“Well, then. Find out. And if she hasn’t been told everything, do so.” She sighed with some exasperation. Really, this was like having to handle the twins! “I’ll want to speak to your Housekeeper, your Butler, too, I suppose — ”
“Ah…” He fidgeted. “That won’t exactly be possible.”
She frowned at him. “And why not?”
He fidgeted some more. “Because I don’t exactly have human servants.”
It really was like handling the twins, with every tiny bit of information being pulled out of them as if she was extracting teeth! “Well, what exactly do you have?” she asked, trying to keep her tone even.
“Erm,” he replied. If she hadn’t been so irked at him at the moment, his diffidence and politeness would quite have charmed her. He was nothing like the nobles she’d met so far. But she was far too angry to be charmed. “I told you that I am a wizard… They’re…magic servants. The Godmother said it would be safer. No one would be in danger from me.”
Now it was her turn to blink. “Magic servants? Like — what, precisely? Brownies? Animated statues? Animals?”
“Brownies and animals would be in danger. Animated statues are too difficult to create. No, these are sort of like spirits, except they can affect physical objects and they aren’t exactly intelligent. And they’re kind of invisible.”
“So I wouldn’t know when they were about.” She considered that, and was not entirely certain she liked the notion. “And even if I ordered them not to hang about unless I summoned them, I still wouldn’t know if they were about.”
“It takes less magic that way.”
She sighed. Evidently men — or this man, anyway — didn’t mind the fact that invisible servants could be gawking at them at any time.
“It’s not as if they have a gender,” he added helpfully, perhaps reading her discomfort in her expression.
“I see. But surely you have some ordinary servants? Your Gamekeeper, for instance?” Although she dearly wanted to, this did not seem to be the time to bring up Eric von Teller’s many faults.
“Eric isn’t…exactly…a servant.” From the way he was squirming now, a person would have been forgiven for assuming there was a fire under his chair.
“Ah, he’s your bastard brother, then,” she said, heartlessly. “That accounts for a great deal — ”
He actually jumped. “How did you know?” he blurted. “No one knew! No one but my father and — ”
“Oh, do give over,” she told him, pushing her plate away and staring at him until he met her eyes. “People aren’t idiots, you know. Granny has put two and two together, and she can’t be the only one. A Gamekeeper who is put in charge of the presumptive Duke until he is of age? Who is the only contact between you and the outside world? Who is the image of your father when he was young?” And who gives himself more airs than the King himself? “It isn’t hard to put together.”
He was still agitated. “Who else guessed? How many?”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. Since you withdrew from Court, you’ve probably ceased to be interesting. I don’t exactly run out and buy broadside sheets every time a boy comes by crying one. I never heard my mother or the twins chattering about you, so you aren’t common gossip. Granny told me, but she never leaves her cottage.”
“Granny? That would be the old witch in the cottage in my forest?” He suddenly looked interested. “The nice old woman with the really cozy little cottage, who makes the honey-oatcakes, I mean.”
“Yes, probably. Granny is the only witch I know of in your forest, with or without a cozy cottage.” Something occurred to her, and she began feeling a little more charitable toward the absent Eric. “This is why Eric is such a — ” she coughed “ — overly vigilant Gamekeeper, isn’t it? If he makes himself disagreeable enough, it will discourage people from being in the woods at all, which would mean there would be less chance — ”
“Of an accident. Like yours. Yes.” He dropped his gaze again. “Eric wasn’t a Gamekeeper, originally. There was some confusion when Father died so suddenly about who should be my Guardian, and Eric just stepped in. He did well enough, and this Dukedom really is small enough that the King saw no need to replace him, and in truth, no one really wanted all the work. You really can’t blame them. It’s just the town house, Redbuck, the forest and a few mines. Mostly tin. The income is enough to keep up the town house and Redbuck, but it’s nothing fabulous. My heir is my second cousin, and he’s already got a larger Dukedom, so it isn’t as if he needs this one.”
Privately, Bella thought it was “fabulous” enough, and certainly Genevieve would have been in ecstasy merely to be in the presence of a Duke. But she supposed that by the standards of the others in the Court, Duke Sebastian was small pickings indeed. She had heard stories from Genevieve and the twins — usually when she was involuntarily caught in the middle of gossip sessions with callers — about Dukedoms with vast acreage, hundreds and thousands of sheep and cattle, incredible palaces that dazzled with their opulence. A forest, a few mines, a town house and a fortified Manor didn’t seem to measure up to that.
“I remember Granny very well,” Sebastian was saying, as she shook herself out of her thoughts, and decided to help herself to a slice of pie. “I used to ride out on my pony with the hunts, and Father would leave me with her, because that was generally where my pony’s legs got tired. Is it still the same Granny?”