Part 2: I Will Call Your Name (4/7)

She had to know the truth. She had to know the truth. Diana quickened her pace. The Duke's bedchamber sat directly above her own room, and the moment she set foot in that corridor, a knight moved to block her way.

"I'm afraid I cannot, my lady."

"I beg your pardon?"

"His Grace has ordered that no one be admitted today."

"Why? Has something happened?"

"He says he wishes to rest alone."

Somewhere in the knight's eyes lurked a flicker of pity. Catching that look, Diana drew a slow breath. In her first life, too, her father had posted his guards not at his bedchamber door but back at the corridor's entrance.

She had always assumed the threat of assassination must be grave. Now she understood it was not. A man in genuine fear of assassins would station his knights directly at his door.

"I see. Then may I at least borrow a book from Father's study?"

Diana gestured toward the study at the far end of the same floor. It lay far enough from the bedchamber that the knight gave a nod.

Once inside, Diana inhaled deeply. She knew the hidden passage that led to her father's room. Her father and elder brother had told her of it once — before they rode down to the fief when war with Lodbrok broke out, in the life she had already lived.

It was not truly a secret passage at all. One simply flipped a switch and pushed the bookshelf aside, and the way opened.

This passage connected straight to her father's bedchamber. The door beyond stood closed, so there was no chance of meeting him face to face. She knew she should not be doing this. But after what Giscard had told her, she felt she had to see it with her own eyes.

Diana stepped into the passage. She had crawled only a short way when she heard it — a sweet, nasal sound.

For an instant she thought of turning back. Yet as though something had bewitched her, she pressed on.

Why had Giscard told her this? Diana bit her lip. Her hands were trembling. Just before the door that led into the bedchamber, she stood with her hand clamped over her mouth, listening.

"Ah, Your Grace!"

Another wet voice drifted through. She knew that voice. It was Mirva's. Your Grace — surely that meant her father. Absurdly, even standing inside her father's own bedchamber, Diana doubted it, and doubted again.

That isn't Father's voice.

That wretched woman has dragged someone else in here. Father is away from home just now—

But when a man's voice rose, Diana had no choice but to admit it belonged to her own father.

"You will not find it easy to drive Lady Mirva out."

"Huh?"

"That woman is His Grace's cherished mistress."

"…"

"I'm told the two of them couple every single day."

Why say such a thing at a moment like that? Pity? Diana had refused to believe it. But Giscard had worn the faintest cold smile at the corner of his mouth as he spoke.

"They will no doubt be hard at it at this very hour as well."

She could not tell whether that had been deep mockery or something else. That was why she had come to confirm it with her own ears. Listening to her father couple with another woman — worse, with the very woman she despised — was the worst thing imaginable. She wanted to rise and leave at once, but her legs would not obey.

It was true: she had forgotten even where she was, and what she was supposed to be doing.

Then, as though every act had ended, low, unhurried voices drifted through.

"Did you scold the young lady a great deal, Your Grace?"

"…Only somewhat."

"Oh, Your Grace, you are far too strict with the young lady. It has hardly been any time at all since she lost her mother."

"I know the child is struggling. But she is far too impatient."

"…"

"Left to her own pace, she would understand what to do by the time she turned fifteen — why must she go manufacturing strife like this, honestly… She never used to be like this, you know."

"…"

"Leave the young lady to me. I shall see to her myself."

"Very well. Do as you like."

Diana listened helplessly to their voices. They spoke like a married couple. Right. This is my father's private life. He said he would take no new wife. He never said he would keep no woman.

"Your Grace… could the young lady have found out after all?"

At that, Diana lifted her head. Could I have been discovered?

"Found out what?"

"That the two of us love each other."

At those words, Diana bit her lip until it nearly bled. Then the Duke's voice came through, threaded with laughter.

"That child will never know."

"…I do worry, though. In truth, I am worried even now."

"…"

"If she ever learns the truth and turns on me, what am I to do?"

"What do you imagine she might find out?"

"That when I first came to this house, we were already in love."

