Bouquet
(C) Intelligent Systems and Nintendo
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Fruit of the Poison Tree: Pasque Flower, Rosebud, Lobelia
(can an unpretentious young girl bear all the malevolence that surrounds house reglay?)
"What did your lady mother have to say?"
At these words, Louise set down the letter in her hands to look at her dear friend full in the face. Celia had been knitting across the small table where Louise had been pleasantly occupied with her mail, but in addition to the question Celia also paused in her work--a shame, for in addition to the tender sound of the knitting needles followed the soft, melodious sound of her dearest companion's lovely singing voice, lending to the atmosphere of the room what could only be positive feelings so desperately needed. Indeed, Louise's mood now wavered, though she put on a brave face to make up for it. "Mother is doing well. She's been reading a new novel about an idyllic retreat into the countryside, though she says it's far too idealized and not at all accurate with her experience."
Celia smiled. "Lady Catherine and her novels. When do you think she will decide to write one of her own?"
"She told me once she would only write if she could be assured that it would change the world," Louise replied, laying her hand on top of her mother's letter. The stationery was descended from a fine brand, though it did not have quite the smoothness of her birthday present from Lord Pent. Her mother had admired the gift, though everyone knew well that her mother's first and enduring love for fine jewelry held her back from truly appreciating much else.
Louise was still sunning in her good feelings when Celia, eyes averted, asked, "And what of your father?"
"Ah..." Closing her eyes, Louise took in a deep breath. "Mother says Father is being a bit impossible to live with."
There was a beat of hesitation shivering in the air before Celia said, "Perhaps you should write to him, Lady Louise."
Louise opened her eyes then, though the letters before her kept her attention. Besides the one from her mother, there was also another from Lady Nella, Countess Caerleon, who was bearing patiently her confinement with the sort of good humor that Louise thought spoke well of the noblewoman's inclination towards motherhood. It seemed quite wonderful to be so blessed, not only to have the children from the first marriage--her nieces and nephew, at that--as well as the adopted child, but then to bear her own--Lady Nella must feel quite fulfilled as a woman. But now was not the time to linger overlong on romantic thoughts of motherhood, though it took Louise quite a bit of mental shaking before she could organize her mind thus. "I of course would write Father if I had anything to say, but with my recent failure I am afraid I will be seeing him before long." She tried to smile, though Celia returned it with a small frown. "Celia, you can't argue the fact. It has been almost a week since Master Raike has thought to speak with me again since that disaster, and I...cannot really blame him. He is probably trying to figure out the best way to have me sent home without hurting my feelings too much."
"But who could have ever expected a baron to commit such an act!" Flush with anger, Celia rose from her seat. "You have not even started, so why--"
Solemn bells echoed, interrupting Celia's tirade in timely fashion, or so Louise thought. She truly did not believe herself ready for such a conversation, no matter that her dear friend was wholly on her side. With a forced smile she stood from her seat. "It's time for church. Shall we go?"
Celia nodded, though her expression betrayed a certain hesitance. "Of course. But these Tower Elimineans are so brusque with their worship it makes me wonder why we spend the effort gathering in the first place."
"...Well, we're guests here for now, so we should be respectful." Despite her words, Louise could not help but privately agree. As a Lighter Eliminean, she could not help but feel somewhat at a loss when it came to the rituals of the Tower Elimineans, who were the most prominent denomination of those who followed the words of Saint Elimine, blessed be her name. They claimed to speak for all Elimineans due their main symbol, the Tower of the Saint, where her followers had built an altar after she left for God's country. Lighter Elimineans kept true to the tenets of the holy saint's most well-known sermon, called 'The Light on the Hill' as it was given after she had received God's announcement that she was to return to Him, which caused grievances between them and the Tower Elimineans once the latter's rigid hierarchy began presuming to speak for the saint after her departure. Louise could only assume Lord Pent was a Tower Eliminean because the castle chapel hardly strayed from their particular canon, and the fact that she would most certainly have to cast aside her own beliefs like any good wife should for the sake of her husband--as her mother had for her father, for one--brought a measure of discomfort that could not easily be shrugged off like a cloak. As her mother had told her before, matters of faith were more like corsets, providing support and shaping well both young and old.
