I immediately slap the top of his head with my fan. He puts his hands over his head and stares up at me in surprise.
“Sir! A gentleman does not lift a lady’s skirts!” I begin to fan myself frantically, as if I’m in need of smelling salts.
He blushes and jumps to his feet. “Please accept my apologies, my lady. I did not mean . . . I only meant to . . .”
“Well, I never!” I shout. I harrumph for emphasis and storm away. That should take care of him. He’ll avoid me for the rest of the evening out of sheer humiliation.
I walk through the hall leading away from the ballroom, then stop to remove my tight heels so that I can continue. When I bend down, I feel the talisman knock against my upper thigh. I realize the metal hasn’t reacted in a while. The farther I venture into the private areas of the house, the colder it gets.
Now that I’ve thwacked a nobleman on the head, I’m feeling bold.
Tiptoeing, shoes in my hand, I creep up the stairs toward the duke and duchess’s private bedchambers.
I pause to listen. It’s silent upstairs. I’m not sure what I’m doing or what I’m looking for. I don’t have a plan, exactly. I just know that I’ll know when I find it.
Each of my footsteps creaks on the wood floor. I’m positive I’m alerting everyone in the house to my actions, but of course that’s silly, because there’s a loud party going on in the ballroom and the entire household, including the staff, is there right now.
The duke’s bedchamber is at the end of the hall. I run my finger along the striped wallpaper. It’s textured, so the sensation is extra satisfying.
I realize maybe I had a little more champagne than I think I did.
But then I am not alone.
The Duke of Girt appears in the hallway, and he does not look surprised to see me. “Why, Lady Lila,” he says, cordial and friendly. He smells familiar somehow, underneath that perfume. “What brings you here?”
“I . . . I was looking to get some air,” I say weakly, as the talisman hums.
“Shall we step out to the balcony?” the duke asks. “So we can see the fireworks?”
The obsidian is humming so hot it almost burns my skin, but there is only one answer I can give: “That would be lovely.”
I realize where I smelled that scent before. It’s from the forest, when I had a predator hunting me, the day I stumbled upon Baer Abbey. The unmistakable smell of rot and death. It smells like my would-be assassin.
Even so, I follow the duke to the private balcony outside his chambers, his hand on the small of my back, leading the way.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Caledon
SOMEHOW THE DUCHESS MANAGES TO find Cal after he thought he’d escaped her.
She comes up behind him while he’s getting a glass of wine and something to eat, covers his eyes with her hands, and lets out a high-pitched giggle. “There’s my little bunny rabbit,” she coos.
“Oh, hello,” Cal says. Bunny rabbit? The duchess is getting bolder by the moment. Good. Perhaps he will finally learn something from her.
This is what he should have been doing from the beginning, warming up the duchess, becoming her confidant. Why hadn’t he? He was distracted, he realizes now; he was too concerned with Shadow. No longer.
“Shall we dance once more?” he offers.
“Oh! Yes, let’s do that,” she says.
It pains him to return to the dance floor, but it is the closest thing to intimacy in a public setting. The duchess is voluble and naïve, and he would like to know more about this mysterious duke and his business in the country.
He sees a flash of Shadow’s dress across the ballroom and tries to ignore it.
The duchess leans in to whisper in his ear. “The duke is away so often, it gets terribly lonely, and cold. Even in the summer months, the house is so large and drafty, the nights are simply frigid. I shiver, all alone.”
“He leaves you often?” Cal asks.
“Yes, and he goes so far away. He never pops back up unannounced, you know. No out-of-the-blue midnight arrivals back from Renovia, like some husbands like to do. Try to catch their wives at something naughty.” She giggles. The sound stabs him in the ear. But she’s finally said something interesting and so he twirls her back toward the center of the floor.
“You poor thing. What is so important in Renovia that could keep the duke away from his lovely wife?” he asks.
She tilts toward his ear; he gets a whiff of the alcohol on her breath. “My husband is a very important asset to the crown, bunny. He has many associations in Renovia.”
“Is that so?” Cal says. “Friends? Family?”
“You could call them friends, I suppose. The grand prince was one,” she says coyly. “A very good friend indeed.”
“Is that so?”
“Oh yes, Alast was here on a hunt not too long ago,” the duchess tells him.
“The duke does enjoy the hunt,” says Cal politely. “He is so good at it.”
The duchess laughs. “Oh! Nothing could be further from the truth! The duke loathes hunting. He’s terrible! But it is a useful hobby, I suppose.”
“I see,” says Cal, who isn’t sure he does. Not yet.
“Pity what happened to him, don’t you think? The poor man, assassinated in cold blood by a lowly blacksmith!” the duchess says, as if she read his mind.
“Yes, a tragedy,” says Cal. “But I suppose now the duke doesn’t have to leave you for Renovia, since the grand prince has passed,” he says to the duchess.
“Quite the contrary! He’s leaving tonight.”
“Tonight! Why so soon?” he asks, watching Shadow disappear into the crowd again. “What exactly does His Grace do in Renovia? Manage the grand prince’s estate?”
“I suppose you could say that,” the duchess says lightly.
Cal furrows his eyebrows, feigning confusion.
She goes on. “I will tell you a secret! He is leaving to make sure the insurrection continues as planned!”
“Insurrection? Against the queen?”
Duchess Girt laughs. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those Renovian sympathizers!”
He arranges his face to hide his pounding heart. “Of course not! What is the duke planning?”
“Oh, I can’t say, but perhaps I will give you a hint. By tomorrow there will be regime change.”
Regime change? The assassination of the princess? Of the queen? Is that what this nitwit duchess is talking about? Does the duke plan on killing the queen and the princess while they are in Montrice?