The Safe-Keeper's Secret (24 page)

N
aturally, after all that, there was little chance that Fiona would be able to simply walk away. Angeline guided the exhausted Isadora out of the crowd, but the others stood fast, Reed and Thomas and Robert banding together behind Fiona to give her support. One by one, the villagers gathered around her, wishing her well and touching her cheek and claiming they had always known she was something special. She was as gracious as shock and wonder would allow, and she endured their good wishes for as long as she could.

Then, “Let's go home,” she said to the men, and they broke away as gently as they could. Still, scattered groups of villagers waved to her from streetcorners and doorways as they passed, and Fiona waved back.

“You should not be so overcome,” Thomas observed, though he held her right arm and lent her his considerable strength as they finally walked home. “You have known this secret for two years.”

“True,” she said in a faint voice. “But I suppose I did not expect it to become known in such a public fashion.”

“Could this have been a better day?” Reed said jubilantly. “Good news for everyone! Except the king, perhaps, and he did not deserve better news. I could not be happier!”

Fiona looked at him sideways, for he held her left arm, and beside him on the roadway paced Robert Bayliss. The merchant kept his gaze on the ground before him and had said nothing since they left the city center.

“So you are pleased to learn who your mother is, and your father,” she said. “You have for so long wanted to know.”

“Pleased!” Reed repeated. “Overjoyed!”

Robert came to a sudden halt, and they all perforce stopped alongside him. There was no traffic before or behind them, so they all just stood in the roadway and waited for him to speak.

“I did not know—your mother never told me,” he said, his voice rapid and miserable. “I would have—I would have stood father to you all these years, either one of you, and yet she made me think—she never said—”

Fiona shook loose of Reed's hold and put a hand on Robert's arm. “My mother chose always to do what suited her best and caused the least distress to anyone else,” she said. “I never doubted that this was news that had been deliberately kept from you.”

“But you mustn't think—Victoria was dead, or so I thought, I would never have looked at another woman while I was betrothed to be married—”

“Everyone knows that,” Fiona said. “And my mother knew she could never mortify Victoria by letting you know you had fathered a child while she was missing. It is only now that the pieces could come together and the secret could be shared.”

Reed stepped forward and put his hand on Robert's shoulder. “I have the father I would have chosen if I could have picked from the whole world,” he said in a quiet voice. “I will be the best son you could have imagined, if you will let me.”

There was that sound again, a choked cry, and then Robert was openly weeping. “You and I will continue walking,” Fiona said to Thomas, “and let the two of them sort everything out.”

Angeline met them at the door of the cottage with her fingers to her lips. “Isadora is sleeping,” she whispered. “I think this day has been almost too much for her.”

Fiona slipped by her into the welcome warmth. “I think this day has been almost too much for all of us,” she said.

The three of them sat around the kitchen table, drinking mint tea and talking quietly. “I still don't understand,” Fiona said. “Why it was so important to disguise me. What's another bastard daughter to the king, after all?”

“There had been two others, delivered to highborn ladies in the years between Lirabel's birth and yours,” Thomas said. “Both of those little girls died in infancy.”

Fiona felt her eyebrows rise. “From … illness?”

Angeline shook her head. “They had been murdered. And the royal Safe-Keeper knew it, for the queen had confided her dark deeds to him. And he confided in me, the day he left you in my arms. He had done what he could to protect you—acting as
Safe-Keeper
indeed, though we who keep secrets are not always so active in defending them.”

Fiona slanted a look at Thomas. “Some of us are,” she said.

“I still don't understand,” Thomas complained. “If someone had tracked that Safe-Keeper all the way to Damiana's house, wouldn't Reed have been in just as much danger as Fiona?”

“We thought about that,” Angeline admitted. “But we thought we could still keep him safe. We could have brought in any Truth-Teller—even you!—to swear that he was not the king's bastard. We thought if Damiana claimed Fiona as her own, no one would think to ask questions about her.”

“A little chancy still,” Fiona said.

“All secrets are,” Angeline replied.

“Did you know the other secret as well?” Thomas asked Angeline. “All these years, did you know who Reed's father was?”

Angeline shook her head. “I thought it was you. Though you and Damiana were not very close until the children were a little older. But I thought—well—that I had missed some earlier moment when you fell in love.”

Now Thomas was the one to shake his head. “I would have claimed them—either one of them. That's a truth even a Safe-Keeper wouldn't have kept from me.”

“All the secrets are out now,” Angeline said. “All the truths told. All the wishes come true.”

“Not quite all of them,” Fiona said.

Thomas looked at her. “What's still left undone?” he asked.

But she merely smiled and shook her head. She was still a Safe-Keeper—for a while yet.

Robert and Reed came back late, having stayed for a few glasses of ale at Dirk's tavern, buying a few rounds for the other patrons and generally celebrating their newfound connection. Fiona wanted to talk to Reed, but not in his inebriated state, and so she sent both of them on their way to bed and retired to her own room. She couldn't sleep, of course. For the longest time, she just lay on her mattress, listened to Isadora's breathing, and stared at the shadows on the walls.

So much had already changed, but there were changes still to come.

In the morning, she rose as soon as she heard quiet footsteps descending the stairs. It was Reed, as she had known it would be, for he was always an early riser. She hastily dressed and went out to join him in the kitchen.

