The Farseer Series Books 2 and 3: Royal Assassin, Assassin’s Quest. Robin Hobb

‘I haven’t strength to climb back up, and the rope isn’t long enough to reach to the base of the wall.’

      ‘You can’t come in,’ she repeated stubbornly.

      ‘Very well.’ I seated myself on the windowsill, one leg inside the room, the other dangling out of the window. Wind gusted past me, stirring her night robe and fanning the flames of the fire. I said nothing. After a moment, she began to shiver.

      ‘What do you want?’ she demanded angrily.

      ‘You. I wanted to tell you that tomorrow I am going to the King to ask permission to marry you.’ The words came out of my mouth with no planning. I was suddenly giddily aware that I could say and do anything. Anything at all.

      Molly stared a moment. Her voice was low as she said, ‘I do not wish to marry you.’

      ‘I wasn’t going to tell him that part.’ I found myself grinning at her.

      ‘You are intolerable!’

      ‘Yes. And very cold. Please, at least let me come in out of the cold.’

      She did not give me permission. But she did stand back from the window. I jumped lightly in, ignoring the jolt to my arm. I closed and fastened the shutters. I walked across the room. I knelt by her hearth and built up the fire well with logs to chase the chill from the room. Then I stood, thawing my hands at it. Molly said not a word. She stood sword straight, her arms crossed on her chest. I glanced over at her and smiled.

      She didn’t smile. ‘You should go.’

      I felt my own smile fade. ‘Molly, please, just talk to me. I thought, the last time we spoke, that we understood each other. Now you don’t speak to me, you turn away … I don’t know what changed, I don’t understand what is happening between us.’

      ‘Nothing.’ She suddenly looked very fragile. ‘Nothing is happening between us. Nothing can happen between us. FitzChivalry’ (and that name sounded so strange on her lips), ‘I’ve had time to think. If you had come to me, like this, a week ago, or a month ago, impetuous and smiling, I know I would have been won over.’ She permitted herself the ghost of a sad smile, as if she were remembering the way a dead child had skipped on some long ago summer day. ‘But you didn’t. You were correct and practical, and did all the right things, and, foolish as it may sound, that hurt me. I told myself that if you loved me as deeply as you had declared you did, nothing, not walls, not manners or reputation or protocol, would get in the way of your seeing me. That night, when you came, when we … but it changed nothing. You did not come back.’

      ‘But it was for your sake, for your reputation …’ I began desperately.

      ‘Hush. I told you it was foolish. But feelings do not have to be wise. Feelings just are. Your loving me was not wise. Nor my caring for you. I’ve come to see that. And I’ve come to see that wisdom must overrule feelings.’ She sighed. ‘I was so angry when your uncle first spoke to me. So outraged. He made me defiant, he gave me a steel resolve to stay in spite of everything that stood between us. But I am not a stone. Even if I were, even a stone can be worn away by the constant cold drip of common sense.’

      ‘My uncle? The prince?’ I was incredulous at the betrayal.

      She nodded slowly. ‘He wished me to keep his visit to myself. Nothing, he said, could be gained by your knowing of it. He needed to act in his family’s best interests. He said I should understand that. I did, but it made me angry. It was only over time that he made me see that it was in my own best interests as well.’ She paused and brushed a hand over her cheek. She was crying. Silently, just the tears running as she spoke.

      I walked across the room to her. Tentatively, I took her into my arms. She didn’t resist me, and that surprised me. I held her carefully, as if she were a butterfly that might be crushed too easily. She leaned her head forward, so that her forehead barely rested on my shoulder, and spoke into my chest. ‘In a few more months, I will have saved enough that I can start out on my own again. Not open a business, but rent a room somewhere, and find work to sustain me. And begin to start saving for a shop. That’s what I intend to do. Lady Patience is kind, and Lacey has become a real friend to me. But I do not like being a servant. And I will do it no longer than I have to.’ She stopped speaking and stood still in my arms. She was trembling lightly, as if from exhaustion. She seemed to have run out of words.

      ‘What did my uncle say to you?’ I asked carefully.

      ‘Oh.’ She swallowed, and moved her face lightly against me. I think she wiped tears on my shirt. ‘Only what I should have expected him to say. When first he came to me, he was cold and aloof. He thought me a … street whore, I suppose. He warned me sternly that the King would tolerate no more scandals. He demanded to know if I was with child. Of course, I was angry. I told him it was impossible that I should be. That we had never …’ Molly paused and I could feel how shamed she had been that anyone could even ask such a question. ‘So then he told me that if that was so, it was good. He asked what I thought I deserved, as reparation for your deceptions.’

      The word was like a little knife twisted in my guts. The fury I felt was building, but I forced myself to keep silent that she might speak it all out.

      ‘I told him I expected nothing. That I had deceived myself as much as you had deceived me. So then, he offered me money. To go away. And never speak of you. Or what had happened between us.’

      She was having trouble speaking. Her voice kept getting higher and tighter on each phrase. She fought for a semblance of calm I knew she didn’t feel. ‘He offered me enough to open a chandlery. I was angry. I told him I could not be paid to stop loving someone. That if the offer of money could make me love, or not love, then I was truly a whore. He grew very angry, but he left.’ She gave a sudden shuddering sob, then held herself still. I moved my hands lightly over her shoulders, feeling the tension there. I stroked her hair, softer than any horse’s mane, and sleeker. She had fallen silent.

      ‘Regal makes mischief,’ I heard myself say. ‘He seeks to injure me by driving you away. To shame me by hurting you.’ I shook my head to myself, wondering at my stupidity. ‘I should have foreseen this. All I thought was that he might whisper against you, or arrange for physical harm to befall you. But Burrich is right. The man has no morals, is bound by no rules.’

      ‘He was cold, at first. But never coarsely rude. He came only as the King’s messenger, he said, and came himself to save scandal, that no more should know of it than needed to. He sought to avoid talk, not make it. Later, after we had talked a few times, he said he regretted to see me cornered so, and that he would tell the King it was not of my devising. He even bought candles of me, and arranged for others to know what I had to sell. I believe he is trying to help, FitzChivalry. Or so he sees it.’

      To hear her defend Regal cut me deeper than any insult or rebuke she could level at me. My fingers tangled in her soft hair and I unwound them carefully. Regal. All the weeks I had gone alone, avoiding her, not speaking to her lest it cause scandal. Leaving her alone, so that Regal could come in my stead. Not courting her, no, but winning her with his practised charm and studied words. Chopping away at her image of me while I was not there to contradict anything he said. Making himself out to be her ally, while I was left voiceless to become the unthinking callow youth, the thoughtless villain. I bit my tongue before I spoke any more ill of him to her. It would only sound like a shallow angry boy striking back at one who sought to deny his will.

      ‘Have you ever spoken of Regal’s visits to Patience or Lacey? What did they say of him?’

      She shook her head, and the movement loosed the fragrance of her hair. ‘He cautioned me not to speak of it. “Women talk” he said, and I know that is true. I should not even have spoken of it to you. He said that Patience and Lacey would respect me more if it seemed I had reached this decision on my own. He said, also … that you would not let me go … if you thought the decision came from him. That you must believe that I turned away from you on my own.’

      ‘He knows me that well,’ I conceded to her.

      ‘I should not have told