Lady of Weeds, page 20
part #2 of Lady Series
She shook off Eurion’s hand and shouldered past him, and this time he didn’t hurry to follow her. Instead, Carys heard his footsteps behind her as she hurried homeward, soft but somehow heavy, carefully keeping far enough behind her that not even his faint shadow from the moon fell in her path.
Chapter Twelve
The cottage was all moonlight and brine when Carys opened the door, with just a touch of orange warmth left in the hearth. She closed the door behind her, disregarding Eurion, and attended to the fire. It was calming to have something physical to do.
As she stirred the fire into some semblance of life again, she heard the scattering of sand that heralded Eurion’s arrival, but no consequent opening of the door.
Carys frowned, and laid a log on the glowing coals. Was he sulking?
A moment later, she heard the familiar swish-and-scatter that was Eurion beginning his sword drill. Was he really sulking, or merely giving her space?
Whatever the reason, Carys was grateful for it. The cottage felt uncomfortable around her, and she would like to get more comfortable in it before Eurion came in. She made herself a cup of tea, putting another cup out by habit, and found herself staring at the rug.
She was still gazing at it with far away eyes when she finished her cup of tea, automatically recognising that Eurion was so much longer tonight with his sword drill; the same sense of discomfort still lingering. Carys left her empty cup on the table and crossed the room, and before she crouched beside it, she knew why it had drawn her attention.
The rug was upside down. It should have been no big thing; it was a woven rug that looked almost identical whichever way up it was kept, but for the slightly rougher appearance on the underside.
Carys eyed it in growing concern. There had once been a place for hiding things below that rug; the space was still there, but she only kept a few pearls in it, nothing more. No doubt it had been Mr. Ma—he obviously had no interest in jewels, because the pearls were still there when she checked—but Carys couldn’t help feeling rubbed raw by the invasion, though she had known he was in the cottage. There would be no point in making a search of her cottage without doing the thing thoroughly.
More worrying was the possibility that he had found her other hiding spot. Carys observed the chimney with some anxiety, but there was no sign that the bricks there had been tampered with, nor was there any telling crumble of mortar on the hearth or the floor. At least Ma Yong Hwa had not found that. Carys had a feeling she would have a lot of explaining to do if he had, and since she felt that he would deserve such an explanation, she was glad to have avoided the necessity.
Eurion was still at his practise when Carys prepared the fire for the night and went to bed. She was glad for that, too; in a glance out the window, she had seen him moving in the moonlight, an unusually sober look to his face. The soberness of the look didn’t worry her so much—it was the thoughtfulness of it that concerned her. He had such a habit of coming out with things unexpectedly that she didn’t know how to prepare for what would come next.
The next morning, Eurion was still asleep when she rose—or was pretending to be so, at any rate. Carys had the feeling his breathing was just a little bit too light and regular to signify real sleep, and that was something of a comfort. It could be a good thing if he wished to avoid her, at least until the cottage was comfortable again.
Still, she found herself looking around for the jewel-like glitter of brown eyes as she moved quietly around the room, stoking the fire and setting aside a portion of lunch for him. There was nothing beyond his regular in and out of breath.
Very good, thought Carys, and left the cottage. There was a dark undertone of red to the sky when she looked up, which brought a frown to her brow and made her automatically seek for the direction of the wind. There was very little wind, which worried her as well. At this chancy time of year, as winter was struggling through to spring, that meant a storm—and a big storm. The longer the stillness and colour continued without sight of a storm, the worse it would be when it came.
There would be a need to make sure she scoured the shoreline for as much seaweed as possible. Along her part of the shoreline it tended to grow back more quickly than it would have elsewhere—whether from the magic she was told inhabited the weeds naturally, or simply as a result of the natural life of it—and there would be the free-floating ribbons to clear away as the swell grew bigger with the promise of a storm.
Still, the morning wasn’t so hard as Carys had expected, the swell almost normal if it hadn’t been for the lack of wind, and there wasn’t so much free-floating weed as she had thought to see. She paused from her work once or twice to stretch her back, and saw Steele in the distance, treading the path toward the village with his three men. It gave her a rather unpleasant shock, because she hadn’t seen him in a few days, and she had assumed that he had gone to further villages to continue his search for whatever he was looking for. She didn’t like to think of him passing by her cottage.
Just after noon, as Carys was bundling her seaweed beyond the rock-line, with one ear to the selkies as they played indolently, Ma Yong Hwa came strolling through the sandy grass, his top hat perched on his head just as usual.
He bowed to her and seemed as though he would have reached out to help with her seaweed, but Carys stopped him with one salty, sandy hand.
“I’ve nearly done.” Besides, where was the use in dirtying that impeccable suit?
“There’s magic gathering,” said Mr. Ma, as if that was what he had come to say to her.
Carys shrugged. Magic or storm, it was all the same along the seashore. “There’s a storm coming,” she said. “Things are unsteady.”
“Ah,” he said, unsurprised. “You know?”
“It won’t be safe for you to walk down here when it breaks,” she told him. “The selkies will want to play, and there is no one to stop them.”
“Is that not your job?”
