To be honest, none of the prepared foods were very good. The snails were overcooked, the egg butter was oversalted, and the cook put anise in things that did not in any way require anise. Wren liked anise as much as the next person, but there were limits. A little fennel would work much better here, without turning everything into a weird licorice-flavored endurance test.
Oh, well. Much as Wren might like to break into the fortress kitchens and demand to know what personal trauma the cook was excising through spices, their mission would probably suffer. She moved on to safer choices. The little rolls of meat were fairly inoffensive, along with slivers of cheese. It wasn’t exactly a meal, but if you grazed throughout the day, it kept your stomach from growling too loudly.
She took her food over to the window. The view was spectacular, but more importantly, the sill was nearly a foot deep, which meant that she couldn’t see down, merely out. Distant hills didn’t bother her. It was the distant ground that got her into trouble.
This view might have been worth a little queasiness even so. She could see the long curve of the river and the fields that spread across the hills. It looked green and prosperous and well-maintained.
The Prince of—whoever the hell the Prince was, the one who owned the fortress, Wren had already forgotten his name—clearly cared for his tiny kingdom. She approved of that.
She nibbled at a bit of cheese. The cheese, at least, was excellent. Wren approved of good cheese. She could have done great things with this cheese, given an adequate kitchen. Not that she often had one of those. The Saint’s chosen spent a lot more time around battlefields than bread ovens.
Wren had given up on cooking for years. Even now, when she could sometimes convince the Temple staff to let her use a corner of the kitchen, she always felt bad about disrupting the cook’s carefully orchestrated chaos.
“What are you looking at?” asked a familiar voice, breaking into her thoughts.
Wren turned, feeling a helpless smile spread across her face. “It’s you!” she said, and then cursed herself immediately for her lack of courtly manners.
Her savior from the punchbowl didn’t seem to mind. “It is indeed,” he said, with a little half-bow.
“And Lady Wren.”
“Forgive me,” she said. “I’m afraid you didn’t tell me your name before, when you came to my rescue.”
He smiled, his eyes crinkling up at the corners. “Ian.”
“Lord Ian?”
He shook his head. “Merely Ian. I fear that there are several cousins and at least one brother in the way before I become so much as a minor noble. And since I quite like my cousins, I’m in no rush to ascend.” He leaned against the windowsill beside her, smile still playing around his lips. “But you haven’t answered my question.”
“I haven’t?”
Ian gestured to the window. “What are you looking at, with such an intent expression on your face?”
Wren swallowed. He’d been paying attention to her expression? She hoped that she hadn’t been scowling or chewing on her lower lip, a habit which her mother had always chided her about, saying it made her look like a sheep chewing its cud. “The landscape,” she admitted. “It’s such an extraordinary view. I could look at it for hours.” And a good thing, too, since nobody wants to talk to me.
He studied her face, oddly intent. “Is that so?”
Belatedly, Wren remembered that anyone familiar with the Court of Smoke had probably seen the view so many times that it no longer registered. She smiled sheepishly. “I know, I know, it is terribly unfashionable to admit to being impressed with the view. Probably anyone who is anyone has seen much better. But I still like it, anyway.”
Ian shook his head. “No, no,” he said. “Never admit that you have been caught being
unfashionable. And never apologize for enjoying something.” He leaned his elbows against the broad windowsill and gazed out at it himself. “It is beautiful. My home, I fear, is rather flat.”
“Mine’s all hills,” said Wren, turning to look out the window again and wondering when she could steal another glance at his face without being too obvious. Now? No, too soon. Wait until he says something else.
He did not say anything else, not for several minutes. When Wren finally gave up and glanced toward him, his eyes caught hers and held them.
“Is there a husband waiting for you, back in those hills?” he asked softly.
Wren’s pulse, which stayed steady even when she was trying to put an axe in someone’s brain, jumped. “I…err…no,” she stammered. Did he mean that like it sounded?
Really, though, is there any other way he could have meant that?
She couldn’t think of one, so she swallowed around a dry throat and asked, “Is there a wife waiting for you, back in your land?”
Ian shook his head, his smile turning wry. “Astonishingly, there is not much market for penniless younger sons without even a courtesy title.” He turned back to the window. “But enough of such self-pity. Tell me about your hill country. Is it steeper than this?”
“No,” Wren said, “it’s more rolling. The mountains are a long way away…” To her mild astonishment, she found herself telling him all about Sedgemoor, about the cold dry winters and the hot green color of the hills in spring and the capricious rivers that were so violently contested by the people who depended on them.
And he listened, that was the wonder of it. He listened and nodded and asked intelligent questions and she didn’t feel as if she was boring him to tears.
“My…err…friend is holding a gathering to sample perfumes in two nights,” she said finally. （Was she supposed to call Marguerite her friend? She couldn’t remember.） “You should come! I’m sure I can arrange an invitation.”
Ian put a hand over his heart in apparent anguish. “Two nights hence? Alas. I am slated to dance attendance on my aging mother that evening.” He gave her a hangdog look. “Believe me, I would far rather be sampling perfumes in pleasant company.”
Wren swallowed. I almost believe him. But maybe that was just a polite excuse? She dropped her eyes. Have I been nattering on to him, but he’s too polite to leave?
“When may I see you again?” Ian asked. “If not over perfumes?”
Her heart leapt. She knew that the accepted thing for a lady to do would be to say something flirtatious but noncommittal. She wracked her brain for something flirtatious, but all she could think of was Istvhan, who would probably have said, “Here’s my room number, I’ll be there all night.” Istvhan did not do noncommittal.
Instead she said, “When would you like to?” and felt her heart leap again when he smiled.
TWENTY-FOUR
IT HAD TAKEN Marguerite an entire week to set up the perfume sampling, and now that it had arrived, it was going better than it should have.
People streamed in, chattering. They chattered to each other, they sniffed samples from tiny, cut-glass bottles, they chattered about the samples. They drank wine and chattered about the wine. They sniffed more, they chattered more. The room filled up with sweet scents and gossip and Marguerite circulated through it, smiling warmly, listening hard, and watching people watch other people.