The Queen's Librarian (11 page)

“O
HHHHH
,”
said Laurie as they arrived at the great red bridge that spanned the river and marked the boundary of the village. “
Red
Bridge.
I
see.” He grinned then took in the incredulous stares of Lucas and Alex. “…What?”

Lucas only shook his head and turned to Alex. “I can see the mill wheel from here. I say we start there.”

Alex reached out and took hold of Saffron’s reins. “You absolutely are not showing up at Slade’s—if this is indeed where we’ll find him—on a Sun’s Day and at nearly sunset. They’ll be sitting down to supper, and if your mother gets wind of it, she’ll be scandalized and you’ll never hear the end of it.”

“I’m never going to hear the end of it now!”

“If we find him and fix it, it’ll be forgotten by the time the handfasting rolls around; you’ll see.”

“If they’re just sitting down to supper,” Laurie piped in, “maybe they’ll invite us to sit down with them.”

“Laurie.” Lucas shut his eyes and took off his spectacles to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “We are not here for social calls. We are here to accuse Slade of reneging on a verbal contract to marry my sister.” He opened his eyes, replaced the spectacles, and glared. “Do you honestly think they’ll be of a mind to feed us?”

“But I’m hungry. And a prince. Don’t they sort of… y’know,
have
to feed me?”

Lucas stared. And then he turned to Alex. Who was also staring. Lucas shook his head. “It’s like there’s an actual thought process in there that gets mugged for every last bit of common sense it has in its pockets.”

“There’ll be an inn,” Alex said distractedly, still staring at Laurie, who merely blinked at them both through the falling gloom. Alex shook himself then let go of the reins of Lucas’s horse. “Let’s go find it, shall we?”

The ground was dry here, Lucas noted with the eye of someone who hadn’t seen much of it lately. Some of the crops in the fields they’d passed sat on rather stunted stalks and others were yellowing in their beds. They’d still get a decent harvest out of it, but a little more rain would have made a goodly difference in the yield. Funny, the way these things worked, he thought with a depressed little sigh—Red Bridge and the whole of Hunt’s Run were apparently lacking for a little rain, and Orchard Downs had far more than what was good for it.

The red bridge was quite lovely and picturesque, and very well-maintained, Lucas noted as they crossed it. Much bigger than he’d suspected, but then, until Declan Slade had come along, Red Bridge had been more of a
yes, I think I’ve heard of it
than an actual place in Lucas’s world. Lucas didn’t get out of Orchard Downs very often—all right, four times in his life—and he’d only seen the river before in the sense that one of its tributaries made up the boundary between Hunt’s Run and Rolling Green and fed into the lake near the Stone Circle where Lucas and Parry used to go to fish when they were boys. Back before Parry turned into a wanker. And back before Lucas’s mother had made the connection between
water
and
tragic drowning accident waiting to happen
.

The village was small and sedate and very pleasant. There were very few people about, what with the hour, but Lucas now and then noted curious stares coming from gaps in shutters over warmly lit windows. Laurie waved at them—the absent kind, arm bent at the elbow and wrist turning just so, as if he was rearguard in a royal procession. Lucas wondered if perhaps Laurie was of the opinion that any party of which he happened to be a member was, in fact, a royal procession. Lucas merely rolled his eyes and looked for an inn.

It was easy to find: lit up with bright lamps at its doors, and one over the sign on a post proclaiming it the Golden Miller. A stout young woman took charge of the horses and directed Lucas’s little party to her father inside, who lifted an eyebrow at the extravagance of two rooms for three people, but Alex was very firm—though politely and quietly so—that, after having spent the day with Laurie, he was not about to spend the night with him too.

“You just
know
he must blather in his sleep as much as he blathers all day, and people spill the damnedest truths in their sleep. There are some things I really don’t want to know.”

Considering that Laurie had spent more than a few nights on the couch in Lucas’s carriage house, Lucas knew for a fact that Laurie didn’t talk in his sleep. Lucas, however, kept that bit of enlightenment to himself. He’d rather gotten over his snit of this morning, but had yet to get over the sexy flash of Alex’s eyes, and a private room shared only with Alex—and for which Alex was paying—sounded quite good to Lucas.

Lucas did, however, have cause to know that Alex snored. Alex refused to believe it.

