“Shall we go home?”
Agnes looked at her brother.
He had said it so simply. As though he had been away for an afternoon and had finally grown tired of the palace.
She held their father’s sealed deed against her apron.
“In a moment.”
Beatrice moved beside the wedding cake.
“Yes,” she said quickly. “We should all go home and discuss this sensibly.”
Agnes did not look away from her twin.
“I meant I have questions for you.”
His smile softened.
“I thought you might.”
“Six years’ worth.”
King Edmund settled back beside the table.
“Then we shall take the time.”
Beatrice’s expression suggested that time was the last thing this gathering required.
Agnes’s brother slipped the half-mask into his coat pocket.
Without it, she could see the small familiar movements of his face. The way one eyebrow lifted before he attempted a joke. The way his mouth tightened when he was deciding how much to tell her.
She had remembered those things for six years.
Seeing them again was almost unbearable.
“Where were you?”
“Taken from the ship.”
Agnes’s fingers tightened around the parchment.
The vessel on which he had sailed had never returned. The fragments of news that reached home had become one accepted conclusion: everyone aboard was dead.
He had not been.
Neither, he explained, had several of the others.
They had been taken prisoner and moved far inland. Seasons had passed in places where news arrived long after the events it described. Attempts to send word home had gone nowhere.
He did not turn the account into an adventure.
He told her what she needed to know.
He had been unable to leave. Then an exchange had finally brought freedom. Getting home had taken longer than he had expected.
Their father’s death had been news he learned on the journey back.
Agnes closed her eyes.
For years, she had imagined telling her father that a mistake had been made.
Now the mistake had been corrected, and he was not there to hear it.
Her brother looked down.
“I know.”
She opened her eyes.
“No,” she said gently. “Not yet. We have rather a lot to tell each other.”
He nodded.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Even Beatrice appeared to understand that interrupting would be a poor choice.
It did not last.
“I had no way of knowing he was alive,” she said.
Agnes turned toward her.
“Neither did I.”
“Then you understand why arrangements had to be made.”
Edmund rested one hand on the table.
“The arrangements named Agnes and her brother as the heirs. The deed is now in their possession.”
Beatrice glanced at the parchment.
“Yes, but while he was absent—”
“Agnes was not.”
“She hardly understood the responsibilities involved.”
Agnes looked at her young stepmother.
“I understood that I ought to be allowed to attend the ceremony.”
“You became upset.”
“You pushed me.”
“You lost your balance.”
“Immediately after you helped me lose it.”
Her brother shifted beside her.
Beatrice glanced at him and stopped.
He had been close enough to catch Agnes. He had also been close enough to see how she came to need catching.
“She did not stumble into your hands,” he said.
Edmund looked toward Beatrice.
She adjusted the fingers of one glove.
“I wanted a private conversation.”
“You chose a staircase,” Agnes replied. “An unfortunate room.”
The king’s mouth moved.
He kept the smile to himself.
The gallery rose only three shallow steps above the banquet floor.
Agnes looked back at it.
She had followed Beatrice there because her stepmother said they needed to settle a misunderstanding before speaking to the king.
According to Beatrice, there was no point troubling Edmund with family disagreement.
According to Agnes, the family disagreement concerned whether she was allowed to receive the inheritance already intended for her.
They had not agreed.
Then Beatrice had put both hands against her.
Agnes remembered reaching for the railing.
Then the stranger’s grip.
She turned back to her brother.
“And why were you wearing a mask?”
His eyes flicked toward Beatrice.
“I wanted to reach you before she recognized me.”
“You reached my forearms very efficiently.”
“I was hoping to begin with a greeting.”
“You might have stood somewhere less mysterious.”
“I had just heard your voice. I stopped.”
Agnes studied him.
“You stopped behind a column.”
“For a moment.”
“A very dramatic moment.”
His expression changed.
“I saw you and couldn’t quite make myself move.”
The answer quieted her.
She understood that better than she wished to.
He had seen his sister alive before she knew she could see him again.