"…"

"You may be her father, yes — but I am only a maid, after all. Would she leave be a woman who deceived her own mother?"

Diana's fists shook. Rage seeped slowly into her, and her mind sharpened to a cold, killing clarity.

Resentment toward her father, fury at Mirva — all of it blurred together. My mother did nothing wrong. Plenty of nobles take second wives, they said. And compared to them, Father looked only at Mother, they said.

Was all of that a lie?

The twelve-year-old Diana of the past would have confronted him on the spot. But the Diana of now knew exactly how to bury her anger. She smiled, thin and bitter.

The world that a twelve-year-old girl walked through, and the world of a woman who had lived past twenty years and died — they were this different.

It was just as Giscard had said. Mirva was not a woman who could simply be cast out. Her father was deeply attached to this maid called Mirva. Unlike her mother!

It's all right.

Diana repeated it to herself over and over. Grief for her poor mother; disillusionment with her father. The paradise she had dreamed of while rotting away in the Kingdom of Lodbrok had been a lie from the start.

"You did promise that no hand would be laid on the young lady."

"Yes."

"Just you wait and see. I will make sure she can stir up no trouble at all — I will make her that meek young lady once more."

Beneath the honeyed coo of Mirva's words lingered something strange and long.

Diana's face was ashen when she returned to her room; she looked ready to collapse at any moment. She barely made it into a chair. When she looked down at her hands, they were shaking like leaves.

"Did you see it?"

"With what intention did you tell me, Giscard?"

Even Giscard did not know why he had told her. Was it because it seemed contemptible — a girl playing the adult while blind to the open secret every soul in the ducal house knew? Or did he want her to grasp the reality of this child huddled in her corner?

"Why don't you answer me?"

Diana's voice came out razor-sharp. Ah — Giscard had forgotten the pettiest instinct of humankind. People cannot rage at the strong who have wronged them; they carry that rage to the weak instead. Diana's slave was himself. So now it was her turn to pour her anger out on him.

"Speak."

At her prodding, Giscard answered as though it were nothing.

"You seemed to know nothing at all. So I thought I would tell you."

"…"

"Everyone in this house knows why that woman has taken hold of it. It seemed you alone were laboring under a delusion."

A delusion. He could have phrased it more gently, but he chose brutality. Someone spoiling to vent her fury would lash out at whatever words he offered anyway.

He expected Diana to come apart on the spot. Or perhaps — perhaps he had simply wanted to see the naked face beneath that little girl's exquisite mask. I am twisted too, so stop playing the serene little noble. Scream. Show me the bottom of you.

Don't act grown-up when you're nothing but a child.

"You're right."

"…"

"Thank you."

Another reply came back, nothing like the one he had braced for. Giscard stared at her, eyes gone wide.

This girl had not taken her anger out on anyone. Why? Thankful? Even setting the rage aside — what had he done to earn thanks? Or was this, in truth, something to be grateful for?

"You were right. I truly didn't know. If it weren't for you, I doubt I'd ever have thought to look."

And even as she said it, Diana was buried in grave, silent thought. Giscard could only watch her, eyes still wide.

When work all but stopped Duke Brien from coming home, Mirva's world arrived. Permission secured, she began to tighten her grip on Diana — perhaps as punishment for all that earlier defiance. She picked apart everything: the girl's clothing, her lessons, one matter after another. The tutors who taught Diana always pronounced her excellent, but Mirva carried the opposite report to the Duke — the girl was still lacking — and the Duke drove her education ever harder.

Diana had dared to climb over her once before, and she was the weakest of them all. Mirva had never forgotten the disgrace of being slapped where the servants could see. She slashed Diana's allowance, and the maids took their cue and neglected her.

Mirva had even once, in a stretch when the Duke was entirely absent, withheld Diana's meals outright. Diana very nearly starved to death inside the ducal house.

Who would ever believe it — that the princess of the kingdom's foremost ducal house knelt beneath a servant woman? Mirva was the true mistress of this household. Against her, a mere princess was nothing.