She had not thought on this when she agreed, again and again, to marry Lord Pent. It made her wonder what else she had not considered.
Inside the chapel proper were rows of pews filled with the servants of the castle, many who had not even changed out of their uniforms to attend service. Between one Lightsday and another Louise had fallen out of favor with the steward, leaving her to practice some discretion and sit in one of the back rows rather than at the front with Master Raike and his family, though having Celia beside her made the change more than tolerable. Unlike the ecstatic revelries that formed the services for Lighter Elimineans, where the congregations joined like family and worship was only interrupted by at least two meals, the Tower Elimineans did no more than follow the voice of the priest as he lectured them, elevating the sermons of bishops to equal level with the words of the blessed saint. It was uncomfortable to bear what was nearly heresy to her ears and faith, but Louise kept her head low and her eyes did not stray from her open copy of The Journey of Saint Elimine until it was over. It had not taken her even four stories to keep herself occupied until the end of the sermon, and that itself was both relief and concern--brusque, indeed.
The two of them sat together while the servants milled out of the chapel; when he appeared out of the corner of her sight, Master Raike did not even give her one whit of attention, though his wife seemed to pause before being sufficiently distracted by one of her sons. Louise could only grip her hands together, willing desperately that her emotions would not show on her face.
She had failed, after all. She should accept it instead of allowing herself to be devoured by it. But, for Lord Pent's sake...
With a sigh she simply could not hold inside any longer, Louise rose from her seat. Celia did not follow, and a glance from Louise told the story: as it was, Celia had her head bowed low, her lips mouthing prayers gleaned from her copy of that most holy of books. When her dear friend got into a mood like this one, it was best for Louise to leave her be--but not completely. Making her way out of the pew, she took a discerning look about the chapel, finding that it was not decorated with bouquets of flowers like her own country church, nor the little touches of care such as a straw broom laid out for any passerby to do their part in maintaining the place or the children's clutter as they wound crowns of flowers for the little goddess icon that served as their image of the blessed saint. No, this place was made from stone after unyielding stone, and Louise detected something a little cold about it although the statue of Saint Elimine that rose behind the priest's pedestal easily overtook her home church's and its windows were multicolored wonders of artistic delight. Perhaps she was being too judgmental, perhaps she understood not the difference between a little wood-and-stone church next to a dirt road and the personal chapel of a keep as massive and great as Castle Reglay, but she did not care for it. This was not the sort of place she had ever pictured herself married in; this was not a home where her faith could thrive. The only real similarity between the two houses of the holy woman was the beam of light that fell upon the altar in the front of the room, allowing the saint's light to fall upon those awaiting blessings, such as in the case of a bride or groom. Her mother and father, alternatively, told of being blessed by moonlight--nature's light was luminary all the same, no matter its source.
Very gently, Louise worried at her bottom lip with the edge of her front teeth. She ought not be worrying over such details of her upcoming nuptials; at the rate she was going, she would not be marrying anyone within Castle Reglay's chapel.
"Excuse me, milady."
Louise glanced to her left and found a most curious sight: a middle-aged woman with her chestnut-brown hair bound into a flawless Etruscan braid--a woman who was not an inch taller than Louise's rather diminutive height. She was dressed not as a servant but as any respectable person might dress when going to church, though Louise's fine eye for clothing noted that the muted rose dress was made from simple cotton with none of the stiffness of a new outfit. "What can I do for you, madame?" she asked, turning towards the older woman.
With a short curtsy, the woman inquired, "Do I have the pleasure of speaking to our lord's wife-to-be?"
"...Yes, that would be me," Louise said, her heartbeat becoming a little rushed. Though she had become used to the terms 'betrothed' and 'fiancée,' it was quite another thing to be a wife yet, even to-be. "I'm Louise Émile of Alloway. To whom do I have the honor of speaking to?"
The woman tilted her head. "Ah, such politeness from such a young girl. I'm Osanna, now retired from service to House Reglay, though I'm still too used to going to the chapel here rather than in the town. When I was younger, I was nurse and milk-mother to our current count."
Putting a hand to her lips, Louise could not hold back her exclamation at such news. "Ah, then you've known Lord Pent since he was a child! How wonderful!"
