Free The Queen's Bastard by C. E. Murphy

jealous, and looked down at her from the advantage of height she held. She said nothing, only looked; after a steady moment or two Ilyana blanched, then gathered her skirts and ran.
    “You ought not have done that.”
    Belinda smoothed her skirts without lifting her eyes to meet the coachman’s. “Perhaps not. A woman named whore will be run out of house and home, but a woman named witch will be burned.” She looked up then, without humour, without betraying the pounding of her heart or the cold spurts that made her hands thick as they stroked her skirts again. “One I can live through. The other no one can.”
    “You’ve made an enemy.”
    Belinda shook her head. “No, sir. An enemy can do you harm. Ilyana can’t do anything to me.” She curved her mouth into a smile, still without humour. “Certainly not so long as I have the count’s eye.”
    “And if he’s as ill as they say?”
    Interest lit Belinda’s eyes. She swayed her hips forward, her smile turning fuller. “You drove the doctor. Do you have more than servant’s gossip?”
    The coachman shrugged, easy loose movement. Viktor, Belinda thought, would never move with that much grace. Viktor, though, would do her bidding, and the young catamount here might have ideas of his own. “Yesterday the doctor came away shaking his head and frowning, as bad a sign as I’ve ever seen. Today…”
    Belinda edged forward again, inviting intimacy, her gaze wide on the coachman’s. “Today?”
    “Today he’s silent.”
    Belinda caught her breath, wanting it to warm the coldness inside her and instead feeling the accusation of witchcraft dancing in the chill. Arsenic and a bad summer cold and a woman willing to spend all of Gregori’s spare strength—that’s what brought the count low, not spells chanted over an animal’s spilled blood. It was not witchcraft, only coincidence and cruel, deliberate machination. She forced sluggish fear away, wrapping herself in the memory of sunlight cloaking Robert’s shoulders. Slow warmth replaced the cold, calming her breathing and her heart, and, protected by stillness, she nodded to show the coachman she understood.
    His mouth twitched, not with amusement. Recognition, rather, and the acknowledgment that she understood what he learned from silence. “You’ve known a lot of doctors, then.”
    “A few,” Belinda said. “Enough.” She glanced down the hall, then dipped a slight curtsey. “If you’ll excuse me now, the count wants his tea.”
    “And his girl,” the coachman said without malice. “If he’s not stronger by morning, watch yourself, Rosa. Ilyana’s got a mean tongue in her.”
    “Thank you.” Belinda let his warning slip away as soon as her back was turned, and Gregori was dead with the sunrise.
             
    She heard it with the others, being nowhere near important enough to sit out his death watch with him, for all that she’d been closer to him in the last days of his life than anyone else in the household. No, his son from a first marriage had come, riding in late the night before, and the regal, sharp-featured woman who was his noble lover had arrived in the small hours of the morning. Belinda had stood awake on the palace turrets, watching the hurried arrivals, and knew that morning would bear the news of the count’s death.
    Now, with it spoken, she heard the shrieks and wailings of Ilyana and other women, and stared thoughtfully at her own feet. She’d been in Gregori’s employ only a few months; to leave immediately would call more attention to herself, even make her suspect. To stay with Ilyana and her spiteful tongue might cost her far more. The young count wouldn’t want to risk her carrying his father’s child, and the high-born lover would likely as soon see a bruised servant girl dead as not.
    Over Belinda’s thoughts and over the cries of the women, the castellan boomed that no one was to worry, that the young count would not put them out of job and home, and that