Playing in the gardens with Maya was the nearest to bliss she ever came. The goslings had no desire to join her. She could pretend that she was the only woman in the world, that the two of them were the only people. The guards were far away and the gardeners kept out of sight. She knew she was visible to dozens of spying faces behind the dozens of windows, but she could forget about them.
Shandie had been back for six weeks and she thought she was with child again. In a few more days she would know for certain. She prayed that she was, for pregnancy would release her from the looming torture of playing impress at the state funeral and coronation and gala balls. It would also free her from the night thing, too, for a while.
Maya vanished around the end of a hedge into the rose garden; she followed—and stopped. Surprise was quickly followed by annoyance, then panic. There was a man there. He was seated on a bench and had not seen her. He was engrossed in doing something with a large silver bowl.
She moved to snatch up Maya and leave, but Maya had almost reached the intruder before seeing him. She stopped to stare and let Leegie slip to the grass. Eshiala moved forward to recover both.
“Ylo!” Maya said, trotting forward.
So it was, and Maya had done very well to recognize him before her mother did. Eshiala had never seen the signifer out of uniform before. He was wearing a well-tailored riding outfit that might have just come out of the box. If anything, he was even more dashing than usual.
He smiled at Maya with no indication of surprise. “Hello, there, Princess!” Then he turned his smile on Eshiala. “Your servant, ma’am.”
He did not rise. That annoyed her. She did hate the eternal formalities of court life, but he was not to know that. It was mere good manners for a man to stand when greeting a lady. She might be a sham princess, but she had been brought up to appreciate genteel behavior.
“Good morning, Signifer.”
“Ylo,” Maya confirmed. She clutched the edge of the bowl on his lap and stood on tiptoe to see into it. “What doing, Ylo?”
“Making a surprise. You want to help? Here!” And without even asking permission, the soldier lifted the child up to stand on the bench beside him.
Eshiala was nonplussed. She knew the signifer, for he ate at the prince’s table and had his own suite of rooms in Oak House. They saw each other almost every day. He was cool and formal and never addressed her unless she spoke to him first, which was just about never. He was much too good-looking. Shandie had warned her that he was a libertine and asked her to drop a warning to her maids of honor. She had done so with a very embarrassing blush.
“Join us, Gorgeous,” he said, smiling.
Not only much too good-looking, he was also extremely impertinent! Before she could frame an adequately crushing reply, he lifted a rose from a pile of roses on the bench beside him and began stripping the petals into the bowl. The bowl was already half full of petals, red, white, yellow, pink.
“What you doing?” Maya demanded again.
“You want to help? Here . . .” Ylo inspected one of the flowers. ”No prickles!” He gave the flower to Maya, showing how to pull off a petal and drop it in the bowl. Maya grabbed a fistful of petals and tugged. The signifer gleamed eyes and teeth in another brief smile at Eshiala, then returned to his own rose.
Apparently forgotten, Eshiala stood and . . . and dithered. She could certainly snatch up her daughter and leave, but Maya would yell the sky down.
She would not go and sit on the bench. She stayed where she was. “Signifer, what exactly are you doing?”
This time the smile went on longer and was more calculated. “That’s a secret just at the moment. You mean you’ve never seen a man doing this?”
“You’re making perfume?” A great pile of stripped stalks lay at his feet. He must have been at work for an hour or more. “No.” He shook his head. The sun seemed to dim for his smile. He returned his attention to the bowl and Maya’s mangled efforts. “You remind me of Centurion Hardgraa, you know.”
Eshiala could imagine no one she less resembled. “In what way?”
“He hates the palace, too.”
Her defenses sprang back to their posts at once. “That’s absurd!”
“I’ve watched you,” he told the bowl. “Do you know what the domestics call you behind your back? The Ice Impress!”
“What the servants choose to call me is no concern of mine!”
“But servants usually know more of the truth than anyone. They’re all spies, of course. The wine steward and the chief coachman report to Umpily. Emthoro’s people own a footman and the pastry cook and so on.”
This conversation was insane! Shandie had warned her before they were married that her maids of honor would gossip mercilessly, but she had not worried about the servants. “Why in the world should Lord Umpily spy on the prince?”
“This is the court. Everyone spies on everyone.”
She did not believe it. “And how do you know about them?” He shrugged. “Security is Hardgraa’s job, of course. I charmed one of the chambermaids for him and then we traded information. Interesting fellow, Hardgraa. Have you ever had a good heart-to-heart with him?”
She shook her head.
“You should! Son of a quarry worker. He joined the army at sixteen, but his tribune decided he had promise, and his tribune ran an illicit gladiator troop. Hardgraa was killing men to amuse rich folk before he was shaving.”
She shuddered. She had heard rumors of such affairs and the vast sums gambled on them. She clasped her elbows tightly. “Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” Ylo said, reaching for another flower. “But not much of one. At twenty he blackmailed a legate into . . . well, never mind. Hardgraa fought his way up from the swamp. It’s easier for him than you.” Still the signifer continued to strip petals from the roses. Maya was beating the remains of her own flower to death on the bench. “What’s easier?” Eshiala felt she was being entangled in a web of words. Every time she tried to move, he stuck her more firmly with some new puzzle. No one else ever talked to her like this.
He glanced up and studied her for a moment, then reached for another rose. ”He was born in the valleys. No one expects him to know what wine goes with fish, and he never will. You came up from the foothills and expect to be able to pass on the peaks. You never will, either.”
She thought grimly of the hundreds of lessons she had taken in etiquette and dance and elocution and . . . As she drew breath to retort, he added, “Any more than I would have ever made a good legionary.”
Shandie had warned her that Ylo was in line for a dukedom. Well, however much that might impress some silly little debutante, it cut no rushes with a future impress. “You are modest, sir.”
“True, but no one has ever noticed that before.” Ylo inspected another rose, pinched off a few thorns, and tucked it in his hair. Maya broke into yells of laughter and grabbed it out again.
“It was easier for me,” he said. “I was born on the mountaintops. I went down, not up. Learning to sharpen stakes with an ax is infinitely easier than mastering the aristocracy’s sneaky little games. And you know when you’ve done it wrong, because you get beaten. Helps to be beaten, because then nobody cares afterward. You learn faster, too. Shandie thinks I’m a genius. Sit down, Princess.”
She ought to grab Maya and run. Or at least she should find a couple of her ladies to chaperon her while she talked with this notorious lecher.
Ylo looked up, frowning. “We’re certainly being watched from the windows and this little minx is old enough to tell tales if I rape you, but she can’t repeat what we say. Who are you scared of, you or me?”
“I am not scared of anyone!”
“Then prove it by sitting down.”
“The servants will—”
“You said you didn’t care about them. Where was I? Oh, yes. Shandie thinks I’m a genius. That’s nonsense. I was a consul’s son. I was taught to read and write. Then I became a maggot in the XXth legion. I was taught to work. By the Powers, was I ever taught to work!”
She perched on the end of the bench and he peered around Maya at her. Maya was busy entangling the rose in Ylo’s curls. “Have you any idea of the load a legionary carries? Well, can you imagine marching in the rain all day with a couple of Mayas on your back—and then digging ditches for two or three hours after that? Can you imagine having blisters for months on end because they never get a chance to heal?”