Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns #1) - Kendare Blake Page 0,20

in the company of my aunts and your maids. They have not prepared you to court your suitors any better than they prepared you for your poison feast.”

Katharine blushes scarlet. “Who do you think you are,” she asks, “to say such a thing?”

“I am your servant,” he answers, and touches her cheek. “I am your slave. I am here to make sure every one of the suitors does not think of either of your sisters before they think of you.”

WOLF SPRING

The day of Joseph’s return dawns overcast and ugly. Jules watches the whole gray affair lying in her bed in the room she shares with Arsinoe. She has hardly slept.

“They have known he was coming for weeks,” she says.

“Of course they did,” says Madrigal. She stands behind her as Jules sits at her dresser, pulling a brush through Jules’s wild, dark brown hair.

“So why send him home now, two days after Arsinoe’s birthday? He will have missed the celebration and return just in time to see the trash in the streets and the gulls and crows fighting over the leftover food.”

“That’s exactly why,” says Madrigal. “And now they got to spring him on us, and watch us scramble like upset chickens. Poor Annie Sandrin must be out of her mind.”

Yes.

Down in his family’s house by the pier, Joseph’s mother will be nearly overwhelmed, making things ready and barking at her husband and at Matthew and Jonah. Barking happily but barking nonetheless.

“What if he doesn’t come?” Jules asks.

“Why wouldn’t he come?” Madrigal tries again to pin Jules’s hair up onto her head. “This is his home.”

“What do you think he will be like?” she asks.

“If he is anything like his brother Matthew, then all the girls of Wolf Spring are in danger,” Madrigal says, and smiles. “When Matthew was Joseph’s age, he had half the town swimming after his boat.”

Jules jerks under the brush.

“Matthew never cared for anyone besides Aunt Caragh.”

“Yes, yes,” Madrigal mutters. “He was devoted as a hound to my serious sister, just like Joseph will no doubt be to you.” She throws her hands up and sends Jules’s hair flying. “It’s hopeless to try anything with this mess.”

Jules looks sadly into the mirror. Madrigal is so effortlessly beautiful, with her honey-chestnut hair and lithe, graceful limbs. People never guess that she and Jules are mother and daughter. Sometimes, Jules suspects that Madrigal likes it that way.

“You should have slept more,” Madrigal chides. “You have dark hollows beneath your eyes.”

“I couldn’t, not with Camden getting up and turning around every few minutes.”

“And why do you think she could not sleep? Your nervousness kept her awake. If she runs into the table and breaks anything today, it will be your fault.” Madrigal steps out from behind her daughter and studies herself. She touches the ends of her soft, tan-gold waves and dabs perfume onto her long white throat.

“I have done all I can,” she says. “He will have to love you as you are.”

Arsinoe comes up the stairs and leans against their door. “You look great, Jules,” she says.

“You ought to let him come to you,” says Madrigal.

“Why? He’s my friend. This is not a game.” Jules twists away from the dresser and heads downstairs. She is out the door and partway down their long dirt path before she notices that Arsinoe has stayed near the house.

“Aren’t you coming?”

The queen shoves her hands into her pockets. “I don’t think so. This should just be you.”

“He will want to see you.”

“Yes. But later.”

“Well, walk with me for a little way at least!”

Arsinoe laughs. “All right.”

They walk together down the narrow, winding hill road that leads from the property and into town, past the docks, and into the square and the winter market. As they crest the last hill before the cove, Arsinoe stops.

“Do you ever wonder,” Arsinoe asks, “what we would be doing if it had gone different?”

“Different how?” asks Jules. “If we had never tried to run away? If we had made it? Or if they had banished us, too?”

But they only banished Joseph. Jules’s sentence was to be the solitary Midwife and nurse to the queens. To live alone in the Black Cottage as a servant to the crown, her only company the queen and her king-consort during the pregnancy, and the triplets until they grew to the age of claiming. She would be in the Black Cottage now, had her aunt Caragh not volunteered to take her place.

“They should have killed me,” Arsinoe whispers. “I should have offered,