Page 58 of Unrivaled
Silence descended in her wake.I stared down at the hearty breakfast, lost.
CHAPTERTWENTY
THOMAS
Target opened up at country residence.Topic suspects his consort is a spy and has been tracking his movements.Topic also is on first name basis with H.M.G.Target expresses amusement and shock at Topic’s trust in H.M.G.Target says, “We all know H.M.G.makes problems disappear, and we're all problems if we look too close.”Topic is assumed by Target to have leverage or protection against H.M.G.Target’s behavior is escalating.Safety level: knappchs—Apple to Nightingale
1stDay of Spring’s One Moon,
Age of the Locways, Year 272
Cammhinge
From the corner of my eye, I could see the color in Sandra’s cheeks had yet to recede.There’d been time for the blush to settle.We’d been waiting by this door for long enough that my knees ached.
Rose had told me.Sandra had told me.But I’d hoped.We had the coin and the papers.All they needed was a little know-how and they’d pass as country nobility.
I thought Sandra looked the part of landed lady, despite how she’d sighed over her plaits and the hem of her cloak.What did folks out here know different, anyhow?Even the fanciest of them weren’t shit on our shoes in La’Angi.
But even if we hadn’t looked like we were two steps from the lower levels…we were.I’d been knighted less recently than their harvest had come in and everyone knew it.
There was no point trying to hide where we’d come from.It was exactly whywe needed this woman to open her door.
I lifted my hand to rap again at the wood and Sandra flinched.
My stomach twisted.I dropped my hand.“I’m hungry,” I lied, the words abrupt to my own ears.“We ought to get something to eat and try again later.”
She didn’t say anything, gathering up her fashionably long skirts with painful care so she didn’t tread on them.
If I’d been walking with Lady Audrey, she’d’ve given hers a quick flick.Her feet would’ve danced down the steps.Considering the size of said feet, that she made her movements look graceful, and my own slight Sandra couldn’t,didn’t, sit right with me.
I didn’t wish ill on the little lady—not now, and not ever.But it seemed so unfair that I had the land and the coin, yet no tutor wanted to sully their reputation by schooling my daughter, even in a backwater fief.
Away from the front of the houses, I was able to look down the row we hadn’t yet tried.These were the low-range tutors, those who were older, or younger, or had a scandal they were hiding from.The ones who would’ve done the job with halfway respectability wouldn’t speak to us.
I’d been so sure all I’d need was a coin purse with some weight.
Swallowing the lump of disappointment, I offered my arm to her, and she accepted.Her walk wasn’t as stiff as it had been, but her shoulders were bowed with humiliation.
I’d never have brought her if I’d realized this was how it would go.
“Looks like rain,” I said, because she wasn’t going to look up and check.“Would you mind terribly if we returned to the manor and tried again soon?”
She just nodded in silence.One of the plaits coiled on top of her head drooped in the wind.Her hand fluttered up to it.I resisted the urge to tell her I’d seen the lady’s do the exact same the other day when she’d been chewing one nail and studying an inexpertly bound stack of parchment.
Up the road aways another house with the tutor symbol painted on the sign out the front loomed.I hoped Sandra didn’t see the woman with a pinched-looking face staring at us from one of the windows.
“I’m going to ask Lady Audrey,” I said firmly.“When we return.”
She sucked in a breath.“You can’t, Pa.”
“So you said.”Sandra had predicted how the morning’s endeavor would turn out, after similar attempts with their mother when they’d first arrived.But she wasn’t right about the lady.“She’s got a big heart.She’ll know what to do.”I patted the hand that had turned to a claw on my arm, glad that my girl wouldn’t cry again.I’d heard plenty of it over the last few days.It wasn’t that I didn’t understand her grief, but I was tired and out of kerchiefs for her to mop her nose with.
“Let’s go home, Sandy,” I said, hoping she only heard the playfulness in my voice, and not the exhaustion.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
AUDREY
