DYPIOOP Chapter 7

The Inevitable

"Oh—no, not at all. I was just about to wrap up."

Viscountess Maren hurried to her feet, and the Nymph, startled, fluttered back to Elonia's side. Carvel strolled in with his characteristic unhurried ease, bracing one hand against the sofa behind Elonia's back.

"Think nothing of it. The surprise intrusion is entirely mine."

The picture he made was rather devastatingly fond-looking.

All week, Carvel had made a point of coming to see her face during lessons—conspicuously, as though for show. Thanks to this, Elonia had been obliged to perform the role of the delighted fiancée welcoming her beloved before Viscountess Maren and the maids. Every day. Quite. Frequently. Those brief performances were more trying than the actual lessons.

'At this point, isn't he enjoying himself?'

The thought narrowed her gaze.

'Or is he here to keep watch every day?'

He'd gone to the trouble of springing a genuine spirit mage from prison—was he worried she'd bolt? She'd been on the verge of turning to read his intentions when a large hand settled firmly on her shoulder. She stilled. Then Carvel's voice, laced with apparent concern, sounded from above her head.

"Thank you so much for taking on her instruction, my lady."

"Oh, not at all. She's so accomplished that she made it quite easy." Viscountess Maren laughed with a light, pleased titter and gestured toward Elonia. "The embroidery she's done for you—the care she put into it! You're terribly fortunate to have someone so devoted."

"The handkerchief... you say."

That pause he inserted in the middle of the sentence sent a flash of dread straight through her. The longer Viscountess Maren spoke, the harder Elonia's grip tightened on the handkerchief in question.

"Indeed. And it rather looks as though Miss Elonia is hoping to give it to you herself?"

"I am...?"

The question slipped out on pure instinct. Elonia caught herself and scrambled to recover.

"Oh—it's only that this is my first time embroidering a handkerchief. I'd hoped to wait until I was a little more practiced before presenting it..."

She was easing her foot out of the trap when Carvel caught her.

"Come now. Every one of the ladies overseeing your instruction has said without exception that you're a perfect future duchess."

Well, naturally. All the instructors were nobility, and the salon had always catered exclusively to nobility. The occasional difficult guest meant that every employee had been required to learn flawless etiquette, lest they hand anyone a reason to complain. History had been the same—remarkably, Baron Devney had once tutored young imperial grandchildren in it. Not that the Empire had many imperial grandchildren, so the work had dried up quickly. But in the Devney household, where anything sellable was sold, the history books had somehow remained—the one exception. Having grown up with those books, Elonia had found imperial history no particular challenge.

'I simply hadn't anticipated that I'd also need to know the Haelton family genealogy, and the cultures of neighboring kingdoms and minority peoples...'

Viscountess Maren, blissfully ignorant of all this, agreed wholeheartedly.

"Quite so. Among all my students, there's simply no comparison."

That rather settled the matter of refusing to hand over the handkerchief. Carvel had already extended his hand with the ease of a man retrieving his own property. Elonia surrendered it with extreme reluctance. He moved to lift it away easily. She held on.

'This embroidery was absolutely not done for you!'

A silent, trembling battle of wills stretched taut between them over one handkerchief. Then Carvel snatched it from her grip in a single clean motion.

"Thank you, Elonia. I don't believe I've ever received a handkerchief quite so... elaborate."

"I embroidered it thinking of you."

Elonia's defeat was total. She wept, internally, and mirrored his smile on the outside.

He studied the dense embroidery with unruffled curiosity. "The embroidery is a little... rigid."

"It represents the steadfastness of my heart."

"Fortuitous timing. As it happens, I have something for you."

As if he'd been waiting for just this moment, his hand appeared above her head—holding a rather substantial bakery box.

"Cake. You like it, don't you?"

Carvel was directly behind her and she could see nothing but his hand, yet somehow his face was perfectly visible in her mind's eye. That face with its precisely calibrated smile and its requisitioned warmth. That was Carvel Haelton for public consumption. Bringing cake was simply another item on his agenda.

'This is actually rather impressive of him.'

Had he remembered what she'd said at that earlier tea? For any attendant who knew of it, the picture of a devoted future husband couldn't have been more convincing—not a thread of doubt to find anywhere. His hand gave the box a light, pointed little shake. Elonia accepted it with both hands, somewhat at a loss.

"You really didn't have to."

It was heavier than it looked. She was quietly sliding it aside when Carvel added, very softly, from behind her:

"It was expensive."

The pointed reminder came complimentary. Elonia smiled brightly and picked it back up.

"You know how it is with me and cake—I love it so much that if the person sitting across from me dropped dead mid-slice, I wouldn't notice—I'd probably pass out myself before I looked up."

"That would be because you're both dead, Elonia."

"My point stands."

"Your delight makes it worthwhile. I'll bring some occasionally from now on."

He began ostentatiously folding the handkerchief—which refused to cooperate on account of the embroidery's density—thump, thump, thump. What was this? Was he implying she'd be bent in half next? And still, through all of it, Viscountess Maren appeared entirely impervious to his duplicity. She was reading the name printed on the outside of the box with undisguised admiration.

