“Oh no!” Lady Leta protested quickly. She glanced up at Alistair and turned a remarkable shade of red. “I wouldn’t . . . I mean, Lord Alistair and I . . . I mean, I would never dream of—”
“Tut, don’t rattle on so,” said Mintha, her voice less bright than a moment before. “I’ll leave the two of you to your little tryst, and no harm done.” She began to move on, leaving a terrified Leta trembling before Alistair, who stood with his arms crossed, trying not to look at her.
Mintha paused before she had gone many paces and looked around. “Leta, my dear, it just came to me: Are you come here to have the Chronicler write a letter to your father?”
Leta blinked. Then, as though ashamed that she had not had the idea herself, shook her head.
“Well, if you do,” Mintha continued, her eyes shrewdly fixed upon the girl, “try not to mention my dear brother’s health, will you, my pet? I think it best if your lordly father heard the news from Gaheris House first. All in due time, you understand.”
“Earl Ferox is ill?” Leta asked.
Her voice was so full of innocent concern, one could almost believe she could be so ignorant. Mintha smiled grimly. “All in due time. There’s a sweetness. You keep your letters full of wedding details. Tell your dear mother all about your new gown, yes?”
With that, Mintha chucked Leta under the chin, wrinkled her nose as though to a baby, and moved on down the hall, her heavy skirts dragging on the stones behind her.
Leta stood very still, her jaw clenched. If Alistair had not known better, he would have thought she was barely suppressing a boiling anger. But Leta lacked the passion for real anger, he felt certain. It was probably nothing more than timidity and nerves.
When at last she glanced up at him, she could not hold his gaze. “I’m sorry, my lord Alistair,” she said in her small voice. “Am I interrupting your lesson?”
Alistair shook his head. “I believe I am through with reading for the day.” He sighed then and asked with resignation, “Were you looking for me?”
“No!” she said, perhaps too hastily. Her small hands squeezed into fists at her sides, and he thought for a moment that she would say more. But in the end, she was silent.
He sighed again. “In that case, would you mind very much if I excused myself?”
“Not at all,” she murmured, and Alistair beat a hasty retreat, leaving her standing at the library door.
She remained awhile, unable to move, her ears ringing with words she desperately wished she could un-hear. But she could not stay here forever, undecided and afraid. So at last, her head bowed, she slid into the dimness of the library.
The Chronicler sat as he always did, at his desk, wiping his stained fingers with a still-more-stained blotting rag. He did not seem to notice her entrance but stared at the page he had been copying before Alistair’s lesson began, perhaps reading it, perhaps simply gazing at nothing.
Leta coughed. She wasn’t good at this sort of cough. It was too obvious a ploy for attention, and attention was never Leta’s realm of comfort. But she coughed anyway, and when the first one did not work, she tried a second, louder.
The Chronicler turned. For just a moment, she thought she saw his face light up with a glow brighter than the candle on his desk, brighter even than the afternoon sunlight streaming through the window.
But all warmth vanished the next moment, replaced by the Wall.
Leta had become all too familiar with the Wall over the last four months. It was not present at every lesson. No indeed! Many days when she came to the library, eager and embarrassed by her own eagerness, and took her place at this table, she could see equal enthusiasm in the Chronicler’s face. She could hear the excitement in his voice when he told her the list of letters and words she was to learn that day. She would sit and copy these until the Chronicler told her she’d done enough, and then he would draw up his stool beside her and listen to her stumbling attempts to sound out the words.
On the days when the Wall was down, the Chronicler would exclaim, “Listen to you, m’lady! You read like a chronicler yourself!”
But such days were invariably followed by the Wall. The Chronicler would sit on his stool, surrounded in a silence as strong as all Gaheris’s fortifications, retreated so deeply into himself that Leta wondered if he even knew who besieged him anymore.
He would speak, but only as necessary. A curt “Good” or a curter “Wrong.” And scarcely a word of explanation in between.
On such days, Leta rarely read well, and she always left wondering if she had offended him somehow.
She saw the Wall go up now, blocking out that glimpse of warmth and, she dared believe, pleasure.
Pleasure? Her practical side scoffed. Did you not hear them, you ninny? Insipid little creature, that’s what you are!
The Chronicler doesn’t think so, her rebellious side replied stubbornly.