Page 134 of Stardust Child

“I do not believe His Grace would like you to sit out in the rain and cold all day,” he replied firmly. “Nandre is a small village. Edemir has prepared room for them in the cookhouse. There will be plenty of time for someone to come and fetch you there.”

“Very well,” she conceded reluctantly. “We’ll have spare clothes and blankets waiting. I don’t suppose there will be another signal, as they approach?”

“No, Your Grace.” That won an actual smile from Sir Justenin. “But we will send a messenger as soon as there is any news at all.”

It was a very long day. It was impossible to carry on a conversation when the duchess twitched at every noise, and at least once an hour, she went to the window to peer out into the rain as if she expected to see a parade of horses clattering down Eugene Street. Whatever she was thinking, it periodically made her turn very pink.

“He may not come today, my lady,” Mionet was finally forced to remind her, on humanitarian grounds. “Travel will be difficult in this weather, and it might only be the people from Nandre in any case.”

“I know,” Duchess Andelin agreed, only to bolt to her feet a moment later when Sim appeared with another armload of firewood.

“You should not pin your hopes on him too much,” Mionet said, with the conviction of experience.

The skies opened up that afternoon in an icy, drenching downpour that effectively quenched the last of Duchess Andelin’s enthusiasm, and she lapsed into withdrawn silence, her head bent over her sewing. Mionet could not even pretend to make conversation. It was painful to see the sudden, wild hope in the duchess’s face at the sound of steps outside the door, followed by disappointment when Sir Justenin appeared with supper.

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the heavy hamper from him. She was adamant that no one should approach His Grace’s food except herself, his knights, and the vulgar Wen. There was more food inside than two ladies could have eaten in a week, stowed in earthenware containers and wrapped in thick blankets to keep it warm.

“Don’t worry yourself, my lady. They have camped out in far worse than this,” said Sir Justenin, as if this were any sort of consolation. Mionet gave him a flash of cutting gray eyes, but held her tongue.

“Emi, please set places for the duchess and myself,” she instructed, gathering up her sewing and setting the box aside. “Would you care to join us, Sir Justenin?”

“No, thank you,” he said wisely, and departed with a bow.

To be fair, this was no fault of Sir Justenin, nor even entirely the fault of the duke. The signal from this morning might not have even been His Grace; there were two parties coming from the same direction. And this was not like missing a dinner engagement. The duke and his men were facing far greater hazards than Segoile market day traffic.

“The hardest part is waiting,” Mionet said as she nibbled at her own tasteless supper. “There are many things that might delay them. It might not even be something dangerous. A horse may throw a shoe. A wagon axle might break.”

Sometimes wagon axles broke twice in a week. Mionet closed her mouth firmly. There were an infinite number of excuses a man might offer when he was not where he promised he would be. But the Andelin Valley was a truly dangerous place.

The sight of the Meinhem refugees had shocked her as much as it had Duchess Andelin. She had seen beggars in Segoile, but only from a distance and most often through the windows of a carriage. Perhaps this was not a romance at all; maybe it was a morality play, or an epic from the Age of Heroes. Knights and devils. Peril and self-sacrifice. These things were quaint relics of a bygone age on the stages of Segoile, but here they were inescapable reality.

“But if they were close enough to signal, then the worst of the danger must be past,” Duchess Andelin said hopefully. “Even if they cannot come today.”

“I am sure that is so,” Mionet replied, jabbing her fork into a bit of roast pork and wishing the duchess would manage her face just alittle.There was a reason for the bored, bland society masks donned by the aristocrats of the capital. When one lived in close quarters, constantly observed every moment of the day, it was both dangerous andrudeto make a parade of one’s every emotion.

Night fell, and the genre transitioned to tragedy.

“They will come tomorrow, my lady,” Mionet told the duchess in the dressing room some hours later. Peri was putting the green gown andslippers away, and Emi was carefully removing the ribbons they had so artfully used to ornament the duchess’s hair, gown, and throat.

“I know.” The blank-faced doll was back again.

“But you should not count too heavily on such promises in future,” Mionet went on, brushing the curls from Duchess Andelin’s brown hair with sharp, angry jerks. “Men will say a great deal, but you will often find yourself hurt, if you set your heart upon it.”

And the dukehadpromised. Why did men neverthinkbefore they said such things? It was so easy, wasn’t it, to blithely say,I’ll be home in a month,with no thought at all for how their wife would feel when the month had passed and there was no sign of the delinquent. Night after night, worrying and wondering, that cruelest curse upon women: towait.

Mionet had seenthisplay dozens of times. Sooner or later the husband would arrive, often clutching a bouquet of posies which would not undo any of the hurt he had caused. When flowers failed to console, then there would be jewels. And more apologies. And more lonely nights, and the stars forbid a lady should ever be ill-mannered enough to actuallycomplain.A cycle of escalating disappointment, culminating in the realization that it was better to have no expectations at all. One’s wardrobe was a much more reliable source of satisfaction. Many noblewomen drowned their unhappiness in society, or a string of lovers, and occasionally in a bottle.

But Mionet was not quite heartless enough to tell this to Duchess Andelin, who was unlikely to believe it in any case. It was a lesson that every woman had to learn for herself.

“Emi, please make another compress,” she said briskly. “Peri, fetch the cold cream. We’ll give your face a light scrub and tend to your skin tonight, my lady, so you will look all the lovelier tomorrow. There was a fragrant steam one of my ma—”

Distantly, there was a noise.

The doors of the dressing room and hallway were thick and muffling, but it grew louder as it approached, a rapid thudding of footsteps that were not the quick footsteps of Jaose or the staccato tread of Sim, and a man’s voice called.

“Ophele?”

The sight of Duchess Andelin in the mirror was like a flower bursting into bloom.

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