“It snowed last night,” he said, speaking in a whisper to avoid waking Robert, who was sleeping on the sofa. “Do you want to go walk through the fresh snowdrifts?”

“Yes,” she said, and they put on their boots and crept out.

“How's your head?” she asked once they'd stepped outside. The world was a frigid white scene of ice and gauze; their feet crunched through the
crisp top layer of snow with every stride they took. The air felt freshly washed or newly made, cold and delicious when they breathed it in.

Reed laughed. “Fine, if you're talking about the ill effects of ale. In a whirl, if you're talking about the aftereffects of yesterday's audience with the king.”

“Everything is different now,” she agreed.

He surprised her with his response. “But everything is better.”

She glanced up at him as they tramped along. His strong young face looked rested and serene; his smile was wider than ever. “You mean, you were happy to find out you were not the king's son?”

He shrugged. “I was happy to find out I was
someone's
son, and to find that I'm Robert's! I couldn't ask for a better father. And to know at last who my mother was—to have all the questions answered—it makes me feel like I belong in the world, after all this time of wondering.”

“I told you before, you make your own belonging.”

He peered down at her from his much greater height. “So does that mean you still belong here—in a small village—when you know you're the daughter of the king?”

She sighed. “I do foresee some upsets in my life.”

They had come to an old wooden fence that separated their property from some open space. Reed brushed the snow off the top bar, then lifted Fiona up to sit. He leaned on his elbows beside her.

“This is what I expect to happen,” he said quietly. “You will go to the royal city from time to time, and make friends with your sister, and learn how to behave in the presence of your father. You will return to Tambleham now and then, but it will never be your permanent home the way it has been for so long. There will be other pressures at work on you, other hands reaching for you. After all this time, it is you who will be the restless one, and I the one who stays in one place.”

“But if I leave, who will be Safe-Keeper in Tambleham?” she asked. “Who will live in our mother's cottage?”

He turned and leaned his back against the railing. “Allison and Ed will live in our mother's house, I imagine, since she understands the garden so well. I will live in the house being built on Angeline's land.”

“You!” she exclaimed. “But I thought—won't you be going to Lowford to live with Robert?”

He nodded. “I'll go for a while. But I won't stay. I belong in Tambleham, and I have work to do here.”

She looked down at him. “
You're
going to be Safe-Keeper of the village.”

He nodded. “Isn't it funny? I knew that people were always telling me secrets. I knew how to keep them. But I thought it was because—because I had been raised in the house with a Safe-Keeper and her daughter. But it was because a Safe-Keeper was my mother, and I inherited her ability to keep silence.” He glanced at her. “I don't know how you managed to learn such a difficult thing all on your own.”

She smiled. “I was never as good at it as I wanted to be. Thomas was right about me. I'm more interested in truth than secrets.”

“And we've had our share of both this past day,” he said.

“Secrets revealed, truths proclaimed, and everyone's dreams come true,” she said.

He kept his eyes on the white vista before him. “Only one of mine,” he said quietly. “The chance to know my father. I told you another wish the other day.”

She smiled a little. “We will work on that wish when you come home from Lowford,” she said. “I still have one of my own to fulfill, and it's haunted me for longer.”

He tilted his head up at her, squinting a little in the sun. “You want to find your mother,” he said.

She nodded. “If she's still alive. You make your own belonging—but you have so few chances at love. Seeing Robert's face when he looks at you makes me want to see her face when she looks at me.”

“But you'll come back to me?”

She put her hand on his shoulder. “As you've always come back to me.”

Two days later, Robert's carriage arrived at the door, and Robert, Reed, Angeline, and Thomas all piled in. “I'll be gone a month, I expect,” Reed told Fiona as he hugged her good-bye. “When will you go to the royal city?”

“I don't know yet,” she said. “I might not be here when you get back. But soon.”

“Soon,” he said, and kissed her cheek, and climbed in beside his father.

Angeline hugged her next. “I am almost afraid to go,” her aunt said. “So much has happened in a few short days! What else will happen as soon as I turn my back?”

Fiona laughed. “Oh, no! I've had my share of adventures. It's somebody else's turn to engage in surprises.”

“I'm not sure yours are all done yet,” Thomas said.

Fiona hugged him as well. “And your life?” she asked innocently. “It does not have a twist or two still in it?”

Angeline smiled. “Oh, Thomas's life is always full of excitement. He travels from town to town, spreading good news and bad, and he is often just one step ahead of an angry villager.”

He shook his head. “No longer. I'm going to settle down and let people come to me with their questions and their disputes.”

Angeline looked at him quickly. “Settle down! But where?”

He took her elbow and helped her into the carriage. “In Lowford. On a street or in a house or in a room as near to you as I can get.”

Angeline froze with one foot on the pulldown steps. “Thomas! What do you—what are you saying?”

He laughed and urged her forward. “You'll have to invite me in once we arrive in Lowford, and I can explain in more detail.”

And so it was that Angeline's wish came true.

Fiona was smiling as she stood by the gate and waved, sad to see almost all of her best-loved friends and relatives driving away, but fixing part of her mind on all the chores that were still left to do. There was still her own last wish to be granted, and another one that she knew of—

And another one that she'd heard rumors of, but it was somebody else's dream, and she didn't know if it might really come true.

Chapter Seventeen