“Why did you eat it, then?”
“I didn’t want to worry you.” He paused, and she could hear him trying not to gag. “Go back to bed, wife. I don’t want company for this.”
If he didn’t want to worry her, then he should stop trying to endure it all by himself. Ophele retreated to the door of the bedchamber and then hovered anxiously. From the sound of it, he was heaving up his toenails. She wouldn’t want him to see her in such a state, either, but she couldn’t just go back to bed.
Could she besureit wasn’t poison? Could someone have gotten to him after all? Ophele had imagined this, but in her daydreams it had always been distant and dramatic, a thing that could notreallyhappen. She couldn’t stop thinking of Davi offering to switch plates at supper, and remembering that moment when one of the kitchen boys had shouted and she had looked away from Azelma’s busy hands.
At long last, the privy door creaked open. Ophele fled back to bed on silent feet and slipped between the covers, pulling them up to her ears. But it was a long time before she heard his heavy tread approaching and the loudclunkas he locked the door. On the other side of the bed drapes, she could hear him building up the fire, and then a chair creaked under his weight. A rustling of paper.
He did not come back to bed.
***
Someone had searched Mionet’s cottage.
She had not been trained to notice such things, but there could be no other explanation. Shoe boxes slightly out of order. Ink bottles just a few inches from their usual position on her desk. The ribbon in her address book marking the wrong page. It was more alarming than an outright robbery.
It meant she was suspected.
By who?
Of what?
Hadeveryonebeen searched? It wouldn’t have surprised her, if that were the case; the attack on the cook had shattered the peace of the manor, and Mionet could not blame Duke Andelin for almost any precaution. But though she watched the servants carefully, and listened to their gossip, there was no sign that they had endured the same indignity.
Ought she report it? Was it suspicious that she had not?
Standing in her violated cottage, Mionet’s hands clenched at her sides and she lifted her chin, drawing three slow breaths. It was suspicious either way. Duke Andelin’s threat rang in her memory, enough to send a prickling chill down her spine, but she knew there was nothing to be found.
It would be easy enough to claim ignorance, if anyone confronted her over her disarranged things.
There was nothing like a crisis to clarify one’s position, and to Mionet’s dismay, it was neither so high nor so intimate as she hoped. If she could have gotten her hands on the real culprit, she would have happily strangled him. In a single stroke, he had undone the patient work of months.
It wasn’t just the rapport she had been building with the Duchess of Andelin. Ever since she arrived, Mionet had been molding the whole household in the appropriate direction. Just bringing its highest-ranking members—and Davi—to the table to share meals was a triumph. Eating together was not a trivialthing. Over time, even the most banal conversations built up into real intimacy, like flakes of snow in a blizzard.
She had been working assiduously to make sure those conversations were not banal. The Duchess of Andelin was her most important relationship, yes, but Mionet had been cultivating a rather intellectual understanding with Justenin, and fostering camaraderie with Leonin, a gentleman of the capital in every way. She had pushed the dangerous Miche of Harnost aside and—she thought—even made a little progress with Duke Andelin himself. He was not a friendly man, but he respected courage, and Mionet had chosen moments to distinguish herself carefully.
And then that botched assassination had blown everything to flinders.
“Why can’t you just work here?” Duchess Andelin was entreating her husband as Mionet entered the solar one morning, a week after the attempt on Wen. This was an area where things were going askew.
“I can’t hide away, wife.” He darted a sharp glance at Mionet and moved them both away, but even from the other end of the room, Mionet’s keen ears still caught the words. “I’ll be fine. I’m guarded.”
“Then at least come home for supper,” she said, catching his sleeve. “Please.”
“Ophele. You don’t need to worry about this.” His tone sharpened. “You don’t need to do anything.”
“I said I was sorry,” she whispered. “Won’t you just—”
“I said no.”
The words were so harsh, Mionet stiffened. From the corner of her eye, she could see him looming over his wife, nudging her chin up with a finger to make her look at him.
“This is not a puzzle for you to solve,” he told her, glowering. “Don’t you ever do such a thing again. Promise me.”
“Promise.”It was not a request.
She must have said something satisfactory, but Mionet had to look away at that point, feeling the outrage rise clear from her toes to her ears. She couldn’t imagine what the lady could have done that would merit the snarling correction of Remin Grimjaw.
