The change that rushes over her is so sudden, it’s like I can see her molting. Her face sheds that vicious elation as if it had never existed, and she becomes who she always is. The Elizabeth I’ve come to know.
“Anna!” she calls merrily, holding out a hand to me. “Ilona did the silliest thing, come see. She broke Ferenc’s vase—his best one, the one his mother gave us as our wedding gift.”
Biting on the inside of my cheek, I step warily in, terrified that I will tread on broken porcelain, or show my fear, or do anything to make this worse. I stand like a statue, trying to quell my trembling as Elizabeth sweeps over to me, ignoring the crunch beneath her slippered feet. She takes my icy hand and clasps it tight between both of hers, dry and very warm, like embers.
“Oh, why that face?” she exclaims, peering into my eyes. Hers are so black and deep, so shiningly inviting, that I fear I may inadvertently tumble into them and be somehow lost. “You did not—You do not actually think I was going to cut this silly little slattern’s fingers off, did you?”
“I . . .” I can’t finish, my heart is so slick in my throat. It cuts at me to hear her call Ilona such names, but I don’t know what to say in her defense. I can’t even think properly, not with such dread crouching inside me like a poisonous toad. Do I believe her? Dare I risk her displeasure, maybe even her wrath, by protecting my friend?
“Oh, Anna . . .” Elizabeth bursts into ringing peals of laughter, lifting a hand to graze her knuckles down my cheek. “What nonsense. She broke a vase, a precious one; she needed to be taught a sharp lesson, that is all. And fear teaches caution like nothing else.”
She drops my hands and comes closer, running pale strands of my hair through her fingers, like she might with a pet. I can hear Krisztina’s mocking “lap cat” echoing in the hollow caverns of my head. “You believe me, don’t you, my Anna?” she says glibly, so near I can feel the soft brush of her breath fan over my lips. “That I only meant to teach her to be better?”
I nod, not trusting my own pounding heart. I can’t believe she would have done it. And yet, I also can’t forget her face, that all-consuming rapture. Then there’s the caution in her eyes, a serpentine wariness I’ve never seen before.
I have a sudden, lurching feeling that if I don’t lie—and don’t lie well—I will find fangs buried in my throat.
So I force a smile, gentle my face into the admiration she’s accustomed to from me. “Of course,” I appease her. “She broke a precious thing. She must—she must be taught.” I almost crumble at the short sound of Ilona’s betrayed gasp, but I must hold fast. For both our sakes.
Elizabeth examines me a moment longer, her gaze flicking shrewdly between my eyes. Barely breathing, I keep my face rigorously placid until her own relaxes. “Good,” she says, her eyes softening. “I knew you would understand.”
Then she lets me go and heaves Ilona up, clucking at her like a mother over a foolish, awkward child, rolling her eyes almost indulgently when the girl’s legs buckle. “Go fetch a broom, and wrap up your knees before you ruin my rugs, you silly girl,” she says, giving Ilona a little push toward the door. “And try not to bring the rest of the castle crashing down around our ears if you can help it.”
To her credit, Ilona does not need to be told twice. Flicking me a wounded dart of a look, she stumbles by me and pelts out the door, dropping her skirts to conceal her cuts.
Suddenly there’s a commotion from the courtyard below: the bellows of men, the creak of carriage wheels, the high-pitched whinny and stamp of stallions. Elizabeth’s delicate face hardens, grows taut. “It’s Ferenc,” she says darkly, stepping away from me. “Damn the stars. My husband has come home early.”
While I help her get ready to greet her husband, trying to hide the residual trembling in my hands, she talks to me in a desperate stream, words tumbling over each other like rocks swept by a river. We’ve avoided speaking of Ferenc until now, but something has slipped loose inside her; I hear her loathing for him laid bare, splayed out and dissected like a butchered beast. How cruel he is, how pedestrian, how far beneath her. How her flesh recoils from his grasping, icy touch.
“I shudder to think what he would do, if he ever learned of Gabor. And he thinks I am too lenient with servants,” she adds, fidgeting nervously in her lap as I plait her hair. “That I do not punish them properly in his absence. That is why I scolded Ilona as harshly as I did, you understand. I . . .” She falters. “I cannot afford to incur his displeasure in that, too.”
“Of course, my lady,” I murmur soothingly, my heart turning over with such sympathy and relief that it quashes the sour tang of my lingering misgivings. I knew such naked bloodlust over a minor misdemeanor could not have come naturally to her. “You did only what you had to do.”
“Elizabeth, please,” she corrects with a dismayed pout. “Else it will make me feel as though this has driven a wedge between us. And I could not bear such a distance from you.”
I smile at her, taking the liberty of stroking the thick fish tail of her braid before I coil it up around her head. “No such wedge exists, or ever could,” I comfort. “My lady Elizabeth.”
“You will dine with us, then,” she declares, flinging me an entreating look in the mirror. “I need you there, my sage.”
“But he’s been gone for so long,” I protest, uncertain. “Would it not rile him to have me there, if he wishes to be alone with you?”
“Hang what he wishes,” she says mutinously, setting her jaw. “And I have already claimed you as my cousin. He cannot keep you from your rightful place by my side.”
So I take a seat beside her in the great hall, drowning dry mouthfuls with rich, red wine. We’re eating the finest food, tender dumplings stuffed with braised pheasant and simmered with paprika and leeks, but every time I think of Ilona’s bloody knees it all turns to sawdust in my mouth. At least Ferenc doesn’t seem any more comfortable than I am. He hasn’t washed, or even changed out of his commander’s regalia; his boots are still dull with the dust of the road. I catch him sneaking slantwise looks at me, his colorless eyes shrewd with thought.
I shift uneasily beneath his deceptively placid gaze; I can see it for the lie it is. He’s furious under that frosty veneer, all the muscles in his jaw drawn tight, notched like a ready bow. When he finally speaks, we’d been eating in dead silence for the best part of an hour, and both Elizabeth and I startle at the sound of his voice.
“My lady wife,” he says, wiping roughly at his mouth. “Why are the fields not freshly tilled?”
Elizabeth sets her fork down, very deliberately. She’s chosen a low-cut burgundy bodice for the evening, and candlelight gilds the creamy swell of her breasts above its rim. Her face is composed, but I’m close enough to see the frantic ticking of her heart in the hollow of her throat, like an insect trapped under her skin. “Excuse me, husband. Did you say ‘tilled’?”
“Yes, tilled.” He throws down his fork with a clatter, swaying his jaw from side to side. “The thing that must happen to the soil after harvest, before the land is planted in spring. Our land, Beth, which you’ve been stewarding in my absence. Or should have been, at least.”