Then Beatrice had moved, and the moment had ended.
Agnes touched his sleeve.
“Next time,” she said, “try saying my name.”
“I’ll do that.”
Beatrice cleared her throat.
“Are we finished with the reunion?”
Edmund looked at her.
She changed the question.
“I mean, there are practical matters.”
“There certainly are,” Agnes said.
Her brother glanced toward the door.
“She can be out of the house tonight.”
Beatrice went very still.
Agnes looked at him.
“You have been home for less than a day.”
“I have seen enough.”
“So have I. I also know where everything is.”
He drew a breath.
She continued before he could turn his protectiveness into another decision made without her.
“We’ll arrange her departure. We won’t start pulling things out of rooms in the dark.”
Beatrice relaxed slightly.
Agnes noticed.
“That does not mean you are staying in charge.”
Her stepmother’s relief vanished.
Edmund nodded.
“Until suitable arrangements are made, you will remain apart. I will see that neither heir is prevented from entering or managing the house.”
Beatrice clasped her hands.
“I have managed it for months.”
“Yes,” Agnes said. “Which is why you can explain what requires attention.”
Her brother looked at her.
She met his eyes.
“We’ve inherited responsibilities as well as rooms.”
He considered that.
Then he nodded.
Agnes had spent the weeks after their father’s death being told she was too emotional to make decisions.
Beatrice had suggested postponing conversations. Then she had suggested holding them without Agnes.
She had referred to the family house as hers before anyone had settled what belonged to whom.
Agnes had objected.
That was how she had become difficult.
Now, with the deed in her hands, she felt an urge to make one enormous decision simply because nobody could stop her.
Send Beatrice away.
Lock every door.
Tell her brother they were never leaving again.
She resisted it.
She had not spent months asking to be heard so that she could immediately stop listening.
“What would you like to do with the house?” she asked her twin.
He seemed surprised.
“Keep it, surely.”
“Because you want to?”
He looked toward the parchment.
“Because it’s home.”
“That’s a reason. I’d like to know whether it is yours.”
For the first time that afternoon, his confidence faltered.
“I don’t know yet.”
Agnes nodded.
“Then we won’t decide everything today.”
Beatrice opened her mouth.
“Neither will you,” Agnes added.
The king turned his attention to her stepmother.
“What did you tell me before Agnes arrived?”
Beatrice looked at the cake.
“That she might not attend.”
“And why?”
“She was finding the occasion distressing.”
Agnes gave a quiet, disbelieving laugh.
“I was downstairs asking which room it was in.”
Beatrice’s face tightened.
“I could not know what you intended.”
“You could have asked me.”
Edmund waited.
The silence grew.
At last Beatrice said, “I thought she might accept a different arrangement.”
“Which arrangement?” Agnes asked.
“That I continued managing everything.”
“And where would I live?”
“You have always preferred the smaller rooms.”
Agnes looked at her brother.
He was watching Beatrice with the expression he used to wear when listening to someone sell him something that appeared to have no useful parts.
“The smaller rooms are where she put me,” Agnes said.
Beatrice lifted her chin.
“They were perfectly comfortable.”
“How fortunate,” her brother said. “We may eventually find you some.”
Agnes touched his arm.
He stopped.
She had not forgotten the shove.
She did not need him to invent a second humiliation to prove he had seen it.
Beatrice tried a different approach.
“Your father would not have wanted his widow treated as a stranger.”
Agnes’s face changed.
“My father would have wanted you to stop when I said no.”
Beatrice looked away.
There it was, at last: something the cake, the chandeliers, and the polished table could not make elegant.
Agnes had said no.
Beatrice had pushed her anyway.
Edmund leaned forward.
“You will not approach Agnes privately again while these arrangements are made.”
Her stepmother looked at him.
“Surely that is unnecessary.”
“It is necessary to Agnes.”
He turned to her.
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes.”
Her brother stood quietly beside her.
She was grateful for that.
He had spent the last few minutes discovering that helping her did not require answering every question first.
