Royal Assassin

I walked across the room to her. Tentatively, I took her into my arms. She didn’t resist, and that surprised me. I held her carefully, as if she were a butterfly that might be crushed too easily. She leaned her head forward, so that her forehead barely rested on my shoulder, and spoke into my chest. “In a few more months, I will have saved enough that I can start out on my own again. Not open a business, but rent a room somewhere, and find work to sustain me. And begin to start saving for a shop. That’s what I intend to do. Lady Patience is kind, and Lacey has become a real friend to me. But I do not like being a servant. And I will do it no longer than I have to.” She stopped speaking and stood still in my arms. She was trembling lightly, as if from exhaustion: She seemed to have run out of words.

“What did my uncle say to you?” I asked carefully.

“Oh.” She swallowed, and moved her face lightly against me. I think she wiped tears on my shirt. “Only what I should have expected him to say. When first he came to me, he was cold and aloof. He thought me a . . . street whore, I suppose. He warned me sternly that the King would tolerate no more scandals. He demanded to know if I was with child. Of course, I was angry. I told him it was impossible that I should be. That we had never . . .” Molly paused and I could feel how shamed she had been that anyone could even ask such a question. “So then he told me that if that was so, it was good. He asked what I thought I deserved, as reparation for your deceptions.”

The word was like a little knife twisted in my guts. The fury I felt was building, but I forced myself to keep silent that she might speak it all out.

“I told him I expected nothing. That I had deceived myself as much as you had deceived me. So then he offered me money. To go away. And never speak of you. Or what had happened between us.”

She was having trouble speaking. Her voice kept getting higher and tighter on each phrase. She fought for a semblance of calm I knew she didn’t feel. “He offered me enough to open a chandlery. I was angry. I told him I could not be paid to stop loving someone. That if the offer of money could make me love, or not love, then I was truly a whore. He grew very angry, but he left.” She gave a sudden shuddering sob, then held herself still. I moved my hands lightly over her shoulders, feeling the tension there. I stroked her hair; softer than any horse’s mane, and sleeker. She had fallen silent.

“Regal makes mischief,” I heard myself say. “He seeks to injure me by driving you away. To shame me by hurting you.” I shook my head to myself, wondering at my stupidity. “I should have foreseen this. All I thought was that he might whisper against you. Or arrange for physical harm to befall you. But Burrich is right. The man has no morals, he is bound by no rules.”

“He was cold, at first. But never coarsely rude. He came only as the King’s messenger, he said, and came himself to save scandal, that no more should know of it than needed to. He sought to avoid talk, not make it. Later, after we had talked a few times, he said he regretted to see me cornered so, and that he would tell the King it was not of my devising. He even bought candles of me, and arranged for others to know what I had to sell. I believe he is trying to help, FitzChivalry. Or so he sees it.”

To hear her defend Regal cut me deeper than any insult or rebuke she could level at me. My fingers tangled in her soft hair and I unwound them carefully. Regal. All the weeks I had gone alone, avoiding her, not speaking to her lest it cause scandal. Leaving her alone, so that Regal could come in my stead. Not courting her, no, but winning her with his practiced charm and studied words. Chopping away at her image of me while I was not there to contradict anything he said. Making himself out to be her ally while I was left voiceless to become the unthinking callow youth, the thoughtless villain. I bit my tongue before I spoke any more ill of him to her. It would only sound like a shallow angry boy striking back at one who sought to deny his will.

“Have you ever spoken of Regal’s visits to Patience or Lacey? What did they say of him?”

She shook her head, and the movement loosed the fragrance of her hair. “He cautioned me not to speak of it. ‘Women talk’ he said, and I know that is true. I should not even have spoken of it to you. He said that Patience and Lacey would respect me more if it seemed I had reached this decision on my own. He said, also . . . that you would not let me go . . . if you thought the decision came from him. That you must believe that I turned away from you on my own.”

“He knows me that well,” I conceded to her.

“I should not have told you,” she murmured. She pushed a little away from me, to look up into my eyes. “I don’t know why I did.”

Her eyes and her hair were the colors of a forest. “Perhaps you did not want me to let you go?” I ventured.

“You must,” she said. “We both know there is no future for us.”