Page 25

Chapter 25

Elliot

C orbett gave a shallow bow and held out his hand for Elliot to shake, his broad smile still in place.

Elliot stared from Corbett’s hand to his face, struggling to make sense of the steward’s response. Elliot had barely been more than a child when he left, and Corbett had never treated him with so much respect. He certainly hadn’t expected to be greeted with joy after both Elliot and the town had abandoned each other in turn.

Corbett’s face started to fall at Elliot’s frozen response, so Elliot quickly thrust out his hand and shook the steward’s. Around them the crowd burst into frenzied whispering, their voices growing louder as they pressed in closer, each craning for a proper look at Elliot.

“Your Lordship!” The ancient mayor was the first to step out of the crowd, offering Elliot a deeper bow. “Welcome. Your return has been long awaited.”

“Lordship?” Avery stared from the two men to Elliot, her face blank. “What are they talking about, Elliot?”

“Don’t be slow,” Mattie said. “Isn’t it obvious? Last night when you kept talking about the steward, I did wonder what had happened to the old lord’s son since I was sure I remembered him having one. It looks like we have our answer.” She shook her head. “I just can’t believe that none of the stories I heard about Opaline ever included this little tidbit! So she was married to the lord of Bolivere before she started traveling.” She turned a calculating look on Elliot.

“Snake in the trees!” Frank cawed from Nutmeg’s saddle as he stared at Elliot from one beady eye and then the other.

But Elliot couldn’t focus on anyone except Avery. She was staring at him as if he had just declared his intention to take up a life of crime instead of having just been revealed as the heir to a noble line.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, but any further apology was cut off by the crowd surging forward and jostling Avery so badly she nearly fell.

Elliot tried to leap forward to assist her, but Corbett seized his arm, slowing him, and Mattie reached Avery first.

“We need to get you up to the manor,” Corbett murmured. “We can talk further there.”

The mayor stopped frowning at the crowd to exchange a look with Corbett. He had managed to create a small bubble of space in his immediate vicinity, and the rest of them sheltered inside it as the two men exchanged quiet words.

“You’ll see the ladies settled in their rooms at the inn?” Corbett asked, and the mayor solemnly nodded.

“Leave it to me. It’s best to get His Lordship out of the open for the moment.”

Corbett signaled at another man to take the reins off Elliot, and before Elliot could protest, he was being whisked out of the square in the direction of the manor. He tried to pull back, looking over his shoulder for a glimpse of Avery, but Corbett’s grip on his arm was firm.

“The mayor will take care of the ladies,” Corbett said in a voice as firm as his hand. “The best thing we can do for them is to get you out of there before it becomes a crush and one of them gets trampled.”

Elliot stopped resisting, but dismay surged through him. He had known the truth would eventually come out in Bolivere, but he hadn’t expected such a dramatic reception—or to be immediately separated from Avery. He hadn’t even had a chance to?—

What? A chance to explain? He’d had days—weeks—to do that on the road. He should have seized his opportunity when he had it. Avery would certainly think so, and she would be right. He had allowed his resentment and pain to silence him about his past, and he was already paying the price.

Part of him still wanted to break away from Corbett and run back to Avery. But she had already been caught in the crowd once, and he couldn’t risk her being injured.

With a start, he remembered that he couldn’t leave Corbett, even if he wanted to. He had become accustomed to thinking of himself as bound to Avery, but he had never actually been bound to her. She had just been the one holding the lamp—a lamp she had just handed over to Corbett.

The realization shook Elliot. Avery had completed her commission for Bolivere, and now she had discovered that Elliot had been hiding things from her. If she felt betrayed enough to leave, despite her earlier promise to stay with him, there was no longer anything holding them together. He wouldn’t even be able to follow her—not as long as Corbett had the lamp.

“This is incredible!” Corbett marveled, unaware of Elliot’s internal turmoil. “Avery is even more exceptional than I realized. Some of the townsfolk were uncertain about entrusting our commission to such a young roving merchant, but she’s certainly proved herself beyond any possible expectation. She not only brought us the lamp but you as well! How ever did she find you?”

The silence stretched out long enough to make it obvious the question hadn’t been rhetorical. “It’s a long story,” Elliot muttered, unsure how much more to say.

Corbett shook his head. “I can imagine. And it’s a tale I would like to hear. But that can wait. The important thing is that you’re here. We’ve all been counting down to Avery’s return, but I didn’t realize it would prove so momentous!”

