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Chapter Fifteen Everything is context

Isobelle scrambled to her feet, windmilled her arms for balance, and kept herself vertical mostly by sheer will.

Down at the tournament grounds there was an inflatable knight, held upright by the warm air of a fire beneath him that was

constantly tended.

He swayed gently in the breeze, and his arms flailed around unpredictably as the wind and updraughts caught

them.

Isobelle and the girls liked to joke about him: Full of hot air, just like the real thing.

Isobelle had an unpleasant suspicion she might have resembled him just now.

“Gw—Céline!” she called, hoping the slip sounded like a hiccup, and took off after Gwen.

Usually, after tea parties, Isobelle reclined in a languid fashion upon her daybed until her head was in good working order.

Now, she was in the worst possible shape to be discovering a drawback to recruiting a fit, strong blacksmith as your partner-in-crime:

they’re fast .

By the time Isobelle completed her barely controlled descent of the stairs, both hands grabbing at the wall, she caught

only a flash of Gwen’s skirts as she disappeared around the corner at the end of the hallway.

Isobelle hurried after her, but when she rounded the corner, there was no sign of which way Gwen had gone next.

A particularly stern-looking portrait squinted down at her in disapproval, and Isobelle rested one hand on the wall to catch her breath and return his glare.

“You know,” she muttered, “I don’t recall asking your opinion.”

She had very little brain available for thinking through what had just happened as she commenced her search for her friend.

Almost all of it was taken up with the combined tasks of guessing where Gwen might have run to and keeping herself upright.

There was no sign of her errant blacksmith down in the stables—though Achilles was very pleased to see her.

She had no apples

in her pockets to feed him, so she gave him a caress on his velvety nose.

She crossed into the wing of the castle that housed the ballroom, venturing into Madame Dupont’s territory, hovering at the

door to see if she could spot Gwen hiding among the rows of young children currently learning their first carole.

And eventually, having managed a full lap of the castle, she was forced to drift back up to her own quarters.

How could I have miscalculated so very badly?

She was about to drop onto the edge of her bed, defeat and confusion dragging her downward, when she saw a silhouette against

the sheer curtains of the window overlooking the balcony stretching from her room to Gwen’s.

Isobelle’s blood thundered in

her ears as she eased the heavy door to the balcony open enough to peek through.

Gwen had her head bowed, both her hands braced against the stone railing, and she was taking long, steadying breaths.

It wasn’t quite sunset yet, but the sun was low in the sky, bathing Gwen in a golden light.

She seemed almost to glow.

Isobelle, having given up on the pursuit completely, pulled up short at the sight of her quarry, simply gazing at her.

Gwen

looked like a painting, a goddess or queen whose every detail had been lingered over by a master’s delicate brush.

Suddenly,

Isobelle felt something very close to.

.. shyness? This was a new experience for her.

“Gwen?” she ventured, hovering at the open door.

“May I join you?”

Gwen turned her head to blink at her, and the familiar frown line between her brows broke the spell.

“I don’t think I’ve ever

heard you ask permission for anything before,” she murmured.

Which wasn’t technically an invitation—but as she said it, she

moved along the balcony, making a space beside her.

“First time for everything?” Isobelle suggested, easing up beside Gwen as though she were a spooked horse, keeping her movements

small and slow.

She curled her hands around the balcony railing beside Gwen’s and gazed down at them.

Gwen’s hands were not those of a lady, and even Olivia’s best manicure couldn’t hide the calluses.

A few freckles dotted the

backs of her hands, matching the ones that Isobelle so admired across her nose and cheeks.

There were a few tiny white spots

that must be old burn marks, long since healed.

As Isobelle absorbed all these small details, she realized that although she’d trotted all over the castle, she hadn’t taken

any of that time to come up with proper opening remarks.

“I’m sorry, Gwen. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Gwen shook her head, then clearly thought better of it, grimacing.

“You didn’t,” she replied, and then amended the statement.

“I mean, not really. It just caught me off guard, and... and it didn’t occur to me that you’d all have...” She too gazed down at their hands where they rested side by side.

“Just for practice,” she concluded, with a note of bitterness in her voice that Isobelle couldn’t identify.

Isobelle made a genuine effort to parse this.

“It—it bothers you to think of kissing another girl?” she asked carefully, doing

her damnedest not to examine the tangle of confusion that accompanied that particular question.

