The Water Thief

by Jane Kindred

  “Please, cousin.” My interruption startled him. “Sebastian will know me. Is he here?”

  Emrys’s eyes darted swiftly from mine to Sven’s and back again with a look that was part panic, part fury. His look said he suspected something had been conceived to entrap him, but he could not determine what. If I were really August, I would surely expose the false Sebastian, and if I were not, he was facing extortion at the very least. “I’m sure Lady Elen can get to the bottom of this.” He nodded sharply to Perkins, who still hovered nearby. “Don’t leave them unattended.”

  I hadn’t even known Great Aunt Elen was still alive. If she was, how had Emrys become the guardian of the counterfeit Sebastian?

  Her arrival soon answered that question. Judging by the slackness of the left side of her face, she’d suffered a stroke, leaving her wheelchair-bound and unable to care for herself. Wheeled in by Emrys, she tugged his sleeve with her right hand while the left lay motionless and gnarled in her lap, gesturing to him to bring me closer.

  I rose and came to her, kneeling in front of her chair to take her right hand. “Aunt Elen, it’s me. It’s August. I’m so sorry to see you’ve been unwell. I suppose we both have.”

  She had the strength and dexterity to snatch her hand away. “Stand up,” she snapped. “That’s hardly a proper way for a lady to behave.” Illness had not mellowed her, and my absence had not made her disposition toward me—or rather, August—softer.

  I straightened automatically, my cheeks hot, and gave her the curtsy I’d practiced for Abigail. Despite the years, and despite her somewhat weakened voice, her tone had instantly put me in my place. Affection had never been her way, and propriety was everything.

  “Turn,” she ordered.

  I turned about slowly, conscious of my posture and the way I held myself. When I faced her once more, she took my hand, but not to hold it. She grasped my ring finger at the knuckle and examined my mother’s ring before dropping my hand and jerking her head toward Emrys. “Of course it’s her. Welcome home, August. Emrys, fetch Sebastian.” She gestured toward another servant hovering in the hallway to wheel her out.

  My cousin looked as if his jaw had become unhinged. Apparently, Emrys had expected her to disavow me and send me packing. He had no choice now but to produce his counterfeit heir.

  Emrys, however, recovered quickly and managed to paste on a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “We’re so pleased to have you home with us, August. You must forgive my disbelief. But I’m sure you understand my misgivings. This is all quite extraordinary.” He eyed me then as if his mistrust of me were warring with not a little triumph, unexpected and only just occurring to him. Whatever triumph he might have in my “resurrection”, I doubted it was anything that boded well for me. “Of course, Sebastian will need to be told gently before he sees you, to ease the shock.” And perhaps to be coached in how to behave as if he knew me.

  “Of course, cousin.”

  “I’ll have your suite made up for you immediately. I’m sure you’d like to rest and freshen up after your journey.”

  In the process of seeing me to my room, Emrys attempted to dismiss Sven, but the latter was firm in his insistence that my full recovery depended upon his continued presence. I had no doubt that Emrys would be strategizing to get rid of Sven later, but for now, he would stay, given a room in the guest wing.

  August’s suite was as I remembered it, sheer white curtains letting in as much light as possible once the heavy draperies had been drawn, and everything else in pale marine colors as though seen through a scrim of water. It smelled of dust and age and crushed flowers. And just a hint of violet from the toiletries still half-full on her dressing table. Nine years away, and August’s influence still remained. It was as though it had been kept in hopes of her return by a heartsick twin who couldn’t quite accept her loss—a heartsickness entirely contrived.

  I couldn’t help but notice as we passed them that my own rooms down the corridor were no longer in use. Fabric draped the furnishings as if the room had long been shut up, and from what I could see from the door, very little of this furnishing remained. “Sebastian” must have found better accommodations.

  I sat stiffly in the receiving room, overwhelmed with a dizzying nostalgia, until I was summoned for an audience with the lord of Cantre’r Gwaelod.

