Page 6 of House of Roots and Ruin
“Camille, I didn’t mean to insinuate that you—”
“I will be better,” she promised.
“Well…actually…there’s something else I’d hoped we could talk about,” I said, slipping the duchess’s letter from my pocket. There was something horrible in the way Camille had said Highmoor would always be my home. The words themselves sounded lovely but their implication made me bristle. Staying at home meant I never went anywhere. I never learned anything new. I wouldn’t find a suitor, a calling,myself,if I never left. Camille was bound to Highmoor, she was called to protect it and the islands, but I…what purpose did I serve behind its stony walls? “I…got that letter from Mercy yesterday.”
She took a small spoonful of the broth, rolling it around her mouth while she contemplated what I wasn’t saying. “Oh?”
“She’s made friends with a duchess, from Bloem—”
“Dauphine Laurent,” Camille cut in, nodding.
My head bobbed in time with hers. “Yes, well. The Laurents have a son—”
“Alexander,” she interrupted again, taking more crackers and crushing them into her soup.
“Alexander,” I agreed. Each time she broke my train of thought, my nerves mounted, growing from my middle like a bramble of tangled vines, reaching up to strangle me.
“He’s a lovely young man,” she said, glancing out across the room again. “I can’t imagine being in the duke’s position.”
“Position?”
“He’s an invalid, you know. Alexander. Some nasty fall or childhood malady, I can’t remember which…” She shook her head as if it wasn’t of importance. “He hasn’t the slightest bit of movement in his legs, has to go everywhere in a wheeled chair.”
“How awful,” I murmured, picturing how it would look in painted form, a small, forlorn figure seated before a looming old manor, the grounds chock-full of overgrown greenery, threatening to swallow the boy whole.
Camille took another bite. “Do you not like it?” she asked, gesturing to my own bowl. I still hadn’t touched it.
“I was just…letting it cool for a moment.”
“So, let me guess. Dauphine is after Mercy to visit Chauntilalie, isn’t she? She’s obviously trying to set up some sort of arrangement with the pair of them behind my back. And Mercy wrote to you to…what? Get her out of it?” She rubbed at her temples with a sigh. “I swear, she’s such a baby sometimes.”
“What? No.”
But Camille was already playing out her imagined scenario, too intent upon it to hear me. “Mercy,” she snorted. “Dauphine must be scraping the bottom of the barrel. Anyone with one eye can see that that girl has already pinned her heart to—” She cut herself off abruptly, glancing sharply toward a couple who’d passed by closer than she liked. She swallowed. “Well. You know.”
I did.
“That isn’t why she was writing,” I said, carefully bringing out the duchess’s letter and setting it down on the table between us, now a sodden mess.
After giving it a wary look of disdain, she opened the wrinkledpages. I watched her eyes dart back and forth, scanning the bright ink. She read it once, twice, a third time, then put the letter back down. “No,” she said without preamble.
“What do you mean no?”
“No, you won’t be going.” She downed a long swallow of the cider as if seeking fortitude.
Normally I would have nodded and followed her wishes but her earlier words still echoed uneasily in my mind.
Highmoor will always be your home.
Always.
It willalwaysbe my home.
My home willalwaysbe here.
But why should it?
Had she ever once asked me what I wanted out of my life?