"Girl, this is a house of worship, not of gossip!" thundered the priest, who was still at his pulpit despite the near-empty chapel. Louise's face went blazing hot at the admonishment, but when Madame Osanna placed her hand upon Louise's forearm she calmed a little.
"Come, Milady Louise. Shall we seek fresh air?"
After glancing back at Celia, who was still in the meditative throes of prayer, Louise nodded and followed the older woman out of the chapel. Being as the chapel was more of an attached detachment of the greater castle, this led them into the common garden path-- 'common' referring to the use it saw each day and not a comment as to its quality--which would eventually lead them down to the castle town if they so chose. Madame Osanna seemed to want to avoid that path, veering into the bushes and forcing Louise, who was in one of the simple white dresses she so liked to wear to church, to clumsily follow after her, keeping as well as she could from dirtying her skirts. Birdsong followed them, as did the summer sun, and it did occur to her that the day was quite nice no matter how much she wanted for more appropriate clothing. She smiled as she twisted and ducked around errant branches, quite enjoying the physical exercise.
They exited into a vaguely familiar place: a gazebo she and Celia had found once while exploring the castle grounds. Madame Osanna took her there now, and they seated themselves within the shade provided by the simple, yet elegant structure. Hedges surrounded most of the area save a lone path, with bright summer flowers providing a pleasant contrast to the white of the gazebo and green of the trimmed hedges and grass. Without either a tea cozy or maid to provide one, there was a feeling of privacy that seemed to Louise as being more than a veil--they were secluded totally and utterly.
Looking at Madame Osanna's smiling face, Louise felt strangely ill at ease. With this perfect solitude on a bright summer day, the shade in which the gazebo shrouded them with had a slight sense of unreality that she did not care for at all.
"Milady," the older woman said, her hands on her lap with a casualness that Louise could not mimic, "how goes your time here so far? I understand your first foray into building connections did not go well."
"Oh, I, well..." Louise's smile was strained as she tried to formulate some rationalization that did not sound wholly like one. "It will take time to be accepted by Reglay's nobility. I've always known that. It...teaches me to learn patience."
Madame Osanna nodded. "Every woman should know that much. But really, you've drawn an unlucky card. House Reglay has been much maligned for some time now."
"What do you mean?" Louise asked, her hands loosely linked together, concern blooming in her chest like a particularly treacherous chest cold.
Eyes darting about, Madame Osanna leaned towards Louise. "What do you know of Count Reglay's parentage?"
Louise blinked. "His parents are the late Count and Countess Reglay."
"Is that so." The older woman leaned back. "Your ears are well protected from errant whispers, I see. Then again, you are not a native of Reglay."
Louise could not help the touch of a frown weighing down her brows, nor could she stop the building heaviness bearing down within her chest. There was no doubt that this conversation would lead down winding paths she would rather keep herself away from, but her curiosity had taken hold; it was too strong an enemy for a girl like herself to defeat--or so she told herself. "What do you mean?"
"It has long been held as truth rather than rumor," Madame Osanna's expression darkened, "that Lord Pent is no legitimate heir of House Reglay."
Raising a hand to her mouth, Louise closed her eyes, the heavy weight in her chest having sunk to her stomach and feeling as though it were churning about. In her fifteen years she had not once come across even the idea of infidelity; to have it revealed before her face as a stark truth, boldly naked with arms outstretched--it was too much. "Lord Pent doesn't know this...?" she whispered to herself, suddenly unsure. To know something about Lord Pent that he didn't was a terrible power.
She could never tell him but, if there was any truth to it, then didn't he deserve to know?
"He should not know. I doubt he even remembers his mother, since she never cared for his presence to begin with, but the old count had sent him away right after her death, when the voices of the Reglay nobility were clamoring the loudest for a legitimate heir. That he ignored them by preferring to keep a bastard as the heir instead of marrying a Reglay County noblewoman and producing a real heir has always offended them, moreso when Lord Pent ascended as the new Count Reglay." Sighing, Madame Osanna shook her head. "It really is a shame. His mother was no real countess, preferring to play around in Aquleia rather than comport herself to her role, and the only reason his father kept him around was because the man had no patience for anything but his ledgers. As his nurse, I've had to watch this for years without being able to voice my disgust. That boy deserves so much better than the house he was born into." Finally, finally, Lord Pent's nurse paused in her refrain, only to gasp when their eyes met. "Oh, milady, your coloring looks so pale. Do you need to rest?"
