Telmaine

With the jolting of the closed carriage, her exhaustion, and the baron’s harrowing at her conscience, she felt quite ill by the time they alighted in front of the ostentatious house Lysander Hearne had bequeathed his paramour. The heavy, musky-sweet scent of the blooming night roses nearly completed her undoing; in a cold sweat, she pressed her fingers to her upper lip and willed her stomach to stop heaving. If Ishmael sonned her, she wasn’t aware of it, but she abruptly felt his gloved hand on her wrist, pulling it down, and felt the lip of a flask pressed against her mouth.

“Drink,” he said.

She drew a breath to protest, but what she smelled was not liquor but something herbal. She let herself swallow. “It’s an old Southern Isles remedy for seasickness,” he said. “I’d to take th’coastal steamer up from Stranhorne, and though it’s mere fancy that a mage can’t cross water, I’m a Borders man, blood, bone, and belly.”

Mint and astringent, it did help. She nodded acknowledgment of the fact, carefully concealing her horror at the mere thought of traveling by sea. No doubt, like her husband, the baron could discourse endlessly on the detailed maps, the clever navigational devices, and the extensive system of warning bells on coasts and rocks that enabled Darkborn to venture on the waters despite the limitations of sonn. No matter. She had never set foot on a boat, and never would.

He let her precede him up the steps to the elaborately decorated door and stood at her shoulder as they waited to know whether anyone would respond to the ring. A footman opened the door.

“Tercelle Amberley, please.”

“Lady Tercelle is not receiving—”

“Tell her Telmaine Hearne requests an interview, concerning a favor that her husband Balthasar did Lady Tercelle.”

The door closed in their faces. She was aware of Ish’s attention to their rear, of his casting a crisp yet delicate sonn to either side along the street. The moment before the door opened, his head turned back, though she had heard neither voice nor footstep through the door. His acuity was unnerving—was it magic?

She would be ill if she thought too much of magic, though as the footman ushered them across the hall, she itched to free her hands from their gloves. Had she been alone, or in the presence of someone ignorant of the meaning of the gesture, she would have.

She did not need Ish’s hunter’s senses to know that the big house had been long unoccupied and barely reopened; all she needed were a chatelaine’s. With its wide central stair, the hall echoed to sonn, all the muting hangings and decorations removed to be stored or displayed elsewhere. Most of the furniture in the large receiving room was still draped, and the room smelled of dust and aged dried flowers. Tercelle Amberley sat on one of the chairs, wearing a loose morning gown that flowed from the yoke and would conceal her milk-laden breasts and thickened waist. She had changed very little over the years, Telmaine thought: still the same little droplet face that could sparkle pertly or crumple piteously. “Lady Telmaine,” Tercelle said with a tremor. “Do come in. Take a seat. And introduce me to your gentleman friend.”

As an insinuation, it was a shaky effort; perhaps it was merely habit.

“Lady Tercelle Amberley, Ishmael di Studier, Baron Strumheller.”

Tercelle extended a hand that trembled slightly. “Forgive me, Baron Strumheller, I have been—” And then she froze, jerked her hand back, and froze again. Telmaine realized then that Ishmael had slipped his glove off.

And that Tercelle Amberley knew what that implied.

Telmaine recovered her wits enough to summon a social laugh. “Baron Strumheller, I fear that your reputation has preceded you.”

Tercelle panted. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been so very nervous lately. I’m sure it’s nothing, only . . .”

Telmaine regarded her with head cocked slightly to one side, assessing strategies.

Ishmael di Studier, his expression wry, drew his glove on and held out his hand to receive Tercelle’s. When he stooped, he brushed air with his lips.

“Where is my daughter?” Telmaine said.

“What? Your daughter?” said Tercelle.

Her confusion seemed genuine. Telmaine did not trust it. “Yes, mine. You may not care for your sons—”

“Voice down,” rumbled the baron.

“—but be assured that Balthasar and I care for our daughter, and we will stop at nothing to find her.”

Tercelle snatched back her hand from Ishmael. “The woman’s mad. I have no sons.” She caught up the bell sitting beside her. The baron intercepted her as she started to ring it, muffling the bell with his gloved hand. “M’lady, we need your help.”

“If you are trying to blackmail me, I warn you, my betrothed—”

“Is as ruthless as any man alive,” Ish said, “aye, and y’might rightly fear for your life. But Balthasar Hearne nearly lost his last night, and the same men who beat him almost t’death stole his daughter from his doorstep. Were they your men?”