  * * * * *

  The false Sebastian bore a resemblance to me, though he was harder-built and broader-shouldered. And better fed, I reckoned. His hair was also darker and his eyes a piercing brown that was almost black. He seemed the perfect picture of a feudal lord, in a way that I never could have.

  He waited for me in what amounted to a throne room—a sort of sitting room where the lord of the manor received his tenants’ grievances. “Sebastian” sat in an odd combination of bored relaxation and ready-to-bolt, one arm resting easily on the arm of the chair while the other clutched the wood, and one leg firmly planted on the ground, with the opposite cocked beneath the seat as if he might leap from it at any moment.

  His dark eyes surveyed me cautiously as I was ushered in, and he rose, unconsciously straightening his waistcoat. He was taller than I expected. “Is it you?” He blinked rapidly against a sudden glistening moisture at the corners of his eyes. I hadn’t expected such marvelous acting.

  But I could give as good as I got. I judged that this “Sebastian” had not been accused of August’s murder, but even if he had, this “August” would be unlikely to know of it. I sprang forward and threw myself at the imposter, nearly bowling him over. “Sebastian!” I cried. “It’s me! I’m home! It’s August!”

  More false tears were shed that afternoon, I dare to guess, than at the funeral of an ancient lord by a young widow about to come into her inheritance.

  When I’d composed myself, I gazed up at him shyly—or hoped it appeared so—and “Sebastian” held me at arms’ length.

  “They told me you might not remember me,” he said. “Do you remember…anything of how you were lost to us?”

  “My memory has begun to return to me only recently. Just little bits and pieces. Of that day,” I answered truthfully, “I remember nothing. If it weren’t for Bleddyn, I might have never come back to myself.”

  “Sebastian” cocked his head. “Bleddyn?”

  I lowered my eyes demurely, as though I might be harboring a slight infatuation for the man who’d supposedly nursed me back to health. “Dr. Rees,” I amended. “My benefactor. He’d heard about my accident and guessed who I must be.”

  “We owe him a debt of gratitude.”

  I made a mental note to warn Sven to be on the lookout for their gratitude. And also to determine who “they” were; it seemed a stretch to presume my counterfeit was using the majestic plural. For the first time, I began to wonder how far this plot to be rid of August and me had gone. I’d been assuming it was Emrys who engineered it, since the attacks had taken place while on his boat, but who else? He certainly couldn’t have done it all alone. The fact that I’d been kept hidden away by those who claimed to know what crime I’d committed meant it was far broader than Emrys and this “Sebastian”—who himself could hardly have been old enough to have taken part in the violence against us. My keepers might never have referred to me by name, but they’d known who I was, without a doubt.

  “We’ll have plenty of time to become reacquainted.” The false Sebastian pressed my hands and let me go. “But you must be tired.”

  I wasn’t, but I recognized a dismissal when I heard one. In truth, I was bursting with nervous energy after the release of all the tension I’d been holding in anticipation of this encounter.

  “I thought I might wander in the garden a bit. Bleddyn says the fresh air helps to mend the connections in my brain that have been damaged.”

  “Of course,” said pretender-Sebastian. “I’ll show you the way.”

  “Oh, I remember it.” I smiled. “I re
member everything about this house and our time in it. It’s only after that I’m missing.” That ought to be sufficient to keep him on edge, knowing I had memories of the real Sebastian that might trip him up.

  * * * * *

  The garden had been neglected. August had loved it here among the hedge mazes and the hidden treasures of blooms appearing in little alcoves within the trimmed rows of green when one least expected them—though there were none of the latter to be seen. Apparently, she loved it still. I hadn’t seen her since several days before leaving Thievesward, but as I strolled, she appeared before me in the mist.

  “His name is Macsen,” she said without preface.

  I jumped at the sound of her voice in the quiet garden. “Whose?”

  “The ‘earl’ of Cantre’r Gwaelod.” She dripped onto the stone pathway, as though the bog was always with her. “Don’t you remember him?” The name seemed familiar. “Emrys’s bastard.” August began to walk along the path, and I followed. “The one he got on that poor simple housemaid—scarcely older than I was on the day I died—when we were babies. We tried to avoid him whenever we visited Emrys’s estate. He was always skulking about.”

