I Shall Wear Midnight

Duchess’s bodyguards to reach for their weapons, thus causing the castle guards to draw theirs too, so as not to be left out. By the time swords were safely disentangled and put where they belonged, the Duchess was already launching a counter-attack. ‘You should not put up with this insubordination, young man! You are the Baron, and you have given this … this creature notice to leave your lands. She is not conducive to public order, and if she still wilfully insists on not leaving, do I need to remind you that her parents are your tenants?’
    Tiffany was already seething because of ‘creature’, but to hersurprise the young Baron shook his head and said, ‘No, I cannot punish good tenants for having a wayward daughter.’
    ‘Wayward’? That was worse than ‘creature’! How dare he …! And her thoughts ran together. He wouldn’t dare. He never had dared, not in all the time they’d known each other, all the time when she had been just Tiffany and he had been just Roland. It had been a strange relationship, mostly because it wasn’t a relationship at all. They hadn’t been drawn to one another: they had been pushed towards one another by the way the world worked. She was a witch, which meant that she was automatically different from the village kids, and he was the Baron’s son, which automatically meant he was different from the village kids.
    And where they had gone wrong was in believing, somewhere in their minds, that because two things were different, they must therefore be alike. Slowly finding out that this wasn’t true hadn’t been nice for either of them and there had been a certain number of things that both of them wished hadn’t been said. And then it wasn’t over, because it had never begun, not really, of course. And so it was best for both of them. Of course. Certainly. Yes.
    And in all that time he’d never been like this, never so cold, never so stupid in such a meticulous kind of way that you couldn’t blame it all on the wretched Duchess, although Tiffany would have loved to. No, there were other things happening. She had to be on her guard. And there, watching them watching her, she realized how a person could be both stupid and clever.
    She picked up her chair, placed it neatly in front of the desk, sat down on it, folded her hands and said, ‘I am very sorry, my lord.’ She turned to the Duchess, bowed her head and said, ‘And to you too, your grace. I temporarily forgot my place. It will not happen again. Thank you.’
    The Duchess grunted. It would have been impossible for Tiffany to have thought any less of her but, well, a grunt? After aclimb-down like that? Humbling an uppity young witch deserved a lot better than that – some remark so cutting that it blunted on the bone. Honestly, she might have made an effort.
    Roland was staring at Tiffany, so nonplussed he was nearly minused. She confused him a little more by handing him the now-crumpled sheet of paper and saying, ‘Do you want to deal with the other matters, my lord?’
    He struggled for a moment, managed to flatten the paper on the desk to his satisfaction, smoothed it out and said, ‘There is the matter of the death of my father and the theft of money from his strongbox.’
    Tiffany fixed him with a helpful smile, which made him nervous. ‘Anything else, my lord? I am anxious that everything should be dealt with.’
    ‘Roland, she is up to something,’ said the Duchess. ‘Be on your guard.’ She waved a hand towards the guards. ‘And you guards should be on your guard as well, mind!’
    The guards, having some difficulty with the idea of being even more on their guard when they were already – through nervousness – much further on their guard in any case than they had ever been before, strained to look a bit taller.
    Roland cleared his throat. ‘Ahem, then there is the matter of the late cook, who fell to her death almost coincidentally with, I believe, insulting you. Do you understand these charges?’
    ‘No,’ said Tiffany.
    There was a moment of silence before Roland said, ‘Er, why not?’
    ‘Because they aren’t charges, my lord. You are not declaring outright that you think I stole the money and killed your father and the cook. You are simply sort of waving the idea in front of me in the hope that I will burst into tears, I suppose. Witches don’t cry, and I want something that probably no other witch has ever asked for before. I want a hearing. A proper hearing. And that