Ch6. An Uncertain Answer

Addie did not think there was anything improper about Jeffery wanting to come along.

She nodded and started walking. “I’m going to a little alley beside the eastern market. There’s an old woman there who makes pastries. Hardly anyone knows about the place, but they’re simple and really good.” She smiled as she thought of Anna, whom she had served since childhood. “I thought a young lady raised in the palace would turn her nose up at something like that. But once, she caught me sneaking a pastry, and immediately started insisting that she wanted to try one too.”

Addie laughed again. Whenever she spoke of Anna, she sounded almost like a mother talking about her own daughter. “Ever since then, whenever I take a longer holiday and go home to visit my family, she always reminds me to bring some back for her when I return.”

Jeffery walked half a step behind Addie, slowing his pace to match hers as they moved through the shifting light and shadow of the narrow alley.

He did not interrupt.

He simply listened.

His eyes stayed on the road ahead, but he took in every word. Anna catching Addie sneaking pastries, then demanding to try one herself. He pictured it without meaning to. A girl raised in a palace, crouched somewhere out of sight, her eyes bright as she stared at the pastry in her maid’s hand. That girl and the Anna he had seen on the tower were the same person.

And yet they seemed separated by an impossible distance. His throat moved, but he said nothing.

As Addie went on, there was a softness and certainty in her laughter that only someone very close to another person could possess. Jeffery glanced at her once. He said nothing, but in his mind, he quietly moved the name Addie from the vague category of palace maid to somewhere far more specific. She was not merely a servant.

She was someone who had grown up beside Anna. They walked a little farther.

At the bend in the alley, the noise of the market had already begun to drift toward them. The smell of frying food mingled with voices and distant calls from vendors—a very ordinary kind of noise, warm and human in a way that made a person feel strangely at ease.

“Has she always…” Jeffery’s voice was low, almost as though he were asking himself as much as Addie. He paused, choosing among several words before settling on the one that came closest. “…held everything in like that?”

There was no accusation in the question. No pity. Only confirmation. Like someone fitting together a puzzle and wanting to know whether the piece in his hand truly belonged where he had placed it. His gaze remained on the mouth of the alley ahead. His tone was as calm as though they were discussing the weather.

But his knuckles brushed lightly against the fabric of his coat, betraying the weight those stories had begun to leave inside him. Addie was carefully choosing several of the prettier pastries for Anna, yet she did not miss Jeffery’s question.

That was one of the things she had learned after so many years as a maid—to listen even while her hands were busy.

“She does talk,” Addie said. “But when she does, she usually cries until she can’t stop. Someone has to hold her and soothe her for a long time…” She paused. “But…”

Addie hesitated, uncertain whether she should continue. Jeffery stood beside the stall. He did not look at the pastries. He only waited. The way he waited was quiet. He did not press her. Did not turn his head to urge her on. Did not use his eyes to demand an answer.

He simply left the space after that “but” open, like an unlocked door.

Whether she stepped through it was her choice. Jeffery had spent much of his life waiting.

Waiting for the person in his dreams to show her face.

Waiting for bad weather on the road to clear. Waiting for a city gate to open again at dawn. He knew how to wait. A breeze came from the direction of the market, carrying the sweet smell of freshly baked pastries along with voices and distant calls.

Jeffery’s gaze fell briefly on the pastries Addie was selecting. They were plain in shape and not especially pretty, but the old woman’s hands moved with the ease of someone who had made them for decades. Addie had said few people knew about them. But they were very good.

Again, he imagined Anna discovering Addie sneaking one. A scene he had never witnessed, yet somehow his mind painted it with unusual clarity. He reached inside his coat, took out several copper coins, and placed them quietly on the wooden counter. A little more than the pastries cost. He offered no explanation.

Then he looked back at Addie. His voice dropped low enough that only the two of them could hear. “But what?” He did not pretend he had missed her hesitation.

Yet the way he asked made it clear that she could answer if she wished—and remain silent if she did not.

