Agent of the Crown (25 page)

Telaine walked back to the town, expecting
Morgan to swoop down on her at any moment. He didn’t appear. It was
dinnertime, so she went into the tavern and shared a table with
Josephine Adderly, who was glowing with the success of Blythe
Bradford’s wedding dress.

“Everyone wants one like it!” she exclaimed.
“Lainie, I can’t thank you enough for providing me with the
pattern.”

“It was hardly a pattern, just a set of
drawings,” Telaine protested. “I still can’t believe you were able
to recreate the dress from a picture.”

“Well, I can’t believe you built those
lights, they were so beautiful,” Josephine said. “So romantic.” Her
eyes went merry, and she added, “
Very
romantic for some, I
hear.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t be silly. Everyone knows you’re
walking out with Ben Garrett,” Josephine said in a low voice, as if
despite her words it was a great secret. “Oh, Lainie, I’m so happy
for you! I know more than a handful of girls who are so jealous of
you. That voice…” She sighed and closed her eyes. “Is it true he
carried you home from the shivaree, draped in those lights?”

“No!” Telaine exclaimed, laughing. “Really,
Josephine, it’s only been a day, and we haven’t even gone out in
public. How do these rumors get started?”

“I don’t know. But I do know Mister Garrett
was mooning about all day yesterday with the silliest smile on his
face. Nobody makes that sort of face ’less they’re courting. And
tale is he sang to you right in front of everyone and nobody
noticed.”

“If nobody noticed, how does anyone
know?”

“Well,
somebody
noticed. And
I
saw you were awfully close during the dance,
and
you danced
twice with him in a row, and I know what that means. I read the
social news from the city.”

Telaine covered her burning face with her
hands. “Do I have no secrets left?”
Let’s hope I do.

“Maybe,” said Josephine, with a satisfied
smile. “Is he a good kisser?”

“Josephine!” Telaine exclaimed. Josephine
laughed like she’d made the funniest joke of all time.

She finished her meal and strolled off down
the street toward home, feeling cheerful. She’d always enjoyed
passing by the forge; now she knew why. Ben had his back to her,
working some yellow-hot metal, when she approached, but before she
could reach the forge rail Eleanor came out of nowhere, grabbed her
arm and dragged her into the laundry.

“You and Ben,” she said, and wrapped her arms
around Telaine. “I’m so happy for you both!”

“We’re just walking out, Eleanor,” Telaine
said, feeling her cheeks heat again.

“You obviously don’t understand what that
means,” said Eleanor, releasing her. “Oh, my dear, he’s like a
different man.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He’s been my neighbor for four years, always
quiet, mostly keeps to himself,” Eleanor said. “Took a while for
folks to get to know him, but then there was Wintersmeet that first
year, and he sang for us… well, you know how he can sing, of course
you do, and it made him well-liked, gave him a way to fit in, but
he still didn’t talk much. Friendly, but shut off. Everyone knows
what he’s like, they don’t mind his ways.

“But all yesterday, he was saying hey to
anyone who passed by, smiling and talking like he usually only does
when he’s been singing. He went to the tavern for supper. Don’t
think he’s been in there since last Wintersmeet, and that was for
the chorals. You’ve changed him, dear. And in just one day. It’s
amazing, it truly is.”

And I was going to destroy all that. Thank
heaven I came to my senses.
“That’s…quite a burden to bear,”
she said.

Eleanor steered her to sit at the broad
table. “I didn’t mean to lay that on you. Happen I exaggerated.”
She patted Telaine’s hand. “Lainie, walking out together doesn’t
mean a promise. It’s how you get to know each other, what you’re
like together. But a man like Ben, when he gives his heart, he
gives it all at once. Remember that, will you?”

“Happen you should give him a talk about not
expecting too much of a girl,” Telaine said, and laughed. “No,
don’t, I wasn’t serious,” she added when Eleanor firmed her chin in
the way she did when she was planning on giving someone a good
stiff lecture. “But you have to admit it’s fearsome to have that
much power over a man.” The Princess would have loved to be in her
position, to know she could make Ben dance to her tune. Telaine
didn’t have any idea what to do with it.

