Page 102 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

Osric was thoroughly charmed.

Mrs. Parson came to clear away the breakfast things and offer Fairhrim a bath, which she gladly accepted.

Half an hour later, Fairhrim joined Osric in his study, wearing one of Mrs. Parson’s dressing gowns, overtopped by another of Mrs. Parson’s shawls.

“Mrs. Parson is washing my dress,” said Fairhrim. “She wants to sew up the torn bit, too. I told her not to bother, but she insisted.”

“She’s grateful to you,” said Osric. “So am I.”

Fairhrim pulled the shawl tighter around herself. “I don’t want praise for having killed someone.”

“This is a Fyren household,” said Osric. “We celebrate murders.”

“Stop it.”

“Besides, it was hardly your first one.”

Fairhrim punctured him with a glare.

Thus warned, Osric did not pursue the theme. Instead he said, “Mrs. Parson asked me about your necklace.”

“Did she?”

“She wanted to know where it was from.”

Fairhrim ran a finger under the worn leather at her neck. “Interesting that she would ask. It’s a hagstone. Amagris gave it to me. I wear it as a reminder.”

“A reminder for what?”

“To protect my heart.”

She touched the stone. It made her shudder like a reflex. So it was the gift of her former lover, carried like a millstone around her neck.

“Most people camouflage their points of vulnerability,” said Osric.

“I’d rather remember.” In a transparent change of subject, she gestured to Osric’s desk, where two letters lay side by side. “What are you working on?”

“A mystery,” said Osric. “You’ll recall that when we went to Wellesley Keep, I took a few mementos…”

“Mementos,” repeated Fairhrim, immensely sardonic.

“Including Wellesley’s correspondence with his various mistresses,” continued Osric. “I investigated them all for blackmailing purposes. There was only one whose identity I couldn’t work out. Interestingly, I found a letter in an identical hand in the Agannor’s coat at the asylum. It contains instructions to sedate the children.”

Osric placed both letters, written in a flowing hand, before Fairhrim. One was perfumed and flowery, the other was crumpled and dirtied by bits of lint from the Agannor’s pocket. Both were unsigned.

At first Fairhrim studied them with a frown. Then her eyes hardened. Her countenance shifted. Her neck straightened. A low rage quickened in her. “I know this hand.”

Osric wasn’t certain whether he was talking to a woman or an impending storm.

“Whose is it?” he asked.

When she looked up, her gaze was chilled iron. “The Kentish queen’s.”

“What?”

Fairhrim plucked lint off the Agannor’s letter as a cat might tear feathers from a bird. Her jaw was tense.

“How in Hel’s name do you know the Kentish queen’s hand?” asked Osric.