“Milady d’Angelica,” he called out instead.
Then again, what titles did Angelica have that could stand up to a queen’s? What power did she possess that didn’t pale into insignificance beside that of the woman who stood in the sitting room of her apartments, her face a carefully composed mask.
Angelica curtseyed, because she didn’t dare do anything else. The Dowager gestured impatiently for her to stand.
“A sudden visit,” she said without a smile, “and news about my son. I think we can dispense with that.”
And if Angelica hadn’t curtseyed, no doubt Sebastian’s mother would have rebuked her for it.
“You told me to bring you any news about Sebastian, Your Majesty,” Angelica said.
The Dowager nodded, moving over to a comfortable-looking chair. She didn’t offer Angelica a seat.
“I know what I said. I also know what I said would happen if you didn’t.”
Angelica could remember the threats too. The Mask of Lead, the traditional punishment for traitors. Just the thought of it made her shudder.
“Well?” the Dowager asked. “Have you managed to make my son the happiest husband-to-be in the circle of the world?”
“He says that he is leaving,” Angelica said. “He was angry at being manipulated, and he declared that he was going after the whore he loved before.”
“And you did nothing to stop him?” the Dowager demanded.
Angelica could hardly believe that. “What would you have had me do? Tackle him at the door? Lock him in his chambers?”
“Do I have to spell it out to you?” the Dowager said. “Sebastian might not be Rupert, but he is still a man.”
“You think I didn’t try that?” Angelica countered. That part stung worse than the rest of it. No one had rejected her before. Whoever she wanted, whether it was out of genuine desire or simply to prove that she could, had come running. Sebastian had been the only one to ever turn her down. “He’s in love.”
The Dowager sat there, and seemed to calm a little. “So you’re telling me that you can’t be the wife I need for my son? That you can’t make him happy? That you’re useless to me?”
Too late, Angelica saw the danger in it.
“I didn’t say that,” she said. “I only came because—”
“Because you wanted me to solve your problems for you, and because you were afraid of what would happen if you didn’t,” the Dowager said. She stood, her finger jabbing at Angelica’s chest. “Well, I am prepared to give you one piece of advice. If he is following the girl, the most likely place she will go is Monthys, in the north. There, is that sufficient for you, or do I need to draw you a map?”
“How do you know that?” Angelica asked.
“Because I know what this is all about,” the Dowager snapped back. “Let’s make it clear, Milady. I have already done something to control my son. I have sent you to distract him. Now, if necessary, I will discard that option, but there would be no marriage then, and I would be... very disappointed in you.”
She didn’t need to spell out the threat. At best, Angelica would find herself sent away from the court. At worst…
“I’ll fix this,” she promised. “I’ll make sure that Sebastian loves me, and only me.”
“You do that,” the Dowager said. “Whatever it takes, you do that.”
***
Angelica had no time for the usual niceties of noble travel. This was not the moment to meander along in a carriage, hemmed in by a gaggle of hangers-on, and surrounded by enough servants to slow her to a walk. Instead, she had her servants dig out riding clothes, and with her own hands she packed a small bag with things she might need. She even tied her hair back in a much simpler style than her usual elaborate braids, knowing that there would be no time for such things on the road. Besides, there were some things it might be better not to be recognized doing.
She set out into Ashton with a cloak around her to make sure no one saw who she was. She took a half mask as well, and in the city, that was a common enough mark of religious fervor that no one questioned it. She rode to the gates of the palace first, stopping by the guards and spinning a coin between her fingers.
“Prince Sebastian,” she said. “Which way did he go?”
She knew she couldn’t hide her identity from the guards, but probably they wouldn’t ask questions either. They would simply assume that she was following after the man she loved and intended to marry. It was even the truth, in its way.
“That way, Milady,” one of the men said, pointing. “The way the young women went when they ran from the palace a few days ago.”
Angelica should have guessed as much. He pointed, and Angelica went. She followed Sebastian through the city like a hound at the hunt, hoping she could get to him before he went too far. She felt almost like some spirit bound to the city. In her home, she was powerful. She knew the people here, and whom to talk to. The further she went beyond it, the more she would have to rely on her own wits. She asked the same questions Sebastian must have asked as he went, and received the same answers.
She heard about the flight of Sophia and the serving girl through the city from a series of folk so filthy she wouldn’t even have noticed them under other circumstances. They remembered it because it had been the most exciting thing to happen in their dreary lives for weeks. Maybe she and Sebastian would become another piece of gossip for them. Angelica hoped not. From a gossiping fishwife who genuflected to her as she passed, Angelica heard about a chase through the city’s streets. From an urchin so grubby that she couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, she heard about them diving into the barrels of a cart to hide.
“And then the woman with the cart told them to come with her,” the filthy creature told her. “They all drove off together.”
Angelica tossed it a small coin. “If you’re lying to me, I’ll see to it that you’re thrown from one of the bridges.”
