Page 61 of The Court of Venus

“Taking a turn around the gardens with the king,” said Joan Rockford. “He needs fresh air.”

“Good. I’d like a private word with Kitty.” I spun with my hands knit behind my back, as I’d seen Roland do, and tossed her a mischievous smile.

Without the cake of powder, she looked older than her twenty-eight years. There were faint lines on her forehead, around her mouth. She pursed her thin lips, waving the other ladies away. With a flash they were gone, their white gowns fluttering in their wake as they turned the corner.

I ran my hand along the back of a chair. Walking in a forest, Roland would tug on leaves, leave a trail in his wake. He’d trace the lines of furniture, of picture frames, searching for dust. Roland’s busy hands—infamous at court. His admirers must imagine he was touching them instead. Maybe I’d noticed him more than I cared to admit, but I had to be careful. Kitty’s eyes were just as keen as mine.

I stood before her while she sat demurely on a cushion, subduing the dog with gentle coos. “I thought you’d come for Cecily,” she said.

“I came to talk.”

She peered up at me through narrowed eyes. “Don’t you and Cecily talk? Or do you do other things?”

“Our kind of talk is different.”

“That, I have no doubt. Cecily Guildford knew men long before—”

I leapt forward and clapped my hand over her mouth. Beneath it, her quick, excited breath. Her eyes shone with challenge as her chest heaved. When I released her, she wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “I see the truth is still unwanted, even if the queen and her family have been naughty.”

My heart again. Now, now, now, it pounded. Ask her now. What would I want Roland to say, if I were her? I settled on: “Are you lonely here, Kitty?”

She blinked several times. “Lonely. Am I lonely?” She rose onto her knees. “After Eleanor became queen, I was cast into the country, begging for scraps of a word. And then, and then! A page delivers a note from Charles Guildford, and I’m to return to court in the service of his witless daughter, after years of nothing from anyone at all. I was promised a full pardon by Prospero himself.”

Cast to the country. No word. Waiting for a messenger to round the bend. I had more in common with her than I thought.

“Prospero is dead. He cannot issue pardons.”

She fell onto her heels. “The pardon has already been issued. What I meant was—no one has forgiven me.” Her black eyes cut to mine. “I told the king what he needed to know. Instead of a reward, I was banished—and now, mocked. How is this the Crown’s generosity?” She gestured around the queen’s empty rooms, pulling the dog tighter against her belly, where it began to struggle. “I was helping.”

And I knew she believed she was. Her conviction was apparent.

“Help me now.” I gave her what I knew to be Roland’s most charming, confident grin.

“With what? What do you want? If you want me to spy on Cecily, don’t bother. She never does anything interesting.”

“No, not Cecily. I want your memory.” I tilted my head back. How many times had Roland gripped me with this precise stare? “I know it’s sharper than most.”

She smiled, flattered enough to let me continue.

“Three years ago”—I turned my hand from side to side—“roughly, after Hal died, there was an inquest.”

Everything about her expanded. Her smile, her delight at being useful and under someone’s line of questioning again. Roland was right—she was someone who would steal just for the thrill of being interrogated afterward. “Yes, but it was rather uneventful.” She peered up at me curiously.

I sat down beside her and leaned my head against the base of a chair, crossing one of Roland’s long legs over the other. I eyed the fluttering pulse on her neck. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’ve heard. But I wasn’t there myself, so I’d like to ask you about it.”

“Why?” Beneath her crescent hood, her face was pale and eager, and there was a single brown mole twitching beside her pursed lips.

“Because I believe what you said. You want to help, and you are selfless when someone is in need.”

She liked that very much. “Well, I sat in the balcony and watched as that old Estellan Sunborn and Prospero brought witnesses forward. The Guildfords were terribly smug, drunk throughout, you know, because they saw a path had cleared for them. They aren’t smart enough to have done it themselves, but they were crafty enough to push little Eleanor right in front of the king’s nose.” She laughed. “Or, I suppose, Prospero was. Let’s see … what else? A stable hand was brought forward, and he was so frightened, convinced that because he was a witness he was being accused.”

As she recalled it, moment by moment, I touched her mind, as lightly as dipping my finger into a pond. The memory was already there, resting on the surface, and so I saw what her words reflected: the stable hand pushed forward by Tom Guildford. He had a tuft of hair on his chin—unfashionable after barefaced Roland rose at court—and he kept scratching it as he beheld the two magicians raised above him.

“How long have you lived here, at Redhall?” boomed Prospero, voice magnified by his expansion magic.

The stable hand twisted the hem of his shirt. “I came here as a boy.”

It was grooms and servants and ladies-in-waiting like him and Kitty who watched and listened at doors, who kept the great houses and palaces running. “How many years ago was that?” Prospero demanded.