foundling from the moment they arrived, and felt sick at what she’d done.
Or maybe she just felt sick.
In the parlor she found Elly asleep on the sofa, sitting upright in the same dress she’d worn the day before, chin on her chest. Her sketchbook lay half off her lap, where it had slid when she’d drifted off, and a charcoal pencil had fallen to the floor by her bare feet. The sketchbook lay next to her where it had fallen, page filled with one of Elly’s forests: she would spend hours on the trees, making sure every branch and leaf was perfect, and then she would fill in the spaces between with half-glimpsed beasts and fierce eyes. There was no sign of Gavin. No boots, no coat, no dirty gauntlets thrown onto the table or dropped on the floor. Judah picked up the sketchbook, closed it and put it back in Elly’s lap.
Elly’s head jerked. She winced, put a hand to her neck. Then she saw Judah. “Are you just coming home? Where have you been?”
“In Theron’s workshop.” Judah sat down in the armchair. “Gavin was out of his head. By the time I got up there, I couldn’t make it back down again. I passed out on the floor.”
Elly stared at her; deciding if she was lying, Judah knew. It was painful to see. Finally she said, “That explains the dust. What about the hunt?”
“Everyone lived except the deer.”
“Was it bad?”
Stealthily, Judah scratched come here now on the inside of her wrist. Jagged and angular, which was its own message. There was no answer. “Yes. It was. But it’s over. And he’s not hurt. Just—”
“Humiliated.”
Feeling unclean, Judah nodded.
“And Gavin?”
Judah lifted her shoulders. Let them drop.
Elly’s hair was braided down her back. She reached up with both hands and yanked it ferociously, like a bell that wouldn’t ring. “Of course,” she said. “Because coming back here and actually dealing with us would be difficult, and Gavin doesn’t like difficult. Gavin likes fighting and wine and pretty little courtier girls who follow him around like geese. Oh, how strong you are, Lord Gavin. How handsome and manly.”
“To be fair,” Judah said, “Theron’s not here, either.”
“Theron has reason not to be,” Elly snapped, and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. When she dropped them again the anger was gone. “Tell me about the hunt, Jude.”
So Judah did. A version of the hunt, anyway, in which there was a bit more mockery of Theron’s stutter and a lot less of Gavin nearly killing him. Nothing she said was technically untrue, but it was all a lie, nevertheless. “Anyway, he survived,” she finished. “And it wasn’t easy for Gavin, either, so stable your warhorse, all right?”
“Gavin.” Elly’s lips pressed together. “Gavin will wake up with a headache and be just fine.” She sat down and began putting on her shoes. “I’m going to try to talk Theron into coming down. He can’t stay up there, his lungs will rot. If anyone asks for me, tell them to go jump in a well. And if you see Gavin, tell him to jump in a well, too,” she added, head held high.
As soon as she left—as if he’d been waiting and watching around a corner somewhere—the door opened again, and Gavin came in: pale and unsteady, hair disheveled and coat missing. His shirt was only half-buttoned, and incorrectly, with some brownish stain down the front that could have been wine or blood or either or both. His eyes were red and bleary. “I didn’t do it,” he said.
“I know,” Judah said.
Theron had said that when Gavin remounted his horse he had looked as though his bones were slumped and soft. She saw now what he meant. Gavin dropped onto the sofa, just where Elly had been sitting, and everything about him seemed defeated. “He doesn’t want her,” he said. He had a headache, a blurry throb over his eyes that Judah hadn’t noticed until they were in the same room. “He’ll take her to make me miserable. He wants Theron dead, so he has one less heir to worry about, and he wants to know I’ll jump when he pulls my string.”
It felt like Judah had been angry with him for days. She was tired of being angry with him. It was too hard. She sat down next to him. “We’ll figure it out,” she said, and took his hand. He let her. The headache flared; her queasiness and his folded together, doubled,