  “The boy who threw a rock at your head when we were eleven.” Cousin Emrys had kept the young mother in his employ, and young Macsen had been an occasional scowling presence when we visited with Great Aunt Elen.

  “The very same. You bloodied his nose.”

  “I’d like to bloody it again. For starters.”

  “I always felt sorry for him.”

  I stared at her while she seemed to sniff at a rangy bough of wisteria on a broken trellis. I wondered whether the dead could have a sense of smell.

  “Sorry for him? He’s obviously benefited greatly from the conspiracy to murder you and has stolen my life!”

  August glanced at me over her shoulder. “He’s a pawn. He was a child when Emrys had me killed. He may not even know what happened to you, or that my death was other than an accident.”

  “I repeat, he’s stolen my life.”

  “If he thinks you’re dead too, why shouldn’t he? Emrys obviously put him up to it. If you were given the chance to be the lord of Cantre’r Gwaelod after growing up in our shadow, would you refuse it?” She was irritatingly logical. Always had been. I wished I could bloody her nose. “You must stay close to him, convince him you believe in him utterly. He may let slip something of what Emrys has done.”

  It was all very fine for her to say so. I was the one who had to cozy up to a murderer. But I swallowed my misgivings and made my best effort at dinner that evening to convince Macsen I was his loving twin—or believed I was, not knowing his true identity. The layers of deception and counter-deception in this house were nearly mind numbing.

  I took myself off to bed early, finding the effort to maintain such layers exhausting. Strange dreams plagued my sleep that first night back at Llys Mawr, dreams that reminded me of my days at All Fates. Something seemed to hold me down, taking my breath. Unlike at All Fates, I didn’t regain consciousness in a tub of water, but I did wake gasping and a bit damp, as though I’d had night sweats.

  A disturbing phrase lingered from the dream that I didn’t want to examine: She’ll do as well as he. After all, we only need one.

  Chapter Five

  Great Aunt Elen insisted on throwing me a grand fete to celebrate my return from the dead. As little warmth as she had ever displayed toward either of us, she nonetheless believed in proper social etiquette. And social etiquette demanded that a young woman of stature—and August’s was the highest social stature in the land—be presented to society with great fanfare. It ought to have happened on our sixteenth birthday, but Great Aunt Elen would make up for the slight impropriety by making the affair into a welcome-home for the Lost Countess of Cantre’r Gwaelod.

  Technically, I was not a countess—or rather, August was not—simply by virtue of the fact that I, Sebastian, lived. Or at least someone calling himself Sebastian did. There could only be one inheritor of the title of earl—or countess, should there be no male heir. August would have been Lady Swift. But word had gotten round of my return, and my colloquial title was the Lost Countess, whether Great Aunt Elen or Cousin Emrys and his bastard liked it or not.

  Sven managed to get Abigail hired on as my lady-in-waiting, so there would be no more need for me to lace myself up as I’d learned to do, pretending I’d acquired the quirk of bashfulness at the sanatorium and trusted only Abigail to attend me. She used Jewel’s trick with the surgical tape and a brush of dark powder to give me cleavage in a lower-cut bodice, and instead of the conservative, simple cotton gowns I’d arrived with, I was dressed in a stunning lilac silk with several layers of crinoline and a daring décolletage.

  I felt like a fairy-tale princess as I descended the grand staircase with Sven as my escort onto the landing before the ballroom and was announced to the guests. The only thing marring my grand entrance was knowing August’s damp presence might be hovering somewhere in the shadows, when this party ought to be hers. There was little time to dwell on what ought to be, however, as the orchestra began playing a waltz on cue, and the lord of the house requested the honor of the first dance with his twin to welcome her home after her long absence. Luckily, Sven had taught me how to follow on the dance floor in anticipation of just such an occasion as this.

