Dark Triumph (His Fair Assassin #2)(13)
“Where have you been?” she asks.
“I went to the privy,” I tell her shortly. “Shall I invite you to come with me next time?”
She wrinkles her nose and falls into step beside me. The small jar of poison is a heavy weight in my pocket, one I would rather have taken back to my room as soon as possible. Instead, with Jamette’s discovering me, I have no choice but to return to the hall with the evidence of my crime still upon me.
Two days later, the rain finally lifts, and we are all eager to be out of the palace, which has begun to feel far too much like a prison. Julian, Pierre, and some of the barons, Julliers and Vienne among them, have arranged for a hunt, and it was not overly difficult to get myself and my ladies in waiting invited along. Of course, I do not need to be on the hunt in order for the poison to work, but I prefer to see a job through to its end.
Besides, I fear I shall go mad again if I do not get out of the castle, even for just a few hours.
The huntsman rides ahead, followed by the handlers and their dogs, who are churning and woofing and barking in their eagerness to be off the leash. I make certain to position myself near Julliers and Vienne but carefully avoid paying any attention to them lest someone should note my doing so.
Pierre had been hoping for a deer, but the huntsman was unable to find a trail. Which was perhaps good, since the ground is thick and muddy after more than a week of rain, and the horses could easily founder and risk breaking a leg if we were to chase deer. Instead, we will be hunting for small game, and so have brought our falcons.
My own sits on my wrist, her small leather hood with its bright red and blue feathers covering her eyes and keeping her calm amid the commotion. Julian gave her to me for my twelfth birthday. When I ran away to the convent, he watched over her for the full three years I was gone, as if knowing I’d be back. When I returned, she’d grown so used to him that at first she would go only to his wrist, not mine.
Just outside the city wall, my falcon grows agitated, turning her head from side to side and causing the tiny silver bells on her jesses to tinkle. We have reached the very place where the duchess’s men met their deaths but a handful of days ago, and I wonder if the sensitive creature can feel the lingering presence of death. The heartbreaking bellow of the last knight as he went down echoes in my ears, unnerving me.
“Is everything all right?”
I look up to find Julian has nudged his mount closer to mine.
I shoot him a glance, careful to hide my agitation and fill my expression with annoyance. “Other than half our party being fools? Yes, except for that, everything is fine.”
He smiles. “I am glad you decided to come. I should have expired of boredom otherwise. I might even have had to shoot one of the barons, just for entertainment. They would all be grateful if they knew that your presence has spared them such a fate.”
His words strike a chord of unease. Is he fishing? Does he suspect that I am behind the scattered deaths in our party over the last few months? I twist my mouth in a cruel smile. “Do not feel you must resist shooting them on my account. I could do with some entertainment as well.”
Julian laughs, a rich easy sound that does much to alleviate my concerns. “Watching Pierre seduce Baron Vienne’s wife out from under his nose should be amusing enough.”
I turn my gaze to Pierre. He is flirting outrageously with a buxom lady in vermilion velvet. I cannot help but wonder what she sees in him. He is thickly muscled and barrel-chested like our father, and he wears his black hair long and straight. His mouth is full and red, like a girl’s.
There is no love lost between Pierre and me. When he was twelve years old, he wanted to prove that he was no mere boy but a man full grown, and did so by forcing my first kiss on me when I was but nine years of age.
I was so startled by the kiss, so taken aback and affronted at this violation of my person, that I retaliated in the only way I knew how: I kissed him back. I didn’t simply return the kiss while his lips were already planted on my own. Instead, I waited until he was busy polishing our lord father’s armor, sauntered up to him as I had seen Marie the upstairs maid do to one of the men-at-arms, grabbed his smooth cheeks in my hands, and smacked him soundly on his lips.
The scar that adorns his left eyebrow is from where I whacked him with our father’s scabbard when he tried to force a second kiss.
But while I rarely have occasion to feel grateful to Pierre, today I do. If Pierre is courting Vienne’s wife, any suspicion over her husband’s death will fall on their shoulders rather than mine.
I turn to Julian with a sly smile. “How long will it take Baron Vienne to realize that Pierre is cuckolding him?”
Julian smiles back. “Not long, for Pierre will not truly enjoy himself until he can rub the baron’s nose in it.”
Since we are speaking of the baron, I allow my gaze to drift over to him and Julliers. I can feel the rapid beating of their hearts—as if two horses are galloping far in the distance, just beyond true hearing. Beads of sweat have begun to form on Julliers’s brow, but Vienne shows no signs of distress. He is heavier than Julliers and so will no doubt need to absorb more poison before his symptoms begin in earnest.
Before either Julian or I can say anything further, the huntsman sounds his horn. It is time to hunt.
I remove my falcon’s hood, and she fluffs her wings in readiness, her sharp, keen eye scanning the field. I launch her from my arm, painfully jealous of her freedom as she rises high in the sky, wheeling around once, twice, watching for her prey.