"Ah, yes...I would like that," Louise murmured, lowering her hand from her mouth with a trembling hesitance, knowing that she was so close to becoming physically ill. She allowed Madame Osanna to escort her to the castle proper, and let herself drift to the rooms prepared for her during her stay. On the tea table there was a new letter from Lord Pent, and when she sighted his handwriting, so familiar to her now, she could only stand there, wanting desperately to read it but knowing that she would be expected to reply, and...
She could not do it. Louise could not possibly write to him with this new knowledge having burned its black brand into her mind and heart. All she could do was take to her bed and hope she would be allowed to forget, if only for a little while.
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Deep within the next day Louise rose and found herself with nothing to do, in possession of only an ache between her eyes from oversleep and a note from Celia, who had ventured into the castle town for a curative from the Allowellian fields to make Louise sprightly and alive once again. It would have to be licoresse root for tea, though she had no need of an expectorant--she only liked its intense flavor. With a sigh of effort, Louise rose to dress herself, opting for a thinner, less bothersome corset she liked to wear for more freedom of movement and a light summer dress of the palest blue trimmed with white lace, before leaving her rooms. A maid passing by scarcely glanced at her; Louise found that her presence was treated by the housemaids as neither a pleasantry nor annoyance, all to a one tolerant with nary a sign of life in their faces those few times she had reason to speak with any of them. They were probably all pleased with her poor reputation within Castle Reglay, counting down the days until her dismissal, but Louise found she could not bring herself to feel much in return, especially not now.
She went to the foyer.
The portrait of Lord Pent's lady mother hung proudly there, in its grand spot above the split in the stairway that would lead one either into the East or West Halls, her beauty peering down upon all visitors of the castle. It was she who was the first sight, the herald who proclaimed the wonders of Reglay Castle, and she did not disappoint one bit. Louise could still remember that day vividly; entering the castle, she did not find Lord Pent like the other ladies surely had, but rather the incomparable visage of his mother. Her own mother had made a little sound, though whether it was of pleasure or derision Louise had never remembered to ask, and led her away to find where their rooms would be. The next day, when Louise had first walked through the parted crowds to address Lord Pent for the first (and, she had thought privately, perhaps the last) time, she had been taken aback by the fact that Lord Pent shared his mother's beauty, that same wondrous coloring of hair and eyes that had made her almost ethereal; for a man, it had made him look gentle, though his throne was nothing short of imposing. He was a count; he was lovely; he was lonely. These things were all she knew of him--were these also the things that had caused her to speak so confidently?
No. She knew it had been herself. Only herself, and the nascent feelings she had held within her breast at that time. She could no more fully explain why she had spoken the way she had that day or the full crest of emotions she had experienced within that short time than she could explain why not one of the nineteen highborn ladies and all their exemplary feminine skills were able to secure themselves a husband that day.
The portrait of Countess Reglay was still beautiful, still fascinating to the eye, but now Louise could detect something cold in her amethyst-reflective eyes, something that mirrored the feeling that had wormed its way into Louise's own heart. This woman, who had bestowed upon her only child such gentle beauty, did not have a heart that reflected the goodness of her looks. That was all Louise could articulate to herself regarding what she now felt for the countess, having so little experience in espousing malicious thoughts towards others--it was a good thing Lord Pent did not take after his mother, the mother he had never truly known.
Her thoughts were uncomfortable for her; she turned around and walked away. There was an art gallery within the castle, Lord Pent had told her once, and she thought perhaps she might find an image of the last Count Reglay. She wanted to--no, she only wished for a look. Nothing more.
There were but a few points of illumination within the gallery, and innumerable portraits of the men who made up Lord Pent's ancestry. Only the very first of the Reglay lineage, Martell the adept, one of the few who stood beside their respective leaders during the Scouring, was depicted as a younger man, perhaps no older than Lord Pent himself right now, but of course it was impossible to see anything of Lord Pent in a man from a thousand years before. But to compare Lord Pent to his father, a rather grim, austere man whose only portrait bore the label 'Lord Klein, 27th Count of Reglay'...that was altogether more difficult. Louise studied the late Count Reglay's unsmiling face and remembered Lord Pent's half-smiles, she looked into stern, dark eyes and remembered light ones, she tried to substitute dark hair for hair the color of pale bluish-gray...
