It was so much what he’d always dreamed of that at first he couldn’t speak, just smile at her like a lovesick fool. Which he was. “Lainie,” he said, and her own smile broadened. “Lainie, will you walk out with me tomorrow?”
She nodded, still smiling, and she was so beautiful he had to kiss her just once more. Her lips tasted sweet, like apples. “Tomorrow, then,” he said, stepping backward and nearly tripping over the forgotten spool. He picked it up and handed it to her, then walked away, quickly, afraid if he stayed any longer they’d spend the rest of the night kissing. Not that that would be a bad thing. He glanced back just once to see her still standing there, holding the firefly spool, and then he’d turned the corner and was walking away down the street, barely able to keep from skipping and jumping like an ecstatic child.
Safely in his home, he went into his bedroom without turning on the lamp and threw himself face-first onto the bed. Then he rolled onto his back and began to laugh. He’d kissed Lainie Bricker. She’d kissed him back. He felt her lips on his in memory and laughed again with joy. The love of his life was walking out with him tomorrow. And what a tomorrow it would be.
Ben: Introduction
(Agent of the Crown, Spring/Summer 953 Y.B.)
The following bonus scenes were written well after the first three Crown of Tremontane books were complete, but before Agent of the Crown went through its fourth and final revision. The ending of the scene “The Truth,” in which Ben and Telaine are reconciled, contains the original speechifying from version three that was revised out for the final version. I think it’s a lot more awkward than what I eventually came up with, though some lines remain the same (and some have been in there since version one).
Ben: Revelation
It couldn’t be happening. He screamed again and strained against Liam’s hands holding him back. One of the soldiers tied Lainie’s hands behind her back and stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth. “No!” he shouted hoarsely, and felt tears spring to his eyes as the captain kicked her legs out from under her and dragged her to the gazebo.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Liam said in a low voice that was choked with anger. “He’ll just kill you too.”
Ben sucked in a harsh, sobbing breath. The Baron would murder her while he watched helplessly. There had to be something he could do. Lainie knelt up and glared at the Baron as he approached her. Of course she wasn’t afraid. Not even facing death. The Baron lowered his pistol and pointed it at her head; she continued to stare him down. Ben sobbed, and closed his eyes. He couldn’t watch her die.
There was the shot. He cried out again, felt Liam release him. “Ben!” he said, and Ben opened his eyes to see the Baron sprawled on the ground, Lainie wriggling near him, and Jack and Liam rushing to take the gun and subdue the Baron. Ben ran to her side, yanked the handkerchief from her mouth and untied her with shaking hands. She was alive, the shot had miraculously missed, and he pulled her into his arms and felt her cling to him, breathing heavily. He stroked her hair and tried to calm his own breathing.
“What is going on here?” a woman said, and Lainie turned in his arms to look behind them. He kept a grip on her shoulders loosely, reluctant to let her go, and saw a line of soldiers, far more professional-looking than the Thorsten men, riding up the street toward them. Their leader held a pistol as if she’d just shot into the air; her mouth was compressed and her brow furrowed.
The Baron shoved Liam away and took a few steps toward her. “Major, I am Baron Steepridge, and these people are rebelling against my rule. You can see my men and I are hopelessly outnumbered. These four—” he pointed at Jack and Liam, Lainie and Ben—“are the ringleaders. I demand that you take them into custody.”
“He was going to murder an innocent person!” Liam exclaimed.
“Hardly innocent. A murderer,” the Baron said, pointing at Morgan’s body with the knife still sticking out of his eye socket.
“It was in self-defense!” Ben shouted, and the major looked briefly in his direction, then back at the Baron.
“I can see this is going to take a while to sort out,” she said. “I’ll have to ask everyone involved to come with me to the fort.”
Lainie drew in a breath and moved a little under his hands, as if she wanted to say something. Then she gasped, and said, under her breath, “Jeffy.”
“What?” Ben said.