It was, she decided, simply

that she couldn’t imagine Gwen, of all people, being so easily shocked by a harmless game.

Gwen huffed a breath that was almost a laugh.

“Of course not.”

“So... what exactly is the problem, then?”

Isobelle felt Gwen’s eyes on her and made herself lift her head.

There they were, the forest-green eyes with those hints of

oak, waiting to catch her as firmly as any snare.

This time, though, they were unguarded.

And in their slow blink, in the

tilt of the strong brows framing them, they showed her something.

.. something worryingly close to hurt.

Gwen’s lips parted. “All these things you’ve been teaching me about how to be a lady—it all keeps coming back to context.

The same gesture at a feast might mean something completely different at a picnic. The promise of a dance at the midsummer

ball is worlds away from an impromptu waltz when someone plays the harp after dinner—even though they’re both just meals,

both just dances. That’s what you keep saying—everything is context.”

“Everything is context,” Isobelle agreed, distantly aware that she’d adopted Gwen’s trick of echoing words when she wasn’t sure what was

happening.

“Yes!” Gwen’s voice grew louder.

“Are you really trying to tell me that you, of all people, don’t see why I might object to kissing someone in front of all her friends, on a dare, to practice for whatever nobleman eventually wins her hand in marriage?”

Isobelle couldn’t seem to disengage—couldn’t break her gaze away from Gwen’s.

“I...” she began.

“Well, I...” Heavens

above, was she stammering ?

What had Hilde put in that tea?

Some of the heat drained from Gwen’s gaze, her defenses lowering a touch at the sight of Isobelle scrambling for words.

“I

suppose I just don’t kiss people for practice.”

“I thought...” Isobelle heard herself say, as though someone else—someone particularly insipid—was speaking.

“I thought

it might be quite nice.”

Gwen’s lashes dipped into a slow blink, and she spoke so softly that Isobelle had to lean in to hear her.

“If someone kisses

me,” she whispered, “I want it to be because they want to. Because they need to.”

Isobelle couldn’t remember how to breathe.

Gwen was gazing at her lips now, and she didn’t bother to conceal the fact.

“I want it to be because they can’t take another

second wondering, dreaming about what it would be like.”

Isobelle was watching Gwen’s mouth too—watching the way her lips shaped the words—and she was mesmerized as they curved into

a hint of a smile.

Gwen’s voice was soft.

“ Quite nice isn’t quite enough for me.”

“No,” Isobelle agreed, breathing the word.

She was pinned in place now.

There was something magnificent about Gwen, gilded

by the sunset, seeming to glow from the inside out.

Gwen stepped back. “And given what we’re trying to protect you from—how little choice you’ll have if we fail—I don’t think it should be enough for you, either.”

Without another word she turned and strode back inside.

Isobelle could hear her footsteps, softened by the rug, until the

door of her room closed behind her.

Slowly, Isobelle turned and leaned back against the edge of the balustrade.

Then she gave up and let her legs fold, slithering

down and pulling her knees in against her chest.

She felt she was on the edge of understanding something truly important, but her head was still spinning when she turned it

too fast.

What had Gwen said?

You, of all people, don’t see why I might object to kissing someone in front of all her friends, on a dare, to practice for

whatever nobleman eventually wins her hand in marriage?

Perhaps that was it, and Gwen was hurt because Isobelle had made her think that she expected one of the men to win the tournament.

That she should make herself ready for him.

A small part of her mind raised its hand for her attention, attempting to lodge an inquiry as to whether the relevant part

of that sentence was definitely the bit pertaining to the nobleman.

Could it have been the dare that was the problem?

The game? The audience?

But it had been a very long day, and pushing her way through the fog of that question felt like trying to locate a landmark

without any idea of the direction in which it lay, or even what it looked like.

And so, instead, she stayed where she was as the sun sank below the horizon and velvety darkness fell all around her.

She was still sitting there, gazing at Gwen’s door, when Olivia came to find her.

Isobelle took one look at her maid’s face and sat up straighter.

“Oh dear,” she said.

“What’s happened?”

Olivia walked over, leaning down to offer her a hand.

Isobelle took hold, and Olivia’s strong grip pulled her up.

“Last rounds of the qualifiers tomorrow,” Olivia said.

“And then comes the dragon bonfire, and then the start of the tournament

proper.”