Beatrice looked between the twins.
Then she tried to smile.
“Perhaps we should begin again. We are family, after all.”
Agnes looked at the staircase.
Her brother looked at Beatrice.
“Would you like me to put the mask back on?”
Edmund laughed before he could stop himself.
Beatrice’s smile disappeared.
Agnes shook her head.
“No. Once was quite enough.”
She turned back to her stepmother.
“You will take your own belongings. We will not pretend they are ours merely because we are angry.”
Beatrice began to nod.
“And you will leave ours where they are.”
The nod stopped.
“We can discuss the details with someone present,” Agnes continued. “There will be no more conversations in corners about what I ought to give up.”
Her stepmother glanced at the sealed deed.
“You might at least let me read it.”
“You knew very well what it said before I received it.”
Beatrice had no answer.
Agnes shifted the parchment carefully.
She had spent so long being urged to surrender something that simply keeping hold of it felt unfamiliar.
She meant to become accustomed to it.
Edmund looked toward the doorway.
“The immediate matter is settled. The estate will not pass to Beatrice.”
Her stepmother’s fingers closed around a fold of blue satin.
“But the house—”
“Belongs to the heirs.”
“The household—”
“Will answer to them.”
“The arrangements I already made—”
Agnes lifted one eyebrow.
“Must now be discussed with us.”
Beatrice stared at her.
It appeared that having no inheritance was beginning to involve a remarkable number of things she could no longer order.
She looked toward the wedding cake.
Then away again.
Nobody offered her a different estate to soften the disappointment.
At last she made a stiff acknowledgment to the king and moved toward the far end of the hall.
She stopped near the cake, apparently unwilling to leave the only part of the afternoon that still looked exactly as she had planned.
Agnes watched until there was space between them.
Then her right hand began to tremble.
She tried to still it against the parchment.
Her brother saw.
“May I?”
She nodded.
He placed his hand beneath hers without taking the deed away.
For a moment, she could only look at his fingers.
There was nothing ghostly about them.
They were warm.
“You’re really here,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I was angry with you sometimes.”
“I’d have been angry too.”
“For being dead.”
His mouth moved.
“I apologize for the inconvenience.”
She laughed.
Then she cried, briefly and without elegance.
He stayed beside her.
Edmund looked toward the windows, granting them the only privacy the room could offer.
When Agnes could speak again, she said, “Don’t vanish while I’m looking away.”
“I won’t.”
“That is a promise I intend to take very seriously.”
“I know.”
They did not settle six years beside the banquet table.
They began with smaller things.
Her brother asked about their father’s last months.
Agnes told him there had been good days as well as difficult ones.
He asked whether the old pear tree still stood.
She said it did, although it had produced fruit so sour that their father accused it of a personal grievance.
He smiled.
The familiar expression nearly undid her again.
They would have to speak about the lost years more than once. He would have things he could not yet describe. She would remember moments he could never return to.
For now, they could begin by going home together.
Agnes looked at the deed in her hands.
“Shall we go?”
Her brother glanced toward the gallery.
“This way?”
“The broad steps,” she said. “At an ordinary pace.”
He offered his arm.
She tucked the parchment securely against her left side and took his arm with her right.
This time, nobody hurried her.
At the doorway, he looked back.
Beatrice still stood near the untouched cake.
“Did you mean she could keep that?”
Agnes followed his gaze.
“I certainly don’t intend to carry it.”
“We could return for it.”
She looked at him.
He gave her the smallest familiar grin.
For six years, she had forgotten how irritating a brother could be when he was safely available to irritate her.
The discovery made her unexpectedly happy.
“First the house,” she said.
“Then the cake?”
“Then a very long explanation of everything you’ve missed.”
He nodded.
“And after that?”
Agnes smiled.
“We’ll see whether you’ve earned dessert.”
Behind them, Edmund laughed.
The cake remained untouched.
Agnes walked out holding the inheritance her stepmother had tried to keep from her, with the brother she had thought she would never see again.
Her brother matched his pace to hers.