Now that she knew about the cart, it was easy to track their progress. They’d headed for the northernmost exit from the city, and that seemed to make it clear where they were heading: Monthys. Angelica sped up, hoping that the Dowager’s information was right even as she wondered what the old woman was keeping from her. She didn’t like being a pawn in someone else’s game. One day, the old hag would pay for it.
For today, she had to get ahead of Sebastian.
Angelica had no thoughts about trying to change his mind, not yet. He would still be burning with the need to find that… that… Angelica couldn’t think of words harsh enough for one of the Indentured who pretended to be something she wasn’t, who seduced the prince who was meant for Angelica, and who had been nothing but an impediment since she arrived.
She couldn’t let Sebastian find her, but he wouldn’t simply turn away from the search because she asked. That meant that she needed to act, and act fast, if she was going to make this turn out right.
“Out of the way!” she called, before spurring her horse forward at the kind of speed that promised a crushing fall to anyone stupid enough to stand in its path. She headed out from the city, guessing at the route the wagon must have taken. She cut across the fields, jumping hedges so close that she could feel the brush of the branches against her boots. Anything that would let her get ahead of Sebastian before he went too far.
Eventually, she saw a crossroads ahead, and a man leaning on the signpost there with a flagon of cider in one hand and the air of someone who didn’t intend to move.
“You,” Angelica said. “Are you here every day? Did you see a cart with three girls pass by here on the way north a few days ago?”
The man hesitated, regarding his drink. “I—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Angelica said. She hefted a purse, the clink of the Royals inside unmistakable. “You were now. A young man named Sebastian will ask you, and if you want these coins, you will say that you saw them. Three young women, one with red hair, one dressed like a servant from the palace.”
“Three young women?” the man s
aid.
“One with red hair,” Angelica repeated with what she hoped was a suitable degree of patience. “They asked you the way to Barriston.”
It was the wrong way, of course. More than that, it was a journey that would keep Sebastian occupied for a while, and that would cool his foolish desire for Sophia when he failed to find her. It would give him a chance to remember his duty.
“They did all that?” the man asked.
“They did if you want the coin,” Angelica snapped back. “Half now, half when it’s done. Repeat it to me, so I know you’re not too drunk to say it when the time comes.”
He managed it, and that was good enough. It had to be. Angelica gave him his coin and rode on, wondering how long it would take him to realize that she wouldn’t be coming back with the other half. Hopefully, he wouldn’t work it out until well after Sebastian had been by.
For her part, she had to be long gone by that point. She couldn’t afford for Sebastian to see her, or he would work out what she’d done. Besides, she needed all the head start that she could get. It was a long way north to Monthys, and Angelica needed to finish everything that she needed to do well before Sebastian realized his mistake and came after her.
“There will be enough time,” Angelica reassured herself as she rode north. “I’ll get it done, and be back in Ashton before Sebastian realizes that anything’s wrong.”
Get it done. Such a delicate way of phrasing it, as if she were still in court, feigning shock while setting out the indiscretions of some minor noble girl for the rumor mill to digest. Why not say what she meant? That, once she found Sophia, there was only one thing that was going to ensure that she would never interfere with her or Sebastian’s life again; only one thing that would make it clear that Sebastian was hers, and that would show the Dowager that Angelica was willing to do whatever was required to secure her position. There was only one thing that was going to leave Angelica feeling safe.
Sophia was going to have to die.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sebastian had no doubt as he rode that there would be trouble for what he was doing now. Riding away like this, against his mother’s orders, avoiding the marriage she had set for him? For a noble from another family, it would have been enough to warrant disinheritance. For the son of the Dowager, it was tantamount to treason.
“It won’t come to that,” Sebastian said as his horse thundered onward. “And even if it does, Sophia is worth it.”
He knew what he was giving up by doing this. When he found her, when he married her, they wouldn’t just be able to walk back into Ashton in triumph, take up residence in the palace, and assume that everyone would be happy. If they were able to return at all, it would be under a cloud of disgrace.
“I don’t care,” Sebastian told his horse. Worrying about disgrace and honor had been what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. He’d put Sophia aside because of what he’d assumed people would think about her. He hadn’t even made them raise their voices in disapproval; he’d just acted, knowing what they would say.
It had been a weak, cowardly thing to do, and now he was going to undo it, if he could.
Sophia was worth a dozen of the nobles he’d spent his time around growing up. A hundred. It didn’t matter if she had the Masked Goddess’s mark tattooed on her calf to claim her, she was the only woman Sebastian could even begin to dream of marrying.
Certainly not Milady d’Angelica. She was everything that the court represented: vain, shallow, manipulative, focused on her own wealth and success rather than anyone else. It didn’t matter that she was beautiful, or from the right family, that she was intelligent or the sealing of an alliance within the country. She wasn’t the woman Sebastian wanted.
“I was still harsh with her when I left,” Sebastian said. He wondered what anyone watching would think, with him talking to his horse like this. Yet the truth was that he didn’t care now what people thought, and in a lot of ways, the horse was a better listener than most of the people around him had been at the palace.