“I know, I’m looking forward to it,” Isobelle replied, enunciating her words as carefully as she could and resting one hand

casually on the balustrade to make sure she didn’t wobble.

“What’s the problem?”

“It’s Lord Whimsitt,” Olivia replied grimly.

“What’s he done now?”

“He’s worried about interlopers in the tournament, that the wrong sort of people might weasel their way in for the money.

The head steward has announced that every entrant will be required to provide formal patents of nobility, with seals attached.”

Isobelle felt all the heat draining from her face, leaving something very cold in its wake.

“But we don’t have those for Gwen.”

“No,” Olivia agreed.

“We don’t.”

When the sunlight crept across Isobelle’s face in the morning, slowly dragging her toward wakefulness, the patents of nobility

weren’t the first thing she thought of.

The first thing she wondered was why the inside of her mouth felt and tasted like a hessian sack.

The second thought—much

slower, trickling into the cracks in her consciousness until it had flooded her entire mind—was of Gwen.

She had tossed and turned until shortly before dawn, rehearsing conversations with Gwen, trying to plan out every way their next encounter might turn.

She owed Gwen an apology, of that much she was sure.

She just wished she were entirely clear on what the apology was for .

She felt a strange sense of loss—the uncomfortable feeling that something between them had gone, and she couldn’t see how

to get it back when she wasn’t even sure what it had been.

In the bright light of the morning, Isobelle wasn’t sure what she needed, except to talk to Gwen.

Whatever had happened the

night before, now their heads were clear, and she would fix it.

Isobelle’s greatest strength had always been her ability to

select a course of action and then simply believe her way to success, and that was what she would do now.

She would fix this hiccup with Gwen, and things would go back as

they were.

So she rolled out of bed and set about strapping on her own armor.

The right clothes always fortified one against difficult situations.

She chose the deep purple dress with yellow trim that

reminded her of an iris, and, wondering vaguely where Olivia had gotten to, wriggled into it on her own.

Leaning into the botanical theme, she bound up her hair with green ribbon, pinched her cheeks to make them pink, and headed

for the door to the living room—only to find the world had begun its morning without her.

Olivia had a map spread out on the table and was leaning over it with Gwen and Madame Dupont, their three heads bowed together

as Olivia traced out a route with her finger.

Saddlebags were sitting in a heap in the middle of the floor, and a pile of

bread and cheese presumably constituted breakfast.

Gwen glanced up as Isobelle emerged.

Her gaze lingered briefly, then dropped to the map again.

You can hide behind cartography for now, Sir Gwen , Isobelle told her silently, trying not to examine too closely the stab of disappointment she felt at Gwen’s unwillingness

to meet her gaze.

But we have a conversation waiting for us .

“Good, you’re up,” Olivia said.

“The three of you can get on your way.”

“To?” Isobelle asked, heading for the bread and cheese.

Mental and emotional confusion was no reason to skip breakfast. In

fact, Isobelle had discovered that breakfast often helped sort out such things.

Or at least provided a helpful distraction.

“I’m sending you to an old friend of mine,” Olivia replied, stepping in behind her to tighten the laces on her dress.

“He

may be reluctant to assist you—if he objects, give him this.” She pressed a small round token into Isobelle’s hand.

It bore

a worn depiction of an owl in flight, each feather individually engraved into the metal.

Isobelle eyed Olivia askance.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in my asking what this is about?”

Olivia shrugged.

“He’s an old friend. This will remind him of a debt he owes me. It should take you half a day’s ride to reach

him—Madame Dupont will escort you.”

“What about Whimsitt?” Isobelle asked, hearing the words and hating herself for caring.

Ordinarily she would have cheerfully

risked his wrath, but there had been a different, darker edge to his anger the night she’d snuck out to meet Gwen.

An edge

that made Isobelle, for once, hesitate.

“If he asks, I’ll cover for you. Easy to say you’re indisposed with a monthly condition of some delicacy.” Olivia’s lips quirked.

“I can guarantee he won’t ask any further questions.”

Olivia always had an answer ready.

It was Isobelle’s experience that Olivia could sort out almost anything, though it was

often better if you didn’t ask for details.

She wasn’t particularly surprised to find the wheels of their salvation already in motion this morning, and from that point

on, she devoted her attentions to gathering up more of the bread and cheese, in case there wasn’t a nice place to stop for

morning tea along the way.

Half an hour later, they were on the road.