She left, unsettled and unable--unwilling--to admit the core reason of it.
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The next day found Louise no better than before, so under Celia's direction she found herself in her favorite place in all the castle: the kitchens.
As befitting a castle as large as Castle Reglay, there were multiple rooms in the kitchen section; one for baking bread alone, another for roasting various meats, others for frying and boiling. There was even a small pâtisserie for the preparation of cakes and biscuits for tea. Certain doors led outside to various kitchen gardens, where the scent of a hundred different spices and other aromatics vied for supremacy, bolstered by the summer breeze. Common vegetables, such as potatoes and turnips, were grown in nearby fields, as did fruits for all seasons--there was even an entire orchard of fruit trees, such as multiple types of apples and pears, peaches, oranges, apricots, and even pomegranates and quince, which had a whole team of workers wheeling out bushels of fruit to both castle and town. Being from Alloway, Louise could see that the castle was self-sufficient in a way that bespoke of the natural independence found in all people; not only self-sufficient, but also providing for its county to an extent that was not often seen by high-ranked nobility. It was not quite the same as Alloway, where her dear uncle the count was busy working to ensure that every family in his lands could provide for themselves rather than be forced to depend on his largesse to survive, but she could see that House Reglay cared deeply for its people like a father his children. Paternalism, as she had heard her mother call it, did have its benefits.
She did not like where that thought could lead her, and instead concentrated on decorating her tea cakes. Perhaps due to her fondness for all things concerning food, she had been taken under the wing of the castle's pâtissier, Monsieur Dumás, who had a long storied history of working at the castle, from caring for the chickens as a boy to becoming the head of all things to do with baking in his advanced age, and although he had not even a single hair on his head his hands were as steady and bold as Ellie's back at home. As he was also Etruscan, they delighted in each other's company initially to speak the language of their ancestors, though love for cooking only strengthened their growing bond. To her, he was like a kindly old grandfather in direct opposition to her maternal one, and if she could she would spend entire days in the pâtisserie with him learning how to make pies and choux pastries and brioche and all matter of cakes. Were she not a born lady of some importance, Louise imagined she could have worked very well at becoming a chef in her own right--she could even hunt!
"There we are, that's quite enough cream on top of that, wouldn't you say?" Monsieur Dumás' voice broke into her thoughts, and she looked down to find that her little tea cake was now suffocated by globs of cream, much to her dismay.
"Oh...and I wanted to put a strawberry on top for Celia," Louise moaned, pouting at the mess she had made. Celia had asked her to go make some pastries for them to share while Celia worked on some mending and alteration on Louise's dresses, and Louise had followed through if only to force herself not to think. But now, with a drowned cake to show for her efforts, she felt worse than before.
Monsieur Dumás patted her on the shoulder before taking the ruined cake away. "We still have some left for you to decorate. It's such a pleasure to have such a fine young lady interested in the art of pastry-making. I haven't been of much use since Countess Reglay was welcomed by our good saint into God's country."
Dreadful curiosity! It reared its head yet again, and compelled by such Louise could only ask, "Did you know her?"
"Ah! I knew her quite well!" the old pâtissier exclaimed as he reached for a pan of cooling tea cakes. "What a beautiful lady she was. Called away far too soon, I say. Without her, the castle's been staid and gloomy. Even our young count takes far too much after our old count for my liking. But you, little Lady Louise, you'll bring life to this place again, won't you?"
"...I do hope so," she answered, at once both pained by the mention that Lord Pent was like his...his father while obscurely pleased to be held in such high esteem by such a delightful man. "Would you tell me about her?"
Placing the pan before her, Monsieur Dumás leaned on the counter where they were working. "It was a little under twenty years ago when she first arrived--charming woman! Before her arrival, the mood was so bad. The old count's family had died from illness, even the two little girls, and we servants thought there would never be a good day in this castle again. But she came into our lives and suddenly Castle Reglay became even more glamorous than the White Palace! Parties of all sizes, nobility in and out the doors, but she guided it all like a queen in her own right." With the sparkle of reminiscence in his eye, he nodded at Louise. "Little Louise, you've seen her picture in the foyer, haven't you?"
