He could be in earnest. It went without saying that he didn’t often meet a woman who stood up to him, nor one who was willing to don men’s clothing and work as he did. And he was very handsome. When he wasn’t frowning, that saturnine face had a melancholy to it that was extremely attractive. When he laughed, a genuine laugh, he was completely transformed. He was a great deal more intelligent than she had thought. He was treating her rather as an equal, which was incredibly rare. And sometimes there actually was a happy ending…
But then she remembered the Wool Guild dance.
Yes, this was the same man who had been perfectly willing to prey on any girl he thought would not be able to defend herself, and who had no obvious Guardians or Protectors.
“Well, then, treat me as Abel, your young squire, that you are teaching all these useful things to,” she said lightly. “I’m starting to like being a boy. There’s a lot of freedom in breeches!”
A succession of emotions chased across his face, all in an instant. Surprise. Disbelief. A great deal of disbelief, in fact. This was not the response he had expected — which argued that he had some experience in what he could expect from that sad, sad story.
Well, so this was a ploy, and you were counting on me to respond to it! You, sir, are a bastard in more than just birth! A very brief moment of anger consumed her, anger that she forced herself not to respond to. He mustn’t guess that she knew what he was up to. She needed to keep him friendly. She also needed him not to be angry at her, because angry men did unpleasant things. “Who knows, maybe I’ll take to swaggering about taverns in breeches when this is over and scandalize the entire city. Or at least my stepmother.” She chuckled, inviting him in on the joke. “Can you imagine what Genevieve Beauchamps would have to say about that? And can you imagine the reaction of the King, since he’s the reason I’m here in the first place?”
Another moment of surprise, and then an answering chuckle. “I just might help you with that, then, Abel,” he said. “That could be a hell of a jest.” The chuckle deepened. “Nothing wrong with tweaking the King’s britches. Old bastard’s got a stick rammed up his arse, he’s so stiff.”
She laughed, and slapped his shoulder as a man would. “It’s worth thinking about. But later. There’s a roast of venison waiting for us, and I’m perishing for food.”
But as they parted where the corridor divided, her laughter faded, and she shivered. That had been a very narrow escape.
And how many more lay ahead of her?
NO ONE, NOT EVEN A DEDICATED HOYDEN, COULD possibly have thrown herself more earnestly into the role of “Abel” than Bella did. From the moment they sat down to dinner to the moment when she left him after the second riding lesson, she acted as much the boy as she could, deliberately aping every would-be young swaggerer she had ever seen — and since there were generally a lot of them swarming around her sisters, and they tended to ignore her in favor of the twins, she had been able to observe quite a few in action.
It seemed to work. By the time they parted to get their respective suppers, he was treating her as he had out in the tin country — like a boy.
Which was all very well, except as she settled down to her book on The Tradition with the beeswax stuffed in her ears and another flagon of hot mulled wine beside her, and picked up where she had left off, she came across another Traditional Path she was going to have to steer wary of — Gone For a Soldier — the girl who really was disguised as a boy, and who subsequently fell in love with the man in whose company she found herself most. Usually this was a girl who, fed up with a stifling life at home, or overwhelmed with patriotism — or just having no other options but to go whoring — struck out for adventure in breeches.
There were variations, as always. Sometimes it was a girl following her lover to war — well, at least she wouldn’t have to worry about that one. Sometimes it was a girl escaping marriage to someone awful, and very rarely, it was a girl taking the place of her father or brother to save them from conscription.
Now, so long as she steered clear of the trap of falling for Eric, that could play out for her, she realized, since The Tradition had very firm ideas about the conduct of the man in question. According to the book, he seldom realized that the “boy” in whose company he spent so much time was really a girl. It generally resulted in a surprise revelation after the girl had heroically saved his life and gotten dangerously wounded. Sometimes the “boy” would tell him of a beautiful sister until he fell in love with the girl she actually was, and eventually she would come forward as the sister, her ruse abandoned.
Well, I won’t be doing anything like that, thank you very much.
Just as long as she kept a firm grip on what she was doing, and he became oblivious to her femininity, she just might manage to steer clear of any complications with Eric for the next two months. Complications with Eric…surely the very last thing she needed right now.
At least I am not going to become a she-wolf. That was…well, it made this look like a trivial hurdle to jump, truth to tell.
If she closed her eyes, she could feel that pressure, now, like a storm waiting to break. The Tradition really wanted to find a place for her.
She rubbed her temple and sighed. All this was hideously complicated. People had no idea how much they did was being dictated by this force! And this was just ordinary life, without any magic involved! It was a wonder that Godmothers didn’t go mad.
Then she turned the page and read some more.
Oh, wait. They do…
As the full moon passed into the waning moon, Bella took advantage of Sebastian’s absence to continue searching his parents’ rooms for clues as to the curse.
She found clothing, carefully preserved, and a few very rudimentary books on magic in his mother’s rooms. She found a chest of baby clothing, and in it a box of tokens of Sebastian’s infancy: a lock of hair, a silver rattle, an ivory teething ring. Buried deep behind the closet were half-embroidered garments and bed linens, sad evidence of the things she has left behind at her death. But there were no letters, no journals. A check of the Old Duke’s belongings was even less fruitful; she couldn’t even find any evidence that the Old Duke had done any of his own correspondence, much less kept any sort of journal. In neither room did she find any token or suspicious object that might have carried a curse. A bit discouraged by her lack of success, she reported to Elena, who encouraged her to keep investigating.