"Good heavens, this is the most celebrated bakery in the capital. The queue is absolutely infamous—it must have been terribly difficult to obtain!"

"...Is it really."

"Why, it's simply impossible to know cakes and not know this name! And to think, Your Grace has this side to him."

Inside were slices of impossibly fine-looking cake. The Nymph, who had been drifting nearby, peered at them with enormous interest.

'That celebrated, is it?'

Elonia studied the luminous slices gleaming in the box with an expression of profound ambivalence. When Carvel chose to be generous, there was usually a reason. Hadn't he proven that just a week ago—tell me if you have questions about history, he'd said, neatly omitting the part about how much of it she would actually be required to memorize? This could well be more of the same. She concealed her wariness and murmured toward the back of the sofa:

"This doesn't come with some sort of... debt attached, does it?"

Carvel fielded this with practiced ease. "Chocolate-heavy desserts are good for the mind, or so they say. I thought it might help."

"I've only looked at it and I already feel as though I've memorized an entire volume."

There it is. The week he'd named was arriving, so he'd come in person. Of course. Elonia, guilty in advance, smiled as though genuinely moved by the gift—fervently praying he would not turn around and look at the history book she had not even half memorized. Before he could do exactly that, she thrust the box out to Amy with impressive speed.

"Would you prepare this with the tea?"

"How many cups shall I set out?"

"Three, please."

Amy bowed and departed with the cake box. The Nymph lingered with a look of profound regret, her small mouth working—then scattered into the air and was gone.

The mention of three cups had Viscountess Maren covering her mouth with her hand, laughing.

"My lesson is quite concluded, and I've been here far too long. It would only be proper to take my leave—hoho."

"Oh—no, really, my lady!"

Even performing fondness was preferable to being left alone with him. Surely he wouldn't pressure her about the history books in front of a witness. But Viscountess Maren, for all her remarkable social acuity, entirely failed to read Elonia's signal.

"Then I shall see you again tomorrow morning."

She took her leave with impeccable courtesy. Elonia rose, unavoidably, to see her off—without forgetting, on her way, to shoot Carvel a look of profound reproach.

Click. The door shut, and Carvel was left alone in the room. He made a small sound of consideration in the back of his throat, and his mouth curved.

"Clumsy."

Clumsy at hiding her thoughts. Even clumsier at flattery. She seemed to believe she was doing an excellent job of concealing herself. She was not. It was genuinely astonishing that a person whose every deception was plainly written on her face had ended up arrested as a fraud.

The imperial palace had a woman entrenched within it who'd had fifteen foxes for breakfast and was still hungry—Elonia might be swallowed whole before she had time to blink. And yet—knowing that, and still prodding her anyway, just to watch her bristle—it was difficult to stop.

In truth, aside from the history, the rest of the bridal instruction was nothing more than performance. There needed to be something to show the outside world.

He ran his thumb absently over the handkerchief—ornate on the surface, stiff as board to the touch. How many layers of embroidery had she put on the thing to make it this rigid? But there was a faint scent caught in the threads.

"I had the impression she didn't wear perfume."

He considered the extravagant floral embroidery a moment longer, then tucked the handkerchief into his inner breast pocket.

His gaze moved around the room and settled on the tower of stacked books. He crossed to the desk and rifled through the haphazard pile. The progress marked inside was the kind that could not, under any circumstances, have been completed in a week. He found the markers she'd penciled in at the edges—breaking the material into seven-day intervals—and a small laugh escaped him.

"Trying hard regardless."

The image of her steadfast expression—leave it to me—rose in his mind, and he couldn't contain the laugh this time.

The estate, which had been rather tedious, felt slightly less so.

When Elonia returned to the room, Carvel—who she had assumed would have left by now—was sitting on the sofa opposite, waiting. He was holding, of all things, the history book she'd been annotating. The one she hadn't gotten halfway through.

'And so it comes...'

But what was she to do.

'This was a humanly impossible task. It isn't as though I didn't try. I did, didn't I?'

She'd barely finished that thought when Carvel's cool gaze found her. A quick sweep of the room confirmed that Amy had not yet returned—presumably still preparing the tea. Left alone with him, then.

'He wouldn't actually have me re-arrested, would he?'

She crossed to the opposite sofa with great care and sat down. He set the book on the table with a thunk and spoke.

"You've already become something of a talk among the noble circles. The prospective duchess. Remarkable, Elonia."

She couldn't determine whether this was genuine praise or artfully deployed irony. The atmosphere was considerably quieter than when Viscountess Maren had been present, which suggested he wasn't entirely inventing it. He looked at her directly.

"Which is why I'd prefer you not leave the estate grounds for the time being."

"As it is, leaving is already sufficiently difficult."

"The schedule was designed with that in mind."

Oh. Right. Elonia couldn't decide where to begin pointing out what was wrong with him. She decided to start with the more immediately pressing matter—since she couldn't dispose of him.

"In that case, would you extend the memorization deadline?"

"The deadline? Ah—the one week I gave you."

Elonia nodded quickly. He lifted one corner of his mouth.

"Until the imperial audience. Since your health was the excuse we gave, something on the order of a month seems suitably convincing."

He'd never actually expected a week to begin with—his answer came out almost cheerfully.