She returned the nod with one of her own. "Yes. Lord Pent's mother was so beautiful...there must not have been a woman who could compare. It's no wonder she was chosen."
"Now, now, you've still time to grow into a magnificent woman yourself. Just give it another two or three years and your count won't be able to keep away from you!" At this compliment, no less magnificent than the woman he thought she would grow to become, Louise looked away, hiding both her smile as well as her flaming face. "See there, roses bloom on your cheeks where other girls would just become blotchy. But what was I saying? Countess Reglay wasn't just beautiful, but an accomplished artist in her own right. She could play the harp and sing and dance, but more than that she was a first-rate actress. She recited poetry like the silk workers weave. When she was alive, the arts blossomed in Reglay and she worked tirelessly to make it so."
Horrible thoughts darkened Louise's mood. "To work like that...she must have been away from her husband quite often." To that, Monsieur Dumás waved his hand, a frustrated look on his face.
"They were not close, true enough, but that should have never led to such awful rumors. A brilliant lady such as the Countess shouldn't have to hide behind her husband, bowing to him like a servant. Even the old count knew this, and he benefited so much from her skills that he had naught to complain about in the first place. They were simply two different people in two different spheres, and they each held their own quite well." He sighed. "I remembered when she succumbed, how you couldn't drag the old count away from her bedside. The young count was just a lad then, and they did their best to keep him from the worst of it. When the rumors flared up after her death, he had to be sent away for his own good."
"Lord Pent can't remember his mother," Louise murmured, confused and saddened in turns. What she was hearing put a different spin on things than what Lord Pent's nurse had informed her of, but just as her mother would always say, no issue was only one-sided.
Monsieur Dumás nodded, his expression grave. "It's well he can't. To see her in her final days would have been a desecration of the woman she had been in the few short years she had lived here. Better he know a picture of her true form."
She no longer could stand the difference between his words and the words of Madame Osanna. In a burst of frustration, Louise exclaimed, "What you say is too different from what Lord Pent's nurse told me! I can't understand it!"
"His nurse?"
"Madame Osanna," Louise clarified. To this, her good friend and teacher only raised one bushy white eyebrow.
"The young count's nurse was Madame Melanie. She died of consumption some time after he left to live with his viscount grandfather."
-0-
"That makes no sense," Celia said when Louise related the entire story to her later that day. "Why would this woman present herself in such a way? Why the lies, or were they all lies?"
"I don't know, but I intend to find out." So saying this, Louise hurried to Master Raike's office, knowing well that he could still be disgusted with her. For the sake of discovering the truth, she mustered enough determination to conquer her humiliation and anxiety.
It was necessary. She wanted nothing more than to write to Lord Pent without these fears in her heart, without feeling she had to play gatekeeper between him and the truth of him.
The steward was in his office when she entered, to which he raised his head and frowned at her. Shaking her head, she met his gaze as she said, "Please forgive my rudeness, but I have something I must discuss with you."
"I was just about to call on you, actually." He nodded to her. "But please, sit down and tell me what's wrong."
After doing one she proceeded to do the latter, omitting nothing--not even her own reactions and personal feelings. Her honesty earned her his mutable and ever-changing expressions, as first he listened without emotion, then his face began to develop reddish blotches as his frown deepened until, finally, she was done recounting it all. When it was clear she had finished, he began shaking his head. "So, we're infested."
"Infested?"
He exhaled loudly, less a sigh than a wordless exclamation of frustration and anxiety. "With spies."
She could not help herself; she sat up painfully straight, her hands all but glued together as she gripped them hard. "Spies? But why?"
"The other lords want to know what we're doing, and they want to change things to make it more favorable for them." The look he gave her was every bit as calculating as one of her mother's own stares, and just like those this one made her suddenly uneasy. "I think your presence is making someone or someones very nervous if they tried to feed you this tale."
"I don't understand. What were they trying to do?"
