The Queen's Bastard Part 22

"Thank you, Ilana. We shall-"

"Ilyana." The girl doesn't seem to realise she's correcting a queen, and Sandalia's elevated eyebrow has no effect. After a moment she amends herself, mostly because there's no sense in antagonizing the unpleasant young woman, and goes on: "Ilyana. We shall call on you again when we require your testimony, and in the interim you'll be expected to remain within the walls of the cottage we have provided for you."

Ilyana doesn't understand enough to know she's being placed under arrest. Her expression lights up as the translation is made, and she ducks a curtsey. The cottage is no doubt a far finer home than she's ever known, and as a guest, involuntary or not, of a queen, she will be waited on as if she were the lady and not the servant. It will be a rude shock to her to return to the life she once had, if she's lucky enough to be allowed to do so. She's allowed to go to the door unescorted, and beyond it, two guards, one Khazarian and one Gallic, will bring her to Sandalia's cottage. Only when the girl is gone does Sandalia turn to the translator, eyebrow lifted again in curiosity.

"Do you believe her, Lady Akilina?"

Akilina stands with animal grace, lithe even beneath the weight of petticoats. She wears a shade of coppery gold that should look terrible on her, but somehow enhances the angles of her beauty. "I believe she's a nasty little girl who wanted Gregori's bed for herself, but she's as certain as my guardsman that Your Majesty's Beatrice and their Rosa are one and the same. Viktor," and the heaviness of a Khazarian accent weights the name, though her Gallic is usually exquisite, "tells me that Rosa wore a blade beneath her chemise, under her corsets. A small knife." She holds up a hand, giving the knife its length in demonstration. "Your Majesty could ask Javier..."

"No." Sandalia's reply is slow, thoughtful. "Better to see where his heart lies in the heat of the moment, I think. We'll discover the blade in another way. How," she adds absently, "did you get that little wretch here so quickly? It's a month's journey to Khazan even in summer."

"Viktor told me about her when he told me he was certain Beatrice and Rosa were the same woman. I sent a pigeon," Akilina says carelessly, "and the journey is a month if you travel in comfort. It can be made more quickly if you truly desire it to be done." She shrugs, coquettish thing, and throws a smile toward Sandalia. "And Ilyana's comfort wasn't my concern." Her smile fades, leaving her features beautiful but sharp; this is a woman honed to a blade, Sandalia thinks. "Did anyone come to you asking for Gregori's death?"

Sandalia finds caution stirring in her belly, cool and slow, at the question. She knows Akilina was Gregori's lover-that much gossip has spread to Gallic ears, especially with Akilina leading this Khazarian envoy into Lutetia. "Did you believe his death to be unnatural?" she asks slowly, not avoiding the question, but feeling it relevant. Akilina shakes her head in the negative and Sandalia nods, unsurprised. "No one that I know of asked Gallin for a Khazarian count's death. I'll ask my men," she says, meaning her spies and a.s.sa.s.sins, and Akilina nods her understanding as Sandalia finishes, "but I think I might have been told, if we were to play that particular sort of diplomacy. You knew him," she says delicately, playing on a different kind of diplomacy. "Who might have wanted him dead?"

Akilina laughs, not the sound of genuine cheer Sandalia's come to expect from her, but a bitter thing, edged. "Haven't you heard the stories about Baba Yaga, Your Majesty? Almost anyone would point to me first. Akilina Pankejeff, the witch who eats lives. But Gregori's death would only have served me if he'd married me first, and he was no more likely to do that than marry the imperatrix."

She jerks her eyes to Sandalia's as the words come down heavily between them, their portent unexpected and undeniable. Astonishment curls one corner of Sandalia's mouth. "Irina?"

"Widowed this past decade," Akilina gives back, thinking it out as she speaks. "Only a girl for an heir, but the child is strong and intelligent. Irina is as canny as Your Majesty or the t.i.tian b.i.t.c.h; she wouldn't have a suitor murdered unless..."

"Unless he thought he could pressure her into taking his hand," Sandalia murmurs. "Which he would only do..."

"If she had a secret." Sandalia speaks the final words as certainty; as only a woman with secrets of her own could do. She is a queen, and to speak so is not indiscreet; all men, and all women, too, have secret things hidden in their hearts. Akilina's gaze is forthright and almost sympathetic to that truth, and for a moment they are not queen and countess, but simply women standing against the tide of a world made by men, struggling with more difficulties because of their gender than even the men who try to tear them down could know. "Can you learn it?"

"Does it matter?" Akilina is aware, as Ilyana was not, when she takes a stance contrary to a regent's, but she doesn't back down from it. "Gregori's dead and Irina's secrets are a thousand miles away, but Beatrice Irvine's are here, under ou-Your Majesty's nose. Set me on her, your majesty, and we may find the answers to the Khazarian questions as well."

