Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,301

we were caught by surprise.

Those questions had often led Deanna to an impenetrable veil of mystery, and it wasn’t until many years later that the duchess of Mannington came to ask the more important questions. Why had she been spared? And since she was alive after the supposed murderers had been executed, then why hadn’t she been placed in Carlisle as the rightful queen of Avon?

Her stiff brush scraped hard against her head as the now-familiar rage began to mount inside of her. For several years, Deanna had suspected the betrayal and had felt the anger, but until recently she had suppressed those feelings. If what she feared had truly happened those two decades ago, then she could not readily excuse her own role in the murder of her mother and father, her five brothers and her sister.

“You look so much like her,” came a call from the doorway.

Deanna looked into the mirror and saw Selna’s reflection, the older woman coming into the room with Deanna’s nightclothes over her arm. The duchess turned about in her seat to face the woman.

“Your mother,” Selna explained with a disarming smile. She walked right over and put her hand gently against Deanna’s cheek. “You have her eyes, so soft, so blue.”

It was like a religious ceremony for the handmaid. Weekly at least, over the last twenty years, Selna, who had been her nanny in the days when her father ruled Avon, would brush her hand against Deanna’s cheek and tell her how much she looked like her murdered mother. For so many of those years, Deanna had beamed under the compliment and begged Selna to tell her of Bettien, her mother.

What a horrible irony that now seemed to the enlightened woman!

Deanna rose and walked away, taking the nightclothes.

“Fear not, my Lady,” Selna called after her. “I do not think our king will punish you for your weakness in the Iron Cross.”

Deanna turned sharply on the woman, making her jump in surprise. “Has he told you that personally?” she asked.

“The king?”

“Of course, the king,” Deanna replied. “Have you spoken with him since our return to Mannington?”

Selna appeared shocked. “My Lady,” she protested, “why would his most royal King Greensparrow deem to talk with—”

“Have you spoken with him since we left the Iron Cross?” Deanna interrupted, speaking each word distinctly so that Selna could not miss the implications of the question.

Selna took a deep breath and lifted her jaw resolutely.

She feels safe within the protection of Greensparrow, Deanna mused. The duchess realized that her anger may have caused her to overstep her good judgment. If Selna’s calls to Greensparrow were easily answered—perhaps the king had given her a minor demon to serve as courier—then Deanna’s anger might soon bring Greensparrow’s probing eye her way once more, something she most certainly did not want at this crucial hour.

“My apologies, dear Selna,” Deanna said, moving over to put her hand on the woman’s arm. Deanna dropped her gaze and gave the most profound of sighs. “I only fear that your perception of my weakness beside the cyclopians has lessened me in your view.”

“Never that, my Lady,” the handmaid said unconvincingly.

Deanna looked up, her soft blue eyes wet with tears. Ever since her childhood, Deanna had been good at summoning those; she called them “sympathy drops.”

“It is late, my Lady,” Selna said tersely. “You should retire.”

“It was weakness,” Deanna admitted with a slight sniffle. She noted that Selna’s expression shifted to one of curiosity.

“I could not bear it,” Deanna went on. “I hold no love for Eriadorans, and certainly none for dwarfs, but even the bearded folk seem a high cut above those ghastly one-eyes!”

Selna seemed to relax somewhat, even managed a smile that appeared sincere to Deanna.

“I only fear that my king and savior has come to doubt me,” Deanna lamented.

“Never that, my Lady,” Selna insisted.

“He is all the family that I have,” Deanna said, “except for you, of course. I could not bear to disappoint him, and yet, that, I fear, is exactly what I have done.”

“It was a task for which you of princessly temperament were not well-equipped,” Selna said.

Princessly temperament. Selna often used that curious phrase when speaking to Deanna. Often the young woman wanted to yell in the face of it. If she was so attuned to royalty, then why was Greensparrow, and not she, who was of rightful blood, sitting on Carlisle’s throne?

Deanna forced the angry thoughts deep within her. She let the tears come then, and wrapped Selna in a tight