Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(99)
He closed the distance between us and wrapped me in his arms, and I could not speak.
“I was terrified you would not return,” he mumbled into my hair. “Will you go away again? Please say no.”
I touched his face, which I realized was wet. I drew back to look at him.
“I will not,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
He only pulled me to him again, gripping me so tightly I suspected he did not believe me. Someone started strumming a harp, some romantic ballad, but was almost immediately shushed by at least a dozen voices. I wanted to suggest we continue the conversation in private, but naturally, none of the other protagonists in our impromptu stage drama paid any heed to the innumerable eyes upon them.
Arna, at my side, fidgeted with impatience. “Your wife is not the only one come with apologies, Your Highness.” She went down on one knee, bowing her head low. “I surrender myself to your judgment. I am cured of my desire for a throne—indeed, for anything that is not the humblest mode of existence, as nothing could please me more than the sunlight upon my skin or the birdsong in these trees.”
Wendell drew back, swiping his sleeve over his eyes, and squinted at her irritably, as if she were another self-important musician inserting herself where she wasn’t needed.
“How in God’s name did you get her out?” he said, looking at me with such bafflement that it teetered on the edge of amusement.
“You don’t wish to know why first?” I said, unable to stop smiling. It seemed highly inappropriate, given the circumstances. Yet Wendell was gazing at me with such an expression of delight, awe, and relief, and showing not the slightest indication of flying into one of his fits of temper, nor any evidence that such a tendency could exist in one so light of heart, that I almost wished to laugh.
“Oh, I know why,” he said. “Some scholarly tome told you that you must rescue her, did it not? And so you have trusted in that, rather than the evidence of your own eyes, which proved my stepmother deserving of every punishment a mind could invent.”
“You accuse me of illogic!” I said. “I expected to return to find you very angry with me.”
He barely seemed to hear. He looked from me to Arna, and I did see a flash of temper in his gaze then—but only a flash. “You have risked your life for her. Haven’t you?”
“Ah,” I began nervously. “Somewhat, I suppose.”
“Somewhat,” he repeated. “Somewhat, Em!”
“I had every confidence in my abilities!” I protested, and I told him how it had come about: my research, the journey to the mountain, Poe, the Hidden king’s assistance. When I came to his role Wendell looked so faint it seemed briefly possible that he might pass out. When I told him how Shadow and I had travelled through the Veil, he stood in complete silence for a long moment, staring at me. Then, abruptly, he pulled me into his arms again.
“You must allow your stepmother to live,” I said. I was about to launch into my reasoning, for I still had my speech to finish, but he forestalled me.
“Yes, obviously,” he said, pulling back to draw a handkerchief from his pocket and blow his nose.
“Obviously?” I said, puzzled and a little flustered.
He finished blowing and waved a hand, tucking the handkerchief away. “Good Lord, Emily! You think I would risk you doing something like that again? Name your demands and they shall be met.”
“I—” I stopped, feeling oddly put out that I could not deliver my speech as I’d intended. “I have only the one.”
He studied me. “All the time you were away I spent worrying that you were unhappy here.”
“What?” I said.
“Well, I could think of no other reason why you would leave me for so long. Please put my mind at ease. Are you?”
“Am I what?” I was beginning to feel as if the conversation were a wayward wind blowing me off course. We were supposed to be speaking of his stepmother! She stood not a yard from me; I could tell that she, too, had expected to occupy the bulk of Wendell’s attention, and was displeased to find that this was not so.
“Are you unhappy here?” he persisted. “I have made a number of improvements, such as hiring additional bookbinders—and I realize that I have neglected that all-important room, the library. Now, I will not use the word theft, as it is entirely inaccurate in this case, but if we were to borrow the contents of the dryadology library at Cambridge and make copies—”
“I am not unhappy!” I interrupted. To my surprise, I found myself laughing a little—he looked so dreadfully earnest.
He seemed relieved and glanced at his stepmother with more contempt than hostility. I hadn’t thought it would be easy to convince him, and in truth, it hadn’t been, but now that he had given way to me, he seemed almost to have forgotten why he’d been so adamant before about killing her. Leaves rustled overhead and I glanced up; to my dismay I found the boughs above us crowded with Folk, the largest number being brownies, black eyes glistening, but also some courtly fae less cognizant of their dignity, adolescents in the main.
“You should not forgive me so easily,” I said. “At least not without an explanation.”
I launched back into my speech, offering evidence to support my certainty that his decision to punish his stepmother would come back to haunt him, relying on my extensive knowledge of story patterns, as well as the discoveries regarding the Macan tale I had made at the cottage. I broke off when I saw that he was regarding me with a look of pure exasperation.