masterly work—had replaced Kyra's adolescent choice of green and scarlet satin. The bed hangings were still white, as were the curtains on the two long windows.
Kyra walked slowly to the one nearer the bed and pushed the curtain aside. Below her, the garden was a jeweled geometry of pansy and alyssum, irises and lilies between crowding cinder-colored walls, the lilac trees so thick with bloom as to hide nearly all their branches. Water sparkled like quicksilver in the moss-rimmed fountain. Between pillars of soot-darkened brown brick the gateway at the far side seemed even now thick with shadow.
She turned quickly away. From its corner by the armoire, the crimson wedding dress glittered gently in the diffuse white light.
If I knew what I was looking for
, Kyra reflected grimly, this would be a good deal easier. She only prayed she'd find what she sought in this room or the one adjoining. It was logical, of course, that it would be here.
A book of romances lying on top of the highboy yielded pressed flowers: violets, hyacinth, and a winter rose. Touching the desiccated petals. Kyra called forth the faces of the men who had given them. Young men, and all of them very handsome, two of them wearing the laces and face paint of wealthy, probably noble families. The third… Yes, one of the musicians had given her the violets. A giggle, a kiss, a flirtation on the dark gallery—the mandolin player whom Kyra had glimpsed only that morning as she'd slipped out on her errand; he'd been smuggling one of Neb Wishrom's tousle-haired chambermaids down the back stairs in her shift.
From none of the flowers could Kyra feel any depth of passion either in the giver or in the receiver, though all of them were touched with the kitten joy of pleasant memories.
Kyra paused, the winter rose in her hand.
Well-kept soft fingers brushing the hair aside from her cheek. The half-possessive, half-protective hand in the small of her back, guiding her to a chair. A twinkle in someone's eye. Too many men vying for a dance.
The crimson wedding gown that would fit her as well as it would Alix.
Her jaw hurt with the sudden clench of the muscles there, and she pushed the image from herself with the violence of contempt. Really, she thought disgustedly, are you sorry you had better things to do than play silly games with those callow boys who only asked you to dance when their parents ordered them to? Are you really sorry no one ever treated you like a brood mare with a dowry?
“Yes,” whispered the tall girl who had always sat alone, chin high and eyes sarcastically defiant, watching her friends through too many quandriles, minuets, waltzes.
Yes.
Ninny.
In any case, here was no passion that did murder. Changing her perception, she stroked the flowers but saw nothing of magic, nothing of poison, nothing of ill will.
“… honestly, Gyvinna, she had the nerve to say to me, 'You ought to better yourself and not stay a drudge for the rich.' ”
Kyra made a bolt for the sitting-room door, barely making it as the red-haired chambermaid entered with the laundrywoman behind her, their arms filled with newly pressed linens. Kyra readied herself to retreat farther into her mother's rooms and so out into the gallery if necessary should the two young women enter the parlor, but there was no need. Her hooped skirts nearly dragged over an occasional table in her haste to return to the bedroom in the maids' departing wake.
So much to search, and there had to be something, some clue…
The top drawer of the dresser contained poems.
There were seven or eight of them. One was about one of her mother's lapdogs, which made her smile; one was about the vendors' cries in the street before the coming of full light.
The rest were about Alix.
They were written on cream-colored paper at two pennies the packet, the sort of thing on which plumbers' sons wrote love letters to shop girls. The best that very little money could buy.
If my love be a song,
Kyra walked slowly to the one nearer the bed and pushed the curtain aside. Below her, the garden was a jeweled geometry of pansy and alyssum, irises and lilies between crowding cinder-colored walls, the lilac trees so thick with bloom as to hide nearly all their branches. Water sparkled like quicksilver in the moss-rimmed fountain. Between pillars of soot-darkened brown brick the gateway at the far side seemed even now thick with shadow.
She turned quickly away. From its corner by the armoire, the crimson wedding dress glittered gently in the diffuse white light.
If I knew what I was looking for
, Kyra reflected grimly, this would be a good deal easier. She only prayed she'd find what she sought in this room or the one adjoining. It was logical, of course, that it would be here.
A book of romances lying on top of the highboy yielded pressed flowers: violets, hyacinth, and a winter rose. Touching the desiccated petals. Kyra called forth the faces of the men who had given them. Young men, and all of them very handsome, two of them wearing the laces and face paint of wealthy, probably noble families. The third… Yes, one of the musicians had given her the violets. A giggle, a kiss, a flirtation on the dark gallery—the mandolin player whom Kyra had glimpsed only that morning as she'd slipped out on her errand; he'd been smuggling one of Neb Wishrom's tousle-haired chambermaids down the back stairs in her shift.
From none of the flowers could Kyra feel any depth of passion either in the giver or in the receiver, though all of them were touched with the kitten joy of pleasant memories.
Kyra paused, the winter rose in her hand.
Well-kept soft fingers brushing the hair aside from her cheek. The half-possessive, half-protective hand in the small of her back, guiding her to a chair. A twinkle in someone's eye. Too many men vying for a dance.
The crimson wedding gown that would fit her as well as it would Alix.
Her jaw hurt with the sudden clench of the muscles there, and she pushed the image from herself with the violence of contempt. Really, she thought disgustedly, are you sorry you had better things to do than play silly games with those callow boys who only asked you to dance when their parents ordered them to? Are you really sorry no one ever treated you like a brood mare with a dowry?
“Yes,” whispered the tall girl who had always sat alone, chin high and eyes sarcastically defiant, watching her friends through too many quandriles, minuets, waltzes.
Yes.
Ninny.
In any case, here was no passion that did murder. Changing her perception, she stroked the flowers but saw nothing of magic, nothing of poison, nothing of ill will.
“… honestly, Gyvinna, she had the nerve to say to me, 'You ought to better yourself and not stay a drudge for the rich.' ”
Kyra made a bolt for the sitting-room door, barely making it as the red-haired chambermaid entered with the laundrywoman behind her, their arms filled with newly pressed linens. Kyra readied herself to retreat farther into her mother's rooms and so out into the gallery if necessary should the two young women enter the parlor, but there was no need. Her hooped skirts nearly dragged over an occasional table in her haste to return to the bedroom in the maids' departing wake.
So much to search, and there had to be something, some clue…
The top drawer of the dresser contained poems.
There were seven or eight of them. One was about one of her mother's lapdogs, which made her smile; one was about the vendors' cries in the street before the coming of full light.
The rest were about Alix.
They were written on cream-colored paper at two pennies the packet, the sort of thing on which plumbers' sons wrote love letters to shop girls. The best that very little money could buy.
If my love be a song,
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