AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Dahlia blinked, looking so astonished at the thought that the second prince of Faelhorn might debase himself in so vulgar a fashion as to shop in what she viewed as an inferior marketplace, that she was momentarily speechless. She at last recovered. “I suppose it is a form of charity to shop among the less fortunate.”
Which was a sentence that made absolutely no sense to Clare, until the woman continued talking and it became clear she’d only made the comment as an excuse to segue into talking about her own charity work. She launched into the subject with a genuine pride and enthusiasm that made Clare want to slap her.
Clare recalled, from Alys's briefings on various court persons, that appearing charitable was the latest trend among young noble women, and Dahlia had taken to the field with all the enthusiasm her father’s pocketbook could provide. Still, Clare could have overlooked the fact the charity was only being enacted for the sake of accolades, had it been carried out in a useful manner.
Unfortunately, it soon became clear that Dahlia’s idea of “helping the less fortunate” was to make them look better. Which would have been all to the good, had that meant supplying them with decent clothing. Clare actually listened to the woman blather on for half a bell to determine that, no, what Dahlia had done was commission various ribbons and other accoutrement-type items to make the recipients of her beneficence “look more festive” and to “improve their cheer”.
Clare angled her head slightly to turn a disbelieving look on Numair, certain something had fundamentally broken in her brain and she was hearing this wrong. Numair rolled his eyes.
Unable to help herself, Clare interjected, “And you don’t think their cheer might be more improved by, say, a winter coat than a pretty ribbon?”
Dahlia—in a much better mood now that everything was, to her mind, all about her—missed the blatant sarcasm in Clare’s voice. “I can see how, if you haven’t engaged in any charity work before, you might think so. But if you simply give them things like that—things they need to survive—they won’t work for anything. They’ll become dependent on handouts. Like when you start feeding wild animals and they forget how to hunt for themselves. But things like I provide them—nice, pretty things—allow them a taste of what they can aspire to if they only work hard. It gives them an incentive to rise above their meager stations.
“It’s that sort of effect a person like me can have on them, and I do think it is so important to help the less fortunate. Don’t you agree?”
For a moment, Clare was back in Renault County in rags and dirt, her stomach snarled up in knots and her feet covered in cuts, and her tongue itched to demand just what Dahlia thought she knew of the “less fortunate”. The anger was tempered by the part of Clare that felt herself a traitor for the fineness of the clothing she now wore, for the happy satisfied state of her stomach, and for the lack of dirt ground into her skin.
She felt guilty, simply for having. As if the fact she was not currently in abject need somehow made her an impostor inside her own skin.
Her hands tightened on the reins so that Kialla tossed her head in irritation, and she instantly relaxed her grip. It wasn’t as if she had any special fondness in her heart for “the poor”, as they were all lumped in together. Poverty did terrible things to people, and she had been done too much harm by those of her own former lot in life to have any special pity left for them. She only retained a general sense of the wrongness of poverty as an idea, and that someone—society at large—ought to do something about it.
What was it about money that turned people wicked? Lack of it and excess of it had near the same effect. Those without had so little to lose that fearing the repercussions of their actions was pointless—they could hardly fall any lower—and the latter had so much affluence they simply purchased their way out of those repercussions.
She forced herself to make some general noise of agreement in Dahlia’s direction, and was relieved when Proconsul Aula called back to suggest they break for lunch.
The mystery of where lunch was to be found was solved when they exited the Squirrel Garden—she’d only caught a few glimpses of the typically industrious little rodents in the trees, their activity curbed by winter’s chill—and entered a meadow littered with gazebos on one side and corrals on the other.
Lined up along the outer edges of the gazebos were carts that bore a semblance to the food carts that could be found in the busy market streets. Clare chose to consider it a mere semblance because, where the market carts were humble creatures, these were painted and gilded and so clean they could have driven through a noblewoman’s parlor and she might never be the wiser.
The horses that had carried the carts here had been unhitched and corralled far away before the preparation of food ever began, and of course the customers here could not be expected to stand in line to order. Instead, Clare noticed boys and girls in clothing matching the color of one or another of the carts. They darted between gazebos, taking orders and returning from the carts with food.
