I hesitated, shifting the books in my arms. “I am supposed to be studying.”
We rounded the hedge’s corner only to plow into Abree.
“Did you convince her?” Abree asked Oriana, and I realized that this was an ambush. “And don’t look at us like that, Brienna.”
“Like what?” I countered. “You both know that if I want to receive my cloak and leave with a patron in eight days, I need to spend every minute—”
“Memorizing boring lineages, yes, we know,” Abree interrupted. Her thick auburn hair sat free upon her shoulders, a few stray leaves caught within the curls as if she had been crawling through the bushes and brambles. She was known to practice her lines outside with Master Xavier, and several times I had watched her through the library windows as she tossed and turned on the grass and crushed berries to her bodice as fake blood, projecting her lines to the clouds. I saw evidence of mud on her arden skirts now, the stain of berries, and knew she had been in the throes of rehearsal.
“Please, Brienna,” Oriana pleaded. “I have drawn everyone else’s but yours …”
“And you will want her to draw it, especially after you see the props I found for you,” Abree said, wickedly smiling down at me. She was the tallest of us, taller than me by an entire handbreadth.
“Props!” I cried. “Now, listen, I do not—” But the thunder came again, drowning out my weak protests, and before I could stop her, Oriana stole the books from my hands.
“I’ll go ahead and get things set up,” Oriana said, taking three eager steps away from me, as if my mind could not be changed once she got out of earshot. “Abree, bring her to the studio.”
“Yes, Milady,” Abree returned with a playful bow.
I watched as Oriana dashed across the lawn, in through the back doors.
“Oh, come now, Brienna,” Abree said, the rain fully breaking through the clouds, dappling our dresses. “You need to enjoy these final days.”
“I cannot enjoy them if I worry that I will become inept.” I began to walk toward the house, yanking the ribbon from my braid to let my long hair unwind about me, running my fingers anxiously through it.
“You are not going to become inept!” But there was a pause, which was followed by, “Does Master Cartier think you will?”
I was halfway through the lawn, drenched and overwhelmed with the impending expectations when Abree caught up to me, grabbed my arm, and spun me about. “Please, Brienna. Do the portrait for me, for Oriana.”
I sighed, but a small smile was beginning to touch the corners of my lips. “Very well. But it cannot take all day.”
“You really will be excited to see the props I found!” Abree insisted breathlessly, dragging me across the remaining strip of lawn.
“How long do you think it will take?” I panted as we opened the doors and stepped into the shadows of the back hall, soaked and shivering.
“Not long,” Abree replied. “Oh! Remember how you were helping me plot the second half of my play? The one where Lady Pumpernickel gets thrown in the dungeon for stealing the diadem?”
“Mm-hmm.” Even though I was no longer studying dramatics, Abree continued to solicit my help when it came to plotting her plays. “You don’t know how to get her out of the dungeon, do you?”
She sheepishly blushed. “No. And before you say it … I don’t want to kill her off.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “That was years ago, Abree.”
She was referring to the time when I had been an arden of dramatics and we had both written a skit for Master Xavier. While Abree had authored a comical scene of two sisters fighting over the same beau, I had penned a bloody tragedy of a daughter stealing her father’s throne. I killed off all the characters save for one by the end, and Master Xavier had obviously been shocked by my dark plotting.
“If you do not wish to kill her,” I said as we began to walk down the hall, “then make her find a secret door behind a skeleton, or have a guard shift his allegiance and help her out, but only at a twisted, unexpected cost.”
“Ah, a secret door!” Abree cried, linking her arm with mine. “You plot like a fiend, Bri! I wish I schemed like you.” When she smiled down at me, I felt a drop of remorse, that I had been too frightened of the stage to become a mistress of dramatics.
Abree must have felt the same, for she tightened her hold on me and murmured, “You know, it’s not too late. You can write a two act play in eight days, and impress Master Xavier, and—”
“Abree.” I playfully hushed her.
“Is this how two of Magnalia’s ardens behave a week before their solstice of fate?” The voice startled us. Abree and I stopped in the hall, surprised to see Mistress Therese, the arial of wit, standing with her arms crossed in blunt disapproval. She looked down her thin, pointed nose at us with eyebrows raised, disgusted by our drenched appearance. “You act as if you are children, not women about to gain their cloaks.”
“Much apologies, Mistress Therese,” I murmured, giving her a deep curtsy of respect. Abree mimicked me, although her curtsy was quite careless.
“Tidy up right away, before Madame sees you.”
Abree and I tripped over each other in our haste to get away from her. We stumbled down the corridor into the foyer, to the mouth of the stairs.
“Now, that is a demon in the flesh,” Abree whispered, far too loudly, as she flew up the stairs.
“Abree!” I chided, slipping on my hem just as I heard Cartier behind me.
“Brienna?”
I caught my fall on the balustrade. My balance restored, I whirled on the stair to look down at him. He stood in the foyer, his stark white tunic belted at his waist, his gray breeches nearly the same shade as my dress. He was fastening his passion cloak about his neck, preparing to depart in the rain.
“Master?”
“I assume you will want another private lesson Monday after our morning lecture with Ciri?” He stared up at me, waiting for the answer he knew I would give.
I felt my hand slide on the railing. My hair was uncommonly loose, falling about me in wild, brown tangles, my dress was drenched, my hem dripped a quiet song over the marble. I knew I must look completely undone to him, that I looked nothing like a Valenian woman on the verge of passioning, that I looked nothing like the scholar he was trying to mold. And yet I raised my chin and replied, “Yes, thank you, Master Cartier.”
“Perhaps there will be no letter to distract you next time?” he asked, and my eyes widened as I continued to stare down at him, trying to read beyond the steady composure of his face.
He could punish me for exchanging Francis’s and Sibylle’s letters. He could impart discipline, because I had broken a rule. And so I waited, waited to see what he would require of me.
But then the left corner of his lips moved, too subtle to be a
