The Palace of Lost Memories

Chapter 31

"Will you confront the king about it?" I asked.

"I don't know."

I wanted to press him further but kept my mouth shut. I'd said enough for one night. He'd done enough for one night. Now he needed to think about what that gemstone meant.

"If you need to discuss it with someone, you can talk to me," I said. "You know where to find me."

"I do." It was impossible to gauge his intention from those two words. It was entirely possible he never intended to speak to me again. Part of me wouldn't blame him. I'd caused him a few problems and undermined his loyalty to the king.

But all of me would be very disappointed.

We reached the coach house and he sent a sleepy groom to prepare a carriage to take me home. We stood on the avenue outside the building to wait. Neither of us spoke for some time, and I felt the blanket of awkwardness keenly. I couldn't think of a safe topic to ease it, however.

"Will you be all right?" Hammer eventually asked. "Your wound..."

"It'll be fine. There are no fractures, just a headache the size of the palace. A tisane of hollyroot and a good night's rest will get rid of it."

"Send word to me if it doesn't disappear by morning. I'll bring Doctor Clegg out myself."

I smirked. "He'd love that. Tending the midwife who thinks she's a doctor will give him a laugh."

"If he laughs, he might find himself relegated to an attic room."

"I thought Balthazar decides who is assigned to which room."

"Balthazar likes me."

I wasn't quite sure of that but said nothing. It was enough that he'd been disloyal to the king tonight; I couldn't ask him to question Balthazar's motivations too.

Silence fell again. Hammer leaned against one of the columns holding up the stable portico and shifted the cabinet to his other hip. "Josie," he said softly. "Well done tonight. You single-handedly captured the poisoner."

His earnest praise caught me off-guard and set my heart hammering again, so much so that I blurted out the first thing that entered my head. "You called me a fool. Three times, as I recall." Ugh. Why did I have to bring that up?

He shifted his weight again. "I'm sorry. I have a temper. It tends to make me say the first thing that enters my head, and sometimes that's the wrong thing."

I laughed. "Believe it or not, I do that too. But only when I'm nervous, not angry. I'm sorry I made you angry."

"It wasn't you, it was..." He sighed. "Very well, it was you. You're so..." He shook his head. "Never mind."

"It's all right. I've heard it all before. Stubborn. Headstrong. Selfish."

Thanks to the flickering light from a nearby torch, his crooked smile looked wicked. It quickly vanished, however. "When I walked into Laylana's room, you looked pale. You were shaking. And there was nothing I could do because you'd already done it. I felt useless."

"You're not useless, Captain. You've got a thousand-strong household to worry about, plus all the visiting nobles with their jealousies, not to mention a king with a bowel problem."

He smiled again. "It's never dull here, that's certain."

"Perhaps it will be now that Lord Frederick has been caught. What will you do with him?"

"He'll face Glancian justice. Whatever that is," he added in a mutter.

I wondered why he faced justice when the other prisoners did not. "Keep an eye on the duke of Gladstow," I said. "I caught him arguing with Lady Claypool tonight. He tried to restrain her."