Except . . . Ryder winced, and Kieran said, “Ah. Well, we did warn her not to get the puppies thinking that her hair was a toy.”
Saetien sat down with a thump. “You mean Anya wasn’t teasing?”
Four people shook their heads.
“Woman upset the whole stable with her screeching.” Kildare buttered his toast a bit fiercely in response to the memory.
“She had her sights set on Kieran,” Ryder said. “Well, she did,” he insisted when Eileen scoffed at the suggestion. “Why did you think he asked you to put her up on this side of the house and had Brenda sleep in the guest room on his side? He figured Brenda would be as fierce a protector as any Sceltie.”
The look in Eileen’s eyes held steel. “Kieran?”
“She never got close to my bedroom, let alone my bed, and she packed up and was gone the next day, so my reputation remains unsullied.” Kieran’s lips twitched with amusement. “But even the youngest pups realized that my scolding about the hair wasn’t sincere, since they had solved a problem for me, which is why some of them still think braids are toys.” He pointed a finger at Saetien. “You’ll have to put some effort into convincing them otherwise, for your own sake as well as other young Ladies.”
She bared her teeth in a smile that had Kieran’s eyebrows rising.
“How was playtime with the foals yesterday?” Kildare asked.
Saetien took her time buttering a piece of toast. “It was fine.” Butter, butter, butter. “They let me win a race. It was a close call. Caitie was watching and declared that I won by a nose.”
A lot of male throat clearing.
Eileen reached over and patted Saetien’s hand. “That was kind of the foals to let you win.”
“It was,” she agreed.
The men excused themselves with more haste than manners.
“The pony cart will be out front for you when you’re ready,” Kieran said before he closed the breakfast room door.
“What is discussed is private, but how are things going between you and Prince Butler?” Eileen asked as she refilled their cups. “He can be a bit prickly about the past.”
“It’s not what I expected.”
“That’s a truth that can be said about a lot of things.”
Later that day, Saetien stood on her side of the gate and waited for Butler. Kieran had said it was a bit early to be going, and it probably was, but she’d been thinking about these people all day. Alexandra Angelline, the Chaillot Queen who had struggled to hold on to her Territory in the face of a terrible scandal, with the powerful families in Beldon Mor—the ones who weren’t involved in Briarwood—asking how she had let that evil remain hidden, how she’d allowed it to take root, how she could claim she didn’t know about it when one of the men who had helped make that place lived in her own house. When one of her granddaughters had been committed to that place.
Had those powerful families begun to wonder if Jaenelle Angelline really had been an eccentric, troubled child or if she had been a child who had tried to tell them the truth about the dangers and corruption hidden by people like Robert Benedict?
And Dorothea SaDiablo. Powerful High Priestess of Hayll, who had wanted to control the Realm of Terreille. Had wanted to control more than that?
Jaenelle Angelline had ruled almost the whole of Kaeleer. Dorothea had wanted to rule Terreille. One was beloved while the other was hated for wanting the same thing. Why?
Impatient to hear the next part of the story, Saetien had started walking to Butler’s cottage with only Shelby for company. It wasn’t that far, and it wasn’t dark yet. Besides, having Kieran and whoever was pulling the pony cart just sitting out there in the dark while she talked to Butler was foolish for both man and horse.
She was halfway to the cottage before Kieran and the pony cart caught up to her.
He said nothing. She picked up Shelby and climbed in.
“He won’t open the door before he’s ready,” Kieran finally said.
“I know,” she replied, “but the answers he gives me fill my head with more questions.”
“That’s not surprising. Families can be complicated.”
That was certainly true of hers. It had begun to sink in, really sink in, that her father, whom she loved, had hated the woman who was her great-grandmother. And yet he’d married Surreal, Dorothea’s granddaughter.
The horse stopped, then snorted when she didn’t climb down.
“Shelby can wait here with us,” Kieran said.
She climbed down and walked the rest of the way to the cottage, where she stood by the gate and waited. And waited.
The light was fading, but there was still enough for her to see the flower beds that created a wide border all along the fence and should have provided color along the front of the cottage, especially now that the spring flowers were starting to bloom.
“Can’t the man tell the difference between a flower and a weed?” she muttered as she studied the beds. They were overgrown, unkempt, and full of weeds. They could be lovely with a little care.
Every year, her father had helped her plant flowers in a small space that was hers and hers alone. Tarl wouldn’t let his gardeners touch a thing between the stakes that marked her part of the flower beds in the courtyard that was surrounded by the family’s private rooms. Tarl would fill the watering can for her, and when she was very little he or her father would help her with the watering because the full can was heavy, but caring for the plants and pulling the weeds was up to her.
She’d been a fierce weeder.
She missed taking care of something that was just her own. She didn’t count Shelby because she and Shelby took care of each other. Not the same thing as filling her hands with good earth.
The door opened. Butler walked down the flagstone path and stood on his side of the gate.
“You said Alexandra Angelline was Dorothea SaDiablo’s pawn,” Saetien said, trying not to sound like she was bursting with questions. “What did she do?”
“Alexandra arrived in Kaeleer with her daughter, Leland, and Philip Alexander, along with guards, escorts, and several Ladies who served in her court—and at least one man who was there to carry out Dorothea’s orders,” Butler replied. “She showed up at SaDiablo Hall with the intention of confronting the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, the man she’d been told controlled Jaenelle and now also had Wilhelmina as his unwilling ‘guest.’ Whatever story Dorothea had spun about the man, Alexandra wasn’t prepared to face the Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince who was the High Lord of Hell—and she wasn’t prepared to see Daemon Sadi again. She wasn’t prepared for the number of Warlord Princes in residence or the number of Queens who had gathered to take a look at someone they had considered an enemy since childhood.
“Wilhelmina was never without an escort, was never left unprotected. She didn’t want to go back to Chaillot, didn’t want to go back to any place in Terreille. Ordinary methods of persuasion weren’t going to work to extract the girl from the High Lord’s care and ‘protection.’ So Alexandra agreed to methods that required the skills of Dorothea’s man. Hayll’s High Priestess had provided her man with compulsion spells to use on Wilhelmina in order to get her away from the Hall and get her back to Hayll.”
“You mean Chaillot,” Saetien interrupted. “He would have taken her to Chaillot.”
“Wilhelmina would have been Dorothea’s ‘guest’ to make sure Alexandra continued to assist her efforts to get Jaenelle Angelline away from Saetan. Jaenelle was the real goal because whoever controlled the Queen of Ebon Askavi could control the Realms. A witch powerful enough to crush Saetan’s and Daemon’s power and bring those men to their knees? Factions of the Blood had been trying to get control of Jaenelle ever since Saetan became her legal guardian. What Dorothea and Alexandra didn’t understand was that Saetan recognized the truth about his daughter’s nature, and he didn’t stand in front of Jaenelle in order to protect her from the rest of the Blood. He stood in front in order to protect the Blood from her.”