Elliot stopped abruptly just inside the manor grounds, waiting until Corbett also stopped before speaking.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “If you were so eager for my return, why did you send me away in the first place?”

“Send you away?” Corbett’s brow creased. “What do you mean? I wrote to you myself and even sent coin for your travel expenses to hasten your return.”

Elliot stared at him, uncomprehending.

Corbett’s expression of concern deepened. “Even if my original letter went astray, what about the other ones? When you didn’t return after your father’s death, we sent letters through all six kingdoms, following in your mother’s wake. I made sure to re-explain the situation in every one of them, just in case. Surely at least one of them reached you? Isn’t that why you’re here now?”

“I haven’t seen my mother in more than three years,” Elliot said shortly, still struggling to understand the rest.

Corbett’s eyes widened. “Then why didn’t she write back and say so?” he exclaimed hotly.

Elliot sighed. “You do remember my mother, don’t you? When did she ever expend energy on something for the benefit of someone else?”

Corbett bit back a curse, but Elliot’s own fury was rising as he began to grasp the fullness of his mother’s perfidy.

“You needn’t hold back on insulting her for my sake,” Elliot said darkly. “She and I have parted ways completely. But apparently we didn’t do so soon enough. You say you wrote me a letter explaining everything and asking me to return? All I received was an unsigned note and a pouch of coins.”

“Unsigned?” Corbett asked sharply. “Impossible. I wrote that letter myself, and of course I signed my name.”

“You wrote it to me?” Elliot asked, needing direct confirmation. “Not my mother? And you asked me to return to take my father’s place and claim my inheritance?”

Corbett’s eyes tightened slightly. “Of course. I realize it didn’t follow strict procedures, but I calculated that you would likely have turned eighteen before my letter found you, and I preferred to deal with you directly rather than involve Opaline in any way.”

Elliot groaned, his anger burning almost as brightly toward his own past foolishness as toward his mother. Why hadn’t he insisted on reading the full letter—the one she had claimed was addressed to her? He had been so shocked by the news of his father’s death, and so shaken by his apparent rejection, that he had blindly accepted her claims. He should have known better.

“I only ever saw the first page of the letter,” he admitted, feeling fresh shame as he related his foolishness to his father’s steward. “It ended abruptly after mentioning coin for travel expenses, and she told me it had been a note enclosed within her own letter. Since I was a minor when my father died, it seemed—” He cut himself off.

He shouldn’t have tried to excuse his foolishness. He had known the inherent selfishness of his mother’s nature, and he should never have assumed she would consider inheritance sacred.

“Are you saying you never received the rest of my letter?” Corbett asked, his own tones full of anger. “I know Opaline was always a heedless, selfish woman, but why would she go to such lengths to conceal my plea for you to return?”

Elliot tried to remember back. He had been in such a haze of shock and pain at the time that he could barely recall the couple of days following his receipt of Corbett’s note. “I think she thought that with my father dead, I would stay with her,” he said slowly. “She must have known that if I left, she would never see me or a single one of my coins again. But why would she have lied about my inheritance?”

“Your inheritance?”

Elliot nodded, his thoughts still on that long ago interaction. “Surely she would have liked to get her hands on the whole of my father’s wealth and not just the pouch you sent to me?”

“You were young,” Corbett said in a dark voice, “and vulnerable. I know my duty, and I certainly wouldn’t have allowed Opaline to siphon off any of your estate’s wealth.”

Elliot nodded. “Yes, she must have known she wouldn’t be welcome in Bolivere. If I’d still been a boy with stars in my eyes for my charming mother, it might have been a different story. But I was utterly disillusioned by then. She must have guessed that her only hope of gaining anything was to cut me off completely and keep me chained to her.”

“Cut you off completely?” Corbett sucked in a breath. “Are you saying she denied you your inheritance? What did she claim was in my letter?”

“She told me that my father had changed his will and cut me out almost completely. She claimed that pouch was the full amount of my inheritance while the rest had been left to Bolivere. I understood you actively wished me to stay away and was imagining the town in a state of prosperity. But it didn’t look that way when I came in.”

“Prosperity?” Corbett winced. “We’ve been barely keeping everything together since your father passed.”

“I only discovered the true state of things when Avery told me the truth about your situation.”

Corbett gave a dark laugh. “She doesn’t know the half of it.”

Elliot’s eyes shot to his, his eyebrows rising.

Corbett hesitated before shaking his head. “Not here. I’ll tell you everything, of course, but let’s continue for now.” He gestured ahead into the manor grounds.

