This was the first time she’d had a chance to put the dress under the loose stone, as Albero directed. With Trune having made her identity, the dress was no longer an inconvenience; it was evidence, should he search the house. And she had no doubt that Trune would do that very thing.
Despite the weather there was still a great deal of traffic, on foot or by wagon, at the intersection of the Crescent and the Mile, the grand stone pillars marking the entrance to the fashionable street streaked with rain and moss. Tesara waited at the edge of the crowd for an opportunity and crossed the street with the surge of foot traffic, and at the corner she backed innocently against one pillar.
She felt the stone move at her back and with one hand she moved it to the side, wedged the bundle with the dress behind it, and moved the stone back into place. Then she waited with the rest of the pedestrians, her heart beating fast, hoping no one had noticed. No one appeared to. The rain had dulled everyone into miserable, hunched creatures garbed in thick wool and mufflers, as if it were winter. The traffic cleared for a moment and the crowd surged forward. Tesara hurried with the rest, refusing to let herself look back.
“Look sharp! Look sharp!” The cries of the carters barreling down from deliveries to the Crescent made the crowd pick up their feet and run, and Tesara just barely made it through the intersection before the trotting horses lumbered through. It wasn’t until she had slipped into a bookstore with a vantage point that she managed a look back at the pillars. She rubbed away the steam on the window pane of the door and could see no indication that the stone had been moved or anything put behind it. Reassured, she took a deep breath.
“May I help you, miss?” said a young shop clerk.
Tesara gave her a brilliant smile. “Just browsing,” she said.
The clerk sized her up. “We have the latest by Suristen. Just came in today.”
Tesara had no idea who that was. “Just browsing,” she repeated. Suiting actions to words, she set down her shabby umbrella next to the other patrons’ and began to wander around the shop, pulling out books at random. After she had judged she had spent enough time, she gathered up her umbrella, turned up her collar and marched out into the rain. This time she spared the smallest of glances at the stone pillar as she marched past it with the next horde of pedestrians, and then it was behind her.
She was free of the dress, and she was light-hearted because of it. She almost skipped like a child despite her heavy, clinging wet skirts and her thick coat. Too bad I’m feeling so lovely, she thought, irrepressibly. I couldn’t work my power even if I wanted to. Even as a child, it never came to her when she was content or happy, only when she was angry or mischievous. That was no doubt why Yvienne refused to believe in her. If she herself didn’t know better, Yvienne’s theory made sense, that she had been so naughty as a child that she combined the guilt over her bad behavior with the events that everyone blamed her for.
Some of her good humor slipped away. As if determined to dampen her mood completely, the rain came down harder, and her umbrella dripped through some small tears along its ribs. It was ancient of course, but better than nothing. Tesara wiped the wet out of her eyes and peered out from under the umbrella, hardly able to find her way home. She had practically stumbled into another woman in the fog before she recognized her.
“Oh! Mathilde!” she said. “Terrible weather, isn’t it?”
Mathilde started and then gave her lovely smile, linking her arm in hers. “Miss Tesara, goodness, what are you doing out?”
Tesara had thought the young man standing near Mathilde was a friend of the housemaid’s, but as the girl took her by the arm and turned her neatly away, holding her much nicer umbrella over both of them, she realized she was mistaken. “Visiting a bookstore,” she answered, folding her now redundant umbrella. “The latest by Suristen is in.”
“Is it?” Mathilde didn’t sound as if she were any more interested than Tesara was. “I didn’t know you were bookish.”
Oops. “I was thinking for Yvienne, for her birthday,” Tesara improvised. “He is a great favorite of hers.” She would have to remember to tell Yvienne that.
“Let’s hurry,” Mathilde said. “I don’t fancy getting any wetter than I already am.”
She and Tesara walked as briskly as possible toward home. The little blue cottage loomed out of the weather and she and Mathilde practically broke into a run into the kitchen, shaking off the water and stamping their feet. At Mathilde’s urging, she unlaced her boots and set them near the stove, and then hung up her coat.
“It’ll be dry by morning and there should be no need to go outside for the rest of the day. I’ll just put some tea on for the family and then I’ll be off,” Mathilde said.
Tesara was stricken. “Oh no! Mathilde, you’d already gone home for the day. And here I am dragging you back out.” She was surprised that Mathilde lived near the Mercantile, but then there were plenty of rooms to let over the shops.
“Nonsense,” Mathilde said. “I could hardly let you suffer. You were a drowned rat, and no mistake.” She began bustling around with the tea things.
“Oh, please, let me do that,” Tesara said. “Look, I think it’s letting up. I do feel terrible that you had to come back.”
Mathilde said nothing, just finished lighting the fire under the
