Granny nodded, her gray eyes full of sympathy. “Now, what can you do?” she asked. Her expression turned sly and knowing. “Now might be the time to make use of the busy mouths of those twin stepsisters of yours.”
Bella blinked, taken aback. “I never thought of that — ” Suddenly, given a new direction, her mind hummed. “Now, that is an interesting thought.” She could actually count on their discretion not to use her name — because they wouldn’t want any sort of shadow to fall on their own reputations. But this was too good a scandalous story not to share.
She could tell them what had happened to her at the Wool Guild Ball — and what had happened in the woods — and let their indignation do the rest. She could almost hear it now. “I can’t tell you who it was, of course, because the poor thing would be mortified, but did you hear what that horrible Gamekeeper Eric Teller tried to do to a girl in the middle of the Wool Guild Ball?” Pearl could even add, with absolute truth, “My sister Bella saw it with her own eyes!” That would be even better for everyone’s purposes; Genevieve wouldn’t care that Bella was at an open Ball, it would deflect any suspicion that she had been the one so insulted and there would be no suspicion that the twins had been at the Ball without Genevieve knowing.
Oh, the scandal! Everyone loved scandal. It would spread like wildfire. It would certainly reach the ears of the Sheriff a lot faster than her complaint would —
Now, what that would bring was not a reprimand, but a great deal of scrutiny. Scrutiny was better for her purposes. Someone would probably be set to watch Eric and see if the rumors were true. Eric was in the employ of Duke Sebastian, and the Duke would be called to answer for anything he did.
That someone would almost certainly be a member of the City Guard. And a quiet word in Ragnar’s ear about Eric… Again, she could count on his discretion, although he would probably let a few people know that she was the one who had been accosted and insulted. But they would all be friends of hers, and she could count on them to keep it to themselves. So when the City Guard was told to watch Eric, they would already be primed.
If he knew he was being watched, he would have to mend his ways. If he didn’t realize it, he would be caught.
Granny smiled. “I can almost hear the thoughts buzzing in your brain,” she said.
She smiled. “It is exceedingly manipulative,” she pointed out.
Granny laughed. “What’s magic but manipulation?” she pointed out. “Or politics, or diplomacy for that matter?”
“A point.” Bella mulled it over. “It will be more effective than anything else I could do.”
“Now, you know this can backfire if you are just looking for revenge for what really was a petty insult,” Granny warned.
Bella shook her head. “You’ve told me that before, and while I might have lost my temper with him out in the woods, I’ve got it under control now. And I just can’t bear thinking about what he must be doing to poor girls who don’t have powerful papas. I can’t even imagine what he does to people he’s actually caught poaching…” She clenched her jaw. “I can’t allow someone like that to go on as he is. He is going to become more abusive, not less, the longer he can bully people unopposed. I don’t matter — it’s not as if he actually hurt me, and I suspect he is still stinging from what I said to him. That’s revenge enough. But others will not be so fortunate if he is not stopped.”
Granny nodded with satisfaction. “All right, then. Shall we get to what brought you here in the first place, now that your head is clearer?”
“Please!” she said eagerly, and Granny put down her mug and got up from her chair.
She returned with an enormous leather-bound book, and opened it at the place they had left off.
This book was an extensive compendium of the medical knowledge — especially herbs — of at least ten generations of Grannies. The binding had been cunningly made so that pages could be inserted anywhere, and when something new was learned about a plant, the information could easily be added. Each entry had a dried specimen, a decent drawing of the living plant and everything that had been learned about it, even if all that anyone had left was a notation saying “sheep fodder.”
“I didn’t remember that,” Granny mused, her finger on a line that said that “the root of Sheep Sorrely, when roasted and ground, can be used to make a tasty hot beverage.” “This is as useful for me as it is for you. I don’t believe I have looked this closely at the book in years.”
But something had been nagging at the back of Bella’s mind ever since the discussion of the Woodsman, and finally, it solidified into an actual thought. “Duke Sebastian,” she said aloud. “You said no one had seen him since he came of age — ”
Granny closed the book. “Not quite true,” she admitted, “but close enough. No one outside the Court, at any rate.”
Bella waited, hands folded in her lap, eyes fixed on Granny expectantly. Granny laughed. “I know that look! Your turn to brew the tea. There should be just enough time to tell the tale before you must be getting back.”
Bella was more than willing to brew the tea in exchange for what promised to be more than mere Court gossip.
When she returned with the two mugs full, both sweetened with a touch of honey, Granny had built up the fire again. The two of them put up their feet and Granny took an appreciative sip of her mug. “Well,” she said, “not much of this will be in the broadsheets. Sebastian may be a Duke, but he is not one of the truly wealthy ones.”
Bella settled into the chair and nodded. Wealth was as important as rank in the city, and a blindingly rich commoner, like the Master of the Goldsmiths Guild, was more important to the gossips and often within Court circles than a Duke of modest means and little or no political ambition.
“Sebastian’s mother died when he was very young. His father, the Old Duke, was gray-haired when Sebastian was born, so it was no surprise when he died when Sebastian was sixteen. Sebastian inherited these woods and lands enough to support him comfortably, but not so much that it excited anyone’s greed.” Granny chuckled. “So I was told.”
Bella wondered who had told her. Granny was hardly the simple Herb Woman she pretended to be, but from the way she was talking now, it seemed as if she had some contact with people within the King’s Court.
Or — Well, perhaps not. Her sources could simply be the King’s servants, who probably knew as much about
