots with a glimpse of breeches underneath as a nod to modesty. Barbara covered her dismay by quipping, “As long as that color doesn’t warn off the quarry!” But she made time, as the guests continued to gather, to seek Tio out and comment quietly, “You’re ill advised to take my wardrobe as a model. You have your husband’s dignity to think of.”
“Oh, pooh!” Tionez said dismissively. “In truth, Iohen says he finds it dashing.” She was one of those women who had been told that her pout was attractive, and she employed the expression liberally.
Barbara was not moved. “What he says and what he thinks may be different things.”
“And you’re a fine one to be scolding me on proper behavior!”
It was hard to blame her for bristling at being lectured by someone her own age. Barbara couldn’t have pinpointed her unease. She herself was forgiven some outrageous behavior because of her past and her rank. But it was another matter entirely to be accused—even in jest—of leading others down the same path. That was less forgivable. And if Tio didn’t care for her own sake, it wouldn’t do to raise the hackles of society in general. Tionez had lately been flirting at the edges of Jeanne’s set and Jeanne was not at all innocent of leading respectable women astray.
The sight of Aukustin settling himself on a restless gray hunter brought her promise to the Dowager Princess back to mind, and she watched him with a frown creasing her brow. He was handling the horse badly as it shifted and sidled and his seat… No, that wasn’t it. She urged her own mount over beside him and swung to the ground.
“Mesner Atilliet, if I may?”
The Mystic Marriage Page 4