Folding his hands on top of his desk, Master Raike seemed to take on an indescribable quality, as if he were imbued with experience years beyond what his youthful looks implied. That strange look he was giving her had not yet departed, deepening her anxiety--what did he see when he looked at her in that way? "They wanted you to feel uneasy about your relationship with Lord Pent. If you were the sort of woman whose only interest was marrying a highborn nobleman, that little story would have frightened you into abandoning him since, after all, you would only care for the title. But, as everyone knows about your marriage promise to him, obviously you are not that type.
"You mentioned how it would make you feel to have to hide a secret of that magnitude from him. Indeed, you said that it wouldn't be possible for you. I think someone was counting on that, that your honesty would force you to tell Lord Pent this thing. As I'm sure you know, he's quite ambivalent about his family, and is a fairly private person anyway. Your unearthing this secret and revealing it to him would unnerve him, perhaps enough to cause him harm during his campaign. More to the point, he would definitely ask you to return home, and that act would rend holes into your relationship with him."
Louise had to look away, so overwhelmed as she was with this idea he had put into her head, this cruel plan someone had developed to ruin what she had with Lord Pent, still altogether both new and fragile. Though she was sure they had friendship and trust, they also had the distance of a country and a body of water between them, and anything could happen between the two weeks of a letter and its reply. "They wished to isolate Lord Pent," she spoke aloud, and an intense shock jolted her body when she realized how true it was.
Then, just a little bit, she began to grow angry.
Master Raike nodded. "I'm not sure what's going on between the other lords. I'm sure they've split off into their own factions to support whoever has the strongest claims, which means they're too busy fighting each other to do something as drastic as stop paying taxes or involve either the king or the archbishop, but the truth remains that your continued presence in Reglay is frustrating them. After all, you have a weak but intact relation to the king himself, and your grandfather is a well-respected duke. They're not sure what you can do, and some would rather just have you gone completely." Reaching for a letter on his desk, he said, "This brings me to what I had to discuss with you. You've been invited to tea with Viscount Battam's daughters."
She looked at him, unsure now of how to react. "Viscount Battam? Is he one of the ones who has control over the silk industry?"
"Yes, and other textiles. But don't assume this is going to be a friendly meeting. He has a claim through his grandmother marrying Lord Pent's great-granduncle, so I'm sure he's leading his own faction." He unfolded his hands and laid them flat on the desk, his cheeks tinted red as his jaw tightened. "They're not going to be your friends, Lady Louise. At all costs don't ever let yourself believe it. They may lie and say that House Reglay is poisonous to the future of this county because of this scandal, but we both know that Lord Pent is a better man than they could ever be. As you can see, we can expect all sorts of tricks. Spies and imprisonment are going to be the least of them."
"I understand," she said, the anger from before returning. "I thought they would be courteous, as befitting their rank, but now I see I was wrong. I won't tolerate anyone who tries to hurt Lord Pent, especially when they try to do it through me. And, I won't give you cause to regret requesting my help. You shouldn't...you should never have had to bear seeing your wife jailed and chained."
His expression flickered, but then it showed resolve, such that she thought was mirrored in her own expression. "Thank you, Lady Louise."
Louise only nodded, newfound determination surging through her. She would not fail. For Lord Pent's sake, she would not fail.
For her own sake, she would not fail.
-end-
Not much to say this time, other than that it was a good idea for me to delay this story a week considering my hectic work and school schedule these days. This is the first full-bodied story of the second half of this serial, so I truly hope you enjoyed this part. Thank you for reading! The next story will be posted on 3/22.
The title: In American legalese, the term 'fruit of the poison tree' is about evidence illegally obtained during police investigation, usually through improperly following procedure. Any fan of Law & Order's various offshoots knows that much! As soon as I thought about the phrase, my mind refused any other title for this story, leading to...a different meaning altogether.
Licoresse: Old French for liquorice/licorice. It sounds obvious, I know. An expectorant is for colds, something that clears mucus.
Lady Slyphine Martel, Countess Reglay: Bouquet, the story where even the dead people are complicated. Is it just me, or isn't it interesting how the idea of how the myth around a single person can become incredibly conflicting and complex once they're dead because they no longer have the ability to control the information about them? I often wonder about the difference between history as we know it, and the truth of the times and people. But I guess this is sort of a weird thing to be discussing in a romance story, huh?