Chapter 489 The Wall and the Wolf

Chapter 488: The Wall and the Wolf

Lyria’s POV

"B-both, Your Grace," I told him at once. "D-do you truly expect me to t-take that for your answer?"

"But it is my answer."

I was silent a while as we resumed our walk, passing from the broken lane into the forest I had marked before, where the trees stood so close together that the darkness gathered beneath them like water in a basin.

"D-do you not t-trust me?" I asked at last.

He spared me a glance. "Have I ever afforded you cause to doubt that I do?"

"Y-you afford me one n-now," I said, and could not keep my vexation from my voice. "W-why, pray, can you not be s-straightforward, and answer the question? W-why must you evade it?"

"I am not evading it, Your Highness."

"N-nor are you being h-honest."

"But I am," said he. "I avoided you because I was obliged to set my thoughts in order. And as to the matter of trust, it is not you whom I distrust, which is precisely why I asked whether I had ever given you reason to suppose it. I trust you entirely. The one person I do not trust is myself, for..."

He stopped, and shook his head as we took a turning of the path. We had been walking a considerable while, and had still not reached the spring.

"...but enough of me. Would you not rather answer the question I put to you, than put questions of your own?"

No. I would far rather have asked him a hundred more.

I knew so little of him, and what I did know had been surrendered in fragments, like coins dropped by a man who did not realise his purse was torn. There were hours when he suffered the wall about him to lower, and I caught glimpses of the gentleman behind it; and there were others when it stood so high that I should have required Earl Hawthorne’s prowess to scale it.

But I perceived that he had done with the subject for the present, and was not to be moved. Perhaps, in time, I might persuade the wall to fall. I was curious of him, and I wished to know him better than I did, though I could not have said why the wish had grown so strong.

I exhaled before I spoke.

"My f-first choice," I said, "w-was to be Baron Redwick."

He nodded. "Everyone knows him to be clever."

"Y-yes. But that is w-why I was quick to r-resign him, and w-was not surprised when Her Highness c-claimed him. He is a g-gentleman of the kind one wishes to keep, and she has never been s-slow to take what is worth h-having."

"You may call her by her name," he said. "Or, better still, Crooked Crown."

I laughed, despite myself, for it recalled to me his portrait of her, with the W hanging at so ridiculous an angle that I could not help but chuckle then as I did now.

"C-Crooked Crown it is," I said.

He led me up a slope, giving me his hand where the footing failed, and I took it, and released it again the moment I stood secure, a circumstance he marked with the faintest curve of his lips. As we climbed, I noticed that there was no longer earth or forest about us, but rock, some of it piled high, some lying low and slick with the evening damp. It struck me that I had not once seen such stone in Gallowshill, and I wondered how long he must have walked, in the space of a single night, to find such a place.

"Pray continue," he said. "Afterwards, I shall tell you how I came upon this place, which led me to the spring."

I turned sharply. "H-how did you know I w-was about to ask?"

"There is a reason I call you curious wolf," he said.

I made a face at him, and went on. "I c-chose you next, b-because had I not, Crooked C-Crown would h-have done so. A-and you a-are a d-dangerous person t-to have as an o-opponent."

He nodded. "High praise coming from you." He muttered. "Though you need not have troubled yourself over that. I should never have consented to join her team. I would not have stirred, were it not to be yours."

"I am g-grateful, Your Grace, though you n-need not flatter me with untruths."

"And who says I flatter?" he asked. "Has it ever been known that I care the least for Crooked Crown, or for this entire selection? Besides, you forget that we are partners. I could not have gone to a team opposing my own partner, any more than a man might fight against his own right hand."

"B-but then you would have c-carried a t-target upon your back, for d-defying t-the Crown."

"And you suppose that to be the first occasion upon which I, or anyone of Blackmere, has done so?" he said.

I only stared, for I did not know, and I did not doubt that, had I asked, he would have given me no honest reply, but another of those pleasant evasions that closed upon the truth like a door.

Somewhere ahead of us, I fancied I could hear water, though whether it was the spring, or merely the canal, or my own wishful thinking, I could not tell.

"Tell me what you thought in choosing the others," he said to me.

I considered the matter a moment, for I had not been wholly easy in my choosing, and I did not wish to speak carelessly of gentlemen who, whatever their faults, had come so far at my request.

"I h-had thought Crooked Crown w-would choose L-Lucian..."

Duke Valenridge’s whole frame went rigid immediately and he paused, bringing me too fo a stop. He gave me an intense look, his eyes taking on a deeper shade of green than I was accustomed to.

"You call him by his given name now?" he asked, his voice low.