From far down the line of horses, a soldier said, “Telaine? Telaine!” and leaped from his horse to run toward them.
“Your Highness! Lieutenant North! Return to your position!” the major demanded, but the young man ignored her. He shoved Ben so he fell to the ground.
“Get your hands off my cousin,” he said angrily. “Telaine, what are you doing here? And dressed like a peasant?”
“Cousin? Telaine?” Ben said. He looked up at Lainie, who had her eyes on the lieutenant.
“What are you saying, lieutenant?” the major said, turning her horse and coming toward them.
“Major, I insist you take these four into custody,” the Baron said.
“We thought you were recovering from lung fever,” the lieutenant said. “Julia’s been sick with worry, Telaine, how could you do this to her?”
Telaine. Julia. The names were familiar. Lainie still wasn’t looking at him. “Lainie, what’s he talking about?” he asked, hoping she would say something, anything that would cut through the confusion.
“Milord Baron, who killed this man?” the major said, looking down at the Baron where he stood, legs akimbo, coat open a little over his paunch and his elegant frock coat.
Lainie finally looked down at him, and the look of anguish on her face made his throat tighten. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“That woman—” the Baron began.
Lainie took a few steps away from Ben, into an open space, and shouted, “Major!” The major and the Baron, who’d fallen silent, turned to look at her. “Major,” Lainie went on, “my name is Telaine North Hunter…and I am an agent of the Crown.”
It was like she’d started speaking Veriboldan. He didn’t understand. Telaine North Hunter was a Princess of Tremontane and nobody who would be in Longbourne. Telaine. Lainie. Telaine. She was speaking again, but he couldn’t hear her words because of the roaring in his ears. She looked exactly the same, but she was a stranger. A Princess. And an agent of the Crown. She’d lied to him from the moment they met.
He could hear her now, denouncing the Baron—a Ruskalder invasion? That’s what she was here to discover? She’d had to— He swallowed hard against his throat tightening again. Of course. She couldn’t say who she was because that would draw too much attention. She had to behave like an ordinary person. Cook her own food. Build Devices. Wear plain clothes. Use common language.
Find someone to fall in love with her.
He wanted to be sick. She’d used him to make the Baron trust her, keep him from noticing her. All those walks by the lake, evenings at the tavern, nights spent sitting close together in front of the fire—all ploys to make herself just another commoner. Every embrace, every kiss had been a lie. Had she known he loved her, all along, and pretended otherwise to draw him in? Those tears the night she’d claimed she loved him—manufactured to keep him from breaking free of her spell?
He pushed himself to his feet, feeling like an old man, and realized half the village was staring at him. He flushed. That’s right, he thought, I’m a fool. But you were fooled every bit as much as I was. She was an agent; they were supposed to be good at making people see what they wanted them to see.
He reached into his pocket and fingered the smooth surface of the ring he’d made her. Her worst lie of all, letting him believe she wanted to make a life with him. Her uncle had to approve all the marriages—of course that was true, King Jeffrey couldn’t let just anyone marry into the family. Not that she’d had any intention of marrying him; that was just another ploy to string him along. Couldn’t have him realizing the truth and breaking it off.
“It’s
not enough,” Lainie said, and suddenly their eyes met, and he went stiff with anger. A look of fear crossed her face. “Ben,” she said.
“You showed us what you wanted us to see,” he said. His voice sounded strange, empty and hollow like the gash in the oak tree he’d thought was their own special place. She must have laughed herself sick when he’d taken her there, the Princess who was used to ballrooms and theaters and glittering dresses.
She shook her head. “No, that wasn’t—”
“You just said it,” he said, cutting across her words. “You needed to make the Baron believe you were just an ordinary person, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“You lied about who you were. You lied about why you were here.”
“I never lied about—”
His voice grew hoarse. “Must’ve been your lucky day, finding a fool who believed you so completely that he’d love your false self. No better way to fit in than that.”
She shook her head. Her face was as expressionless as his surely was. “That wasn’t how it went.”
