Collecting a snack from one of the camp kitchens, I refused a friendly offer of company from a girl I had shared the cabin with on board ship. This was one trip I needed to make alone.
The woods around the manor seemed to welcome me, and I soon found my old stride, altered by so many months of walking through crowds in the capital. The air carried slightly more moisture than in Lanare, but a pleasant sea breeze had found its way in among the greenery, so the heat didn’t feel oppressive. Birds called familiar greetings, and rustles in the surrounding undergrowth suggested small animals fled from my approach. I had soon passed through the thickest section of trees and was struggling up a tall hill on the other side. As my breath came more heavily, I chastised myself for losing some of my conditioning in city life. I needed to take more opportunities to exercise.
As I crested the hill and came down the other side, I picked up my pace. I loved the beaches on this side. The softest white sand sloped gently into the sparkling water. At these shallow levels, the water sometimes appeared green, sometimes blue, and sometimes so clear you could see translucent fish darting beneath the surface. And although it was only mid-afternoon, still a long way from twilight, I hoped I might see a turtle making his way up onto the sand.
A reef kept the waves lapping gently against the shore and also meant the beaches were of little use for boats. Subsequently, no one had bothered to build a road out to them, and they were used only for leisure by those willing to make the cross-country walk. It had always been one of their big appeals to me.
As soon as I arrived, I slipped off my shoes and wiggled my feet in the velvet soft sand. Tucking my slippers behind a rock to collect on my way back, I hurried down to the water to let the waves roll over my toes. Down here the wet sand was somehow, impossibly, even softer, and I wriggled my feet, letting them sink down until they were covered.
Unfortunately, it was right at that moment I heard voices. As I pulled my feet free and turned to flee, several figures came into view.
I sucked in a breath, churning filling my stomach. I recognized all of them. The viscount had three children, and there had been no love lost between me and my temporary foster siblings. A situation I should have been used to by the time I reached Catalie. And now, coming around a curve in the beach were Monique, the viscount’s eldest, Shantelle, his youngest, and their friend, Carmel.
Carmel was the first to see me, her eyes widening as she nudged the other two. Both looked up, Monique gasping dramatically when she saw me. Immediately she stalked over in my direction, glaring as she came.
“I had heard you were on the island, Evangeline, but I didn’t think you would dare show your face. Let alone follow us here.” She shook her head. “I should have known better.”
I sighed. “I didn’t follow you, Monique. I didn’t know you would be here today, or I certainly wouldn’t have come.”
“A likely story,” she sneered. “If you were thinking we would be forced to acknowledge you and introduce you to the royals, you can think again. I wouldn’t presume to introduce a thief and a liar to a prince or princess.” She had reached me now, and her eyes narrowed as she leaned in close. “An orphan with no family and no name.”
I sucked in a breath. I longed to snap back at her. To rage and scream that she was the liar. To tell her that I had no need of her services to introduce me to Celine or Frederic or Cassian. But I knew from experience that saying any such thing would only make her worse.
And I could now hear voices behind them on the beach. While they were still out of sight, her words had told me who I would find among them. The last thing I needed was for the royals to find me in a screaming match with the viscount’s daughter. It was beneath my dignity, anyway. Whatever the noble girl might think, I did have some.
“I didn’t expect to see you again, Evie,” said Shantelle, diffidently.
I forced a weak smile in her direction. She had never tormented me of her own volition, like Monique had done, but she had never backed me up, either. The youngest of the viscount’s children, she followed where her older sister led.
“I didn’t expect to ever be back,” I said.
“You should have stayed away. We don’t want you here,” said Carmel. She had always been a more enthusiastic follower of Monique than Shantelle. Perhaps because her parents were only wealthy merchants, and she valued her place in the inner circle of the noble girls. At least Marcus wasn’t with them. Unlike the viscount’s haughty son, Julian, who had seemed surprised by my presence on the few occasions he had ever noticed it, the viscount’s nephew had been a worse harasser than Monique.
I had been fourteen when the viscount found me on a visit to the mainland and decided to take me in as a ward. I had been small for my age, used to being treated as a child. But I had grown up in my years on the island, and Marcus had seen me not as a homeless child but as a threat. At the beginning I had seen how he hung around the viscount’s family—part of it and yet not—and I had thought it a commonality between us. But when I had attempted to reach out to him in friendship, he had made his feelings clear.
I was a usurper. Angling for a place on the island he thought should be his. After years striving to please his uncle, the viscount had chosen to take a nameless, homeless waif in as a ward, giving me the place in his family that Marcus had never quite been able to command. And all his years of pent up frustration and anger had been directed toward me.
I had longed many times to tell him that the viscount was hardly likely to welcome him with anything warmer than obligation when the boy so clearly wished his older cousin gone and himself heir in Julian’s place. But saying such things to Marcus would produce even worse results than speaking truth to Monique. After I turned sixteen, there had been a look in Marcus’s eyes that told me I had better do everything in my power never to be alone with him. I had become so good at avoiding him entirely, that I had barely even seen him my entire seventeenth year. He had succeeded in his revenge, anyway, of course, gaining the outcome he had always most desired. My departure.
A revenge all too ably assisted by the girl in front of me. Monique had been incensed from the beginning at the idea that she should treat a nameless nobody as anything even approaching a sister. A small, vicious part of me felt glad to note her growth spurt. She wouldn’t fit into any of the dresses I had made for her anymore, and the one she had on in their place was clearly inferior in quality. I tried to remind myself such thoughts were beneath me but didn’t quite succeed.
A familiar voice I had hoped never to hear again rang out, and I blanched, all thought of Monique’s gown driven from my mind. So Marcus was with them, after all. Another more measured tone sounded, and I sighed, some of my instinctive anger and fear lightening. Julian was here, too. He had no doubt come on account of the princes, Marcus trailing inevitably behind. Like his father, Julian was unlikely to notice the small jabs and pricks offered me by his sisters and cousin. But his presence was as effective as that of the viscount or their mother for protecting me from anything too outrageous.
Another voice sounded, and the band across my chest tightened for another reason. Their cruelty used to hurt me, but I now recognized my current fear came from a different source. I no longer feared their humiliations for my own sake, it was what they might say about me to Celine and the others that made me quake. That was the true reason I had been hiding since our arrival.
“You should leave. Now.” Monique’s hiss only seconded my own opinion. I couldn’t leave fast enough as far as I was concerned. She took my arm and tried to shove me toward the trees, but we were too late. A small clump of young people wandered into view.