“Why do I have to pay for a room of my own when I don’t necessarily
want
a room of my own?” Laurie groused as he dug into various pockets and came up with rolls of notes and handfuls of coins. “Seven tepins for the room, and that’ll only leave me….” He smoothed out the notes into one wad and squinted at the mound of coins. “A hundred and sixty three notifs and twelve tepins.” And even though it was probably enough to keep Rolling Green going for an entire month, Laurie’s shoulders drooped. “I’ll
never
make it to next allowance.”

Lucas’s teeth were clenched, so his “When is next allowance?” came out rather low and gravelly.

“Lucas,” Alex sighed, “you’re just asking for it now.”

Laurie didn’t notice. “Not ’til Mid’s Day!” he told Lucas, aggrieved. “In
four whole days
!”

Lucas peered very calmly—he thought—at Alex. “I’m going to have to kill him. He’s giving me no choice. And no court in the land will convict me. Not even his mother.”

“That one was your own fault,” Alex chided and signed the register for the room, pointedly shifting the ledger over to Laurie when he was through. Alex smiled brightly at the innkeeper and stuck out his hand. “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Rhys Hensley,” the man told him and shook with Alex then Lucas. Laurie was still brooding over the register.

“So Mister Hensley,” Lucas said, “do you know the Slades?”

“Slades?” Hensley frowned. “I know of Mister Kolton Slade. He owns the mill.” He gestured vaguely at the door and, presumably, the mill that sat downriver and at the eastern end of the village.

“And his wife, Adela?” Lucas pressed, surreptitiously swatting at Laurie as Laurie tugged at Lucas’s sleeve and muttered something at him while he pointed at the window behind Mister Hensley’s desk. “His nephew, Declan Slade?

Hensley’s bushy brown eyebrows slid up his shiny high forehead. “If there’s a wife or nephew, I don’t know of them,” he told Lucas, turning his mouth up bemusedly as Laurie tugged at Lucas hard enough to make his glasses skew to the side.

“
Lucas
,” Laurie hissed.

Lucas jerked his sleeve from Laurie’s grip with a subtle growl and a not so subtle glare. “I saw lots of good places to hide a body on the way here,” he hissed back then elbowed Laurie in the ribs and smiled at Mister Hensley.

Mister Hensley smiled back, though his eyebrows were still riding rather high. “Mister Slade hasn’t actually lived in Red Bridge for years,” he went on, “and there was no wife I knew of back then, but that’s not to say he hasn’t found himself one since. Though I doubt it. Not one for the ladies, him, and I don’t think his partner would apprec—”

“Then who runs the mill?” Alex asked.

Mister Hensley shrugged. “Mister Owen. Or rather I should say Mister Owen’s brother and his sons, since Mister Owen is more often traveling back and forth to Cantula to visit Mister Slade. Mister Owen is Mister Slade’s partner, you see. That’s what I was trying to tell you. And by partner, I mean—”

“Yes, yes, I get your meaning,” Alex cut in, frowning and leaning in to prop himself up on Mister Hensley’s desk. “So Mister Owen is Mister Slade’s partner in both the business and personal senses, and Mister Slade has no other family you know of? No young man claiming to be a nephew who came from Ashwater to help run the mill this past summer?”

“I doubt they need more nephews about the place. And I’m quite certain they need no more help. Mister Owen’s brother remarked last time he came to town that he was going to have to start subletting his sons if his wife didn’t stop birthing them.” He grinned and shook his head. “Twelve sons and only one daughter, poor thing. And now his two eldest have wives and sons of their own.”

Lucas abstractly wondered if Mister Owen’s brother was aware that if he wanted his wife to stop birthing children, he should probably stop siring them.

“So you’re telling me,” Lucas said slowly, still whacking at Laurie, who was still yanking at Lucas’s coat sleeve hard enough to make him worry for the seams, “that in the whole of Red Bridge, there exists only one Slade. And he doesn’t actually live here.”

“
Lucas
!” Laurie snapped, and he yanked so hard Lucas went over to the side. Which might not have been
too
painful or embarrassing, if Lucas hadn’t flailed out to grab at the desk and instead of a solid fall-saving handhold, planted his palm firmly on a small pile of loose papers. The papers slipped, Lucas’s arm went out from under him, the room hove, and Lucas went down, thwacking the side of his face against the corner of Mister Hensley’s desk on his way to the floor.

Being knocked unconscious would have been too kind, Lucas supposed. The abrupt throbbing pain was one thing. The humiliation of trying to blink past the sparkles shrouding his vision and into the shocked faces hovering above him was, if truth be told, quite another.

