“Why must you be so against this rise of ours, my dear?” he said. “Why do you resist my kingship? Don’t you realize what this means for your house as well as mine? Don’t you see the good of Southlands in our ascension?”
“Oh, don’t be silly, dear,” said the baroness with a dismissive toss of her curls. “You know I don’t know about such things. My mind goes whirling when I try to think about it!”
The baron’s mouth worked as though he wanted to speak. Instead, he returned to his search of the desk. After riffling through papers and not finding what he wanted, he slammed a drawer. “You think I’m wrong, don’t you,” he said, his back still to his wife. “You think what I do is . . . evil.”
“What makes you say such a thing?” said she, tilting her head. “You’re my husband.”
“Then why,” said he, turning suddenly and fixing her with the full force of his large eyes, “will you not come down?”
“I’ve told you and I’ve told you!” said she, sounding very like a child. “I think we should wait for Foxbrush to return! With our Daylily. How silly would you feel, husband, if they were to come out of the Wilderlands in another day or two and you had to step down from the throne?”
A muscle in the baron’s broad forehead ticked. Lionheart could almost hear his teeth grinding. Then he said: “I have mastered Southlands as no Eldest in a hundred years has mastered it. Even with the Dragon’s poisoning of our fields and our people, I have brought it under my rule. Hawkeye never united the people so. Foxbrush never could. Even that fool, Lionheart, had he not betrayed his own with loyalties to demons and monsters, could never have brought the strength to Southlands’ throne that I will bring! I am the true Eldest, even if no royal blood flows in my veins. And to this, all the barons have agreed.”
The baroness replied with a guileless smile, “Only because you forced them. Only because they’re afraid of you.”
A long silence crackled the air between them. In that silence, Lionheart could hear a future of screaming and bloodshed and doom. He waited, unable to breathe, for what he knew must follow from the fire burning behind the baron’s cold eyes.
At last, however, the baron sighed. He crossed the room and caressed his wife’s plump cheek. “But you aren’t, are you, my dear?”
“Aren’t what?” asked she, blinking.
“Afraid of me.”
“Oh no!” said she, getting to her feet and taking him in her arms. “Silly man! Why would you ever ask that?”
And she kissed him. Lionheart moved away from the wardrobe door, embarrassed at glimpsing such a tender moment between the baron and his wife. He felt his face flushing and dared not look out again for some moments, though he could guess a little at what went on by the lack of talk without.
Finally he heard the baron say with a deep sigh, “Very well, my love. Stay here if you must. Rest and make yourself easy while I face the vipers below. But tomorrow, you will wear the robes I ordered, and you will take the crown when I place it on your head, and you will be the queen I make of you.”
The baroness giggled. “Have a nice supper, sweetest,” she said.
The stamp of feet, the opening and shutting of a door, the click of a lock, and Lionheart dared breathe again. But the baroness’s hurrying footsteps across the room made him draw himself upright just as she flung wide the wardrobe door.
“Get out!” she said, beckoning with both flustered hands. “Hurry, hurry!”
He stumbled into the room, tripping on petticoats. When he saw the baroness crossing the room to her bellpull, he gasped. Would she summon the guards? But why would she give him away now when she hadn’t to the baron?
“What are you doing?” he demanded sharply, wondering if he should tie her up or gag her or both.
She looked around at him, her mouth a little O of surprise. “Why, I’m ringing for my page boy, of course.”
“What for?”
“So you can clunk him on the head and take his livery.” At Lionheart’s openmouthed stare, the baroness shook her curls, laughing. “You don’t think you’re going to stop the coronation without a disguise, do you? Don’t be a ninny, and get behind that door. You must do your part, or there’s no way we can have ourselves a rebellion!”
12
THAT A VOICE COULD BE HEARD above the lion’s roaring was testimony both to its wrath and its range.
“Little BOY did you call me?”
Foxbrush lay in a pile of helpless horror, his vision one moment full of teeth and mouth and all things ravening . . .
The next moment, full of woman. And such a woman!