PDCOO Chapter 38

Anna, so as not to further aggravate her mother, gave an appropriately edited account of the night before.

"Mama. Bertram was planning to leave right away. But leaving in broad daylight—couldn't that have made it easy for the people searching for him to find him? So he was hiding up in the mountains and planning to set out after dark."

This was a lie. Bertram had intended to stay indefinitely.

"I ran into him during the afternoon when I went to look for food for the pig. He'd been without food all day, apparently. I thought he needed a lot of supplies. So I went through the kitchen a bit—well. Quite thoroughly."

Also a lie. She had put into the bag every ingredient she felt like watching Bertram eat.

The last part was at least adjacent to the truth.

"On the way back I slipped and fell down a slope, and Bertram fell into the ravine trying to catch me, which is why we came down this morning."

Karlah, however, cut straight to the unexpected joint.

"You learned to walk in mountain gullies. How do you slip? You had a bear next to you—you couldn't have been startled by wildlife. Was something else happening?"

Correct. For the first time in her life, a man had said I hope you like me—and she had slipped.

Anna was a quarter-second from going red at the memory when Bertram stepped in.

"Nothing improper occurred between myself and your daughter. I swear it."

"Do you know what 'improper' means?"

"Yes. I also know that if I gave examples, you would slap me."

"Ha. That's bold."

Karlah's eyes remained cold. Anna hovered.

"Mama, truly nothing happened. He just carried me down."

"Anna, go get those young men standing around outside."

"But breakfast isn't ready yet—"

"Is that what matters? I need answers first! Specifically, why the neck of the man who threw the third son of the Gerhardt ducal house onto the ground is still attached to his shoulders."

This was also something Anna wanted answered.

She looked out at the restaurant. The soldiers were filing toward the kitchen one by one, reading the room. Franz pretended to groan with great suffering and stayed where he was.

When the kitchen bench had filled to capacity, Karlah asked the first question.

"Bertram. What exactly are you?"

"I am..."

Bertram took a long breath and answered with great gravity.

"Franz's manservant."

Franz made a sound of genuine, unperformed anguish. Karlah's voice of disbelief buried it.

"Does that make any sense? What manservant beats their employer in the middle of the road?"

Everyone present agreed, but Bertram was entirely unmoved.

"His Grace the Twelfth Duke Gerhardt, in his concern, observed that his beloved third son was becoming increasingly presumptuous with age. He assigned me—being of similar age—as the young lord's companion, with standing instructions to correct any breach of etiquette at any time."

"That still doesn't justify fists—"

"His Grace thought so initially as well. However, as time passed, circumstances deteriorated. At fourteen, Franz made a marriage proposal to a nineteen-year-old young lady at his very first formal reception. He then dueled her fiancé and her elder brother on the spot, won both, and proceeded to withdraw the proposal on the grounds that overcoming obstacles of such poor quality provided no satisfaction whatsoever—thus marking, for the ducal house, the opening entry in the capital's register of—"

"Oi, Bertram—"

Franz finally lunged upright—

Or attempted to. He rolled off the bench instead. 

He didn't stop talking.

"Why are you dragging up something from over a decade ago!"

"I haven't finished, sir."

Bertram raised one index finger. Franz retreated, wearing the expression of a man watching his house burn and being informed it wasn't all that cold.

Meanwhile Karlah's face had settled into the look she reserved for things she found simultaneously revolting and impossible to stop listening to.

Bertram did not let the moment pass.

The target of Karlah's aggression had changed.

Franz's adolescence, it emerged, had been a sustained natural disaster. Romantic catastrophe and physical confrontation—typically both at once—followed each other without pause or apology.

Not only Karlah but the soldiers who had served Franz for years were leaning forward with bright eyes, encountering stories they had somehow never heard.

"...And so two years passed like a typhoon. By Franz's sixteenth birthday—having by that point received sixteen separate dueling challenges—His Grace concluded the situation could no longer be overlooked. There was even a certain theatrical flourish when a young officer, whose fiancée had been successfully extracted by Franz on that same birthday, arrived to reclaim his honor and was repelled by Franz's cake knife."

"Good lord..."

