And he told Mienthe he was sorry to hear about her loss and asked whether she liked living in Tiefenauer with Uncle Talenes.
The question froze Mienthe in her seat. She could not answer truthfully, but she had not expected her lord cousin to speak to her at all and was too confused to lie. The silence that stretched out was horribly uncomfortable.
Then Uncle Talenes sharply assured Lord Bertaud that of course Mienthe was perfectly happy, didn’t he provide everything she needed? She was great friends with his son Terre; the two would assuredly wed in two years, as soon as Mienthe was old enough. Terre glanced sidelong at his father’s face, swallowed, and tried to sound enthusiastic as he agreed. Karre leaned his elbow on the table and grinned at his brother. Aunt Eren scolded Mienthe for her discourtesy in failing to answer her lord cousin’s question.
“I am happy,” Mienthe whispered dutifully, but something made her add, risking a quick glance up at her lord cousin, “Only sometimes I miss Tef.”
“Who is Tef?” Lord Bertaud asked her gently.
Mienthe flinched under Aunt Eren’s cold glare and opened her mouth, but she did not know how to answer this question and in the end only looked helplessly at Lord Bertaud. Tef was Tef; it seemed impossible to explain him.
“Who is Tef?” Lord Bertaud asked Uncle Talenes.
Uncle Talenes shook his head, baffled. “A childhood friend?” he guessed.
Mienthe stared down at her plate and wished passionately that she was free to run out to the courtyard and hide under the great oaks. Then Uncle Talenes began to talk about tariffs and trade again, and the discomfort was covered over. But to Mienthe the rest of the meal seemed to last for hours and hours, even though in fact her lord cousin departed the house long before dusk.
Once he was gone, Aunt Eren scolded Mienthe again for clumsiness and discourtesy—Any well-bred girl should be able to respond gracefully to a simple question, and why ever had Mienthe thought Lord Bertaud would want to hear about some little friend from years past? Anyone would have thought Mienthe had no sense of gratitude for anything Talenes had done for her, and no one liked an ungrateful child. Look up, Mienthe, and say, “Yes, Aunt Eren,” properly. She was much too old to sulk like a spoiled toddler, and Aunt Eren wouldn’t have it.
Mienthe said Yes, Aunt Eren, and No, Aunt Eren, and looked up when she was bidden to, and down when she could, and at last her aunt allowed her to escape to the courtyard. Mienthe tucked herself up next to the largest of the oaks and wished desperately for Tef. Speaking his name to her cousin had made her remember him too clearly.
Six days after Lord Bertaud’s visit, not long after dawn, a four-horse coach with the king’s badge in gold scrollwork on one door and the Delta’s in silver on the other arrived at the house unannounced. It swished around the drive and pulled up by the front entrance. The driver, a grim-looking older man with the king’s badge on his shoulder, set the brake, leaped down from his high seat, opened the coach door, and placed a step so his passenger could step down.
The man who descended from the coach, Mienthe saw, did not fit the image implied by its elegance. He looked to be a soldier or a guardsman, not a nobleman. By his bearing, he was well enough bred, but no one extraordinary. But he wore the king’s badge on one shoulder and the Delta’s on the other. Mienthe did not move from the window seat of her room. She was curious about the visitor, but not enough to put herself in her uncle’s way.
She was surprised when Karre put his head through her door a moment later and said, “Father wants you. In his study. Hurry up, can’t you?”
Mienthe stared after Karre when he had vanished. Her heart sank, for whatever Uncle Talenes wanted, she already knew she would not be able to do it, or at least would not be able to do it properly, or would not want to do it. Probably he wanted to show her off to the visitor. Mienthe knew she would look stiff and slow and that Uncle Talenes would regretfully tell his visitor that she was not very clever. But Karre called impatiently from out in the hall, so she reluctantly got to her feet.
She was not surprised to find the visitor with Uncle Talenes when she came into the study, but she was surprised at Uncle Talenes’s expression and manner. Her uncle liked to show her to his friends and talk about what he would do with her father’s estate when she married Terre, but this time he did not look like he had brought her in to show her off. He looked angry, but stifled, as though he was afraid to show his anger too clearly.
In contrast, the visitor looked… not quite oblivious of Uncle Talenes’s anger, Mienthe thought. No, he looked like he knew Uncle Talenes was angry, but also like he did not mind his anger in the least. Mienthe admired him at once: She never felt anything but afraid and ashamed when Uncle Talenes was angry with her.