His sisters wore deep blue, high-collared silk shirts, and black silk dining jackets and slacks. Clean, carefully groomed, and formally dressed, the women were nearly as striking as Jerin. Eldest Whistler led, Jerin on her arm, the younger sisters trailing behind in flanking positions. The Whistler family entered the room with the feral grace of hunting wolves.
“They don’t look like farmers to me,” Kij murmured as Eldest correctly approached Queen Mother Elder first to pay respects.
“Their grandmothers were knights,” Ren told her simply. The less said about what else the Whistlers’ grandmothers had been, the better. “The title reverted after their deaths, of course, but the family remains gentry.”
“Just barely,” Kij murmured. “Too bad—he’s quite pretty. I’m sure someone who doesn’t mind adding a little common stock into the line will be quick to snap him up.”
Pompous ass.
Ren knew that the Whistlers had never been before royalty, and doubted that they had ever been to a formal dinner, yet she watched with awe as they greeted each of her mothers with regal calm. After bowing to Ren’s youngest mother, Milain, the Whistler party turned, and Jerin saw her for the first time. His smile was warm, shy—and stunning as a blow from a giant mallet.
Kij drifted off, no doubt to warn her sisters that the pretty stranger wasn’t up to the Porter level of breeding. Ren crossed to the Whistlers. Her mothers, bless them all, hung back so she had their visitors to herself.
“Whistler.” She nodded to Eldest. There was a dark look that wasn’t there before. Drat, they know what I did with their little brother!
With that in mind, she cooled her greeting to Jerin to all that was proper. It was almost maddening, though, to be so close as to feel the heat of his body, be able to catch his light scent, and yet be unable to touch him.
She scrambled to find a neutral subject to talk about, finally settling on, “I hope you had a good trip.”
“Uneventful, which is always good,” Eldest said.
Queen Mother Elder called for attention. “Our esteemed daughters-in-law, ladies of Avonar, welcome again to our dinner table. May we introduce you to our guests in our home this summer, the family Whistler.”
As her Mother Elder named members of each family, Ren wondered if this was in some way a subtle cut on her mothers’ part. The Porters had been almost shameless in their pursuit of a royal marriage, making sure Keifer was always in Princess Eldest’s eye, and allowing Eldest to take discreet liberties with their brother. The Porters succeeded in their campaign, and reaped the rewards of being in-laws to the crown, but Keifer had been a bitter disappointment. If Ren had her way, the Porters would soon lose their coveted position.
Queen Mother Elder had finished explaining the Whistlers’ tie to Prince Alannon and his royal bloodline when Odelia appeared in the doorway. She smiled brilliantly at Jerin and hurried to his side.
“Whistler.” Odelia gave a quick nod to Eldest, and then she caught Jerin’s free hand in hers. “Jerin! It’s good to see you here!”
“You look well.” Jerin reached out to brush back Odelia’s bangs, away from where she had been struck. “Hardly a scar. No one could ever tell.”
“Thanks to you.” Odelia beamed, looking more radiant than Ren had ever seen her. “Come, they’re sitting for dinner.” She swept him away without a glance at his sisters. “I’m sure no one will mind if you sit beside me.”
As Ren gazed after Odelia in stunned amazement, Corelle whispered overloud to her sister, “I don’t know, Eldest—I think we better find some mighty big sticks, and soon.”
“Yup,” Eldest Whistler murmured low enough so only Ren and her sisters could hear, and made a motion with her hand. The younger Whistlers nodded to their Eldest and hurried after Odelia and Jerin. Corelle cut off a middle Porter sister to claim the chair beside Jerin, and Summer flanked Odelia.
Ren suspected if their guests had been anyone but the Porters, her mothers would have set the sitting arrangements back to the original plan. Since the Porters were their in-laws, however, the dinner could be considered “only family.” Whatever the reason, their mothers made no move to correct things. Perhaps Odelia had even counted on that; Ren could never understand the inner workings of Odelia’s mind.