“Fearsome and beautiful,” Eleanor said. “My
Robert was like that. Loved like a bonfire burning.”

Robert had died only three years before. “I
wish I could have known him.”

Eleanor nodded. “I miss him still,” she said,
dry-eyed and resigned. “But I have his children. And the way Trey
and Blythe are going, I might have his grandchildren soon.”

“They are rather like rabbits, aren’t they?”
Telaine said, and Eleanor laughed and nodded.

Ben still had his back to her when Telaine
left the laundry. She stood at the rail, watching him, ignoring the
murmured conversation a couple of old men were having nearby in
which they alternated between staring at her and staring at
Ben.

He wore a sleeveless shirt with a leather
apron tied over it, and the muscles of his arms and his back slid
and stretched as he worked the bellows. His head was bowed over his
work, his light brown hair sweaty around his neck. How had she
passed him every day for nine weeks and never realized how good he
looked? And she’d made him happy. She leaned on the stone pillar at
the corner of the forge rail and waited for him to notice her.

It took him a few minutes to turn around. He
twitched, surprised someone was there, then smiled that new,
wonderful smile when he realized it was her.
I’ve made him
happy, but he’s made me happy too
, she thought. “I hope I’m not
a distraction,” she said.

He plunged whatever he’d been working on into
the quenching barrel. “Never that,” he said, then the corners of
his mouth twitched up in amusement. “Not an unwelcome one, certain
sure.”

“I wanted you to know I’m back, safe and
sound, and I’ve got a new job that will keep me away from Morgan
for a while. I thought you’d feel better knowing that.”

“Much better.” He took the metal from the
barrel, but stood there holding it. “Watching you ride off with him
all those times, and how he made you hold him so close…never hated
anyone so much in my life.”

Anger made him sound nothing like himself,
and Telaine clasped his arm.

“I need you to promise me something, Ben,”
she said. “You have to promise you won’t go picking a fight with
Morgan. I don’t care what he does. If he kills you, I—I don’t want
him to kill you. Please.”

“Happen I’ll kill him instead,” Ben said,
clenching his fist and making the tendons rise up on his arm.

“I’ll stay away from him, and you’ll leave
him alone, and Morgan won’t be part of our lives. Promise me.”

Ben cast his cool, steady gaze on her,
unsmiling. “
promise
,” he said, and Telaine jerked. He had
never lied to her before. She thought he never would. She had no
way to challenge him on it.

“Thanks,” she said instead, and released him.
All that was left to her was to ensure that whatever Morgan did to
her, Ben would never find out.

He gave her a half smile. “Walk out with me
tonight? In public this time?” He sounded amused.

“How can I refuse such an invitation?” she
said, and dimpled at him. She loved the way it made him catch his
breath and look at her lips as though kissing them was the only
thing on his mind.

They spoke a little longer, low-voiced words
that were no one’s business but theirs, before Telaine went back to
Aunt Weaver’s to clean up and encode the day’s intelligence to be
sent out the next day. Soon, very soon, she’d finish her work, and
then…then anything was possible.

That evening, “walking out,” to Ben Garrett,
meant going down to the tavern. They walked together down the main
street, hand in hand, in silence. People passed them, eyeing their
clasped hands, then giving Telaine knowing looks and smiles that
had her wishing she was invisible. It was so much easier being the
focus of attention when you wore a mask.

She clutched Ben more tightly until he
exclaimed, in mock pain, “I’m going to need that hand later.”

“I feel like everyone’s staring at us,” she
said.

“Everyone’s staring at
me
,” he said.
“Not you.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I know how they think. They’re thinking,” he
dropped his voice to a near-whisper, “‘How did that homely fellow
end up with such a mysterious, beautiful woman?’”

Telaine blushed. She’d blushed more in the
last two days than in the whole rest of her life. “You are the
least homely man I’ve ever seen,” she said. “And I’m hardly
mysterious or beautiful.”

He put his free arm around her waist and
picked her up, making her first gasp, then laugh with delight as he
spun around with her once before setting her back down. “You are
beautiful,” he said in a low voice, “and I’ll tell you a truth,
every unmarried man in Longbourne wishes you were walking out with
him tonight.”