His eyes ached with unshed tears. “That sounds like just another lie,” he said. “We deserve everything you ever did to us for being such fools.” He turned and walked away, pushing past that circle of villagers who were all looking at him with such pity he thought it might burn him down to the bone.
Once inside his house, he just stood there, unable to move, barely able to think. He looked over at the couch. She’d really had him that night, used her body to make sure he’d stay attached to her. He’d wanted her so desperately, her soft skin and her smile and those eyes—he turned away from the couch and yanked out the kitchen chair, sat down at the table, covered his face with his hands and wept. He’d fallen in love with a fantasy, a dream-woman manufactured for the sake of an agent’s cover identity. He was the biggest fool in the history of Tremontane.
Finally, he wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. Enough self-pity. What had they said about a Ruskalder invasion? He’d barely heard Lainie—the Princess—say something about how the Ruskalder would reach the fort that night. The fort, and then Longbourne. Well, he could do something about that.
He went into the forge and hefted his biggest sledgehammer. It wasn’t anything he used in the forge and he couldn’t remember what it was there for; it might well have been there before he came to Longbourne. It was as good a weapon as any, and it made him feel strong to have it in his hands, strong and capable and nobody’s fool. He headed back toward the crowd, toward the major, and the villagers parted for him as if honoring his pain. It made him burn with humiliation. “Happen you could use a few more hands at the fort,” he said to the major. “I’m with you.”
“So am I,” Liam said, then other voices joined in, and the major surveyed the crowd appraisingly.
“No,” the Princess said, “no, you can’t, you’re not fighters, you’ll just get yourselves killed.”
He looked at her. She had the damned nerve to look as if she cared what happened to them. It made him furious, with her, with himself, with the Ruskalder. “Happen you don’t get a say in this,” he said, coldly, putting a deadly edge on his words. “Go back where you came from. You’re not one of us.”
She flinched as if he’d hit her. The pain in her eyes satisfied him with a wicked pleasure. It wasn’t enough to make up for what she’d done to him, but it was something. He turned away from her and went to stand by Liam, who said, “Ben,” then fell silent. Heaven bless him for knowing not to say anything.
Ben: The Truth
He hurt everywhere, sharp pain in his leg like a hot knife trying to cut it off, dull aches in his chest and arms as if he’d been working the bellows for twenty-four hours without a rest. He dragged his eyelids open and blinked at a ceiling far more distant than his own. The bed felt wrong, too, and the cold air smelled tart and bitter, the smell of an astringent liquid mixed with that of blood. He tried to sit up, and the pain in his leg spiked so hard it made his vision go black for a minute. He lay back, panting as if he’d run the length of Longbourne without stopping, and tried to remember what had brought him here. The wall, the siege towers, the—
Memory returned. The Ruskalder pouring over the walls, the screams, Lieutenant North laying about him with his sword and him smashing skulls and breaking bones with the hammer. How stupid he was to go to war forgetting that the point of it was to kill the other fellow before he killed you. He’d succeeded at that, anyway. He reached down to feel his leg, see if he could figure out why it hurt, and found a huge bandage wrapped around his thigh. That he didn’t remember. Touching it made his leg twinge, so he stopped doing that and clasped his hands across his stomach. “Hello,” he called out, “is anyone there? Anyone?”
Footsteps, crossing a wooden floor, then, “I was wondering when you’d wake up.” Tabitha Green, Longbourne’s physician. “How you feeling, Ben?”
“Like I went to war. What’s wrong with my leg?”
“Nothing, ‘cept you nearly lost it,” Tabitha said. “Some Ruskalder bastard tried to take it off at the hip. Major Anselm’s healer did what he could, but it’s still going to take some weeks to heal fully. No need to worry.”
“I wasn’t,” Ben lied. “Besides, you patched me up, so I’ll do all right.”
“Flatterer,” the doctor said, and patted his cheek maternally. She treated everyone as if they were her children, her own brood having grown up and left Longbourne years ago.
