Page 102 of Stardust Child

And maybe that was exactly what he thought would happen. Ophele thumbed through the pages as she clambered back up the stairs, her smile fading. Somehow, she had survived another day without betraying her ignorance, and neither Lady Verr nor Sir Leonin had seemed to think anything of her interlude with the scholars. No one would have guessed that she had never met a Master from the Tower before, or that the only house she had ever seen was Aldeburke.

But what might they expect of her tomorrow?

* * *

Things could not have gone more perfectly if Mionet had planned it.

From the great house on top of the hill, it was like the very air had changed, a lightening in spirit as if an exorcism had occurred. The great, grim, glowering presence of the Duke of Andelin had loomed over all of Tresingale by night and day, as if some part of him had been mortared into the stones. And that presence did not look with favor upon Lady Mionet Verr.

She wasn’t sure why. But she wasn’t about to waste this opportunity.

Every day was another chance to make a bosom friend of the duchess, and Mionet began the moment her lady rang the bell in the morning, sailing into the bedchamber with Emi and Peri at her back and a smile painted on her face.

Even before the duke’s departure, the duchess had had little to say for herself. Seated in her chair by the fire, she wore only her chemise with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and no way of telling whether she had been awake for ten minutes or ten hours. There were shadows under her eyes.

“Good morning, my lady,” Mionet said, absorbing all of this at a glance and acknowledging none of it. “Would you like to be dressed now?”

“Yes, please,” said the duchess, moving toward the dressing room with all the animation of a doll.

It was tempting to think of her that way, when she was in this morose mood. She looked like a doll, tiny and exquisite and utterly lacking in expression. But that was not at all the same thing as a Segoile society mask, and Mionet had noted it with interest. As a veteran of the capital’s highest society, she had an unerring instinct for the presence of secrets, and there was something hidden under that blank doll’s face.

Secrets were currency. Secrets were power. And though the Duke and Duchess of Andelin were irrelevant rustic nobility now, who could say what might happen in future? Theywouldgo to Segoile. And if she played her cards right, they would be very useful indeed.

“What would you like to wear today?” Mionet asked with determined good cheer, opening the wide double doors of the wardrobe closet. The dressing room was the only place where she had the duchess to herself, and she was determined that today she would find an opening in the lady’s armor. “It’s so gray and dreary out, perhaps something bright? The light blue, or one of the pinks?”

“Either is fine,” the duchess replied, without turning her head.

“This one, then.” Mionet handed the better of the pink gowns to Peri and went to retrieve the matching slippers from the back of the closet. Never mind closing the gap between them, it would be progress if she could just stimulate an opinion from the duchess. “There is a new hairstyle that was just coming into fashion in Segoile when I left,” she added. “Out of Sachar Veche, a very sculptural style. Shall we try it?”

She set out the key words like bait. By now she had learned that the duchess’s interest was piqued by new usages for words she already knew, and anything at all about foreign places.

“If you like,” Duchess Andelin said indifferently, moving toward the dressing table and reminding Mionet so much of Chloe, her childhood doll, that she couldn’t resist giving her Chloe’s six curling ringlets.

“You see how it is shaped to your head,” she explained as she worked, twisting the long maple-colored locks over the top of the duchess’s head. “These coils are meant to look like a seashell.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to explain that Sachar Veche, being an island nation, often adopted an oceanic motif to their clothing and jewelry. But when the duchess chose to contribute to a conversation, it was most often with that sort of trivia, so Mionet made room for it in the hopes that she would, and internally writhed in the silence.

“They like to include such details, in Sachar Veche fashion,” she was finally forced to explain. “It is funny how styles travel, isn’t it? We are so far away, yet their styles pass over the sea to us in a matter of weeks. Or perhaps it would be months? I am never sure of my geography.”

As a lure, this rarely failed. In less than a month’s acquaintance Mionet had heard Edemir consult the duchess on mileage no less than five times and the duke had asked her twice, as if she were a mobile atlas.

“Aren’t they on the other side of the Sea of Eskai?” Emi asked helpfully, and subsided in confusion before Mionet’s death glare.

All further gambits died the same ignominious death, and the duchess retired afterward to her desk, leaving Mionet to embroider with outward serenity and great internal wrath.

This was a problem. Her entire plan rested upon gaining the duchess’ trust, a task that should have been child’s play. After eight months with only men for company, Duchess Andelin should have been perishing for female companionship. A lady-in-waiting wasmeantto be a friend and confidante, and somehow Mionet suspected that she had a lot to confide.

There must be a way to get her to divulge it.

When it came, the solution was so obvious that she was ashamed she hadn’t thought of it sooner. But then, it wouldn’t have occurred to Mionet Verr that the absence of one’s husband was cause for anything but celebration.

“Perhaps you would like a cold compress, my lady,” she offered sympathetically the next morning. A servant must pretend not to noticeif their mistress’s eyes showed signs of prolonged weeping, but a lady-in-waiting could offer consolation. “I remember being quite low in my spirits, whenever my husband was away.”

This was a flagrant lie, and Mionet watched the duchess’s reaction carefully, wondering what she might have been told of the deceased Lord Verr. But Duchess Andelin only looked up with a little surprise.

“Yes. Thank you,” she said, an actual reaction. Peri went to make the compress and Mionet went into the closet, encouraged.

“I know it is hard, but it does no good to fret and worry while he’s away,” she said, selecting several dresses to offer. “I used to spend hours with my gowns when I was first married, to discover what I liked and what was most becoming. The day is brighter when you feel beautiful. And won’t he be pleased to come home and find you so?”

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