Ren took advantage of the change and sat Eldest Whistler beside her, wanting a chance to mend their friendship. They were, hopefully, going to be sisters-in-law.
Kij Porter took the chair to Ren’s other side. As the first remove made its rounds, Kij leaned close and whispered, “Is it true? Their grandmothers married Alannon?”
“Go look at his portrait upstairs after dinner and compare.”
Kij made a noise of disgust. “That proves nothing.”
“There’s a paper trail. Do you think we wouldn’t check? Besides, it’s not as if they came forward with the claim. Our paths happened to cross when Odelia was attacked, and the story came out.”
Kij gazed down the table at Jerin. “He is certainly a pretty one. We were thinking of offering for Dirich Dunwood, but maybe we’ll go for royal blood instead.”
Ren covered her dismay. She’d forgotten that her sisters-in-law had been quietly searching for a husband. She shot a glance at her Mother Elder. Were the Porters here not as a subtle dig at them, but to provide a way to marry Jerin off before Ren could get her sisters’ approval?
After dinner they retired to the blue salon. There, Odelia and the Porter sisters vied for Jerin’s affection. Ren did not have the heart to press him, so she stood back and watched as Jerin flustered under the close attention. He flashed shy smiles at their compliments and witty remarks, but grew quieter and quieter.
“Jerin’s had a long day,” Ren finally murmured to Eldest Whistler. “And he’s not used to this mobbing. Why not send him up to your suite?”
“I’ll take him up.”
Ren rested a hand on Eldest Whistler’s shoulder to keep her from going. “I’d like to talk to you. Have—can Summer and Corelle take care of him?”
Eldest studied her with ice-blue calm, then nodded. “We should talk.”
Good-nights were said, the younger Whistlers went off to their rooms, and Ren led Eldest to her study. Ren poured out brandy, offered good cigars, and then said, “You seem angry at me.”
Eldest Whistler spoke slowly, obviously choosing her words carefully. “Shall I say that I was disappointed when I learned what liberties you had taken with my brother?”
“Corelle saw us, then,” Ren guessed.
Eldest nodded. “And told the first moment it was useful to her to do so.”
“I’m sorry,” Ren murmured.
“This sponsoring of Jerin. It’s your idea, to make amends?”
“In part.” Ren considered and decided. “I love Jerin. It would make me happy to marry him. If I had been born Eldest to another family, I wouldn’t have left your farm without a marriage contract.”
“But we’re too far beneath the princesses of the realm,” Eldest said bitterly, almost spitting the word “princesses.” “Except for a quick dalliance.”
“Perhaps not.”
Eldest looked up sharply, and then frowned. “You toy with me.”
“No. My first husband was politically a good choice. Keifer was also a spoiled, self-centered, manipulative brat. He played my sisters against one another to get his way. He threw fits, threw food, threw dishes, pouted, cried, and withheld sexual services. The public appearance at the theater was typical of his refusal to listen to common sense.”
“I would have spanked him,” Eldest murmured.
“I wished my sister had, often. Perhaps she would be alive today.” Ren sighed. “Keifer was everything that Jerin is not, including a bloodline that traced back twenty generations. I have asked my mothers to allow a marriage between our families. To be frank, without Prince Alannon’s blood, they would have never agreed to consider Jerin. I don’t know if it’s enough, though, for them to decide in favor of a marriage.”
?
??I see,” Eldest Whistler said, face controlled against any emotion that she might have been feeling. A soldier’s face. How many generations before that military stamp would breed out?
“My mothers thought it would be unfair to raise your hopes for a royal match,” Ren said. “I thought you should know, so you can keep it in mind when the offers for Jerin come in.”
A trace of a smile flitted across Eldest’s face. “You don’t want us to accept any offer before you can make yours.”
“Yes.”
Eldest stood swirling the brandy in her glass, considering, and finally sighed. “And how long must we wait?”
