I had just sketched a very ugly lord in my mind when my eyes were suddenly drawn to a man standing with his back to me. His flaxen hair was bound in a ribbon, and something about his height and manner of stature seemed strangely comforting to me. He was dressed in a dark red jerkin and white long-sleeved linen shirt, his breeches a simple black, yet the longer I looked upon his backside, the more I realized there was no chance for me to unobtrusively circumvent the crowd to see his crest.
He must have sensed my gaze, for he at last turned about and glanced at me. My eyes immediately fastened to the emblem imprinted on the breast of his jerkin. It was the tree Jourdain had shown me. This was d’Aramitz. But he had become very still, so still that it was unnatural.
My gaze slowly moved from the crest to his face—which was in no manner ugly and old but young and handsome. Eyes blue as cornflowers. A mouth that rarely smiled.
I was broken, I was mended as I stared at him, as he stared at me.
For he was not just d’Aramitz, the third fallen lord. He was not just an unfamiliar man I was supposed to make eye contact with and then drift away from.
He was Cartier.
TWENTY-TWO
D’ARAMITZ
For a moment, all I could do was stand and breathe, my hands pressed to the silk of my bodice, to the stays of my corset. This could not be, I thought, the protest filling my mind as rain in a river. Cartier was a passion. Cartier was a Valenian.
And yet, all this time, he had been something else.
Cartier was Theo d’Aramitz . . . Aodhan Morgane . . . a fallen Maevan lord.
I could not take my eyes from him.
The sounds of the hall began to melt away as frost in sun, the firelight flickering into a dark gold, as if it were laughing, laughing at Cartier and me. Because I saw it in his gaze too, the longer he drank me in. He was shocked, alarmed that I was the mademoiselle with the silver rose, that I was Amadine Jourdain, the one to retrieve the Stone of Eventide, the one he had been admonished to keep an eye on, to assist if trouble should befall her.
His eyes rushed over me, hung upon that rose in my hair as if it were a thorn, something akin to pain flaring across his expression. And then his gaze returned to mine, the distance between us thin and sharp, like the air just before a steep incline.
Oh, how, how had this happened? How had we not known about each other?
The shock of this was about to blow our covers.
I turned away first and stepped directly into a man who caught me by the arm before I spilled his chalice of ale down his doublet.
“Careful, Mademoiselle,” he said, and I forced a shy smile to my lips.
“Forgive me, Monsieur,” I rasped, then darted away before he could hold me captive.
I was seeking a place to run, to hide until I could recover—I wanted shadows and quiet and solitude—when I heard Cartier following me. I knew it was him; I recognized the heady sensation of distance closing between us.
I stopped before one of the empty trestle tables, pretending that I was admiring the heraldry on the wall, when I felt his leg brush my skirts.
“And who might you be, mademoiselle?”
His voice was soft, agonized.
I should not look at him, should not talk to him. If Allenach happened to glance this way, he would know. He would know there was something between Cartier and me.
And yet I could not resist it. I turned to face him, my body waking to how close he was to me.
“Amadine Jourdain,” I responded—polite, detached, disinterested. But my gaze was bright, my heart smoldering, and he knew it. He knew it because I saw the same in him, as if we were mirrors, reflecting each other. “And you are . . . ?”
“Theo d’Aramitz.” He gave me a bow; I watched as his blond hair gleamed in the light, as his body moved with grace. Beneath that polish and passion, he was steel and cold wind; he was the blue banner and the horse of the House of Morgane.
A rebelling House. A fallen House.
His father must have been the lord to join with MacQuinn and Kavanagh, because Cartier would have been only a child twenty-five years ago. And even as I began to weave together the threads, I knew there was still more that I needed to know. He and I needed to find a way to speak, alone, before the mission completely rotted beneath our feet.
“Which room is yours?” I whispered, and enjoyed the way his face flushed from my brash inquiry.
“The flying stoat,” he returned, so low I almost didn’t hear him.
“I will come to you, tonight,” I said, and then turned away, as if he had lost my interest.
I merged back into the crowd just in time, because Allenach entered the hall, his eyes finding me immediately. He strode toward me, and I waited, hoping that the color in my face had cooled.
“I would like for you to sit at my table, at the place of honor,” Allenach said, offering me his hand.
I took it, let him walk me to the dais, where a long table sat heavily laden with chalices, plates, flagons, and platters of steaming food. But it wasn’t the feast that drew my attention; it was the two young men who sat waiting for us there.
“Amadine, allow me to introduce you to my oldest son, Rian, and my youngest son, Sean,” Allenach said. “Rian and Sean, this is Amadine Jourdain.”
Sean nodded politely at me, his hazelnut-colored hair cropped short, his face freckled and sunburned. I guessed him to be a little older than me. But Rian, the firstborn, merely looked at me with eyes of flint, his thick eyebrows cocked, his dark brown hair loose and long at his collar as he impatiently tapped his fingers along the table. I made a note to avoid him in the future.
I curtsied to them, even though it felt awkward and unnecessary in such a hall. Rian sat at Allenach’s right—signifying he was the heir—and Sean sat on his left. I was to sit on the other side of Sean, which was probably the safest seat in the entire hall for me at the moment. I was cushioned from Rian’s suspicious gaze and Allenach’s inquiries, and I was on the other side of the hall from Cartier.
But as I sat in my appointed chair of honor, my gaze helplessly roamed the trestle tables set before us, seeking my master out despite my better judgment. He was sitting to the left of the hall, three tables away, yet he and I had a perfect view of each other. It felt like a chasm had opened up, cracking the tables, the pewter and silver, the tiles that stretched between us. His eyes were on me; my eyes were on him. And he raised his chalice ever so slightly and drank to me. Drank to my fooling him, drank to my reuniting with him, drank to the plans that entwined us not as passions but as rebels.
“So, my father says you are a passion of knowledge,” Sean said, trying to engage me in polite conversation.
I glanced at him, granted him a little smile. He was regarding me as if I were a flower with briars, the grandeur of my dress obviously making him slightly uncomfortable.
“Yes, I am,” I replied, and forced myself to take the platter of dove breasts that Sean handed me. I began to fill my plate, my stomach revolting at the sight of everything as it had been crunched all day by my corset. But I had to appear at ease, grateful. I ate and spoke to Sean, slowly adjusting to the cadence of the hall.