As they began walking again, he couldn’t stop shaking his head. “I think I need a moment to recover from this revelation. How could she do something so terrible to her own son? It’s beyond villainous.”

“She no doubt found some way to excuse it in her mind,” Elliot said with a hard edge to his voice. “She always does.”

Corbett’s face tightened. “Your father was a very wise man, but I never understood what he saw in her.”

“He saw her beauty, I think,” Elliot said as they walked side by side through the outer edges of the estate. “And her charm and affection. I have enough memories of my very early years to remember she used to be affectionate—back before she grew bored of playing the pampered mistress of the manor. Even now she’s good at charming acquaintances—although their opinions always change in the end.”

He shook away the memories that crowded his mind. “My father would have done well to look for signs of her character rather than her charm. But she was always his greatest blindness.”

They followed a bend in the main drive, and the manor house appeared before them. If the earlier nostalgia had seemed strong, it was nothing to the wave that hit Elliot as he reached his childhood home.

He walked forward in a daze, only to be brought up short by a grizzled older man who stepped into the path in front of them.

“Master Elliot!” he cried with delight. “I mean…Your Lordship.” He chuckled at his own forgetfulness, offering Elliot a hand which Elliot shook more speedily than he had Corbett’s.

“You’re still here!” he exclaimed, remembering the gardener who had always let him take a turn with the pruning shears.

“Aye, My Lord,” he said with a grin. “I’m not gravebound yet.”

Elliot flushed. “I merely meant that you might have retired by now.”

“But who else remembers how you like the garden kept?” the man asked with a wink. “O’ course none of us were going to leave before the young master returned.”

“None of us?” Elliot repeated, looking toward Corbett who shrugged and nodded.

“Master Elliot! Master Elliot!” Several people came running down the path from the house, puffing with the exertion.

When they reached him, the matronly lady in front threw her arms around him and burst into tears.

“We’re saved! We’re saved!” she cried.

The others stood back a little, but they looked no less relieved.

“It’s Your Lordship now, Cook,” the gardener said, and the woman finally released Elliot and stood back, mopping at her eyes.

“Why, so it is, and foolish me,” she said, beaming at Elliot. “I’m just that pleased to see you again, young master.”

Elliot smiled uneasily back at her. He remembered her fondly—largely because of all the spiced buns she used to sneak him. But he didn’t want to take credit that belonged to Avery.

“Actually it’s Avery, the roving merchant, who brought the lamp to save you,” he said.

Cook stared at him blankly for a moment before glancing at Corbett.

“Oh, that creature in the cave, you mean? Yes, we’ll be well pleased to see him gone. No one’s been able to set foot outside at night without fear ever since it took old Hubbard. And the children can’t play in the forest at all. Supplies are hard to come by too, since that merchant train got attacked. No merchants will come near this region at the moment, so you’ll find we have a meager table, I’m afraid. We’re scraping by on what we grow and make ourselves, but some of the younger ones are talking about getting up a supply chain of our own, it’s getting that desperate—” She broke off when Corbett cleared his throat meaningfully, although he was hiding a smile as he did it.

“Well, never mind all that,” she said. “I hope I can still put a decent meal together, whatever the restrictions. But I wasn’t meaning that creature—as glad as we’ll be to see it gone. I meant us here at the manor are saved.”

“He didn’t get any of our letters,” Corbett said. “He doesn’t know about Clarence.”

“Not a single one?” the gardener cried. “But my son went after Her Ladyship himself when we didn’t hear back after the first two letters. He tracked her down and swore he put it into her hand himself. She promised to pass it on.”

Elliot ground his teeth together. What must they have been thinking of him all this time? And who was Clarence to have them so concerned?

He turned to Corbett with a look of inquiry. The steward had said there was more to relate, and Elliot was growing more and more impatient to hear the full tale.

“I think I need to hear what’s been going on here in my absence,” he said.

Corbett quickly nodded. “Why don’t we go inside and use your father’s old study? It’s untouched.”

“Except for the cleaning, of course,” one of the women behind Cook chimed in. “You won’t find any dust.” She sounded proud.

“Thank you,” Elliot said, unsure what else to say to this collection of loyal people from his past. They had been the background of every memory of his childhood, many of them kinder to him than his own mother. He had pictured them scattered and gone since his father’s death, but they were all still here, just as they had been then. He should have returned much sooner.

