Telmaine

Telmaine did not recognize the manservant who showed her into the apartment and Balthasar’s room. Neither Lorcas nor Eldon was present, and nor, to her relief, was Olivede Hearne. Her husband was lying in his bed surrounded by unread newspapers. She knew them to be unread because Bal habitually reduced newspapers to a shambles that was the despair of every conscientious housemaid. His face was taut with strain, even as he smiled and opened his arms to Amerdale and herself. She was immediately frightened he might have relapsed, but when she slid her hand behind his neck she felt no greater physical duress. Emotionally was a different matter. She sucked in her breath at his emotional storm: He was trying and failing to avoid thinking of something, and all that did was fragment it. He made an effort, a valiant effort, at lightheartedness for their sakes.

At last, she coaxed Amerdale to agree that she would like to visit the menagerie in the central garden, and asked a manservant to find a nursery maid to take her. They sent her off with the young girl who appeared, and Bal sighed with audible regret. “She needs the distraction,” he said, unwittingly echoing Merivan’s unappreciated offer. Telmaine concealed a wince and slipped into the small, warm place left by their daughter, lay down beside him, and laid her arm across his chest, sliding her bare hand under the yoke of his shirt to rest on his shoulder. “Something’s wrong,” she risked asking. “I can tell it. What is it?”

The surge of utter, impotent hatred in him made her recoil, even so far as to pull her hand away. He did not notice. His thoughts, normally so orderly and engaging, were a hard coil of anger. After a long moment, he said in a soft, strained voice, “Telmaine, I’m sorry. But I can’t . . . I haven’t the strength to keep doing this. I’ve . . . withdrawn my support from Baron Strumheller. I’ve lost my nerve. I’m hurt and I’m worried and . . .” And to her touch, to her magic, his jagged memories of the night before told her the truth behind his lies, that his supposedly dead brother Lysander, the one who’d made him accomplice to murder seventeen years ago, had claimed to have their daughter, and was threatening her life.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you’ll be ashamed of me.”

She could not speak, horrified at what her touch was revealing, horrified at the lie in his words. He had never lied to her, not like this. She knew Lysander had hurt him, but not that Lysander would exert such control over him.

She sought truthful words, to fit between his lie and her knowledge. “My love, my cherished, I understand. Don’t hate yourself.”

“I won’t,” he said, another lie. He felt so frail in her arms. She held him as tightly as she dared, sinking her awareness into his body and sensing the slow, natural healing of his injuries. She longed to inject her own vitality into the still-fragile bulk of the spleen, the delicate matrix of the broken rib, the clot-stiffened areas in the lungs. There . . . there was a small foul area, like the rotten spot on a peach: the beginnings of pneumonia. He’d not know that was gone, and it was so easily brushed away, as though she had been doing this for years.

“I haven’t had any word about Florilinde,” he said, resting his cheek against hers. “Or Baronet di Maurier.”

She broke off her examination to remember that yes, she should have asked that question. “Theophile called in three inquiry agents. I spoke to them this morning, told them everything I knew. They said they would come and speak to you later on. They seemed very competent.” Which she could not believe of Guillaume di Maurier, social scandal that he was. One of the agents, fortunately, had reminded her of Ishmael, a seasoned man with a brusque but gentle manner.

“Good . . .” he murmured. “Telmaine, I am worried about Olivede. She went back to the Rivermarch to help. Eldon says that she had company, a guard, but after everything that’s happened . . .” They are my children, Balthasar, Lysander’s voice spoke through him. “And I’m . . . I can’t help thinking about the twin babies. I don’t know whether they’re alive or dead, Telmaine. It’s all mixed up in my mind with Florilinde. . . .”

She stroked his forehead, though his memories and guilt and lies lacerated her. “Bal, no one can care for them all at once. Your sister is a grown woman, responsible for her own well-being. No one can know better than she does what the dangers are. Baron Strumheller is a great landowner and a Shadowhunter; he has money and lawyers and powerful friends. Yes, it would be terrible if anything happened to the twins, but you have done your best for them already. We must think first of our Florilinde.” Deliberately, she added, “I cannot think of anything that I would not do to get her back safely.”

And she knew, as she said it, that it was the truth, should and had to be the truth. She pushed herself upright, tucking her legs under her beneath her hampering skirts, and put a hand on the table beside the medicine bottles. “Which one of these helps you rest?” She would use her magic to help him sleep, but with his experience, he would surely know.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t need—”

“You don’t need to lie here and fret. I’m going to go and pay a call on Mistress White Hand.”

“I sent her a letter.”

“A letter’s too slow. Then I am going to call at the rooms of Guillaume di Maurier and find out what he knows, and then I . . . well, what I do next depends upon what I find out.”

“It’s not safe,” he protested.

She allowed a moment for him to tell her the truth as to why it was not safe, and then leaned over and kissed him lightly, a blithe wife disregarding her husband’s fretting. “I’ll not use my own or the ducal carriage: I’ve asked Sylvide to call on me. I will start by taking hers, as far as I think it’s safe for her to go. Then I’ll hire.”

“Telmaine—”

“I can do this, Bal. You can’t. Baron Strumheller can’t. Did I not hear you say, just before we left the house, that whatever condition we find ourselves in, we are the ones to fight this evil? You made no distinction then between Baron Strumheller and yourself, and your sister and me.”

“I do not think,” he said, after a long silence, “I could live if anything happened to you.”

She swallowed. “I thought the same. But we have children, and we cannot be so selfish. Promise me that if anything does happen to me—anything that forces us apart—promise me you will still live for, love, and care for the children. And I will make you the same promise.”

“Kiss me,” he whispered. She braced herself against his profound unhappiness and sense of inadequacy, but drew strength from his unexpected admiration. She did not press him for his promise, knowing by the kiss and the emotions that, consciously or otherwise, it was given. Despite her better wisdom, she pressed healing on him through the kiss.

“Better than any medicine,” he breathed, his hand curling around the back of her neck as she drew away. They smiled at each other, each wreathed in secrets and unspoken truths.