Carys finished off a bale with a sharp tug of string. “No. My job is to clear their playthings. Warn people not to get too close. Make sure they can’t make mischief for the fishermen with the seaweed.”
“Ah,” said Ma Yong Hwa again. “Are many people then lost to the selkies?”
“Not many,” Carys said, with a constricted throat. She turned her back on him to gather another bale into being. “And those who are lost usually return in the end. The selkies give up their playthings when they no longer amuse them.”
“All of them return?”
“Most of them return,” she said shortly. She did not wish to discuss such things with Ma Yong Hwa—or with anyone. “If you do not wish to be in danger, you should avoid the rocky shoreline.”
“I did not think to be in danger,” he said. “I merely wished for information. Is it inconvenient?”
“No inconvenience.” Carys finished another bundle with a sharp tug. “But the villagers know already. If you have questions, you should ask them.”
“I see,” he said mildly. “I should do so. I have been too busy.”
Wanting to change the subject, she said with a faint touch of sarcasm, “So I saw. Did you find everything you were looking for in my floorboards yesterday?”
That Ma Yong Hwa should know she knew the extent of his search was a salve to her irritation about the fact that it had happened.
Hiss brown eyes rested on her in a combination of wonder and understanding. “I did not search so deeply,” he said. “However, I don’t expect your trust.”
“I see,” said Carys. Perhaps it was ridiculously trusting of her, but she believed him. More, she believed that he would have been more careful—that he would be the kind of man, moreover, to know the difference between sides of a rug, miniscule though it was. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“You should not be so,” said Yong Hwa. “If not me—”
A cold, bitter edge of fear chilled Carys across the shoulders. It occurred to her, suddenly and horribly, that Steele had gone, not necessarily toward the village, but toward the cottage. The cottage where Eurion was, alone and no match for four men and their swords.
Carys picked up her skirts and ran.
Pursuit sounded behind her, and perhaps Ma Yong Hwa’s voice, but Carys ignored it, her feet pounding through sand and her heart pounding in her throat, constricting her breath and making shards of pain across her chest.
Eurion, alone in the cottage; Eurion, facing Steele and his sword—Eurion perhaps sought and found.
Eurion, perhaps dead.
She made it to the cottage somehow, though she didn’t remember how, and stopped in the doorway, looking around wildly. There was no Eurion to be seen, but all of Carys’ dishes were out of the cupboards, the blue as well as the plain, and the rug had been left carelessly thrown back on itself. Someone had been in the cottage while she was out again—and this time, that someone wanted her to know for sure that he had been there.
Carys stumbled a few steps further into the cottage. If that someone had been there, where was Eurion? Had he been taken?
Behind her, Ma Yong Hwa stepped swiftly into the cottage, and Carys, with the uneasy swirl of the sea in her stomach, panted, “He’s not here. Where is he? He should be here.”
Gasping a little himself, Yong Hwa suggested, “Perhaps he is going for a walk.”
“Yes,” she said, aware of how sharp and short her words had become. She could almost taste her own disagreement.
“Does the—does Eurion stay here during the day?”
“Yes,” said Carys, her skirt still bunched in her hands. “He’s recently recovered from being sick.”
Where was Eurion? Perhaps he had been sulking last night. She hadn’t really thought so at the time, but why else would he be gone? She must have hurt his feelings so much that he simply left. Unless—unless Steele really had been looking for someone instead of something.
Ma Yong Hwa must have seen the second, closer look she sent around the room. He said, “I think—I hope—there has been no struggle.”
“I think so, too,” Carys said, her throat growing a little less tight. And yet, if Eurion wasn’t here, where was he?
“Is anything taken?”
She couldn’t give him all her attention, but she saw the sharpness to his eyes; the very real concern. Not concern for her, but for whatever it was he still thought she had.
“I will check later,” she said. She didn’t even dare look around as she said it, because it seemed certain that she would look at the fireplace, and Ma Yong Hwa was far too sharp for that, too. Instead, she looked only at him and repeated, “I will look later. Good day, Mr. Ma.”
“Can I do nothing for you?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Very well,” he said, and bowed. “If I should see Eurion, I will send you notice.”
“Thank you,” said Carys, and her thanks were sincere. It didn’t seem as though there had been a struggle, and yet where was Eurion? Had he left of his own accord?
Ma Yong Hwa left quietly, and Carys sat down with a jerk. If Eurion had left of his own accord, it was her own fault. She should have been gentler with him—and yet, how could she have been? She couldn’t encourage him—couldn’t encourage herself. There was no good in gentleness when it came to Eurion. Better to be harsh and safe than risk the growth of feelings that had no business where they were.
* * *
She should have prepared a meal—or even just made herself a cup of tea—but Carys found herself, an hour after Ma Yong Hwa left, still sitting in her usual chair. There was a sick feeling to her stomach that discouraged any desire for food, but when it occurred to her how long she had sat where she was, Carys stood abruptly and left the cottage.
She took the small trail to the right of the cottage, where Eurion said he had once walked, and from which he had seen her on the beach. It was the only place she could think he might have gone if he were simply out for a walk.