The maids, watching Diana go hungry for days without a word of protest, rolled their eyes and bent their necks to Mirva's will once more; the head maid was no different.

Everyone pitied the young lady's sorry state. And perhaps because of it, Diana had begun, somewhere along the way, to smile brightly at the very sight of Mirva. There was no reason to. She smiled whether they brought her cheap clothes, whether she was starved, whether not a single maid was assigned to her.

Had the girl finally worked out who truly held the whip hand? Mirva grew drunk on her victory. Diana was perfectly broken to the leash now. And the instant she recognized it, Mirva began bestowing tiny gifts, like rewards to a dog that had learned its trick.

When, about a month later, Diana received a second invitation from Princess Ionia, Mirva dressed her properly this time. The Duke really had raged over the pearl earring affair, and he had personally warned that there would be no forgiveness for a second such incident.

And yet another thought gnawed at her. Here she was, keeping the house — while Diana, play-acting at princess, was summoned off to the royal palace. The society she truly ached to enter was permitted to Diana alone.

I need only become the Duchess.

Queen of this household though she might be, beyond its gates she was nothing at all. Mirva made herself think so, swallowing down the bitterness. Then Diana returned from the palace carrying astonishing news.

"Princess Ionia says she wants me to come and be her lady-in-waiting!"

This tiny little miss was now announcing her intention to step beyond these walls.

Diana watched Giscard put his sword through its forms. He had a genuine gift for the blade. He had not yet been taught the finer points of swordsmanship, but the strength and speed in his sword arm, and his dynamic vision, were said to be first-rate.

Her gaze fell to the restraint collar at his throat. Now and then, longing to set him free, she had gone to his room and searched for the key that would undo it. She had never found it. Someday, perhaps, the chance would come.

Sword flashing to the bark of his battle cry, he looked properly fierce already — and this was only his third month. That, she supposed, was how he had mastered the blade quickly enough to slay the poison dragon. And that was how the throne of Lodbrok had come to be passed to him. Diana turned the root of it over in her mind.

Why had the prince of Lodbrok come to the Kingdom of Farnborough? And why had Farnborough's king granted that slave into the Duke's hands?

She had meant to ask Giscard, but the instant he scented a question about where he came from, his lips sealed shut. For all that she knew the future, she knew almost nothing. Even the true shape of her father's tie to Mirva had been beyond her.

Then his eyes met hers. Diana expected him to return to his drills, but he lowered his sword and walked over to her instead.

"…"

He looked at her a moment, then bowed at the waist.

"What brings you this far, my lady?"

"I heard you'd been practicing the sword."

"Yes."

"I don't think I'll be able to come see you very often anymore."

At her words, Giscard's face went stiff.

"It looks as if I'll be serving at the palace from now on. If Her Majesty the Queen consents, the appointment goes through at once."

"…"

"You understand how things stand. There's going to be a great deal to do."

"You are… leaving the house?"

Leaving me behind? It sounded like a question — so in the end, you're throwing me away — and Diana laughed. Within these walls, Diana could only ever be held down.

She had decided to admit it to herself: her father was a disappointing man. He could be tender, even kind, at times — and yet she had never been able to stop feeling a wall between them, and here was the reason. Her father had always lived, first and last, by his own reckoning.

She had walked so straight a line herself that it had never once occurred to her that her father kept such an improper relationship. The Duke was one of those foolish men who hungered to parade the women they had taken to their beds — and Diana might well have been made the sacrifice for it.

"So look after Alexa well for me. And keep working hard at the sword."

"…"

"I've taught you your letters, so learn the spelling properly. You ought to manage at least one name written correctly."

Giscard nodded. Diana watched him with worry creeping over her. What would happen if the household's people set upon this boy? Everything she did was for House Brien, and still no one seemed to grasp that. Just as the anxiety stole over her—

"Have you ceased to be my master now, my lady?"

"No. It isn't that. I can't simply sit still either — I have to move."

