“They want higher pay for those who work for the noble houses, they want funds set aside for women who are noticed by nobility! It’s impossible. Any woman picked out by a noble should be damned proud of it, and those who work for the noble houses should be honored to be there!”
Aufors smiled.
“What?” the Marshal demanded.
“I’ve heard it claimed that women themselves should do the choosing of their mates since anything else is tantamount to slavery and rape.”
The Marshal scowled. “I won’t argue the merits of our customs withyou, Colonel. It’s not something I’d ordinarily discuss except with my own class. The thing I started out to say was, why am I here in Havenor? Since I’ve been here, there hasn’t been a single meeting of the ministers! Not one! There hasn’t been an occasion when I could be useful as a counterweight to anything! So. Why am I here?”
Aufors took a deep breath and said, probingly: “I have been struck by all the attention paid to Genevieve.”
“Well, yes, but I thought that was because of Delganor.”
“I think not. If he had been set on her, would he have treated me as he did?”
“He was magnanimous.”
“Prince Delganor has no reputation for magnanimity.”
“Perhaps he is more generous than he is said to be,” the Marshal replied, in a grumpy voice.
Aufors merely nodded. Though he thought it unlikely the Prince was better than said to be, he could not deny the Prince had behaved well. Better than the Marshal, and with less justification. But then, the Prince did not have the habit of rage, as the Marshal did. Whatever he felt was kept hidden. That, in itself, might be a cause for concern.
Though Aufors left Havenor a full day and a half behind the Duchess, his use of the river packet put him in Reusel-on-mere in a day and a half, well before she arrived there. Reusel-on-mere was a small place with several good inns, its existence justified by the confluence of the Reusal with a number of small streams which together formed the mirror smooth blue of the Mere. Below this sizeable lake, the river was wide and slow, running between the farms of Dania and the fens of Southmarsh, a route for both cargo and passenger ships that traveled to and from Poolwich on Havenpool.
Aufors felt the Duchess’s arrival would take some time, for her carriage was large, the road was not at its best during this season, and no doubt she would pause for meals and rest. To catch her whenever she arrived, Aufors took a room in the same inn from which Enkors had been married, one with a good view of all roads into or out of the town, and he offered a good tip to the inn servants to keep a lookout should she arrive while he was away.
It did not take him long to find out that someone had been asking a good many questions about himself and Enkors and about the woman who had come down on the packet the day Genevieve disappeared.
“What were they like, these men?” Aufors asked a garrulous tavern keeper.
“Oh, you know the sort, sir. Sneaky men. Eyes never still, always back and forth, like a caged follet. Not there one moment, there the next, gone the one after.”
Aufors heard the same said several times, put two and two together and added it up to the men known to be employed by the Prince. In which case Yugh Delganor’s ignorance of Genevieve’s departure had been bogus. He had pretended not to know, but he had known, and he cared about it enough to put men upon her trail.
Had he thought he loved her then? Or, at least, been attracted enough to care about her welfare? Perhaps the latter. Perhaps he had felt obliged to do something since it was he who had frightened her. It could not have been more than that, or he would not have accepted Aufors’s declaration in such good part. But if it had been only that, why tie Aufors to a promise of service? Well, because, Aufors told himself soberly, any such promise from an honorable man is like money in the pocket. A note that can be called at need. The prospect increased his discomfort.