  For a housemaid’s son, Macsen was an excellent dancer. I supposed Emrys must have coached him just as Sven had coached me. He held me a bit stiffly, clearly trying to balance his need to appear to be overjoyed at my return with the bitter resentment of me that doubtless lay just beneath the surface. He had resented us all his life due to the accident of birth that had placed us at the top of the social ladder of which he occupied a bottom rung. Now the circumstances that had allowed him to switch places with us had taken an unexpected turn, and his position at the top was threatened. He no doubt wanted to throw another rock at what he presumed was August’s head—one big enough to dispatch his rival for good.

  After the dance with Macsen concluded, one of Great Aunt Elen’s guests approached, and I pasted on my gracious smile.

  The smile I received in return seemed familiar. “Lady August.” He bowed a dark auburn head over my hand and kissed it. The smile in his gray-green eyes as he raised his head was genuine. “May I express what a joy it was to hear of your return?”

  The warmth of his voice was a tenor I could never forget. “Siors,” I breathed, feeling the constriction of the corset as my lungs tried to fill too deeply.

  His smile broadened. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.”

  He had been my sister’s suitor. He’d never paid me any mind. To Siors, though I was precisely the same age as August, I was a child, and an annoyance. And I, resenting August’s attention to him—and his toward her—had done my best to be as much of a pain in his posterior as possible. He had been a handsome if slightly skinny boy of sixteen when I’d last seen him. But now he was a tall and well-proportioned man. If I’d had any doubt before in which direction my inclinations lay, it was drowned now in the deluge of recognition. I desired Siors. And I had desired him at thirteen—which had made me dislike him intensely.

  The orchestra had begun another waltz.

  Siors gave me a gallant bow. “May I have this dance, Lady August?”

  Out of the corner of my eye as I eagerly accepted, I saw Sven watching with a guarded expression.

  “You spurned my advances when we were younger,” Siors teased as we danced.

  I forgot about Sven. “Did I?”

  Siors laughed. “I asked for your hand. A bit prematurely, of course. You made a rather rude gesture with it instead. You don’t remember?”

  I concentrated on following his lead. “I’m afraid my memory is a bit patchy. They say I may never recover it all.”

  “Of course.” The handsome face was crestfallen. “Forgive me.
”

  I smiled as he spun me about. “Don’t be absurd. There’s nothing to forgive. It sounds as though I’m the one who ought to be apologizing for being so impolite when we were children. I’m sure it was a fine proposal and I was quite rude to turn you down so ungraciously.”

  “Well, perhaps you’ll have another chance to turn me down with more aplomb in the future.” He winked, and I swayed unsteadily in his arms, momentarily light-headed. The corset, of course. I had to be careful about taking such deep breaths. I’d forgotten everything in the face of his charm and his obvious interest in me—including the fact that I was not August.

  Sven reminded me when he took his turn with me around the dance floor after. “You seem to have made a friend.”

  “Who, Siors?” I felt myself blush as he raised a curious eyebrow. “Apparently, he was a suitor,” I admitted under my breath.

  “Of August’s,” said Sven. “And I ken he still means to woo her now she’s back.”

  “What of it?”

  “Don’t you think he’ll be expecting something different under her skirts?”

  I scowled as he turned me about. “What kind of a lady do you take me for? Do you really think I’d let him under my skirts so easily?”

  “Judging by your simpering looks while you danced with him? In a heartbeat.”

  “I think I’m rather offended.”

  Sven laughed good-naturedly. “I seem to remember having an easy time of you on the morning we met.”

  I spoke low between clenched teeth. “You had an easy time of Sly, not August. August is a proper lady.”

  A snort escaped him. “You saying you wouldn’t hold still for it if I took you behind a curtain right now and lifted your petticoat to have a go at you in that fancy dress?”

  I glared fire at him. “Watch your tongue, Dr. Rees.”

  Sven’s answering smile was a bit regretful. “Ah, so that’s how it is now, eh? Dr. Rees it is, then.” The dance ended, and Sven bowed graciously to me. “Thank you so much for the dance, Lady August. It was my great pleasure.”