“Yes.”
“It was as if she wanted you to pay attention to Lady Magdalen and not to her, but I can’t think why, unless she is very meek and timid, but she was not timid when she answered your questions that first day.”
Reinhart tried to reconcile how her behavior had gradually changed. “Perhaps she simply does not like me.”
“Then why would she want her friend to like you? Or you to like her friend? Did you not notice how she always tried to paint her friend in a positive light and herself as uninteresting? No, it isn’t that.” Odette sighed.
Jorgen said, “Perhaps she loves her friend so much, she wants her to marry you.”
“But she’s only known this young woman since she arrived here. No, it cannot be that, exactly.”
Reinhart forced the scowl from his face. He hadn’t known the girl long enough to care so much whether she liked him or disliked him, surely. He had believed her when she told him the rumor of her being in love with her father’s knight was false, but it was possible she was lying.
“Either way,” Odette said, “they both seem quite good-hearted. I should be very surprised if you do not choose one or the other of them.”
Reinhart still had time to make up his mind. Besides, he didn’t expect to fall in love with anyone, simply to make the best choice from the list of ladies the king had given him.
“How is Endlein?” Reinhart asked. “Is she calmer than she was at the ball?”
“She was calm when she made it back to her chamber and back to more familiar surroundings,” Odette said. “I think all the strange people upset her. She seems better now.”
Jorgen began telling him what he and Odette had observed and recorded the night of the ball. The people who stood out—the ones who always stood out—were Dorothea, Magdalen, and Fronicka.
His frustration rose as he thought of marrying someone he was not sure about, someone whose character turned out to be disappointing. But if all went as planned, that would not happen.
13
AVELINA AND MAGDALEN made their way down to the Great Hall that evening, since all the margrave’s guests were invited to play games: chess, backgammon, and Nine Men’s Morris.
Upon their arrival, the only people in the Great Hall were Fronicka and the two other ladies who were by her side everywhere she went—Otilia and Beatrix.
Fronicka lifted her head and smiled, showing a row of white teeth.
Magdalen gripped Avelina’s arm a little tighter.
“Lady Dorothea and Lady Magdalen.” Fronicka’s smile grew even wider. “Come here.”
Avelina hesitated, but she and Magdalen slowly made their way over to them.
Fronicka widened her eyes. “Tell us, how was your picnic with Lord Thornbeck? Were you frightened?”
“Why would we be frightened?” Magdalen asked.
The hair rose on the back of Avelina’s neck.
Fronicka leaned toward them, as if to impart a secret. “Some people say,” she whispered, “that Lord Thornbeck killed his brother in that mysterious fire in the west wing so he could be margrave. And that woman who wandered into the ballroom last night, calling for Annlin? She is the mother of his brother’s lover. She went mad when the fire killed her daughter along with the previous margrave.”
Avelina could not resist asking, “Then why would Lord Thornbeck keep her here if he killed her daughter?”
Fronicka raised her brows with a superior air. “For his guilty conscience’s sake, or perhaps to make himself look innocent. I know not. I only know what the servants tell my servant. She always finds out truths about people that no one else knows.”
“Like what you told Lord Thornbeck about me?” Avelina raised her own brows as she looked Fronicka in the eye.
“Are you accusing me?” Fronicka placed a hand over her chest.
“You should not gossip about people. Whatever you heard, it’s not true about me.”
Fronicka erased the shocked innocence from her expression and narrowed her eyes. “Is that so? Why do you hide the truth, Lady Dorothea? Do you hope Lord Thornbeck will marry you and will think the child is his?” Otilia and Beatrix looked shocked, then laughed, half covering their grins with their hands.
Magdalen tugged on her arm to pull her away.
“One thing is sure,” Avelina shot back. “He is too wise to marry you.”
Magdalen tugged harder and Avelina took a couple of steps back.
Fronicka turned her twisted glare into a haughty look. “I was only trying to warn you, to tell you what I had learned. Your own servant was too drunk last night to learn anything of any use to you.”