Giscard said nothing. He looked at her as though something strained against his teeth. But Diana did not wait for it; she turned and walked away.

Anyone would assume Diana fled outward because she could not stomach Mirva. And once, that had been true. There had been flight in her social rounds, too — rounds her father at least acknowledged, hours that freed her from the house's affairs.

But here, in this moment, Diana chose not to sit and take the beating. Fifteen was unbearably far away.

"How ridiculous it all was."

Back then, the reports had come to Diana from the maids. That Mirva abused the servants and siphoned estate funds out of the Duke's private coffers. And when she heard that the woman drew the household's servants into her debauched revels, the words were so vile Diana had wanted to scour her own ears clean.

As lady of the estate, Diana had appealed to her father, seen a just judgment handed down, and driven the woman from the house.

Looking back on it now, though, something did not fit. Why would the very maids who groveled before Mirva have turned on her? Why did everything flow exactly as Diana willed? Now she knew. It was because her father had decided it would.

Once his daughter reached a suitable age, he set the household in her hands and cast out his extravagant mistress.

But Father — I cannot wait that long.

Diana's eyes flashed cold.

All this while she had believed that being in the right would be enough to drive Mirva out. She had even made herself small, careful never to become the family's ruin. One could not simply cast the woman out and come away unscathed; her crimes had to be charged and proven.

But having witnessed her father's sin — and the moment Mirva starved her for days on end — Diana threw her conscience where the family was concerned overboard. From then on, there was nothing she would not do.

"Her Majesty the Queen summons you."

Diana set foot inside the royal palace. The world of a twelve-year-old had turned quite harsh on her — but she was already an adult within, a queen who had once rolled across the floor of Lodbrok's palace like a piece of trash.

Something as small as this will not defeat me.

She had chosen to live a different life.

For Diana, becoming a lady-in-waiting was no simple matter.

"I will not behave in any way Your Majesty dislikes."

Those were the first words she spoke to the Queen whose leave she had come to beg. When the Queen asked, as though to say and what is that meant to mean?, Diana gave a small smile.

"Her Highness Princess Ionia has begged that I come and serve as her lady-in-waiting."

"…Yes. That is precisely why I summoned you."

The Queen studied Diana. As she saw it just now, here was a girl who had snatched up, without a second thought, a post offered on nothing more than the Princess's one-sided fondness.

"Behavior you dislike, you say?"

The Queen asked in a voice edged with laughter. Even so, her eyes were cold enough that a chill ran through Diana for an instant.

"A lady-in-waiting's post would put me in the Prince's path far more often, would it not?"

"I imagine so."

"I have thought it over very carefully, and it seems to me that slipping so easily into a position every noble daughter in the land covets, while calling myself a mere maid, amounts to a privilege. It would cast doubt on my sincerity in serving Her Highness as well. And so I will arrange matters such that I never once meet the Prince."

She could not very well say, You can't stand me, can you? — so Diana had dressed the thought in more courteous words. The Queen sent back a look that all but said, Go on, then. The brow that lived in a permanent frown sat smooth and uncreased, and the corners of her mouth were lifted.

"I want to become the Princess's maid."

"Why go to such lengths? You would have plenty of fine opportunities without binding yourself to the Princess."

"My mother taught me that whatever a thing may be, however small, one must win it with one's own hands."

"…"

"And I wish to set my father's mind at ease. He believes me far too young to carry a household."

"Aha. The Brien household did have a woman minding the estate, didn't it? Or was she, properly speaking, the Duchess's maid?"

So the Queen knows the private workings of House Brien.

The Queen shook her head then, her brows twisting as though the mere thought soured her stomach. Her eyes opened, and she sank into long, silent deliberation.

Would it be gain, or loss, to place at the Princess's side this child — a maid's daughter, abused by her father's mistress? The Princess had pressed hard for it, but in her heart the Queen had been reluctant.

Diana caught that reluctance too. Which was wiser — to appeal to the Queen's feelings, or to name the gains that reason could count? She held her eyes shut a long moment, then opened them.