The path was longer than she remembered, but Carys kept walking, grimly, until she was following the curve of the cliff-top that overlooked a wide swathe of seashore and her own rocky section. Her eyes flicked from the green clifftop to the seashore below, seeking a golden-haired figure, but found nothing. She turned back at last, unwillingly, and strode homeward, holding within her chest the unsteady warmth of a hope that Eurion would be there when she got back.
Carys arrived back home with the last of the sunlight, to find the cottage as empty as it had been when she first returned. She gave it one look and left again, too restless to sit down when she might be bringing in her crop of seaweed from the morning. It was safe enough where it was, but she had no desire to sit down again, doing nothing. Either Eurion would return, or he would not. There was nothing more she could do.
So she brought in the seaweed, and perhaps she had been hoping that there would be a different result when she took it home with her, because she dropped the handles of the cart without unloading it and went inside.
There was no difference: the cottage was still untidy, Eurion still gone, the blue dishes left out. This time, however, Carys thought to check behind the curtain after she tidied the rug back into its place. Eurion kept his spare clothes and the coat she’d given him behind there, orderly and out of the way.
They were gone.
Carys stared at that empty stool for far too long. He had left, then.
The sunshine had gone, and with it any hope of questions answered.
There was a pain in her chest, so Carys sat at the table, weary and shaken. There was emptiness everywhere she looked: the cupboards, with their contents strewn across the bench and table, the three chairs at odds around the small table, even the sound of the cottage was empty.
And into that emptiness, there was the sound of the front door opening. Carys looked up, worn and entirely uncertain what to expect, and a familiar golden-haired figure danced in her vision.
Her hand curled tightly into the fabric of her skirt. Carys asked icily, “Where were you?”
“Lady?” Eurion stepped forward uncertainly. “What is it? Are you hurt?”
“Where were you?”
“Don’t you remember? Miss Allen—you said—was I meant not to go?”
Carys stared at him for one galling moment, all at once aware of where he had been and how he had spent the day—aware that she couldn’t even complain about it when she had told him he might do as he wished. Aware that the fear and uncertainty she had gone through in the last few hours were not something she could charge against him.
“I forgot,” she said quietly, instead of shouting all the things she wanted to shout. Had she forgotten? Or was it just that she hadn’t expected him to really go, and had dismissed it from her mind?
“Did something happen?” Eurion, his gaze flicking from the crown of her head to her feet, moved forward swiftly once again and dropped on one knee in front of her to gaze up at her face. “Lady? You’re not hurt, are you?”
“No,” said Carys, aware how close her hands were to shaking, and how impossible it was to pull them away from Eurion’s warm fingers without giving away that fact. “I forgot. Are you going out again tomorrow?”
“I can stay—”
“No,” Carys said. “This week you should go out. Don’t stay in the cottage.”
Eurion, frowning, opened his mouth, but by then Carys had gathered her thoughts enough to speak before him.
“Where are your clothes?”
“I washed them,” he said. He looked a little conscious, or perhaps just a little pleased with himself. “I thought you would be tired. I hung them behind the cottage. Lady, why should I go out this week?”
“There’s something I need done.”
“I can do it,” he said.
“You’ll have to go to the village every day.”
“I need to walk more,” he answered, settling back on his heels, though he didn’t let go of her hands. “I’m more healthy now.”
It was true. It was also true that Carys had long meant to have a small storehouse built in the village. It was not something that was urgent enough to send Eurion out to do tomorrow, but Carys would do it in any case. If Steele chose to come back again while she was out of the cottage, she was determined that Eurion wouldn’t be there to find.
Just to be sure, Carys asked Eurion, “Did you move my things?”
“No, Lady,” he said. “I don’t touch those things. Didn’t you take them out?”
“I’ll write you a note to take to Enfys,” Carys said. “Make sure you deliver it to her first; she’ll tell you what you need to do after.”
“Can’t you tell me now?”
“Tomorrow,” said Carys. She was weary—so very weary that she didn’t know how she would rise from her bed to attend to the seashore tomorrow. She shivered a little, and Eurion stood again, looking around the room with wondering eyes.
“You let the fire go out, Lady,” he said. “You shouldn’t sit in the cold and dark.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Carys said, though she would have risen to attend to the fire at once if he hadn’t returned with the light quilt from the bed to drape around her shoulders.
He wrapped it tightly at the front, too; and when Carys made a move as if to shrug it off and rise anyway, he said, “I’ll look to the fire, Lady.”
Carys heard him behind her, attending to the fire, then gradually, making tea. Then he flitted around the kitchen, putting away the blue things and the other dishes, and still she couldn’t gather the energy to rise from her chair. When he gave her a cup of tea she took it without comment, and Eurion sat in his chair beside her, unusually quiet. He didn’t speak again, in fact, until Carys eventually took herself off to bed, and the cottage settled into warm quiet around them.
Then he said, into that quietness, “Lady?”
Carys closed her eyes. “What is it?”
“I wouldn’t leave without telling you, you know. I wouldn’t leave unless you told me to go.”
She didn’t know how she was supposed to reply to that, so Carys let the words sink into warm silence around them, too.