The original staff’s presence made it seem almost impossible that his father wasn’t waiting for him in that study, working behind his large desk or consulting a book on one of the shelves. But his father would never sit in that room again. Elliot waited for the pain of that truth to cripple him. But the grief that came was manageable. It hurt, but it didn’t strike him down. He had been convinced that the old, familiar environments would make the pain infinitely worse, but somehow it was the opposite.

The familiarity of his old home didn’t just remind him of his father’s absence, it also reminded him of all the years they had shared. His mother had robbed him of nearly five years with his father, but he and his father had shared thirteen years before that. Stepping into his father’s study—untouched by the passing time—made those first years feel far more real than the shadowy years that had followed them.

Elliot sank into an armchair near the window as he realized something both wonderful and horrifying. He had longed to find a proper home and put down roots, but his roots had still been there in Bolivere all along. He had thought he lost his home when his father died, but it had always been waiting for him. Why had he wasted three years longing for something that was already his?

Corbett hovered awkwardly near the other armchair until Elliot realized he was waiting for an invitation to sit. He flushed and gestured for him to do so. It felt strange to see the older, and more competent, man deferring to him.

He didn’t dwell on it, though. His new realization had only energized his desire to understand what was going on.

He leaned forward. “Who is Clarence? What’s been going on here?”

Corbett’s brow creased. “You don’t remember your uncle?” He sighed. “But I’m forgetting you were only a baby when your father banished him from Bolivere.”

“I had an uncle who was banished?” Elliot stared at him. How could he not have known that?

“He was your father’s younger brother, but the two were nothing alike. Whereas your father worked tirelessly for the town, Clarence used his position to steal from and cheat the townsfolk. Your father was ashamed to call him brother, and after Clarence was sent away, your father forbade any mention of him. He even had him expunged from the family trees.”

“But he’s back?” Elliot asked, still trying to wrap his mind around the existence of an unknown uncle.

“Not currently,” Corbett said, sounding relieved. “At least I haven’t had word of anyone seeing him recently. But he’s been here several times since your father’s death. As far as Avery knows, we’ve kept your father’s death a secret because it was advantageous to the town, but that was only a secondary reason. Our main purpose was to keep Clarence away. If you failed to claim your inheritance in five years, it would go to the next heir, and unfortunately that’s him. Since we didn’t know where you were or what had happened to you, we’ve been trying to put off that clock starting.”

Cook stepped into the room, bearing a heavy tray loaded with spiced buns. Catching the end of Corbett’s words, she gave a dramatic shudder. “None of us would work in a house under Clarence. And it would break all of our hearts to be forced to leave only to watch him destroy everything your father built.”

“We explained all this in the follow up letters,” Corbett said, “which only heightens your mother’s betrayal. I would have put it in the first one informing you of your father’s death, except it never occurred to me that you might not return immediately.”

“If she even bothered to read any of the subsequent letters,” Elliot muttered.

He waited for his anger against his mother to flare again, but he had long known who she was and how little she regarded anyone but herself—even Elliot. She had already betrayed both her husband and her son, and he had come to peace with her absence from his life. He had chosen not to let anger against her rule him, and he refused to let her new crimes change that.

“If only I had returned immediately,” Elliot said heavily. “None of your charade would have been necessary.”

He stood, bowing deeply to first Corbett and then Cook. “Please accept my sincere apology. I am deeply grieved to have caused you all so much concern and anxiety. My not knowing the severity of the situation is little excuse. I knew how much my father loved Bolivere and you all, and I should have hurried straight here.”

“See,” Cook said to Corbett, “that’s what you’d never catch Clarence doing. Looks like he’s still his father’s son to me.” She looked pleased, which seemed like far more than Elliot deserved.

“You’re too kind to me,” he said. “You always were.”

Cook laughed. “Nonsense! You can’t be too kind to a child. And you were always a likable youngster.”

She fussed about with arranging the tray on the low table between the armchairs before bustling back out of the room.

“I truly am sorry,” Elliot said less formally to Corbett.

“After the lies your mother told you, I don’t blame you,” Corbett said. “You must have felt deeply hurt and rejected. I hope you know your father was always proud of you, and he talked often of your return. He was convinced you would come back as soon as you turned eighteen.”

Emotion swept over Elliot, and he was silent for several long moments as he fought them back. Eventually he cleared his throat.

“Thank you,” he said. “That means a lot. But in the meantime, it seems you’ve borne the brunt of keeping the facade alive. I suppose you must have been claiming that my father refused to come out and see his brother?”

