“Why?” she asked, knocking firmly on a door. “It wasn’t any of your doing, and besides, there are worse things than being a lady’s maid. I could be dredging sewers or working in the mines.”
Choice. The word came swiftly to my mind although I did not speak it aloud. Until these last few days, I had not truly appreciated what it meant to have control over one’s own life. The right to choose mattered – and it was a right none of the half-bloods had.
“What do you want?” shrieked a voice from inside the room.
“It’s me!” I shouted back. “Cécile!” Squaring my shoulders, I turned the handle and went inside.
“Cécile!” the Queen exclaimed as she caught sight of me. Rising to her feet, she hurried over and kissed me on both cheeks while I was still mid-curtsey. I wheezed as she pulled me into a hug that made my ribs creak.
“Don’t break her, Matilde,” the Duchesse shouted over her shoulder. “She’s positively fragile.”
“I’m not really,” I said, smiling awkwardly at the Queen as she led me towards a sitting area surrounded by mirrors. “I did grow up on a farm, you know.”
“These things, as is often the case, are relative,” the Duchesse replied.
“Your hair is positively tangles,” the Queen declared, seemingly oblivious to our conversation. Picking up a hairbrush, she pushed me down on a stool in the middle of the circle of benches and began to work the snags out of my hair.
“Just let her,” the Duchesse said, the soft tone of her voice out of character. “She is better when she has someone to mother.”
I nodded into the reflection of the mirrors, which had clearly been set up for this purpose.
“Why are you here?”
élise had been right – Tristan’s aunt was not one for wasting time.
I cleared my throat. “Before, you said there were opportunities for me here in Trollus – that little would be denied me. I’d… I’d like to take advantage of that.”
She took a mouthful of tea and watched me in the mirror. I waited for her to ask me what had changed, but she only nodded. “Is there something in particular you wish to pursue?”
Knowledge. “I’m not sure,” I replied.
“Music?”
“No,” I said quickly. “Not that.” My singing was my own – the thing I was best at, that I cared about most. I did not want them interfering in that.
“Art? Literature? History? Language?” She rattled off a series of topics.
“All of those things,” I agreed.
The Duchesse bit her lower lip and then smiled. “Things to pass the time.”
I realized then that she didn’t need to ask what had changed – somehow, she already knew. And it became just as clear to me that the matter of Tristan’s politics and plans was not something that would be overtly discussed between us.
“The game you play,” I pointed towards the boards hovering in the corner. “Will you teach it to me?”
“Guerre,” she mused. “Yes, perhaps that is an appropriate place to begin. With strategy.”
“Tristan. He…” I hesitated, watching the Queen in the mirror. She had ceased with brushing my hair, and her eyes seemed glazed over and unseeing. “He likes this game?”
The Duchesse shook her head. “He does not like it – he lives it. Now, shall we begin?”
The following two days were filled from dawn till dusk with a wide assortment of activities. I learned the basics of Guerre from the Duchesse, practiced with a dancing master, learned how to blow glass, wrote bad alliterative poetry with the twins, and followed Marc about on tours of various parts of the city. Not once did I so much as catch a glimpse of Tristan, which is why, on the third day, his abrupt arrival at my painting lesson caught me off guard.
“That,” said a voice from behind me, “is without a doubt one of the ugliest combinations of color I have ever seen. Please do not tell me you call that art!”
I turned slowly from the brown and green mixture I had been idly smearing across the canvas to find Tristan standing behind me, arms crossed and a frown on his face. “How long have you been at this?”
“All afternoon.” I scowled and got to my feet.
“If this is what an afternoon of lessons by the finest artists of Trollus can accomplish, I can only imagine what you were like when you started.” He glanced towards my teachers. “You’re wasting your time.”
“The Duchesse asked us to give Lady Cécile instruction, Your Highness,” one of the artists said, looking like she would rather be anywhere but here.
“Well, I am telling you to cease and desist immediately,” Tristan snapped. “This,” he gestured vaguely towards my painting, “is not worthy of your attention.”
“Excuse me, Your Highness.” I grabbed handfuls of my skirt and squeezed the fabric, feeling the hot flush of anger and embarrassment on my cheeks. “But I was led to believe I could pursue whatever activities I wished, so I do not see what right you have to stand in my way!”
“Royal prerogative!”