Page 49 of Peculiar Engagements

“I know that look,” she said. She glanced at her husband, who sighed and picked up his cane.

“Check on the dairy,” Yves’ father said. “Not sure what matters, but the dairy does. Some things do. Don’t leave before I’m done, Darling, hm, hm.”

Yves’ mother didn’t speak until the thump of his father’s cane had faded.

“Your father used to do that,” she said. “Go away behind the eyes. It was worse after he came back from the navy, you know. He lost days like that, weeks. He’d drift, and me with a little boy I didn’t know how to be a mother to, running around, asking questions, wanting to know why his dad wasn’t talking.”

Yves sank back in his seat. His mother had never spoken of his father’s time with the navy, or the strange, tense years that had followed his return. It was another one of the rules that drove Yves out of the country, strange and seemingly arbitrary.

Yves’ mother sat down next to him. “I know what happened to send Sage away, Darling. Now I want to know what’s sending you away.”

“So you’re being a mother now,” Yves said, but the old resentment didn’t have the bite it used to. “I could have used one before, instead of—of someone who just threw everything on me and blamed me when I wanted to leave.”

He could have handled it if his mother had snapped back. What he couldn’t prepare for was her silence. She stared into his eyes, holding him there, her blond hair falling in front of her sun-weathered face.

“I know I wasn’t kind to you,” she said. “I didn’t know how to be a mother.”

“You could have practiced,” Yves said, “instead of turning me into one.”

“All right, Darling,” his mother said. “Yves. Let’s practice. What are you doing here? You didn’t come to fight.”

Yves looked away. “Maybe Ineeda mother right now.”

His mother covered his hands with her own. “For what, Yves? Is it this man you’re marrying? Has he hurt you?”

“No. No, he hasn’t.” Yves tried to banish the heat of tears building in his eyes. “He’s nice. So nice. He won’t touch me.”

“Then who was it?” His mother squeezed his hands. “Who hurt my baby?”

Yves closed his eyes, but his mother held him there, quietly, waiting. He thought of how she must have felt when her husband came back from the navy. How hard it must have been for a young woman who didn’t know how to manage her husband’s fits of terror and silence around the needs of a farm and children, how agreeable Yves had been, how easy it had probably been to give him one little task here and there. Not too many at first, but he’d been so eager to please, hadn’t he? He hadn’t learned to complain until it was too late for both of them. Itdidn’t make it hurt less, but it helped, and he took another breath and opened his eyes.

“I love someone else,” Yves said. “But he’s gone. He didn’t love me enough, or he thought—he thought that something in his past was too much for me to handle.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t know.” Yves tried to bring himself back to that room. The sound of Charon gouging out Lord Marteau’s eyes, the blood on his hands, the strange, dark emptiness of his expression. “I don’t think I’m the only one who can stop him from going… back there. But I think I can understand it, if he lets me.”

His mother was quiet for a minute. Outside, Yves could see someone go by leading a roan horse toward a field, and a bird fluttered about on the windowsill.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” his mother said. Yves snorted. “Oh, don’t you start. But if you want him so badly, and this man you’re marrying is so nice, how nice areyouto disappear because you can’t stop thinking about this other fellow?”

“I know it isn’t fair, Ma. I’m trying.”

His mother pursed her lips. “This wedding of yours. The king will be there?”

“I’m trying not to think about that,” Yves said.

“Time was, you’d be over the moon for something like that to happen.” His mother released his hands. “If you think you can learn to love him, tell me and I’ll come to the wedding. But if you change your mind, I’ll be here, and I won’t turn you away. For all the mistakes I’ve made, you’re still my son. You’ll make the right decision in the end.”

“There’s no chance you can tell me?” Yves asked.

“You truly must be hard-pressed to askmeto give you an order,” she said, and patted his hands. “You’ll figure it out, love. Just give yourself time.”

Ten

Smoke driftedthrough the docks of Red Harbor, mingling with the storm clouds that lingered over the smoldering wreckage of the old lighthouse. The spiny red wildflowers that gave the harbor its name grew in every crack of the boardwalk and crept up stone walls, and little red petals stuck to Charon’s boots as he helped a group of carpenters hold up a wall.

Yves had been right, of course. Whether a noble was killed or not wasn’t as important as what was happening in Red Harbor, where outrage had boiled over into a fierce, hot fury that set half the coast ablaze. Charon had gotten there right after the lighthouse had fallen, and now the navy drifted nervously in the harbor mouth while people tore apart the judicial offices and robbed Lord Marteau’s shipping businesses.

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