“Good morning, my lady,” he said.
“Good morning,” she replied. “I must say I’m not sad to see another person. I wondered if I had stumbled upon some official food I wasn’t meant to touch.”
“Touch away,” he encouraged. “The kippers are especially good.”
“Excellent.” Ophelia took one of the slabs of fish and added it to her plate. “You aren’t getting any, though?”
He smiled. “It is a favorite of mine but not of the queen, and it is for her that I am making this plate.” He placed a few items here or there.
“She isn’t coming down?” Ophelia asked.
Talbot’s expression wavered slightly. “She must prepare to meet with the others. Princess Ilaria and Count Crawford returned to the palace just a short time ago.”
Ophelia nearly dropped her plate. “They’ve returned? And I assume they have the leader of his uprising group with them?”
Talbot turned to face her fully, his expression lined with surprise. “You know a great deal, my lady.”
She held his stare for a moment and saw in it a true reflection of her own worries and fears for Grantham. She set her plate on the sideboard and folded her arms before herself. “When you care for someone in the position that the king is in…or the queen…well, you know,” she said softly.
Talbot’s cheek twitched and he turned his face, almost like those words were a slap. Then he cleared his throat and forced himself to look at her again. “You must understand, Lady Ophelia, that this is not an easy road. There are complications.”
“I suppose you would understand that better than most.”
He inclined his head. “If you will excuse me, I must deliver this to Gia—to Queen Giabella so she may eat something before she joins the meeting shortly. I hope you will not be upset to eat alone.”
“Of course not,” Ophelia said, and waved him toward the door. “Good day, Mr. Talbot.”
He strode out and she sighed as she picked up her plate. Now that she knew the man who threatened Grantham’s position…perhaps his very life…was in the palace, she wished she hadn’t taken so much food. She couldn’t eat it, she knew that.
Still, she sat and tried, picking through the offerings as best she could. But all the while, her thoughts raced. Grantham would meet with his sister, brother-in-law and this man first. He’d told her so last night when they’d briefly broached the topic. Any time it came up, she saw the lines of worry and grief on his face.
Did he have them there now? Would he come out safe or broken?
She pushed from the table with a screech of chair leg against wood floor. With an apologetic look for the footman standing by to take her plate, she slipped from the room. In the hallway, she looked in the direction she’d have to go to enter Grantham’s study.
But no, she had no place there. He was her lover and that was temporary. She could be there for him after these trying hours were finished, but she couldn’t barge into a room where she hadn’t been invited and demand a place at his table.
She worried her hands and moved down the hallway in the opposite direction to his study. She entered a parlor that connected to the terrace and stepped outside.
It was a sunny day but cool, and she breathed in the crisp air as she stepped to the edge of the terrace and looked down over the garden. Some of the last autumn flowers were blooming and their brightness warmed her heart in these dark times.
She straightened up. The same blooms might also warm Grantham. She would pick him a bouquet and deliver it to his chamber to be waiting for him. A reminder that she was thinking of him and that there was color even in the darkest times.
That resolved, she smiled as she all but skipped down the stairs and moved toward the flowerbeds. No one else was in the garden. Probably best since she intended to do this without asking permission. She could apologize later if she wasn’t meant to pick flowers in the royal garden.
She began to choose blooms, picking carefully so they were the best and brightest of the fading bunch. She had a handful of the prettiest ones and was searching through even more when she heard a sound behind her.
She pivoted to face it and nearly staggered into the flowerbed in shock. There, not three feet away from her, was Stephen Blairford, Grantham’s disgraced courtier. His cheeks were slashed with stubble, his clothing far more casual than she’d seen him wear in the palace. But it was his expression that made her drop her hands, flowers scattering across the lawn at her feet.
He looked wild. His eyes were bright with emotion, his face lined with hatred as he stared at her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked softly, glad she could meter her emotions when terror gripped her.
He tilted his head. “Why, I’ve come to collect you, my dear lady.”
She glanced back up toward the palace. “Me? Why would you want me?”
“Because His Majesty is due to lose something important to him. And I think you might just be that.” She started to turn away, but Blairford pulled out a pistol from his pocket and leveled it on her. “Tsk, tsk, Lady Ophelia. Don’t be a fool. Now let’s go.”
“They await you in your study,” Dash said to Grantham as they strode down the hallway together. “You will meet with them briefly on your own and then the queen, Princess Sasha and Prince Remington will join you, as per your request.”
Grantham nodded. “Very good. Thank you for arranging things in the absence of a trusted courtier to do so.”
“You may always depend on me,” Dash said softly.
“Yes.” Grantham stopped at the door and smiled at him. “I know. And I appreciate that, and your great care in how you tend to my mother.”
Something in Dash’s gaze flickered, but he inclined his head. “Ring if you have any need. I won’t be far.”
Grantham excuse him with a wave and then smoothed his coat. In that room were his sister and Jonah…but also the leader of the resistance movement against him. At last he would face off with the man who had begun this madness. The one who might end it.
He pushed the door open and entered. Ilaria and Jonah stood together before the fire and he nodded to them briefly before his gaze found the only other person in the room. Not a man, but a woman, and she met his stare without hesitation.
“Grantham,” Ilaria said. “This is Marabelle Fowler. The leader of the rebellion group.”
“Your Majesty,” she said with the slightest of curtsies.
Grantham stared at her. “You are…unexpected.”
“You thought to find a man waiting for you?” she asked with a slight smile. “Everyone does.”
He glanced at Jonah and Ilaria. “I’m surprised this wasn’t mentioned.”
Jonah wrinkled his brow. “We wrote a letter explaining it.”
Grantham shook his head. “I only received a message from a courier saying you were on your way. No mention of any other details.” Jonah and Ilaria appeared confused, but Grantham pushed questions aside. “Not that it matters. Man or woman, you and I have a great deal to discuss, Miss Fowler.”
“More than you know,” she said. “But I assume the others are to join us soon.”