Ren hesitated before saying, truthfully, “I don’t know. I know your family made a good first impression. I know that my mothers are now convinced of your royal bloodline. I know that I love Jerin, and that Odelia is most likely favorable to a match. Lylia is just old enough to marry, and anxious for her wedding night. She’ll be swayed by Jerin’s beauty alone, I think. Trini suffered at Keifer’s hands, and will probably not endorse any man, which my mothers well know. Halley—if she’s to be found, if she’s alive—she’ll be the difficult one to sway; she was not happy with our first marriage.”
“So the rumors are true; Princess Halley is missing.”
“For months.” Ren sighed. “She has never dealt well with the murder of my sisters. At midwinter she said not to worry about her, that she’d be gone for a while, then vanished.”
“Can you make an offer without her?”
Ren shook her head. “I don’t think I can. Halley is much better Eldest material than I, and so her word carries much weight with my mothers. They might decide to wait for her to reappear.”
Eldest Whistler sighed, and was long silent. “We will let you know of any offers we receive, and give you a chance to counter them, but we can’t wait forever. We need Jerin’s brother’s price a week after his birthday. We’ve made arrangements to buy the mercantile at Heron Landing from the Picker sisters, and they’ve given us only until then to buy it, else we pay a penalty.”
Two months. Ren nodded, feeling sick. Halley had been gone for eight months. Sixty spare days did not seem enough time.
“Excuse me,” Eldest murmured, “but I should go and tend my family. They’re still unsettled, this being a new place and all.”
“Of course,” Ren said. “Good night, Whistler.”
“Your Highness.” And Eldest Whistler left with a bow that was hardly more than a nod.
“Gods above, Halley,” Ren murmured to the fire. “Where are you? Are you even still alive?”
Chapter 9
It had been a night of nightmares and Ren jolted awake at dawn. A light rain during the night had dampened the fireplace ashpit, and the ghost of winter fires lingered in the room. Ren tumbled from her bed still half asleep and flung open the windows. After a couple of deep breaths of clear summer morning air, she sat on the window seat, staring as the sun turned the river molten, letting the glitter fill her eyes and blot out the night images. Her nightmare had been twisted by fears of losing Jerin. Halley was missing in a burning building, while the dwarflike shopkeepers from Heron Landing were carrying Jerin off to marry a stranger. No, it wasn’t difficult to tell what had triggered her nightmare.
Where had Halley gone? More importantly, how could they get her back in time?
While Halley hadn’t said where she was going, it hadn’t been hard to guess why she left. More than any of them, Halley had been marked body and soul by the explosion that killed their sisters and husband.
Typical of Odelia’s luck, Odelia had not gone to the theater that night. Ren could never remember why, except a hazy notion that it came as punishment for some small crime. Trini, fortunately, had not gone either—she was still recovering from Keifer’s unnaturally vicious treatment of her. Lylia and the youngest sisters, of course, were too young to take to the theater. With their husband, Keifer, all ten oldest princesses, however, and two of the middle princesses made a rare appearance at a public performance.
After six years, odd memories remained crystal clear. A virgin layer of snow had covered the city, not yet touched by the omnipresent soot of deep winter. They arrived late, delayed by another fit of anger from Keifer, and the great arching windows sent pillars of light into the night. Ren and Halley came through the doors a step behind Lieutenant Raven, and the music struck them all of a sudden, as if they had been deaf up to that moment. Behind them, Eldest ignored Raven’s older sister Hawk as she explained that they hadn’t vetted the building yet due to the sudden plans and pleaded for the royal family to wait in the coaches. They swept up the stairs to the Porters’ private box, where a handful of ancient Porter mothers already waited. In the next box over, their middle Moorland cousins acknowledged the princesses with slightly cool nods—they were still angry with Keifer for slapping Cullen.
The opera was Barren Winter, which had been banned for two generations. The princesses settled into the Porters’ box as the opera’s opening lines reminded the audience that Ren’s great-grandmothers had split their royal daughters into two families. Ren’s grandmothers married Michael and took rule of Queensland. The younger sisters took Rafael as a husband and were given the newly annexed island of Southland to rule.
