"And found his path blocked by House L’Envers," I mused. "How disappointed he must have been. But why would Delaunay care who killed Isabel L’Envers? By all counts, she was his enemy."
Alcuin shrugged, lifting up one hand and letting it fall. "That, I don’t know."
"Perhaps it was her he loved, and not Edmée de Rocaille," I suggested. "Perhaps her betrayal lay not in causing the death of Prince Rolande’s first-betrothed, but in becoming his second."
His eyes widened. "You can’t think it, Phèdre! Delaunay would never condone murder. Never! And why would he honor the Prince’s promise concerning me, if it were true?"
"Guilt?" I suggested. "He grew angry enough when I mentioned Rolande’s name, the other day. Perhaps we have had it wrong all the while, and this feud between Delaunay and Isabel L’Envers de la Courcel was not enmity, but a love affair turned deadly bitter."
Alcuin gnawed his lower lip, mulling over my words while I concealed a smile. I had proposed it only to distract him, but it was too plausible to ignore. "You’re mad to think it," he repeated, visibly distraught, color risen in his pallid cheeks. "It isn’t in Delaunay to so dishonor himself, I know it."
"Well." I sat back and folded my arms, favoring him with a long glance. "You’ll never know, if you won’t speak to him. And you’ve a better chance than I of getting the truth out of him, by a far shot."
We were trained by a master, both of us; it was only seconds before Alcuin realized what I had done and laughed. It was his true laugh, free and unfettered; the very one that had greeted me the first day I had arrived at Delaunay’s house. "Ah, no wonder they pay again and again for your charms! I laid my price before Vitale Bouvarre like a farm-wife in the market, while you coax secrets from their tongues and leave them none the wiser. Would that I’d had half your gift for it."
"I would that you had, too," I said ruefully. "Or found at least half the pleasure in it that I do."
"Even half might kill me." He smiled, quieting, and ran a fold of my gown through his fingers. "Your pleasures are too strong for my taste, Phèdre."
"Talk to him," I said, giving Alcuin a kiss and rising.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Healing of all kinds maintains its own pace, but there was no putting off the visit of Rogier Clavel, the lordling from Barquiel L’Envers' entourage. For one long day prior to our assignation, I thought Delaunay would cancel the contract, but at the last, he came home with a mercenary in tow: a man with the unlikely name of Miqueth, an Eisandine tauriere who had grown bull-shy after an incident which left a scar gouged into his left temple.
My new guard had parlayed his skill with weapons into a lucrative sideline, and Delaunay gauged him reliable enough. He was slight and dark, with brows that drew together in a perpetual half-frown, and while I had no doubt of his skill with a blade, I was surprised to find how greatly I missed Guy’s silent presence. We rode together in Delaunay’s coach and Miqueth grated on my nerves with his restlessness.
My assignation with Lord Clavel was at the Palace itself. To my relief, my guard remained blessedly silent as we traversed its marbled halls, contenting himself with hovering behind me and scowling at everyone we passed. We were in one of the lesser wings, where minor dignitaries are housed, so we encountered no one I knew, although there were a few who saw my sangoire cloak and gave me secret looks, knowing who I was and what it betokened.
Lord Rogier Clavel received me eagerly. He had the D’Angeline looks, but had been living a soft life in the court of the Khalif, and gone a little plump with it. Still, he had the haughty manners of a courtier, and dismissed Miqueth quickly enough, for which I was grateful. Delaunay and I had gone over our strategy enough times, but still, I needed no distractions.
"Phèdre nó Delaunay," Rogier Clavel said, putting on a formal voice that didn’t quite disguise a quaver of eagerness, "I would appreciate it if you would put these items on." He snapped his ringers for a servant, who came bearing the flimsy gauze gowns of a hareem girl. I bit my lip to keep from laughing; it was a scenario straight out of a standard Night Court text, the Pasha’s fantasy. I had expected more from a man who’d been satiated in the courts of Khebbel-im-Akkad.
Still, I knew what was expected of me, and donned the transparent robes. Rogier disappeared, and I was ushered into a bedchamber, which was arrayed with genuine Akkadian appointments. It was more than nice, with luxuriant silk tapestries of elaborate, abstract designs and worked pillows fringed in gold. I sank down on these and knelt abeyante, waiting. The first of my lessons, and still among the most valuable. In time, Rogier Clavel entered, magnificent in his Pasha’s attire. I kept from laughing at how his jowels quivered in his soft face beneath the splendid turban, kneeling to kiss the turned-up toes of his kidskin slippers.
They guard their women well in Khebbel-im-Akkad. So I had heard, and so I came to understand, from the despite and desire mingled in him. Lord Clavel had been denied access, and he raged at it. Once I discerned this, we got on well enough. If he had been denied the hareem, he had gold enough and had paid it for this afternoon’s pleasure. There was no question of exotic tastes learned abroad. He bore a gilt-handled quirt, and it roused him to a fury to punish me with it, chasing me about the cushions and flailing at my buttocks, breathing hard to see the thin red welts that ensued. I turned to the languisement when he groaned, kneeling solicitously, unbuttoning his voluminous pantaloons and taking him into my mouth. I thought that would be the undoing of him, but he surprised me, spilling me onto my back and tossing my legs into the air, performing the act of giving homage to Naamah with two years' pent vigor.
It surprised him, to bring me to climax; and made him solicitous afterward, which also might have made me laugh. "You paid for an anguissette, my lord," I murmured instead. "Are you unhappy to have gotten one?"
"No!" he said, caressing my hair, eyes wide with startlement. "No, Elua’s Balls, no! I thought it was a myth, that’s all."
"I am not a myth," I said, lying against him and gazing up so he might better see the scarlet mote in my eye. "Are there no anguisettes in Khebbel-im-Akkad, then? 'Tis a cruel land, I am told."
"Kushiel’s Dart does not strike, where Elua and his companions have not laid their hand," Rogier Clavel said, tracing the curve of my breast through the thin gauze of my robes. "It is a harsh land indeed, and I am glad enough for a respite from it." A shadow crossed his face, " ‘The bee is in the lavender,’ " he quoted The Exile’s Lament in a lovely, melancholy voice, " ‘The honey fills the comb’…I never understood the sorrow of it until I, too, was far from home."
It was easier than I had reckoned. I smiled and twisted away, sitting back on my heels to put up my hair. "Is it so, then, with all D’Angelines? Does even the Duc L’Envers long for home?"
"Oh, my lord the Duc," he said, watching me hungrily. "He is of Elua’s line, and would prosper anywhere, I think. The Khalif has given him lands and horses and men of his own. Yet even he misses the soil of Terre d’Ange, it is true; and word has reached us of the fall of House Trevalion. The Duc would return home, once his daughter is wed, and relinquish his appointment. I have come to petition the King on his behalf."
My hands stilled on my hair, and I made myself resume, twining it into a loose coil and thrusting an Akkadian hairpin in place. "The Duc’s daughter is to be wed?"