“I nominate Jackie for our side,” said Lord Richard laughingly, since Jacomo the student-priest wasn’t there to defend himself. “He’ll be keen, especially if he joins a celibate order.”
“Your brother can bear holy witness while praying for your immortal souls,” said Duchess Elga, her expression taking on the hardness of wood. This put an end to all ribald joking, to Tess’s immense relief. She’d have had to find a way to stop it otherwise. Jeanne had tears in her eyes; they were upsetting her.
Only at the end of the evening, when the twins were walking through the dim palace corridors toward their suite, did Tess finally blurt out to Jeanne: “Your future mother-in-law makes Mama look positively sweet. And the duke! I guess if you have enough money and rank, you can say whatever the devil you want.”
“Sisi,” said Jeanne quietly, “I’ve talked to Richard and he thinks this is a good idea. What would you say to coming to Castle Cragmarog with us?”
“I’m not going to miss your wedding, silly,” said Tess, whose wits had been slowed by wine. “They can’t slap me into a convent that fast.”
“I meant coming to live with us instead of joining a sisterhood,” said Jeanne. “You could keep me company, and when the children come, you could be their governess. I would treasure your companionship in…in that new house.”
With Richard’s family, Tess completed the sentence in her head. Duke Lionel was pompous and offensive, Duchess Elga strict and bitter. Heinrigh seemed innocuous enough, if a little stupid, but this youngest brother, the seminarian, was surely an apple not fallen far from the tree. Tess chose a trait from each parent and settled upon pompous and bitter.
If Jeanne had suggested this only a day before, Tess would have leaped at the chance on the principle that anything was better than a convent. Having met the people she would have to share a house with, however, she found herself surprisingly uncertain.
Except no, here was Jeanne leaning heavily upon her arm and sighing, her fair, dear head drooping under the weight of her fears. How could Tess tell her no? What kind of barbaric heart could harden against Jeanne? She kissed the crown of her sister’s head and said, “Mama won’t like it, but of course I’ll come, dear heart. Wherever you are is my home, always. Us against the world.”
Weeks passed. The twins turned seventeen upon the cold, dark feast of St. Willibald, halfway between the solstice and the equinox. They invited their family to the palace so that Lord Richard might attend the celebration without embarrassment. Seraphina came (bringing her weird, solemn dragon uncle, against everyone’s wishes) and then announced, in the most tone-deaf manner, that she was—surprise!—going to have a baby. Everyone, down to Seraphina herself, had assumed a half-dragon was like a mule, half this, half that, all infertile, but apparently not. They were all sworn to secrecy on the matter; Seraphina would be leaving for Ranleigh Cottage, one of the royal country estates, and staying there for the duration.
This untimely pregnancy announcement made the torte go sour in Tess’s mouth. Jeanne noticed her expression and whispered in her ear, “She might have told us tomorrow, when it wasn’t our birthday.” Tess smiled weakly at this, though Jeanne had misdiagnosed the malady. Seraphina always stole their thunder; there was no point minding that. Tess didn’t even resent having to keep yet another secret for her.
It was Papa’s undisguised pride that gutted Tess, and Mama’s smile. The smile was entirely fake, but at least she was bothering to pretend.
Later, alone in her closet, Tess polished off the plum brandy. She awoke with a terrible headache and a festering sullenness. Still, she hauled up her own smile, like a leaky bucket from the depths of a stagnant well, and dressed Jeanne with every ounce of cheer she could muster.
* * *
A week before the wedding, when the earliest cherry trees and nodding jonquils were just coming into bloom, Lord Richard drove Jeanne and Tess from Lavondaville to Cragmarog Castle, in Ducana province.
Once it had been a castle in earnest, but like Castle Orison in Lavondaville, age and peace had transformed it into something more palatial than military. Only a semicircle remained of the battlements, which now enclosed formal gardens and fountains. The keep had relaxed into a great stone house with three wings, like a trident. Cupolas, corbie gables, and whimsical chimneys kept the roofline busy; rows of identical glazed windows reflected the sunset sky. The facade was of native Goreddi limestone, glowing warmly in the evening light, elaborated with strapwork and scrollwork around the great doors.
It was all very newfangled and said quite clearly: Here dwelleth money. Jeanne looked overawed; Tess buttressed her across the cobblestone carriage drive and up the steps.
“What a cozy home you shall make it,” Tess whispered in her sister’s ear, but Jeanne was too petrified even to smile.
The twins lived there a week before the rest of their family arrived, getting lost in the big house, strolling arm in arm past crocuses and daffodils in the garden, sitting in the saffron-silk parlor with Duchess Elga every evening while she read aloud from St. Abaster. They studiously avoided the terrible trophy room, which belonged to Heinrigh and was decorated floor to ceiling with the spooked, hapless heads of deer, boar, aurochs, lynx, and wolf. An entire black bear stood on its hind legs in the corner, claws and fangs bared but glass eyes distinctly sad. Jeanne was a shuddering wreck after seeing it and swore never to return to that room again, even if she lived here a thousand years.
Tess had gone back on her own, however, to confirm that she’d seen what she thought she’d seen: the head of a quigutl, openmouthed beside the hearth, used to hold the fireplace tongs. Tess hefted a poker, with half a mind to go find Heinrigh, then set it down in disgust. It would be no help to Jeanne if she killed Richard’s younger brother before the wedding even took place.
She knelt and patted the creature’s spiny forehead. “I know how you feel,” she said.
Cragmarog would be her home, too, if the duke and duchess felt she fit in. She was given a room far away from her sister’s, near the old nurseries. The young lordlings’ old toys—hobbyhorses and little siege engines and more dolls than she would have expected—were nearly as creepy as the trophy room in the moonlight.
The hollow halls echoed melancholy, like her heart.
The rest of Tess and Jeanne’s family, except Seraphina, arrived the day before the service. They would have been welcome sooner—indeed, the duke and duchess would scarcely have noticed four more people wandering lost in their house—but this way the Dombeghs were able to bring along the duke’s youngest son, Lord Jacomo, who had to finish the term at seminary and could return home no sooner.
That was the official story, anyway. Unofficially, it was Lord Jacomo who brought the Dombeghs, because only Lord Jacomo had a coach sturdy enough to withstand the rutted country roads. If you dug deeper still, it became clear that only Lord Jacomo had his own coach, period.
When the coach rolled up, the denizens of Cragmarog went out to greet the new arrivals, Tess trailing after her sister like a proper lady-in-waiting. She didn’t mind being last; she was going to have the best view of her mother and Duchess Elga, a meeting she’d been looking forward to with a certain sadistic glee. What would they make of each other? They were so alike, and so different, that it could go either way: they might be best friends or implacable enemies.