The Duchess turned up about noon the following day. When Aufors greeted her as she dismounted from the carriage, she had all she could do to greet him politely.
“I did not expect to see you, Aufors. I advised you to stay where you were.”
“I did expect to see you, Your Grace, but much has happened you do not know of.”
She shook her head wearily. “What has happened that I should know? No. don’t tell me. I can’t hear anything until I’ve had a bath and a few hours’ rest. The inn in Sabique gets worse by the decade. I stayed there last ten years ago, and I believe they have not turned the mattresses since, much less invested in new ones. The dust in the corners dates from before the Inundation, and it would not surprise me to learn that the bread I was served dates from that same era.”
“Was the night before no better, Your Grace?”
“Worse, if anything.” She turned to her coachman, who was unloading luggage from the boot. “What was the name of the place, Yarnson?”
“Wohsack, Your Grace.”
“Wohsack. Indeed. And woe I had there. Well, I know this place, and it is far better. I am too tired to talk to you now, Aufors. Join me for dinner, about sunset, and we will enlighten one another.”
As they did, in the Duchess’s rooms, at a table laid before the fire, where, said the Duchess, it was most likely safe to talk for she had refused the first room the innkeeper had offered and picked one out for herself.
She heard Aufors’s tale while she ate, shaking her head gravely when he had finished.
“And he actually told you to marry the girl.”
“I’ve said so three times, Your Grace.”
“Call me Alicia, Aufors. When we are alone, you can do that without offending the gentry.”
“As Your Grace wishes, Alicia. Not that I mind offending the gentry. I have mightily offended a couple of them lately.”
She leaned forward and began striking her glass with a spoon, making a tinkling sound as she whispered into his ear:
“And now you want me to tell you where she is?”
“Why else would I be here?” he whispered in return.
“Why, to help me, as I have helped Genevieve.”
He dropped his fork onto his plate with a clatter. “Help . . . I’m sorry Your—Alicia. I didn’t know you needed help.”
She wiped her lips delicately, saying in an ironic tone, even as she put a finger before her lips, “Oh, but the Marshal must have told you my daughter has disappeared.”
“He did not! Nor did anyone at your house, when I went looking for you four days ago!”
The Duchess smiled bleakly. “Well, she has disappeared. I am on my way to Ruckward County, where my son-in-law lives. To fetch my granddaughter.” Now she shushed him in earnest, leaning to his ear once again.
“But surely . . . surely you will want someone to search for your daughter,” he murmured softly.
“Yes,” she murmured softly. “And no.”
He regarded her closely for a long, silent moment. “You know where she is,” he said with his lips alone.
She read his lips, then stared past him, out the window, where the sky above the mountains shone purple with evening. She rose, drew him to his feet. “Let us wander out onto the terrace and watch the stars coming out.”
One of the windows opened upon the terrace, and once there, they leaned upon the balustrade as she said softly, “I say to you that I know where a former servant of mine, a girl named Bessany Blodden, is staying. She has a new baby with her, and I would much like Bessany to be escorted from where she is currently to Merdune, far, far east of here.”
“She has left her husband?” Aufors murmured. “She is … afraid?”
“Oh, one could say that, certainly.”
“Your Grace . . . Alicia, I would volunteer for this duty in a moment if it were not for Genevieve. But she . . . she is my first concern.”
The Duchess smiled, genuinely amused. “Well, Aufors, my young friend, if you will consent to escort Bessany Blodden where she is going, you will find the one you seek, and I cannot think of any other way you will do so.”