“Of course not! Why would I risk—” She stopped.

He nodded approval. “First rule of intrigue—the less done, the less tracked. So, if it wasn’t your doing, whose was’t? Who knew you were with child?”

She pressed her fingers to her face. “For pity’s sake,” she whispered. “Not here.” She tugged to free her hand and the bell, and the baron let her go. The tintinnabulation of the little bell owed as much to the involuntary tremor of her hand as to any deliberate movement. The footman’s prompt appearance justified their caution.

“Mercury,” Tercelle said, “tell Idana that my guests and I will be going up to the roof garden for a little while. I think Baron Strumheller might be more at home in a more . . . natural environment,” she said, with one of the most perfect parodies of a snide society lady that Telmaine had ever heard.

Telmaine’s sonn caught the bobble in the footman’s throat at the mention of Ishmael’s name.

They trailed their hostess up to the roof garden she spoke of. Her maid followed, a sweet-faced, very fat girl who huffed behind them to the last, narrowest flight, and then sank, panting, down on the lowest step at a signal from the lady. Leaning heavily on the banister, Tercelle led them on. Behind her, Telmaine ungloved with two swift yanks and bundled her gloves into her reticule.

On the roof garden the baron sonned around himself at once, another sequence of overlapping bursts that somehow penetrated without being conspicuously forceful. Telmaine was coming to realize that, in the wilds, at least, the baron was a master with sonn. His last burst caught her, poised with ungloved hands; she perceived his very slight nod.

Her turn. She swept down on one knee and caught up Tercelle’s icy hand in both of hers. “Please,” she said, “please, you must help me. They’ve stolen my daughter.”

Images, phrases, impressions tumbled into her mind. The exhaustion and discomforts of a woman one day from childbed, bone-deep weariness, aching breasts, cramping womb, raw genitals. As raw was the memory of writhing agony, the helplessness, the humiliation. Telmaine gasped, losing her own coherence of thought. “Who . . .” she breathed, and remembered lying tense in bed, expectant, disbelieving, thinking, Why? The question always silenced by kissing, fondling, driving all questions away on great surges of molten ecstasy. A man’s erect member, sonned as though she were bending to kiss it. His nipples, his neck, his broad back. Heat surged through her body, and she was no longer sure whether the body was her own or Tercelle’s.

“Uh-oh,” she heard the baron say, and the woman’s erotic memories were suddenly snuffed out of her awareness as he shucked her hands from the lady’s and caught the lady by the elbow and waist and half carried her the few steps to a bower with chairs. He settled her down solicitously and pressed her head forward. Shortly she struggled upright, saying, “No, I’m all right. For pity’s sake, sir, no one must know.”

Feeling dizzy and light in the bones, Telmaine got to her feet and picked her way over to stand in front of them.

“You should rest,” the baron said. Telmaine noticed then that he, too, had removed his gloves.

Tercelle, unnoticing, began to weep and rock. “He will know, he will most certainly know, when we come to our marriage bed. And I don’t know, I don’t understand . . .”

Telmaine believed her and, for the first time, pitied her. “Please,” she said simply, “do you know anything that might help me find my daughter?”

“No,” said the lady, sobbing more loudly. “No, I know nothing.”

“Shh,” said the baron. “Does anyone else know of this?”

She sniffed, calming. “My maids, Idana and Maia. They have been with me since . . . since I first came out.”

“And you trust them?”

“This would have been impossible without them. Maia is very like me in appearance, and she rides well. There will be people who say I rode out after sunset every night until we left for the city. And you met Idana—Idana is a delightful girl, but she has a terrible taste for sweets. If pressed, she will say that she went to visit Dr. Hearne because she thought he could help her with her difficulty.” She stopped. “I trusted my life to them.”

“Very good,” the baron said quietly. “Then in a few weeks, after you have healed up from the childbed . . .” He leaned forward and murmured briefly in her ear. Her mouth fell open. “You are not the only lady with an indiscretion in her past,” he assured her. “But right now, you’d best go somewhere better guarded than this, somewhere where people do not expect to find you. Balthasar Hearne all but died last night, and it may be that by coming here, we have put your life at risk.”

“I don’t . . . I can’t—”

“It is your choice,” the baron said. “Nevertheless, I do advise it. Now Mrs. Hearne and I will take our leave.”