Free Buried Above Ground by Leah Cypess Page B

she found him, sitting at a round table loaded with glittering plates and goblets, eating with his horse-faced wife. Once, he would have been looking for her, too, would have traded a surreptitious glance and made an excuse to pass by and share a whisper. Now he sat eating his soup as if there was nothing else in the room that could possibly hold any interest for him.
    A familiar pang shot through the urge for vengeance, and for a moment the two feelings seemed to be the same thing. She shook her head, pushing off unwelcome thoughts. Perhaps he wasn’t as attentive as he used to be . . . but three days ago, he had read her poetry and brought her expensive chocolates from the Green Islands, so rich and sweet she had made herself eat only one a day. He still loved her, when he remembered to think of her.
    He wouldn’t have killed her.
    But then again, he thought she was desperately in love with him; she had done everything in her power to give that impression, and he had lapped it up as if it was his due. Maybe she had been fooled, just like he had.
    Fortunately there was an easy way to find out.
    Lord Ardun turned, startled and horrified, when she slid into the seat next to his. Lady Ardun, on his other side, stared at Emilie with almost comically wide, kohl-rimmed eyes. Lady Ardun always used far too much kohl and powder, as if enough color could make her look pretty. Instead it made her look desperate for the beauty she would never have.
    One quick glance at her lover’s hands told Emilie that she was right: he had not killed her. The life of the castle took place at night, to accommodate the ghosts; like all the nobles who slept away the sunlight hours, Lord Ardun’s skin was pale, and like all nobles everywhere, it was smooth and soft, unmarked by any hint of work. The scratch she had landed on her killer would have stood out like a beacon on those unblemished white hands.
    A wave of relief surprised her. Well, Lizette had warned her: no matter what her reason for taking a lover, eventually she would come to either love him a little, or hate him a lot. Loving him had made the last three years much more pleasant than they would otherwise have been.
    â€œHow dare you,” Lady Ardun hissed, and Emilie looked away from her lover’s hands to meet his wife’s pale blue eyes. Spittle flew from her lips. “This is not your place.”
    Emilie smiled at her, slowly and scornfully, something she had been longing to do for three years. Lady Ardun flushed and looked away, and the surge of satisfaction within Emilie drowned out, for the moment, the hunger for vengeance.
    Once, very briefly, Emilie had been Lady Ardun’s maid. It had taken only days for Lord Ardun to notice her, and about a week for Lady Ardun to notice his noticing. Lady Ardun had, of course, dismissed Emilie immediately. But she had been too late.
    Emilie sometimes wondered if she should feel grateful to Lady Ardun for selecting an untrained country girl to be one of her personal maids. She still didn’t know why Lady Ardun had done it. If not for that choice, Emilie would have been sent to the kitchens, or the stables.
    It had also occurred to her that she should be ashamed of how she had repaid that favor. And perhaps, if Lady Ardun had ever bothered to acknowledge her existence, back when Emilie had been tying her stays and painting her face and washing her filthy hair, Emilie would be ashamed.
    â€œEmilie,” Lord Ardun said. His gaze flickered, briefly and frantically, between the two women. “If you wish to speak to me, this is not the—”
    â€œI do not,” Emilie said. “I wish to speak to her.”
    Lady Ardun’s hands were hidden beneath the table. Not that it mattered, since her white silk gloves reached nearly to her armpits. The current fashion for formal gloves was, given the circumstances, rather unfortunate.
    â€œI have nothing to say to you,” Lady Ardun said, low and