The Duke In His Castle by Vera Nazarian Page A

her spittle striking him in an oddly intimate manner, so that he feels it on his cheeks, feels it coming from her doll’s mouth. Tiny living projectiles, from her to him.
    She moves away from him then, furious, her eyes attaining a mad quality, dilated and intense.
    “I don’t know,” he says, his lips trembling from the effort to contain an involuntary smile. “You should’ve been forthright with me from the beginning. Why else all this foolery on your part? You could still be pretending, on behalf of your Cousin, in order to get some other non-existent but suspected information out of me—”
    “I don’t have a cousin! I made her up! Lies, all I’ve told you! I am the Jane I told you about, and I’m Izelle. Both are me. Jane is when I’m ordinary and everyday-dull. Izelle is when I feel alive.”
    “And this is feeling alive? Fair enough,” he says, rearranging himself in his seat yet again. “Supposing you really are the Duchess (an exotic fool, more like), how the devil did you escape? And why come help me?”
    “Infernal questions,” she says. “Why can’t you simply believe me—” and then, pauses. “What am I saying? If I were in your place, I’d not believe such a lunatic as myself either, not for anything, no. . . .”
    “How did you escape?” he repeats, his tone neutral, so as not to startle her out of whatever possible wondrous thing she is about to tell him. He is alert, waiting.
    The Duchess of White begins to pace. “The very first unexpected thing to happen was that I found out my secret.”
    The Duke watches her, listening with all his being, and yet on another level he is busy reconciling the details of her with the reality; Duchess is a chit in a jester costume, with a face like a toy and the lips of a doll, and the manner of a madwoman. He is in the same room with another genuine blue blood of the realm, inside his very own castle! She is here, and she has broken free of the curse, somehow! Or . . . he could be dreaming. Or, even worse, this is all a malicious lie, the perpetuation of some dark charade. . . .
    Izelle continues. “Once I found out the secret, all else followed. Yes, now you are surprised, I can see. But it’s true. Just as you, I didn’t know it either, the so-called secret power of White. Indeed, I suspect that at first none of the Dukes are aware of their power, having to discover it as I have. It’s the process in which lies the key.”
    “What is your secret?” he asks, in genuine innocence.
    Enough , he wants to scream, tell me, tell me, tell me!
    Her gaze is elsewhere, doesn’t meet his. “Since I’ve lost in our little silly game, since I’ve forced myself into your noble company and tormented you all day, I owe you the truth. And so I’ll tell you everything—but in due time. First, your secret. You see, I am helping you and not just any other Ducal offspring, for a rather selfish reason: I need you. Your sorcerous power is the only thing that can help—”
    She cuts off her words. It’s as though she is afraid to proceed.
    He gets up, beginning to say “But I have no power,” then says instead: “What significance is there in my knowing my secret power, Duchess?”
    “I think . . . when you gain an awareness of it, you will also have an awareness of the indescribable boundary that holds us all in. Knowing it, you will know how to transcend it.”
    Her words are abstract, yet accompanied by an expression so secure in knowledge, that for once Rossian, more doubting than the devil he so likes to invoke, thinks it prudent to believe her.
    “What must I do?” he asks curtly.
    Janerizel smiles at him. “You already know that I meddle with the arts . . . well then. Since I was informed by sources beyond this mortal coil that by its nature my secret bears a paradoxical relationship to yours, I was able to infer what your secret is. But—oh, what a truly heaven-decreed opportunity fell to me at the gates of your castle! When I