him walk away. She waited for the space of two breaths, then rose, pretended to brush dust from her skirts, and strode out to the corridor as if she owned the house and everything in it. Vincen was walking slowly, his hands clasped behind him.
“Coe?” she said. “Might I have a word with you?”
He turned as if stung and stood there silently. She raised her eyebrows.
“C-certainly,” he said.
“Excellent. This way, please.”
She walked toward the gardens, but instead of opening the iron and glass gate that led into the yard, she turned left into the gardener’s alcove. As she’d suspected, it was empty.
“Close the door, please,” she said.
“My lady …”
“Stop that, Vincen. Stop it now.”
He hesitated. There was fury in his eyes.
“Clara,” he said.
“Much better. Now close the door.”
“It will ruin you,” he said. “I will ruin you. When you were disgraced, it was different. You were like us. But you’re rising again, and if we’re—” He stopped, and began again, his voice hushed. “If we’re seen alone together, it will destroy you.”
“I have been destroyed,” she said. “It didn’t kill me.”
“It will hurt your sons. Your daughters. Your standing in court. I won’t risk you. I can’t do that.”
“Do you really think I would be the first woman in court to have an affair?”
Vincen closed. She saw it happen.
“I’m sure many women in places of power have had affairs with servants,” he said. And there it was. The gulf she could not cross. He was a servant again, and she was a woman of standing.
“You said you would follow me anywhere,” she said. “Perhaps you meant anywhere but back.”
“I will go find my quarters, m’lady. With your permission.”
She stepped over to him, reached past him, and pushed the door closed. His mouth was hard and unresponsive at first. But only at first.
“I have not changed,” she said. “I am the same woman I was this morning. It’s only circumstances.”
“I know, Clara,” he said. “And I’m the same man. It’s just … it’s just that I’m having a terrible day.”
“I am too. But it won’t be the last day there is.”
He kissed her again, and there was a real hunger in it this time. She put her arms around his shoulders and pulled him close. They stood there for a long moment and then stepped back from each other.
“Find your rooms,” she said, “and then explore this house from the basement to the roof. Know it as well as you would a hunting grounds. Learn everyone’s name and their place and, as best you can, their schedules. I will do the same. I don’t know how we can make this work, but we will.”
“And your letters to Carse?”
“Those too,” she said. “Though it seems I won’t be trying to alienate Geder from his new Lord Marshal. Which is a pity as it went so well last time.”
A distant voice caught her. A man’s voice calling Mother!
“Vicarian’s come,” she said, opening the door again and pushing Vincen out before her. “Go. Now. I will find you later tonight.”
She listened to Vincen’s footsteps fade and turned to look at the ghostly reflection of herself in the windows of the gate. The woman who looked back seemed almost unfamiliar. She smoothed her hair.
“Well, then,” she said, and the woman in the glass looked back at her with a gentle smirk. She turned back to the main part of the house, slipping again into the guise of noblewoman and baroness, and followed her boy’s voice to the main part of the house. She found Jorey and Vicarian standing in the front hall grinning at each other. Vicarian’s robes were the brown of the spider priests, and his face looked thinner than when she’d seen him last, but also oddly bright. She had the sense that if she touched him, he would feel fevered.
“Mother,” Vicarian said, catching sight of her.
“No, stay there,” she said. “Let me look at you.”
Vicarian laughed and took a pose. The initiation hadn’t changed him so much, then. She came forward and embraced him, and there was no strange heat, no sense that he had changed. It felt good having her boy back in her arms. Two of her boys.
“So,” she said. “You’ve studied the cult of the spider goddess. Has she made you pious at last?”
“You know,” Vicarian said, taking her arms in a way uncomfortably similar to Vincen, “I think it actually may have.”
He led Clara down the corridor toward the drawing room. The servants scurried around them like mice.