Well, then. No surprise, really. Just about this time last night, Lucas had been drunk and stuck to a bush and still in the process of being duped by a young man who apparently didn’t even exist. Pratfalls were a logical progression.

Lucas lifted a blurry stare—drat, where were his spectacles?—upward to see Mister Hensley peering down at him over the desk. Laurie leaned over too, his hand clapped over his mouth and his eyes wide. Both of them merely stared, Mister Hensley with a concerned “Oh dear me!” but at least Alex had the presence of mind to crouch down to help Lucas and shoot Laurie a livid glare while he was at it. Good old Alex.

“What the
deuce
did you think you were doing?” Alex barked at Laurie, helping Lucas to sit first and then stand, all the while running gentle fingers over Lucas’s cheekbone and temple. He grimaced when his fingertips came away with a tiny bit of blood. “Are you all right?”

“I’m not quite certain,” Lucas said as he let Alex help him not wobble on his feet and then blinked and flinched a little when Alex very carefully set Lucas’s glasses back on his nose. Well, at least they hadn’t broken. “I’ve this overwhelming urge to kill my cousin, but I’ve been having that all day.” Lucas gingerly poked at his throbbing cheek and hissed.

“I’m sorry!” Laurie said, more earnest than Lucas had ever seen him, which… he didn’t know if he should believe it or be even more skeptical than usual. Laurie was coming at Lucas with a handkerchief and too-clear intent, but luckily Alex headed him off and snatched the handkerchief from him before he could do any more damage. “I didn’t mean….” Laurie flapped his hands. “I’m truly
very
sorry, Lucas, it’s only…. You said a man that looked like Slade broke into your house this morning, and….” He waved at the window behind Mister Hensley’s desk and then wrung his hands. “I think maybe he was just looking in at you from the window.”

“N
O
,
SIR
,
I’m quite certain there’ve been no new guests,” said Miss Hensley, whose given name happened to be Tegan. Lucas knew this because it had taken Alex five seconds and a winning smile to get her to volunteer it. Lucas might have growled and rolled his eyes, but he was too busy glaring Laurie into submission. “Your party was the last,” Miss Hensley told Alex.

“And have you seen anyone about?” Alex pressed. “Very light blond hair, tall?”

“And he dresses funny,” Lucas volunteered, “and he speaks in tongues,” then he shut his mouth when Miss Hensley and Alex both looked at him with raised eyebrows. Lucas stared back. Had he slurred it or something? Did he have something on his face? He reached up to check… oh. Right. The new plaster. Now
no
one was going to believe he hadn’t been brawling.

Miss Hensley turned back to Alex, the stars instantly back in her eyes, and she fiddled with a lock of curly brown hair that draped over her shoulder. “No one since you, sir,” she said. “Except….” She frowned then shrugged. “Not a guest, but he did arrive after you.” She turned toward the inn’s stable and whistled, then clapped her hands.

For a moment, Lucas thought he had to be imagining the
woof
that answered her “Here boy!” but then Bramble was barreling toward Lucas at full speed, long ears flapping and tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.

“Bramble!” Lucas cried, bracing himself, but Bramble didn’t leap at him, only greeted him happily and sat down to lean against Lucas’s hip, staring up adoringly and thumping his tail on the ground. “How did you get here, boy?”

Bramble only whined a little and thumped his tail harder.

“So he’s yours, then?” Miss Hensley said. She slumped a little but smiled good-naturedly. “He’s lovely. I’d a mind to keep him.”

“Lovely” was not a word Lucas would’ve chosen to describe Bramble, but over Lucas’s dead body would Miss Hensley be keeping him.

“He’s mine,” Lucas said, in case there was a question. “Though I’ve no idea how he got here.”

“I didn’t see him following us,” Laurie put in.

Neither had Lucas. And Bramble had never done such a thing before. He generally tagged along when Lucas rode out on business, but he’d never followed after when Lucas had expressly left him home.

“Things are definitely very strange these days,” Lucas muttered then peered up at Miss Hensley. “Can he stay the night in the stable? He can bed down with Saffron. They’re old friends.” When Miss Hensley nodded, Lucas nodded back then looked at Alex. “I’ve had enough for one day. I’ve had enough for a week, actually, and I’m tired and my head hurts. We’ll need an early start tomorrow if I’m to get back in time to help with the harvest.
If
it doesn’t rain in the meantime.” He gave Bramble one last scrub between his ears then waved toward Laurie. “Let’s feed His Majesty and go to bed.”