The Queen's Secret (The Queen's Secret #2) - Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,73
I consider throwing an entire pot of tea onto it. Varya saw a dangerous darkness in there, and I feel powerless to stop it.
Lady Daria, one of the youngest of my attendants, slips in with my boots.
“I have been re-stitching the lining, Your Majesty,” she tells me, gaze lowered. “There was a tear in the rabbit fur and I was afraid it would admit water. I can’t believe that we must leave you! Who will tend to you?”
“I have no idea,” I say, bracing myself on one of the bedposts. I feel almost dizzy with the speed at which everything is happening. Tonight I will be sleeping in Hansen’s chambers. “Please take my boots to the king’s apartments.”
Lady Daria scuttles out of the room, despondent. I wish she’d left the boots here, so I could kick them around the room.
Darkness falls in the late afternoon, and most of the ladies have already been driven away. Lady Marguerite has contrived to remain one more night in the castle.
“I have the farthest to go, ma’am,” she tells me. “It’s best for me to leave first thing in the morning rather than attempt the journey in darkness. There is still much that needs sorting and moving. I will undertake it all. I don’t trust the maids here with their sausage fingers. They will break things or steal them.”
“That’s a relief,” I tell her, but nothing is really a relief at the moment. Lady Marguerite kneels on the floor to pack my writing things, my ink and vellum, my royal seal, into a box lined with Argonian silk. In Hansen’s apartments I will have my own morning room where I can read and write, and receive visitors. It’s smaller than this chamber, and has no view of the yard. It looks out across the overgrown moat to the rooftops of the capital. On a clear day, I’m told, the mountains are visible in the distance. They’re capped with snow all the year.
“Lady Cecilia is supposed to have left by now,” Lady Marguerite tells me. “Her carriage was readied early this afternoon, but she sent it away. She has been weeping in her room and refuses to pack her trunk. Perhaps she thinks His Majesty will relent and allow her to stay.”
“Perhaps he will.” I stand at the window, gazing out at the twilight. The sky looks soft as velvet. Another carriage jerks into action and rattles away over the cobbles, taking another sobbing lady back to her dull country estate. They must be very dull indeed if courtiers are so reluctant to return to them.
Daffran, the Chief Scribe, wanders the yard in a daze, sprinkling his birdseed in the dirt and muttering to himself. Since the death of the court physician, he seems beside himself.
“Someone should take the scribe inside,” I say, my breath fogging the glass. “It’s too cold and too late for him to be out feeding birds. The poor old man.”
“I shall do it myself,” Lady Marguerite volunteers, clambering to her feet. “And when I return, I shall bring you some ginger tea.”
Now I know what relief is—being alone. My bedchamber feels half empty, though the four-poster bed is still there, of course, stripped of its sheets and blankets and curtains, and my chairs and table will remain: Hansen has too much furniture, he says, and of a much better quality than mine. I keep peering down into the yard, hoping to see Cal. But the only assassin there is Rhema, talking to the guards outside the tower. She’ll be leaving with Cal in the morning, I suppose.
Hansen can’t be right, can he? He can’t be right about Cal and Rhema.
She and the guards stop talking when Lady Marguerite approaches, steering Daffran toward the tower’s door. The guards admit them both, and it’s some time until Lady Marguerite emerges again.
When she returns, Lady Marguerite is bearing a tray of ginger tea, as promised, and I sit by the fire to drink it. She props my feet on a stool, and starts going through my trinket box, polishing each item with a soft cloth.
“Is he all right?” I ask her.
“Upset about the death of the physician,” she says, “and confused about the time of day. He said he thought it was dawn, not twilight. I settled him in his chair and persuaded him to drink a little wine. He’s probably dozing off now.”
I feel dozy myself. Today has drained me. Too much worrying about things I can’t control.