Corbett nodded. “Clarence was becoming suspicious, though. I was almost certain he had realized the truth after his most recent attempt. I’ve been holding my breath waiting to see what he’ll do next. I’m only surprised he’s been gone so long.” He gazed out the window, his lip curling in disgust. “He calls himself Rene now, and he travels with a nasty crowd.”

Elliot’s spiced bun fell from his hands.

“Did you say Rene?”

Corbett’s gaze flashed back to Elliot, his eyes keen. “You’ve encountered him?”

“He and a couple of mercenaries abducted Avery and her cousin from the roving merchants’ records hall. He was trying to stop her reaching Bolivere.”

“What?” Corbett’s hands clenched around the arms of his chair. “He abducted Avery? But he didn’t get the lamp?”

“No, it was with me,” Elliot said. “But the abduction was the reason we didn’t come by river. He took Avery and Mattie all the way to the coast before they got free.”

“He didn’t recognize you?” Corbett shook his head. “You look uncannily like your father.”

“Actually, I don’t think he ever saw me.”

Corbett whistled softly. “So he never saw you, and he didn’t know about the lamp. It sounds like we had a fortunate escape. One of the innkeepers was certain Clarence had heard some things he shouldn’t have in the taproom on his last visit. But the man swore that while he’d heard about Avery being crucial to destroying the beast, no one had actually mentioned the lamp.” His expression turned grim. “He apparently did, however, learn that his brother was already dead, and that if we couldn’t deal with the creature ourselves, we were going to have to ask for help from the capital, thus exposing our ruse in the process.”

“Has it been so bad here?” Elliot asked.

Corbett ran a tired hand over his face. “Bad enough. The creature killed an older resident first, so we tried to go after it. It mortally injured one of the group who attacked it—a young, strong man—and so we didn’t dare try again without the lamp. We instituted curfews and kept the children close to home, thinking we could wait for Avery’s return, but then it went after a merchant caravan like Cook said. It killed two of their number, and now no travelers will come near our region. If you had tried to come by boat, you would have had trouble finding one to take you.”

Elliot shook his head. If they hadn’t been avoiding all the towns and keeping to the unused roads, they would probably have heard the rumors about the dangerous beast in the woods around Bolivere.

“But how are you surviving without any trade?”

Corbett winced. “I won’t deny that folks have been hurting, both in lost income and in a lack of supplies. Our medical necessities in particular are running low, and if Avery hadn’t turned up by the end of next week, I was going to escort our healer downriver to resupply myself. We’re desperate to have this matter dealt with so we can properly restock and have a chance to trade before winter.”

“So my uncle would see people harmed or even killed for the sake of stealing an inheritance that was never his,” Elliot said. “I can see why you don’t want him in my father’s place. But if he knew the truth of my father’s death, why didn’t he report you himself?”

“From what you saw, did he seem like the type to inspire trust?” Corbett asked wryly. “Especially among guards or nobles. Without any official position, he would have had to make a big fuss to even get a hearing, and I suspect he was afraid that making a lot of noise about Bolivere’s inheritance would bring you out of the woodwork. He wants that five-year timer to begin, but he doesn’t want to attract too much attention in the process.”

“But now that I’m here, claiming my inheritance, any danger from my uncle is passed?” Elliot clarified.

Corbett nodded, and Elliot breathed out, trying not to think of how close he had come to never returning. A home had been waiting for him—one that needed him—and he had nearly missed it because he had let hurt rule him.

He wouldn’t do so any longer, though. He would prove to the people who had faithfully waited for him that he could be worthy of their trust. The group going after the creature would have the lamp with them, so he had always known he would need to accompany them, but he hadn’t thought of it as his fight. Since entering Bolivere, however, that had changed. He would lead the attack, not hang back at the rear. He would repay his people for the stress he had caused them.

Only one thing marred his determination. Returning to his true place had led him inevitably to the end of his road, and he was a little afraid that Avery would have already reached the same conclusion. Despite his momentary fear earlier, he didn’t really believe she would flee. Avery would feel bound by her promise, regardless of his lack of openness, and she had promised to help him free himself from the lamp. She was far more likely to insist on facing the monster at his side than she was to flee.

Elliot had a responsibility to Bolivere, and he couldn’t abandon it to travel with her. But neither could he bear to see her get hurt for his sake.

“What’s the plan with the creature?” he asked Corbett. “When will we be going after it?”

Corbett smiled at his use of we . “The chosen fighters will be gathering mid-morning tomorrow.”

“The plan is well-known throughout town?” Elliot asked. When Corbett nodded, he continued. “In that case, I’d like to request a small amendment. But this time, let’s keep the change quiet.”