“Where is this?” Ben said. He didn’t try to sit up again.
“The old factory. We brought all the serious cases here. Easier for me to tend ‘em than going around to houses.”
“Were there a lot?”
The doctor’s face went grim. “Twenty-five deaths. Maybe forty wounded as seriously as you. A handful of lesser injuries.”
“Who died?”
“Ben, that’s a long list, and—”
“Those are friends, Tabitha. Please.”
The doctor sighed. “The Major wrote it all out to go to the capital, had ‘em make us a copy. I’ll bring it to you later.” She patted his cheek again. “You’re alive, and so are a lot of people. And we kept the Ruskalder from overrunning the fort, so we’re all heroes. Much good that does the dead.” She hesitated, then reached into her pocket, saying, “This was in your trousers when they cut them off you. Not sure you still want it, but I thought…I don’t know what I thought. Here.”
She held out something small. Lainie’s ring.
Ben took it from her and gripped it tightly, unable to meet the doctor’s eye. Tabitha withdrew without another word.
When she was gone, Ben stared at the ceiling and wondered whose names were on that list. Jack? Liam? Lainie—
He’d almost forgotten, in the noise and terror of battle, what fueled the rage that drove the sledgehammer. The Princess who’d used him and made a fool of him, gone back to the capital now. Maybe someday it wouldn’t hurt so much. He clenched the delicate gold band in his fist. Why the hell he was still carrying it, he didn’t know, but he’d put his whole heart into it and he couldn’t bear to throw it away. He’d have to melt it down, turn it into something useful, like a thimble. Maybe Eleanor would want it.
“You’re awake,” Jack said. He dragged something across the floor, a chair or a box or something out of Ben’s line of vision, and sat beside him. “I plan on calling you Gimpy from now on. Heard you were something to watch, up on that wall.”
“I don’t remember most of it.”
“You must’ve killed eight or nine Ruskalder in that last push, before you were wounded. Saved that lieutenant’s life, for one. Then he saved yours, stopped the bleeding long enough for the healer to get to you.”
“I guess I’ll have to thank him,” Ben said, then remembered who they were talking about. Lieutenant North. Prince Jeffrey North. The Princess’s cousin. He hoped he never saw the man again.
“Guess so,” Jack said. He fell silent.
“What?” Ben said.
Ben’s heart thumped once, hard, and he drew in a breath. “I didn’t know,” he said. “Who else?”
“You sure you’re well enough for this?”
“Might drive me crazy wondering. Tell me.”
Jack sighed. “Liam. Trey. Ed Decker, Merisa Stone, Gavin Treller, Annabella White. A lot of others.”
The ache in his chest redoubled, and he felt tears come to his eyes. So many friends. “Tabitha said twenty-five. Jack, is Eleanor all right?”
“She collapsed when they told her the news. Blythe…she looks like she was shot and her body just hasn’t gotten the message yet. They’re having to remind her she’s got the baby to worry about, has to take care of herself.”
“But Isabel’s fine.”
“Not even a scratch, but her best friend is dead and she’s convinced it should’ve been her. I’ll bring her to see you. She could stand to have another friend to talk to.”
“What about Alys?”
Jack shrugged. “Fine, as far as I know. We’re not courting anymore. I didn’t realize how shallow she was until after the battle she started complaining about how the healer hadn’t fixed her up, like she didn’t even realize how many people were still dying. It felt like an insult to them.” He grinned, regaining some of his good cheer. “Plenty of other girls in the world, right?”
“Guess so,” Ben said. As if he wanted other girls. He wanted the woman he’d fallen in love with. The one who didn’t exist.
Jack didn’t notice Ben’s sudden silence. “I promised Ma I’d be home by five,” he said, pulling out his watch. “War’s over, but she worries about me still.” He checked the time, hesitated, then pushed the button at the bottom. And there was her voice, declaring Jack Taylor is a handsome devil. It felt like being knifed through the heart.
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