Signs Of Love

Bishe shook her head.

“I am sorry. Lord Elrod ordered every one of the returned letters burnt.”

“…”

“He said that even if Your Grace should come back one day, there would be words needed for that day when it came, so I was not to cling to the old ones.”

That was his brother all over, a man who never looked back. Nettled by the coolness of it, Keith let a snort of laughter slip and muttered,

“And not because he’d have been embarrassed at my reading them over again?”

“Honestly, I think that as well.”

“A right hand beyond reproach. Had I been you, I’d have spirited a few of them away.”

He fished, keeping it light enough to pass for a joke, but Bishe did not budge an inch.

“And what would I do with a handful of pilfered letters?”

“Mm. Blackmail?”

“It won’t do to tease an old woman.”

Bishe let out a puff of air, like something quietly deflating, and gave her head a short shake. She met Keith’s eyes with a gaze that dripped with fondness.

“…You have changed.”

“So I have. Seven whole years have gone by.”

“That is not what I mean. I mean since you went to Jurgia with that woman.”

The point was so unexpected that Keith’s mouth fell blankly open.

Changed?

He had spent no more than a week down south. Quite apart from the fact that he did like Pai, a pointless streak of contrariness rose in him.

“It will not have happened in a week. It will have been seven-odd years of changing slowly. And it isn’t as though you and I sat together long before I left for Jurgia, so it is an easy mistake to make.”

“I wonder.”

Evening was drawing on, and the sky laid its orange light thick across the stone floor. A warmth hung about Bishe’s monocle and about the side of her face as well. Was that why? Her faint smile felt as tender as his mother’s had.

“Your Grace meant, at first, to decline Lord Elrod’s last wish.”

“…”

“I wanted to hold on to you, but I knew that was what you would do. Your Grace left the White Castle for a reason, and had made a life for yourself on new ground. And then you came back from the south and reversed the decision.”

“…”

Keith opened his mouth and shut it again. He had meant to counter with something about Ardine, but Bishe’s eyes wore a look that said, ‘I know what you are about to say.’

“Of course seeing Lady Ardine will have shaken your heart. Is she not perfectly lovely?”

“…Mm. She is lovely.”

A smile came before he knew it, and with it a sigh light as a feather. Cheeks round as risen bread, and a mouth pursed primly shut. But the moment she found something interesting, those clever eyes went bright, her mouth dropped open, and off she went at a scamper.

“You spent time with the young lady, who has shot up into a proper child now, and I dare say a sense of responsibility welled up in you. And when a man is torn like that, if there is someone at his back to push, he may well make a new choice.”

“…”

“Was Viscountess Deluosa that someone?”

Keith ran a sidelong glance over her, trying to take the measure of what lay behind the question. The woman who stood as straight as a silver candlestick had put her cool, clear face back on, as though the smile had been a lie.

So this is what she meant to get at from the first.

He had thought it would be hard to get a lie past Bishe. Enri would believe whatever he said without picking it apart, and Kalada had her misgivings, but he had reckoned he could win her over somehow. Bishe, though, was not a person who let a thing pass loosely just because Keith had said it. That was exactly why he trusted her utterly and yet could never be wholly at ease with her.

In the end she was Virginia Paragon’s. The affection she showed Keith had only ever been possible in the shadow of that woman, Virginia.

“Yes. Ardine took to her well, and I could feel that she cherished the child too. I thought I could put the young lady into her hands and rest easy.”

He shifted the subject on the sly. Bishe’s eyes narrowed, the eyes of someone picking exactly the thread she wanted out of a tangled skein.

“Which came first? Your heart being taken by Viscountess Deluosa? Or her pressing Your Grace to accept the seat of Regent Duke?”

“You don’t trust her. Is it because she hid that she was a viscountess and went to work as a maid?”

Through her contract with Keith, Pai had come by a title she had never held. The point of it was to guarantee her standing, but to the people of the White Castle it would look as though she had hidden where she came from.

But Bishe shook her head.

“There is nothing remarkable in the daughter of a poor and undistinguished noble house hiding her station and taking work as a maid. Besides, she did not know Lord Elrod’s will. Excepting the estate steward, every soul in that place was in the dark.”

Not even the man named Regent Duke had known. Elrod’s will had been kept an absolute secret.

“So I do not doubt her intentions. She truly came into the White Castle as a maid because she was short of money, she caught Your Grace’s eye, and so mended her fortunes. Such stories are exceedingly rare, but they are not unheard of.”

“What is it you want to say, Bishe.”

Bishe’s speech was economical. She raised only what actually needed raising.

Wait.

A thought grazed the back of Keith’s mind. Even as he clenched his back teeth, Bishe opened her mouth, quiet and careful.

“Yes. It is Your Grace’s intentions that I doubt.”

“…”

“Love, of all things, Your Grace.”

Bishe raised her voice like a woman who had seen an ember bloom under water.

“Who is going to be taken in by so bald a lie?”

Enri was, though. Keith clamped down hard on the urge to say so.

“For what reason on earth do you keep that woman at your side? I know the young lady took to her. She slipped out of her room in secret every day to spend time with her, after all.”

“You… knew about that?”

“Had I not known, I should be unfit to be housekeeper.”

“…”

Had Pai known that Bishe knew? His thoughts leaned toward yes, she surely had.

Yes. She, of all people, could not have failed to know.

If she and Bishe had an unspoken understanding, then the young lady’s escapes were not, in fact, escapes at all. She had not told him so. Seen in an unkind light, it could be picked at as something devious.

“…”

The reason he kept a mysterious woman at his side.

Several reasons offered themselves, but only one had made him announce them as lovers and hand her the room beside his bedchamber: she could stop that wretched ‘sleeping habit’ of his.

Bishe did not know about his sleepwalking.

Ought I to tell Bishe as well?

The roots of the illness ran too deep for that. Strictly speaking Bishe was not a Paragon, but she was no different from one; she had kept the White Castle longer than he had. And Keith had no wish to give a Paragon so much as a thread’s end of his dark secret.

“It isn’t a lie.”

So there was only one way. Deny it flat, to the last. If he pushed the innocent act hard enough, Bishe would in the end at least ‘pretend’ to be taken in. That would do.

“I love her, truly.”

“Your Grace.”

“I fell for her at first sight.”

“Young master.”

The form of address had changed, and Keith Paragon took no notice.

“I had never felt anything of the kind before. It was truly… strange.”

“…”

“Have you by chance heard of the notion of reincarnation? To bring one life to a close and be born anew — that is what they call reincarnation, I gather.”

“I have heard there is a religion on the Eastern Continent that believes in it.”

“The pull I felt was strong enough that I wondered whether I had met her in a previous life. Love, Bishe. You are right that I do not know much about it. That does not mean I hold any great illusions about it, either.”

“…”

“There were signs I take to be love.”

“What sort…”

“That my heart pounds when our eyes meet.”

“…”

“That merely calling her to mind brings a smile of its own accord. That the moment I have wished her good night and turned away, I want to see her again.”

“…”

“Is that not enough to be called love?”