He knew how things worked there. Angelica hadn’t been trying to trick him; she’d simply been trying to put something she knew he would find unpleasant in the best way possible. Looked at through the eyes of a world where the two of them had no choice about whom they were married to, it could even be seen as a kindness.
It was just that Sebastian didn’t want to think that way anymore.
“I don’t want to be stuck in a place where my only duty is to keep breathing in case Rupert dies,” he told his horse. “I don’t want to be somewhere my value is as breeding stock, or as something to be sold on to promote the right connections.”
Looked at like that, the horse probably understood his predicament as well as any noble could. Weren’t the finest horses sold on for their breeding potential? Didn’t those nobles who liked to race the length of country lanes or ride to the hunt keep records of every line, every foal? Wouldn’t every one of them kill their own prize stallions before they allowed a single drop of the wrong blood to enter the bloodlines?
“I’ll find her, and I’ll find a priest to marry us,” Sebastian said. “Even if Mother wants to charge us with treason over it, she’ll still need to persuade the Assembly of Nobles.”
They wouldn’t just kill a prince on a whim. Probably, some of them would be sympathetic, given enough time. Failing that, he and Sophia could always elope into the mountain lands of the north, or slip over the Knifewater together unseen, or even just retire to the lands Sebastian was supposed to be a duke of. They would find a way to make it work.
“I just have to find her first,” Sebastian said, as his horse took him out of the city, into the open countryside.
He felt confident that he would catch up to her, even with how far ahead she had to be by now. He’d found people who had seen what had happened when she ran from the palace, asking guards for their reports, then listening to stories from the people of the city. Most of them had been cautious about talking to him, but he’d managed to get enough fragments together to at least get a general sense of the direction Sophia had been moving in.
From what he’d heard, she was in a cart, which meant that she would be moving faster than a walking pace, but nowhere near as fast as Sebastian could move on horseback. He would find a way to catch up to her, even if it meant riding without rest until he did it. Perhaps that was part of his penance for pushing her out in the first place.
Sebastian pressed forward until he saw the crossroads, finally slowing his horse to a walk as he tried to work out which way to go.
There was a man asleep against the post of the crossroads, a straw hat pulled down over his eyes. A cider jug beside him suggested the reason he was snoring like a donkey. Sebastian let him sleep for now, looking up at the sign. East would lead to the coast, but Sebastian doubted that Sophia had the means to take a ship, or anywhere to go if she did. South would lead back to Ashton, so that was out.
That left the road leading north, and the one leading west. Without any additional information, Sebastian had no idea about which route to take. He could try looking for cart tracks on one of the dirt sections of the road, he guessed, but that implied that he had the skills to know what he was looking for, or to pick out Sophia’s cart from the hundreds of others that might have gone past in the days since then.
That left asking for help, and hoping.
Gently, using the toe of his boot, Sebastian nudged the foot of the sleeping man. He stepped back as the man spluttered and came awake, because he didn’t know how someone that drunk might react to the sight of him there.
“Whaddizit?” the man managed. He also managed to pull himself up to his feet, which seemed quite impressive under the circumstances. “Who are you? What do you want?”
Even now, he seemed to have to hold onto the post to steady himself. Sebastian was starting to wonder if this was such a good idea.
“Are you here regularly?” he asked. He both needed the answer to be yes and hop
ed that it would be no, because what would that say about the man’s life.
“Why do you want to know?” the drunk shot back.
Sebastian was starting to realize that he wasn’t going to find what he wanted here. Even if this man spent most of his time by the crossroads, Sebastian doubted that he would be sober often enough to notice much.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I was looking for someone who might have come by here, but I doubt you can help me. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
He turned back toward his horse.
“Wait,” the man said. “You… you’re Sebastian, aren’t you?”
Sebastian stopped at the sound of his name, turning back toward the man with a frown.
“How do you know my name?” he asked.
The man staggered a little. “What name?”
“My name,” Sebastian said. “You just called me Sebastian.”
“Wait, you’re Sebastian?”
Sebastian did his best to be patient. This man was obviously looking for him, and Sebastian could only think of a few reasons why that might be the case.
“Yes, I am,” he said. “What I want to know is why you’re looking for me.”
“I was…” The man paused for a moment, his brow crinkling. “I was supposed to give you a message.”
“A message?” Sebastian said. It seemed too good to be true, but even so, he dared to hope. “From whom?”
“There was this woman,” the drunk said, and that was enough to fan the embers of hope into a fully fledged fire.
“What woman?” Sebastian said.
The other man wasn’t looking at him now though. If anything, it looked as though he was half drifting back to sleep. Sebastian caught hold of him, half holding him up, half shaking him awake.
“What woman?” he repeated.
“There was something… a red-haired woman, on a cart.”
“That’s her!” Sebastian said, his excitement getting the better of him in that moment. “Was this a few days ago?”
The drunk took his time considering it. “I don’t know. Could be. What day is it?”