"Franz's swordsmanship, naturally, warrants considerable admiration. However, it was on precisely that day that His Grace granted me standing permission to do anything I wished to Franz short of killing him. I have been, over many years, his excellent friend. Isn't that right, Franz?"

"...Yes." Flat. Resigned. "What he says is correct. He went off to repay war debts and didn't come back for too long and I got worried. You've apparently been taking him in—thank you for the trouble. As you can see, he's the sort of person who makes everyone's life more complicated."

"The only one who worries about me is Franz. Just as Franz remains the only person trying to do something about his own crooked character."

"...Bertram. Would someone with that character disappear for three years without a single letter?"

"I had assumed that by twenty-three, Franz would have grown into the kind of man who takes responsibility for his own personality."

"I'm twenty-six! Have you forgotten my age entirely in three years?"

"In any case, Franz's development level has remained consistent since he was fourteen."

The conversation had become so thoroughly undignified that Karlah struck the table with her fist.

Thunk.

Silence.

Karlah summed up the situation in four words.

"I am going mad."

Everyone present except Bertram agreed completely.

"All right. Let's sort this out and eat. Knights—you helped catch the thieves on the communal farm last night. Thank you. Bertram, thank you for helping Anna. And Anna."

"Yes!"

"Go cook breakfast."

"...Yes, ma'am."

Anna took her place at the cutting board. Bertram rose to follow and was stopped by Karlah's hand.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"To strip the onions for the midday service."

"Leave that. Come talk with me inside. The rest of you, make yourselves at home in the restaurant."

But the soldiers only exchanged glances, and none of them ventured out of the kitchen.

—She said onions, didn't she.

—Should we be doing that.

They arranged themselves uncertainly behind Anna. Their combined presence blocked her light entirely. She made a sound of deep displeasure and sent them all to the yard.

Franz dragged three chairs into a row and stretched himself across them. Karlah spent a brief moment imagining him as a very expensive throw pillow, then took Bertram into the house.

The sitting room. Empty.

She settled across from him and asked, without softening it:

"Bertram. You're nobility, aren't you."

Green eyes, sharp as a pruning blade, fixed on him.

"No matter how troublesome a son is—no person in their right mind gives a commoner the right to beat their own child. And the reaction from the other soldiers when you said 'manservant' was wrong."

It was going to collapse with one breath anyway. Bertram finally nodded.

Better to be thought a nobleman than to be identified as the prince.

"Yes, that's correct."

Karlah exhaled as though the earth were sinking under her.

"So everything you said earlier was nonsense."

"The misdeeds Franz committed at fourteen are accurate."

"Never mind him. What are you?"

"I concealed only my rank. As I told you—I am a former soldier, making private restitution for debts incurred in the name of requisition. My family, however, apparently found my absence concerning and sent my old friend to find me."

"I'm a country woman, but I know how high a duke is. You're saying a duke's son came all the way out here to look for a friend?"

Bertram made a silent apology to Franz and stated the reality of noble life without ornament.

"Even a duke's son—the third son is, in essence, a spare resource. Until the brothers ahead of him die, there is no light for him to stand in."

"So that's why a face like that came out crooked. Ha. And what about you—what's your family situation?"

"My only family is my uncle. I have no title guaranteed to me. I would stake my life on that being true."

"I don't need your life. I'd like you to take those men and leave after breakfast."

Karlah had arrived at her conclusion and was rising when Bertram said something entirely unexpected.

"I cannot. I intend to stay a few more days."

Not a request. A statement.

Karlah sat back down slowly, a specific unease moving through her. The man had the quality of a puppet soldier—no expression, no emotion, every assigned task completed without complaint. And yet in this moment he looked like a fortification with a hidden cannon in its walls.

"A few more days. Why?"

"I plan to persuade Franz to remain for a while. I will, of course, provide labor in exchange and lodge elsewhere."

"That's not the issue! Is there a reason to stay? You helped my daughter, you killed the wolf—surely the debt is settled! What more is there?"

Bertram had started to say I made a promise to Anna and swallowed it. Karlah was, for some reason, at an unusually sharp edge today. Introducing Anna's name here would only set sparks flying at her.

But there was no other honest way to explain himself.