to bear.
“I don’t know.” He stopped eating and looked up at her. He had that expression again; the one that looked like a puppy that knows it has done something wrong, but doesn’t quite know what it could be. “That would have been the King’s business, and I don’t know what he decided to do in cases like this. I mean, obviously he has to say something, and it can’t be ‘Oh, I am very sorry, but I’ve had to send your daughter off and she’s never coming back’ because it’s even odds that you are coming back and he wouldn’t want to have to explain how that happened and — ”
Strangely enough, the running stream of words broke the weight of despair that had begun to form. Sebastian was just trying so hard to reassure her, yet tell her the truth at the same time, and failing at both!
He stopped. “I’m babbling, aren’t I?” he asked, sheepishly.
“Yes, you are,” she said, dryly.
“It comes of not having anyone to talk to, I suppose. Eric isn’t exactly a good conversationalist and there’s no one else, really.” Now he looked down at his plate. “It’s rather nice, actually, having someone across the table from me. I mean, I know it’s horrible for you, but it’s nice for me.”
Her tone became so dry it practically sucked all the moisture out of the air. “I’m glad to hear that I’m being useful.”
He looked up quickly, blushed and looked down again. “I really am bungling this.”
She took pity on him; he couldn’t possibly be feeling as awful about all this as she was, but on the other hand, he was doing his best to make the horrible situation as comfortable as it could be. “Oh, I don’t know, I suppose if I were in your place I’d be babbling, too.”
The face he presented to her was full of such gratitude that she was touched. “You are being incredibly decent about this,” he said warmly. “I mean, really, truly decent. Better than I deserve.”
“I would have to agree with that statement.” But she was smiling as she said that. “On the other hand, you actually are attempting to make things up to me. I know very well that the King could have just ordered me thrown in one of his dungeons for three months. Or you could have sealed me up in one of the cells downstairs for a similar length of time.”
“I am going to have to do that for the three nights of the full moon next month,” he pointed out. “Or the first one, at least, because you might turn, and we can’t have you loose. But there’s no reason to throw you into a cell now. I mean, you know what’s at risk here, and the very last thing someone like you is going to do would be to try to run off and put people in danger. Right?”
Numbly, she nodded. It was something that she had avoided thinking about, but he was right. She couldn’t leave, not until they knew for certain that she was safe. She’d heard enough stories; the first thing that a werewolf would seek to kill was the person it loved best.
He crumpled his napkin. “Look, I don’t know how to entertain young ladies very well. Is there anything, anything at all that I can do to make things better for you?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” she replied, feeling a little more mollified. “I don’t know… I think, besides my family, I am going to miss music a lot. I don’t have the usual sort of education — I can’t play or sing worth listening to, but I love listening to it. My stepsisters sing very well, and I go to as many musical gatherings as I can. And there are street musicians, very good ones…I miss that already.”
“Oh. I was going to point out that we have a music room, but I suppose…” He looked thoughtful. “I don’t see any reason why the servants couldn’t play for you.”
She blinked. “They can play?”
“I can arrange it so they can. Or rather, I can summon ones that are musicians if the ones I have can’t. That’s how it works, you see, I summon servants with the skills I need.” He brightened up considerably. “How many do you need? One? Three? A dozen?” A dozen musicians, all at her beck and call? She felt suddenly dazzled by the mere thought. Only the King had that many musicians in his regular retinue. “It’s not easy,” he continued, “but as you pointed out, I really owe it to you. I’ll do what I need to do in order to make you a little happier here.”
“First find out if any of the ones you have are musicians,” she told him, hastily. “Then we’ll see.”
“But I — ” He paused. “Well, I could assemble them in the music room and tell them all that if any of them can play, they should go to an instrument and do so. I’m not sure how else I could tell. It might just be simpler to summon some, don’t you think?”
“They can what?” he demanded, looking at her as if she had grown a second head.
“They can write. You know, you just aren’t asking the right questions when it comes to your servants. Not all of them are stupid, and not all of them just obey blindly.” She shook her finger at him. “And here you are supposed to be the all-powerful wizard and you don’t even know that about your own creatures!”
She almost asked him if he had ever considered actually trying to talk to these servants of his, but the answer was obvious; he hadn’t.
“They aren’t supposed to be intelligent,” he was saying, looking bewildered. “The books all say so. Every single one of the books says that they are completely stupid and that without exact orders they just stand there until you tell them exactly what to do.”
She had to laugh at that, and did. “Well, I suppose that this comes under that heading of ‘out of the mouths of fools and babes’ — I didn’t know, so I didn’t assume anything. I was talking to them, and two of them found a way to talk back to me.”
He laughed with her, though it sounded rueful. “I hate to ask you this, but — would you find out what they can do? Obviously they aren’t as simple as I thought they were.”
“Of course, what else have I to do?” she replied. “How many are there?”
“Only about a hundred and twenty,” he said.
