“Most likely, yes.” Thaddeus halted before her desk. “There are limited options for treason, especially conspiring to kill the monarch. You can’t be lenient on that. It sets a bad precedent. Banishment might also be an option, but he’d always be out there, even more angry after losing his title and riches.”
“I was afraid of that.” She really didn’t want to have to give such a verdict.
But it seemed being queen involved doing a lot of things she didn’t want to do.
When she met Thaddeus’s gaze again, she took in the weariness in his eyes. In the weeks since she’d ascended the throne, his hair had gone even more gray, his face more lined. She really ought to find another personal steward. Thaddeus deserved retirement, not the added burdens she placed on him.
Yet there were so few people she trusted, even now. She certainly didn’t trust the man who’d been her grandfather’s steward, nor any of her grandfather’s former staff.
Thaddeus reached into the leather satchel at his side and pulled out a folded and sealed paper. “This arrived by our trusted messenger.”
The reply from Lalsacia.
Adeline’s stomach twisted, and her handstrembled as she took the paper from Thaddeus. It took her several tries to break the seal. Forcing herself to take a deep breath, she unfolded it and tried to focus enough to take in the words written there in a firm hand. The bottom of the page was signed by King Philip of Lalsacia himself.
“The king of Lalsacia is willing to treat in person.” The lift in her chest fell like a stone a moment later. “But he demands the return of the remaining six envoys. Only once we have returned them will he sit down to discuss a peace treaty with me.”
“You still haven’t told him, have you.” Thaddeus spoke the words as a statement, rather than a true question.
She wasn’t sure if he was asking if she’d told the king of Lalsacia about her marriage to Lord Lorne or if she’d told Lorne about her negotiations with the king of Lalsacia.
In the end, it didn’t matter, as the answer to both of those questions was the same. “No.”
Was she making the right choice? And if it was the right choice, then why did her heart hurt so much?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lorne kept his horse at a walk beside Adeline’s as they rode into the mountains that created the border between Kelverny and Lalsacia, surrounded by numerous guards and several Kelvernese lords who filled out the diplomatic party.
Adeline’s horse tossed its head, and she flexed her fingers, relaxing her grip on the reins. Still, the tension didn’t ease from the line of her back nor the strain from her eyes.
He halted himself before he asked yet again if she was all right. She’d been tense and distant the entire trip from the castle to the mountains, growing more so the closer they came.
Was she merely nervous for the peace talks? A lot hung on the balance. Peace between their kingdoms. Her continued reign. Perhaps her very life.
And yet she was pulling away from him in a way he wouldn’t have expected, given that she’d married him with the purpose of peace. Shouldn’t she have leanedon him more rather than less? They should have stayed up long into the night, discussing their plans.
Worse, he hadn’t yet told her the truth. With so many guards around them in the week and a half since the assassination attempt and with her suddenly holding him at arm’s length, he hadn’t found the right opportunity.
He would have to tell her soon. Before she came face-to-face with his father and found out then.
They crested a rise, and the sprawling Kelvernese military encampment lay before them, a sea of tents filling the valley all the way up to the rise on the far side. There, a palisade of cut timbers created a wall across the pass. The smallest tents were placed in rows near the barrier with larger tents for the commanders at the rear.
Already, a large tent in Kelvernese dark yellow was rising in a cleared space among the larger tents, Adeline’s standard flying from the center pole.
Somewhere out of sight over that rise, Lorne’s father would be entering a nearly identical encampment, if he wasn’t there already.
Lorne’s heart beat harder as it ached within his chest. How he missed his father. Did he know for sure that Lorne was even still alive? Did he know he hadn’t been imprisoned the full time he’d been gone? How much had Adeline written in her communications?
Adeline, strangely, hadn’t let him see any of the missives sent back and forth. He hadn’t even known about them until she’d announced they would beleaving for the border and a diplomatic meeting with the Lalsacian king.
Had he done something wrong? Had that kiss they’d shared scared her away? She’d said it was nice, but she’d withdrawn so soon afterwards.
It was just so…frustrating. He’d thought they were making progress romantically. He’d thought the whole point of their marriage had been for him to assist her in crafting the peace between their kingdoms. Instead he’d found himself shut out as surely as if she’d slammed the door between their bedrooms in his face.
The guards led the way into the encampment, announced with the blaring of trumpets and the march of feet as soldiers assembled into ranks to be presented to their queen.
As Adeline rode between the rows of soldiers, Lorne at her side, the men saluted, all stiff postures and proper uniforms.
