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Leeana swallowed apprehensively. She could count on the fingers of her hands the number of times her mother had issued such a flat decree of authority.
“You will never again go riding without at least Tarith in attendance,” Hanatha told her. “Never, do you understand, Leeana?”
“But, Mother—”
“I said there are no buts this time,” her mother interrupted firmly. “I don’t intend to be any more unreasonable than I have to be, but I do intend to be obeyed. I’ve also spoken to Tarith about it.” Tarith Shieldarm was Leeana’s personal armsman, and had been since she learned to walk. “He understands that I do not expect him to play the role of informant. I need for you to be able to trust him, as you always have, and so I’ve instructed him that he is not to discuss your comings and goings with me or with your father so long as he’s certain none of those comings and goings are without him. That, I hope I need not add, applies only here in Balthar. Here, everyone knows you and we can be relatively confident of your safety with only Tarith to look after you. We ca
Leeana looked at her mother with dismay. She knew Tarith would die to protect her, and that he would respect and protect her privacy and the confidentiality of anything she said to him up to the very limits of his oath of fealty to her father. He was in every sense except blood itself a member of her family, a beloved uncle whose protectiveness might sometimes be exasperating, but whose devotion and rocklike reliability were beyond the very possibility of question. Yet her mother’s decision—and Leeana knew an unyielding decision when she heard one from the baroness—meant an end to any true privacy. Worse, it was a gentle, loving declaration that she would no longer be allowed to fool herself, even briefly, into forgetting that she was the heir conveyant of Balthar and the West Riding.
Tears gleamed on her eyelashes, and her mother sighed.
“I’m sorry, Leeana,” she said regretfully. “I wish I could let you ride anywhere you wanted, with or without a guard. But I can’t, love. Not even here in Balthar, anymore. The situation with your father, and the Council, and this business with Prince Bahzell and his father …” She shook her head. “There are too many enemies, Leeana. Too many people who would strike at your father any way they can. And it wasn’t so many years ago that abductions and forced marriages were accepted, even if they were looked upon more than a little askance. I honestly don’t think anyone would be stupid enough to believe for an instant that your father would allow any man who dared to touch you against your will to live, under any circumstances. But some of his enemies are almost as powerful, or even fully as powerful, as he. Some of them singly, some ru
Leeana inhaled deeply as she heard the flat, unwavering determination of Hanatha’s last sentence. Her mother was right, and she knew it, however little she likedit. Indeed, any other mother and father in the same position would probably have locked her up in one of Hill Guard’s towers long ago. Yet that made the draught no less bitter on the tongue.
“You understand what I’m saying, and why?” her mother asked after a moment, and Leeana nodded.
“Yes, Ma’am,” she said. “I hate it, but I understand it. And I don’t hate you because of it.”
“Thank you for that,” Hanatha said softly.
“I wish—” Leeana began, then closed her mouth.
“You wish what, dear?” her mother prompted after a second or two.
“I don’t know,” Leeana said, feeling the hearth fire warm against her back as she sat on the stool at her mother’s feet. She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I wish I could be who I am and still be someone else, someone who could do and be what she wanted to … and who didn’t have to worry about someone else’s using her as a weapon against her family.”
“I don’t blame you, darling,” her mother said with a tiny smile. “But you can’t, anymore than your father or I can.”
“I know.” Leeana opened her eyes and returned her mother’s smile. “I know, Momma. And I’ll try to be good, really I will.”
“You’ve always been good, even when you were bad,” her mother said with a small, sad chuckle. “I’m not asking for miraculous changes in your behavior or who you are. I’m only insisting that you to be careful, as well.”
“I’ll try,” Leeana repeated.
Chapter Seven
“I don’t think you should be here,” the powerfully built, blond-haired nobleman said. His expression was almost neutral, but his hand lingered near the hilt of his dagger and his voice was dangerously flat. He was a man who neither liked surprises nor was accustomed to—or brooked—disobedience, and it showed.
“It’s not as if anyone else knows that I am here, Milord Baron,” his visitor replied. He was a nondescript little man, brown-haired and brown-eyed, and his clothing was just as unremarkable and easily forgotten as he was. He might have been a tradesman, or a clerk. Possibly a minor functionary, attached to the household of some middle-ranked nobleman. Perhaps even a moderately prosperous physician with a middle-class patient list.
But, of course, the baron thought, he was none of those. Although what precisely he actually was remained much less satisfyingly defined than the list of things he wasn’t.
The baron listened to the spatter of raindrops and the splash of gurgling downspouts on the terrace outside the study of his private suite and considered pointing out that he was on his way to bed and suggesting that the other come back at a more convenient time. As a matter of fact, he considered the idea very carefully before, in the end, he rejected it.
“And how can you be so certain no one knows?” he asked instead.
“My dear Baron!” The little man sounded affronted, although he was respectful enough about it to satisfy propriety. “We’re talking about part of my stock in trade! What sort of a conspirator would I be if I couldn’t be positive about things like that?”
The baron clenched his teeth at the word “conspirator.” Not because it was inaccurate, but because he disliked hearing it bandied about so casually by a man about whom he knew far less than he liked. And also, perhaps, because a noble of his rank was never party to something so common as a “conspiracy.”
“I repeat,” he said, his voice frosted with a warning edge of chill, “how can you be so certain?”
“Because your armsmen aren’t swarming into your chambers even as we speak, Milord,” his visitor said in a much more serious tone. The baron arched one eyebrow, and the other man nodded. “If I could get into your personal chambers without them noticing me, I think it’s safe to say that no one else could possibly suspect I’m here. Besides, I have a few … other ways of being certain I’m not under observation.”
“I see.”
The baron shrugged and crossed the study. He sat in the comfortable chair behind his desk and turned to face his visitor. He had to agree that the point about his armsmen’s not having noticed the other’s arrival was a good one. And then there was the other man’s second point. The baron neither knew nor wanted to know all of the resources his self-proclaimed fellow conspirator might possess. He strongly suspected that sorcery was among them, and if it was, it was most certainly not white sorcery. And since the punishment for dark sorcery and blood magic was death, he preferred to have no more direct knowledge than he could avoid. In an ironic sort of way, his very ignorance—however hard he had to work to maintain it—would be his most powerful protection if things ever went far enough wrong for him to face investigation. Even a court-appointed mage could only confirm the truth of his statement when he testified that he didn’t know that the other was a sorcerer.