“Guess that makes you the lucky one,” Telaine
said, trying not to blush again.

“It does,” Ben said. The serious look was
back, the one that always made her heart beat faster, and without
remembering that they were standing in the middle of Longbourne,
she kissed him lightly and was rewarded with his brilliant smile.
Somebody hooted at them from the other side of the street, and Ben
waved absently in the man’s direction.

“Don’t know how I earned that,” he said, and
led her on down the street.

“By being who you are,” Telaine said. “And
because you think I’m beautiful.” She laid her head on his shoulder
briefly. “You know so much, what are they going to do when we walk
into the tavern?”

He tilted his head back to look at the sky as
if reading the future there. “They’re going to say, hey there,
haven’t seen you in a while, you buying the next round of
drinks?”

“They are not,” Telaine said, laughing.

“I’ve no idea what they’ll say. Probably
tease us a lot. Everyone teases the new couples. Then they get used
to us, and then next time we’ll be the ones teasing.”

Ben held the door to the tavern open for her.
It was too noisy inside, at first, for anyone to notice them. One
of the quarrymen was playing the pianoforte with more energy than
accuracy, while his comrades belted out a well-known song about a
young man and his walking staff. It was a song that relied heavily
on innuendo and double meanings, and the quarrymen found it
hilarious.

Ben saw her seated—he was the perfect
gentleman, far more well-mannered than several noblemen Telaine
knew—and went to fetch them beer. Telaine watched the pianoforte
player and tapped her toe along to the rhythm.

“Sitting alone, sweetheart?” said a man
dressed in the woven white shirt and suspenders favored by the
loggers. He sat across from her and leered. He was such a
stereotype Telaine had to pinch her lips shut to keep from laughing
at him.

“Actually, I’m waiting for someone—”

“And here I am, darlin’, the one you’ve
waited your whole life for.” He tilted back in the chair until it
rocked on only two legs.

The Princess took over. “If I’d known you
were him, I’d have waited a while longer.”

The man looked confused. She added, “You
know, your mother warned me about you. She said you were like to
put yourself where you’re not wanted. Happen you could go back to
your friends now.”

“That’s some good sense there,” said Ben,
holding a mug in each hand. He set the mugs down on the table and
stood next to her with his arms folded over his chest, looking down
at the man with cheery good humor. Telaine had to cover her mouth;
he’d taken a pose that clearly outlined the hard flat muscles of
his chest, the long muscles of his arms.

Unfortunately, the man went from confused to
belligerent. “You ought leave the lady alone,” he told Ben. He was
drunker than she’d first thought. He swayed as he stood, several
inches taller than Ben and more heavily muscled. Telaine looked
around, wondering what to do. Maida and her barman weren’t in
sight. The man’s friends had taken notice of the confrontation and
looked like they were thinking about joining it.

Ben shook his head. “Women make everything
complicated, don’t they?” he said. He had a resigned, mournful look
on his face. Telaine, outraged, opened her mouth to speak, and a
foot pressed hers into the floor. “Tell you what, friend, let’s ask
the lady which of us she favors, let her make the hard choice.”

The man’s face cleared. “Let her make the
hard choice,” he repeated. He turned to Telaine. “Which is it?”

Timidly, Telaine pointed at Ben. He sighed
and threw his arms up. “Guess that’s that,” he said. “You’re a
lucky man, friend. You might’ve had to take her home.” The foot was
removed from hers. “Now I’m stuck with her, and you’re a free man.”
He took the chair away from the man and sat with his chin in his
hands, looking despondent.

The man looked from Ben to Telaine and back
to Ben. His face cleared. “Lucky me,” he declared, and went back to
join his friends.

“Drunks can be fun,” Ben said. He took a long
pull from his mug. “Thanks for not stepping in there.”

“I was going to,” she said, “but somebody
kept my mouth shut by way of my foot.”

Ben laughed. “Doesn’t have to come to a fight
if you think fast.”

Telaine drank her beer. That had been
unexpected. Clever. She gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Didn’t know
you had so much cunning in you.”

“Lots of things you don’t know about me yet.”
He smiled, his eyes warm. “Looking forward to you learning
them.”