Ren started out bored. She knew the story well, the events having triggered the War of the False Eldest, and the repetitive nature of the lyrics annoyed her. Ann Kinsen, however, gave a brilliant performance as Michael, her powerful alto sweeping Ren up in the story of a man’s sterility destroying his family and country. As the younger sisters grew more strident in their demands that their children be considered heirs of the childless elder sisters, the more tortured Michael became by his affliction.
It was Queen Titia, however, who made the opera painfully real and personal. Nana Titia had been a woman forever undecided. To wear the red shawl or the blue one. To sit next to the fire, or near the lamp. To take the fish, or eat the lamb. She wavered on the smallest of details, always with a twittering laugh to cover her awareness of her own weakness.
There on the stage, with her embarrassed polite laugh, Titia dithered about delivering a secret offer to share a noble husband, an option that would have saved Eldest from visiting the disease-ridden cribs in a desperate attempt to produce an heir. Titia hesitated when action would have prevented pregnant Beatrice’s murder and thus the entire war. She wavered as Michael begged for divorce, which would have allowed him to escape the sense of responsibility for the growing tragedy that ultimately led to his suicide. She vacillated instead of stopping Cida’s bloody revenge at the war’s end, letting their imprisoned youngest sisters and nieces—including the infants—to be beheaded in one gory afternoon. With a downcast look and a soft laugh, she refused to make any decision that would have saved her sisters, her husband, and a full score of innocent children—girls that could have been Ren’s mothers if they had lived.
In a stunned moment, Ren realized that the true source of tragedy hadn’t been Michael’s sterility, but Titia’s indecision. Ren thought of her nana, how rarely she smiled, how she often stared out the windows of the palace crying, how she lived into her nineties knowing she destroyed almost everything she loved. For her poor heartbroken nana, for the grandmothers she never knew, for her might-have-been mothers that had been killed in anger, Ren wept.
Ren’s elder sisters and husband heard her crying. They shot cold looks at her—silent orders for her to cease her sobbing. Finally, Keifer leaned against Eldest and whispered his displeasure. A hard look, a flick of his fingers, and she was bundled up to be taken home.
Oh, she hated them so that night, for not weeping, for not being touched by this horrible tragedy that happened to their family, for scolding her with their silent disapproval, for sending her home like a screaming infant. She stood on the front steps, weeping openly now, waiting with a guard for the royal coach to be brought around.
She would get back at them somehow. She would make them pay. Only Halley would she s
pare, for Halley followed her outside to find out why she was crying.
“They should have spared the children,” Ren said as she took the handkerchief that Halley offered. “If they hadn’t split the family, those would have been their own children that they killed. The children would have been our mothers.”
“Their mothers and father had been executed.” Halley scowled at her. “Do you think you could take that hatred to suckle at your breast?”
“They had done nothing wrong!”
“If we had aunts that executed our mothers for fighting over a just cause, would we calmly accept them as our new mothers, or would we rebel?”
“Merrilee was just seven months old.”
“And Livi was seven, and Wren was seventeen. Which ones do you spare? Where do you draw the line?”
“It wasn’t right,” Ren insisted, hunching her shoulders.
They fell into silence, recognizing that they couldn’t agree on this issue. It snowed in huge, slowly drifting clumps, like goose down falling to earth. The coach appeared at the corner. Halley nodded to her and started back up the stairs.
At the theater door Halley stopped, and bluntly announced, “I hate him.”
“So do I.” Ren knew she meant Keifer.
“I don’t want to be married to him.”
Ren scoffed, “We don’t have a choice. The royal family is never going to split, not after last time.”
Halley glared at her.
In the silence between them rose Michael’s poignant aria lamenting the death of innocent children.
There was a muffled noise, like a distant cannon being fired. Then a roar of noise and light whiting out her senses as the explosion smashed Ren down the steps. She landed in slush, bitter cold on her face and hands, flames already furnace-hot across her back.