Deep in his amber eyes, something smoldered like banked coals. Low. Steady. Still burning. Addie hesitated, then sighed. Perhaps she decided there was no harm in telling him.

After all, the fact that Losinitro had a beautiful princess who was not loved by her father was hardly a secret anymore. “As she got older, she became better and better at hiding things.” Addie’s voice softened. “Maybe it started after one night when she had a nightmare. She went to her father crying, but he refused to open the door and let her in.” She paused. “She cried outside his room for hours. Eventually she exhausted herself and fell asleep there. It was the captain of the guard who carried her back to her room.”

Only after finishing did Addie notice the money Jeffery had placed on the stall.

She immediately tried to push it back toward him. “No, you can’t do that. Please take your money back.”

Jeffery did not move after hearing the story. For a moment, even his breathing seemed to stop. A picture formed in his mind. Not something he had ever seen. Something Addie’s words built for him.

A closed door.

A little girl sitting outside it.

Crying loudly at first. Then more softly. Then so quietly there was no sound left at all.

Until finally she fell asleep from exhaustion on the cold stone floor of the corridor.

No one opened the door. Only the captain of the guard came and carried her back. Jeffery’s jaw tightened. Slowly. Almost imperceptibly. But hard.

He remembered Anna’s profile on the tower. That look deeper than exhaustion, older than fear. At the time, he had thought it was despair over the marriage. Fear of Geelong. The weariness of someone driven to the edge of a cliff.

Now he understood it was heavier than that.

It was the expression of someone who had learned, from a very young age, not to knock on closed doors. Someone who had spent so many years learning not to ask that, eventually, she no longer knew where to go when she needed to cry. Something inside his chest clenched dully. And did not let go.

When Addie noticed the coins and reached for them, Jeffery finally surfaced from wherever his thoughts had gone. He glanced down at the money on the wooden counter. Then gently redirected Addie’s hand away.

Not forcefully. He simply blocked its path. “Keep it.” His voice was lower than before. Smooth as a stone worn down by years of water.

No sharp edges. But solid. “Choose a few more.” He paused. His gaze settled on the plain little pastries for two seconds. “If she likes them, take more back for her.”

When he said it, he did not notice the way something slipped quietly and unguardedly into his voice. It was not pity. Not sympathy. Something closer. Something harder to name.

Like a fist that had been clenched for a long time finally loosening by half an inch. Addie heard the kindness in his words. Years as a maid had taught her how to tell when someone meant what they said. She added two more pastries.

One went into the basket. The other she held out toward Jeffery. “Aren’t you curious why our lady likes them?” She waited for him to take it, then looked at him with open curiosity. “And why are you so concerned about her?” “You hardly know each other.”

Jeffery looked down at the pastry she offered. He was silent for a second.

Then took it. It felt lighter in his palm than he expected.

Its surface was rough, still warm from the oven. An honest kind of warmth. Simple. Unadorned. His thumb rubbed lightly along the edge. He did not eat it yet. He simply held it. “I am curious.” He answered the first question first.

His tone was calm, as though stating a simple fact. Then he fell silent again. His gaze moved from the pastry toward the far end of the market.

He looked there for a long time. They hardly knew each other. That was true. He had seen Anna twice.

Everything they had said to each other might not have been enough to fill a single page.

He did not know her favorite color. Did not know whether she favored her left hand or her right.

Did not know what she looked like when she laughed. Even the things he knew of her past were things other people had told him. But he knew her hand had not trembled when she held the letter opener.

He knew the shape of her back when she stood before the guards.

He knew there were wounds beneath her clothes.

Knew she had not slept all night.

Knew the rhythm of the footsteps that had carried her toward her father’s study. He had not actually heard those footsteps.

And yet he had imagined them countless times. So clearly that even he could not explain where that certainty came from. Jeffery raised the pastry and took a bite. Sweet.

With the plain, earthy scent of grain.