"Give me a chance."

"A chance?"

"I will never become anyone as formidable as Your Majesty. I haven't the confidence for it. All I want is something simple."

"…"

"I want out of that house. And I cannot overlook that woman daring to reach for my mother's place."

Diana deliberately bared her slender wrists. Mirva's starving had melted the flesh from her. Her gowns, never padded or taken in, displayed the bare bones of her wrists without her lifting a finger.

How unlike the Princess's birthday banquet, when the Duke had escorted her — the girl standing before the Queen now bore no trace of anyone's care. Diana looked up at Her Majesty with naked pleading in her face.

In truth, it is an ugly thing for a child of twelve to be too cunning. But she judged that laying herself bare, simply and honestly, was the only road into this woman's good graces. When the Queen returned no answer, Diana added, as though in excuse:

"I have a little sister I must protect. Becoming Her Highness's maid will not make me negligent of my duties. Please — grant me the chance."

The Queen did not care for Duke Brien. But some thread of sympathy, some ember of maternal feeling, still lived in her.

The Brien princess begged as though her life depended on it, yet never once lost her dignity. She had said with her own mouth that she would not meet the Queen's precious son. Unlike that weasel of a Duke, the girl's eyes were achingly sincere. The Queen's scales tipped.

Serving Ionia proved easier than caring for Alexa. For one thing, the Queen's older maids shouldered a fair share of the duties themselves, and mercifully none of them rode hard on Diana, who had tumbled into the post like a stone rolled in from outside.

The poor orphan of House Brien.

If anything, they lavished exaggerated pity on Diana and competed to help her along. Nothing put noble ladies more on their guard — nothing made them rage as though the injury were their own — than a young, fallen aristocrat edging toward a legitimate wife's seat.

Her gaunt frame, so changed from the girl who had attended the Princess's birthday banquet, stirred their sympathies. A few even vowed to summon that woman and put her to open shame. Diana knew better than to take such kindness as pure fortune. When she made her debut into society, the story would fasten onto her like a brand. And should she grow into someone worth the trouble, these women would come collecting their price.

So what?

In her first life she would never have amassed such 'debts.' This time, Diana meant to spend them freely. Accepted by the maids, she found attending Ionia easy — and Ionia, for her part, took Diana as a friend outright. All those hours minding Alexa had made the care of a young girl familiar.

Still, it was strange.

It wasn't that she didn't love Alexa. But caring for her sister had always cost her something. Caring for Ionia, though, was work — and work came with wages. The same labor, and yet it gave Diana, if anything, a sense of release and even of achievement. She was glad, too, knowing that her father had stepped one pace nearer the 'betrothal' he wanted so badly.

Alexa.

The one who weighed on her most was Alexa. Unlike Diana, Alexa was the daughter her father cherished above all. If only Mirva would leave the girl alone.

Tucking the worry away, Diana gave Ionia's care everything she had.

Ionia took to following Diana's lead at once, and soon began to imitate everything she did. The girl — timid in some ways, a little wildcat in others — began, in Diana's image, to settle.

With a companion her own age at her side, the Princess's constant tension had somewhere to drain. Where her first life had gone another way, Ionia's affliction, too, began by degrees to mend.

More than that: though men still frightened her, she had begun, haltingly, to accept the very young ones. The one who rejoiced most plainly that the palace's only princess was visibly healing was the King himself. He heaped praise on Diana's labors and granted her the standing right of entry to the palace — a privilege once reserved for those the royal family invited, or for officials of rank alone — handed now to a twelve-year-old duke's daughter. An honorable thing to hold.

And the Queen, on top of it, presented her with a carriage and a horse for her own use.

Diana Brien. People had begun to look at Diana Brien in an entirely different light: the lady-in-waiting the Princess had chosen with her own lips. A refreshingly modest bearing, despite standing a breath away from the Prince's betrothal. The sight of her tending the Princess with such tender devotion.

Far earlier than in her first life, Diana had caught the eyes of the nobility.