I didn’t know half so much about my own inheritance, the entire kingdom that would one day be mine if Gisele never bore my father a son.
Or if Mellicia never did.
I swallowed and glanced at Gisele. Since that first conversation in the coach, we had never again discussed the danger she was in. I turned to Harwin and asked in an abrupt undervoice, “Do you like Gisele?”
He watched me a moment with narrowed eyes as if trying to discern the question that lay under the question. “I do,” he said at last. “We have similar sober natures, and I have from time to time served as her confidante.”
Then he might know the answer to the next question. “Do you think my father wants her dead?”
He took even longer to answer this time. His eyes went briefly to Gisele and then back to me. “I think your father feels she has failed him in the singular duty for which he selected her.”
“She hasn’t given him a son.”
“Precisely.”
“She thinks he wants to get rid of her so he can marry Sir Neville’s daughter and she’ll have a son.”
His face didn’t change; this was not a new idea to him. “I’m not certain your father’s ruthlessness is so extreme,” he said. “But possibly it is.”
I took a deep breath. I had always disliked my father, but my reasons had been purely selfish. He was careless of me. Unkind to me. Uninterested in my wishes and desires. It hadn’t occurred to me to notice how cruel he might be to others, and to despise him for it. “He’s a bad father and obviously a bad husband,” I said. “Is he a bad king as well?”
“He could have been better, he could have been worse,” Harwin replied quietly. “He elevated favorites and seized lands from families that had held them for generations, but many kings do that. Ten years ago, he promoted skirmishes along the southern borders in a fruitless bid for territory, but it caused him to strengthen the army, and that might not be an entirely bad thing. Some of his taxes have been excessive. Some of his trade decisions have been disastrous. He has been open to bribes. He has been unfaithful to both of his queens. He has been an indifferent king, I suppose, but he has been a wretched man.”
“You hate him,” I said.
Harwin looked at me a long time. “He’s only done one thing that I’ve ever completely approved of,” he said.
He didn’t specify, but I had no doubt what he meant. He produced you as his daughter. I felt my cheeks heat up, and I quickly turned my attention back to my plate of food. But I have to admit I was smiling.
Arantha and Darius disappeared after lunch, no doubt so she could show him estate accounts or rent rolls or other receipts. Dannette invited us to a small sitting room, where we all collapsed on a pair of dilapidated sofas. Warm afternoon sunlight poured in from the tall windows and made us all cheerful. It was the first time we’d relaxed since we’d walked into the house.
“This was always my favorite room,” Dannette said. “Probably because I usually had it to myself. My grandmother was always in her office, and Darius was rarely even on the property.”
“Where were your parents?” Gisele asked.
“They died when we were quite young. Darius remembers them better than I do, and he says they were very like the two of us—my father was improvident, kind, and full of magic, while my mother was practical, lighthearted, and curious.”
“My sympathies, then, that you missed the opportunity to get to know them,” Harwin said.
She smiled at him. “It is hard to regret something you never had,” she said. “And we managed well enough without them.”
I remembered my own mother quite clearly. When I was a child, she had seemed like a fairy princess, beautiful and glittering and magical. And, like a fairy princess, impossible to get close to, impossible to touch. I don’t imagine I spent more than an hour a week with her for the whole of my existence. But I cried and cried after her funeral. I had been looking forward to the day I grew old enough for her to take notice of me. I had been so sure that once I was ten, or fifteen, or twenty-five, she would be interested in me, would find me fascinating and delightful. But I had not grown up fast enough. She had died before she could love me.
My father had married Gisele six months later.
I caught Harwin’s quick look and knew he was remembering my tears at the funeral. He had tried so hard to comfort me, but I would not let him take my hand, or distract me with a story about a new litter of puppies, or even talk to me at all.
I wondered if it was too late to tell him how much I appreciated his effort.
Darius poked his head inside the door before any of us had replied to Dannette. “Oh, good, I was sure you would be here,” he said, crossing the room to flop down beside his sister.
“Free so soon?” she teased. “I was sure we wouldn’t see you again until tomorrow—if then.”
“There was a crisis in the kitchen, and you know she doesn’t like me to worry over small domestic trifles,” he said with a grin. “So I made my escape.”
“Is it always like that?” Gisele asked. “You so favored, Dannette so ignored?”
Dannette laughed but Darius looked embarrassed. “Yes,” he said. “I don’t know how to change her. Apparently she was the same way with my aunts. While my father lived, they were invisible. I think the situation was even worse because my father was the youngest of four, and she had wanted a boy for so long.”
Gisele and I exchanged swift glances, and she spoke up in a quiet voice. “I believe a lot of people pin so many of their hopes on their sons that they have no energy or interest left for their daughters.”
“Perhaps there would not be such emotional inequity if there were economic parity,” Harwin said.
Dannette smiled at him. “I love to hear you speak, but I often have no idea what you’re trying to say.”
Gisele stirred. “I think he means that if women were allowed to inherit more property, parents would find it just as easy to love their daughters. But if they know their property most likely will fall into other hands if they only produce daughters, it is hard to feel much affection for a girl.”
“Which makes me think that if I ever have children, I’m going to try to have a girl,” I said, so fiercely that the rest of them laughed. “Well, I am.”
“I would want a daughter also, if I were ever to have children—but—well—I’m not so sure—” Dannette began, and then floundered a little. This earned another laugh from the assembled group.
“I am supposed to be having a son,” Gisele said with some astringency, “but so far I have not been fortunate enough to conceive at all.”
She didn’t say it like she was sorry for herself, but nevertheless I felt a certain amorphous dread in response to her words. If she bore a son, I was cut out of the succession. If she failed to bear a boy… she might well be dead.
Dannette nudged Darius with her foot. She had slipped off her shoes, and her toes were long and elegant. “What about you? Do you hope for boys or girls?”
Darius looked surprised. “Oh, I never thought much about it,” he said. “I’m not sure I would be a good father. I might be very careless. It’s probably better if I don’t bother with children at all.”
Gisele’s voice was carefully neutral. “Of course, when you’re living at the palace, there will be many servants on hand to care for your children, no matter how many you produce.”