Not the refined sweetness of a royal banquet. Something steadier. Grounded. Like an ordinary afternoon in which someone had simply been treated kindly. He chewed twice. Swallowed. Only then did he speak. “I don’t know either.” That was the truth.

He had no neat answer to give her. He turned his head and looked at Addie. There was something quiet and difficult to define in his amber eyes. Something serious.

“It’s just…” He paused. “Once you’ve seen someone standing on a tower like that, it becomes hard to pretend you never saw them.” His fingers closed lightly around the remaining half of the pastry. He lowered his gaze and finished eating it. His expression remained calm.

Like a man who had said everything he intended to say and saw no need to explain further. To Addie, the whole thing sounded almost like something out of a novel.

But then again, stories were often written about things that happened in real life. “I think you’ve fallen in love with our lady.” Addie said it calmly.

With the instinct of a maid who had watched people for years— and with the instinct of someone who, in many ways, thought of Anna as her own daughter. Jeffery froze. This time, longer than before.

Long enough that even he noticed.

His head remained lowered.

His gaze rested on the few crumbs left in his palm. He did not move. Did not answer. The market continued loudly around them. A vendor shouted to customers.

A child ran past and knocked something over with a sharp clatter. Someone at a nearby stall laughed and scolded the child. Every sound was still there. And yet, around Jeffery, it seemed as though a small pocket of silence had formed. Fallen in love. He turned the words over in his mind.

Again.

And again. He had seen her twice.

He had waited outside the city gate for an entire day.

He had spent several days learning the alleys of this city almost street by street.

He remembered exactly where the handle of her letter opener had been worn smooth.

When he heard that she had barely spoken for days, something had sat heavily in his chest for a long time.

It had not entirely gone away even now.

Jeffery brushed the crumbs from his palm with his thumb. Then raised his head and looked toward the far end of the market. His profile faced the light. He did not look at Addie. The silence lasted so long she probably began to think he had no intention of answering.

“…Hard to say.” He finally spoke. His voice was slightly rougher than usual. Like a string pulled just a little too tight.

The note it gave was not quite the one he intended. But it was real.

Behind the dark brown hair at his temples, the tips of his ears had quietly turned red.

He did not deny it. When Addie noticed, she could not help laughing. She lifted the basket, preparing to return to the palace. “Then I’ll tell our lady that someone has fallen in love with her.” She said it teasingly. But she did, in fact, intend to tell Anna.

Perhaps that knowledge might give her another reason to keep living. “Thank you for today. Really.” Addie lowered her gaze slightly. “And… thank you for getting to the tower in time that day.” For a brief moment, the thought of what might have happened if that day had ended in tragedy dimmed her eyes. But the light returned quickly. Things were still all right. For now.

“I should go back. Otherwise, our lady will be waiting too long.” The moment Jeffery heard— I’ll tell our lady that someone has fallen in love with her— his expression held steady for perhaps half a second.

Then, very slowly, it cracked. Not into a smile.

Or at least, not entirely. It was the expression of a man who had been struck precisely where it mattered, wanted to argue, and discovered there was not a single useful argument available. So all he could do was let the words burn once through his chest.

There was a trace of helplessness there. A kind of awkwardness even he had probably never expected from himself. “You…” He started. Then stopped. Whatever he had intended to say turned once on his tongue and failed to find a shape that sounded right. He pressed his lips together and turned his face away. Slowly gathering his usual composure around himself again.

But the faint red at his ears did not disappear.

“Go on…” His voice was quiet. But steady. Addie turned to leave. Jeffery stepped half a pace forward. He did not stop her. Only spoke. Low. “Addie.” She looked back. Jeffery paused.

As though weighing one final sentence before letting it leave his mouth. “That…” His tone hovered somewhere between seriousness and resignation.

“Whether you tell her or not is up to you.” But his eyes betrayed him. As he said it, those amber eyes flicked toward the high walls of the palace. Only for a moment. But clearly enough.

He never told her not to say it.