She followed Numair’s lead as he stopped at one of the corrals, where they left their horses before setting off on foot toward an empty gazebo. They were halfway to it when Clare felt someone’s gaze on her. Or rather, on the wrist with Alys's ribbon bound around it. She followed the feeling to a young woman with brown skin and eyes covered with thick black lashes. It was several moments before the woman’s gaze lifted from the ribbon to Clare’s face. It did not linger long before her eyes widened and she turned away, though she didn’t do so quickly enough to hide the hurt skittering across her features.
Clare was quite certain, then, that she knew exactly what sort of misunderstanding Alys meant her to prevent. Now she simply had to prevent it while also divesting herself of the ribbon without being noticed. All in a wide, open expanse of high society in which everyone was watching everyone else while pretending not to. She had no reasonable excuse to approach the woman and no idea who she was. Her clothes, while well-made, were not quite fine enough for the company she mingled in at present, though the clothes of her companion most certainly were.
Said companion towered above the woman by a good foot and a half. Gray peppered his hair, though he didn’t look old enough to truly warrant the color. He had the same nose and eyes as Alys.
To Miriam, Clare quietly asked, “Who is that?”
Miriam followed her gaze, lips thinning. “Geoffrey Megadari. The soon-to-be Duke of Wake if no one can find his sister.”
Everything about him set Clare’s teeth on edge. He had the same effect on the young woman, if the way she held her body arched away from him was any indication. For his part, he seemed ambivalent to her presence at his side. No, that was not quite right. It was more that he was barely aware of her presence, as if she were an accessory he’d put on. So why had he brought her?
But then, she was obviously important to Alys. Alys, who did not want to be found. Alys, whose brother enjoyed the status granted him by her absence, and who would not want her found. At least, not publicly. He might well benefit from finding her on his own, quietly, and to that end the presence of the woman beside him became obvious. She was a lure. A lure, or a warning, or perhaps both.
Clare kept an eye on the woman throughout the lunch, waiting for an opportunity to arrive. Numair was the only one to notice where her attention went. Dahlia and Lady Meraland—Ella, Clare supposed, as she found titles onerous—were keeping their own conversation, which pointedly excluded Clare, who couldn’t have been happier about the fact. The proconsul of Perish Province, which bordered Taella, had joined their party, and so had taken most of Miriam’s attention.
For his part, Numair was pretending to be halfway to drunk. She suspected it was partially in dedication to maintaining his reputation and partially because, after his second glass of wine, Dahlia got an irritated look on her face and ignored him. The woman clearly had a dedication to obtaining a royal title since, to all appearances, she disliked everything about Numair and didn’t bother to hide it. She didn’t have to, since absolutely no one had any respect for him.
For Clare’s part, when she wasn’t watching Alys's mystery woman, she was trying to figure out where the copious amounts of alcohol Numair supposedly consumed actually went. She didn’t think he was surreptitiously dumping it in the grass somewhere, because it wasn’t the kind of strategy that could be employed in every situation. She was relatively certain it was actually alcohol because, though she was sure he could manage to have a servant at every function, ready to provide him with colored water instead, she was also certain one of them would eventually talk.
Nor were his beverages disguised by glamour. She could always see through that, even when the Song was being as quiet as it was now. It hadn’t fully abandoned her, as it did within the walls of Alaric’s palace, but it was keeping to itself here, in the king’s gardens. Besides which, glamour was yet another strategy too risky for long-term employment. The right mages could see past it if they paid enough attention. So how was he doing it?
She was no closer to an answer when he seemed to ascertain the purpose of her attention. He lifted the wine glass at her in a mocking salute and drained the remaining half of its contents. Well, it had definitely all gone into his mouth.
In her peripheral vision, Alys's mystery woman rose, and Clare’s attention shifted, watching as she walked down to the corral. Her horse—and Lord Megadari’s—were in the corral next to Kialla’s, and the woman began adjusting cinches that had been loosened for comfort while their riders ate.
Clare reached across the table and plucked the apple Numair had purchased but not eaten. “May I?”