15

The coachman remembers Rosa, certainly, all l.u.s.t and long legs and an eye for when to leave a bad situation. He rode her all the way to Khazan, Khazar's capital city, and he'd have done her longer if Gregori's son hadn't called him back to work. His eyes grow wary, though, and he lifts his hands in protest: if the wh.o.r.e's had a child, there'll be no pinning it on him; he was one of three he can guess in a matter of days.

An information-gatherer smiles and waves off the coachman's concerns. Wonders, casually, if Rosa said where she'd be going next, and the coachman snorts. He wouldn't know, but he pointed her toward a stagecoach business that a friend of his owns. That's his goal, he confides, to go into business himself and see more of Khazar, maybe leave it entirely and have a look at Echon. His friend has been as far as Gallin, and works with men from far-off Essandia. He's got more mundane routes, too, and where would somebody like Rosa go but back to her village? Ask his friend, maybe he'll know.

His friend took her south, all the way to Reussland, and of course he's sure it's the same woman. He was sure before he saw a drawing, and he's twice as sure now. What happened to her then, he's got no idea, nor any care, but a bit more gold might help him to remember.

It doesn't, which is a shame, and he's left coughing on his own blood and staring at his tongue, already stiffening from cold as it lies bright and red against the snow.

A pigeon makes its way to Hammabarg faster than a man can, three of them sent against the risk of hawks and frozen nights. A fat man who knows the countess's seal and trusts her for the money-he has ways of a.s.suring that trust is met-begins to look for a woman who pa.s.sed through half a year ago. He knows where she came from, what she looks like, and makes no suppositions about what direction she took. He knows she spreads her legs to pay for pa.s.sage in preference to paying coin, but that she carried enough cash to travel from Khazan to Reussland when dour, now-tongueless Yuliy snorted at her s.e.xual offerings.

It takes him seven days to find her. It should take fewer, but on the third day he finds a different woman, one no one is looking for, and takes his time with her, so that when he's finished, there's nothing left for anyone to find.

Three women meeting Rosa's description left Hammabarg alone in the right time frame. Two went west, ultimately toward Gallin; the third went south, riding on the back of a stagecoach with her skirts showing her ankles. That, the fat man wagers, is the one Akilina wants, and she's paying for his opinion as much as his tracking skills.

Akilina sets men on all three trails. The one who's forced to go through Swiss mountains in the dead of winter, following a trail seven months old, is bitter indeed, and all the more so when a pretty girl he met on a summer journey through the pa.s.s greets him on a village edge with a round belly and a fist for his nose. He finds himself in a church exchanging vows before his horse has cooled from its ride, and finds the horse sold to build another room on his bride's father's home for the new family to live in before the sun breaks noon.

He finds himself on foot in a mountain pa.s.sage in the midst of a winter storm before the night is over, and his wife finds herself a widow when the morning comes.

Akilina finds herself beginning again when the fat man proves right and the other women are unquestionably not Beatrice Irvine. She is patient, and wealthy, and neither Gallin nor Irvine are going anywhere. She hires a man reputed to have no earthly vices, which means only that his vices are too dark to be shared, to send through the mountains this time, and he follows a trail now eight months old toward Parna.

He pauses conscientiously to report that the young widow gave birth to a girl, who has been christened in the church, thanks be to G.o.d that her parents were wed, and may G.o.d bless her father's lost and frozen soul. Akilina stares at that missive for a long time, finally laughing, even if a pigeon was wasted to tell her the news.

Perhaps because he is without vice, but more likely because Akilina is paying him very well, this hired tracker does not stop at the border of his own country. He follows Rosa's trail, travelling quickly and efficiently; Akilina's treasury will feel the weight of his haste. He comes, in time, to Aria Magli, and there comes to the very doorstep from which Rosa alighted on her afternoon of freedom in the ca.n.a.l-ridden city.

The man without vices is a narrow blade of a man, his cheeks pocked with scars and his eyes deep-set and dark. The gondola boy who looks at him weighs his own small life, and the lives of his twelve, or eight, or fourteen brothers and sisters, and thinks of the pretty woman in blue who gave him coin for the day and a chicken to bring home to his family, and tells the man without vices the wrong bridge and the wrong time and nothing at all of the man who paid him to wait on Belinda Primrose outside her home.

It slows the tracker by a few hours, and when he realises the urchin lied to him, it brings a rare slash of a smile to his face. He returns to find the child, and because a gypsy man with a kind of calm readiness is watching, the boy's father still has nine, or fifteen, or thirteen children to his name when the man is done. He has what he needs now: the description of a man, and that of an unusually striking courtesan. His His name, the tracker does not learn, but name, the tracker does not learn, but hers hers he buys off another courtesan, a woman with large b.r.e.a.s.t.s and little of the brains her kind are supposedly vaunted for. he buys off another courtesan, a woman with large b.r.e.a.s.t.s and little of the brains her kind are supposedly vaunted for.

A single morning later he sets loose the last pigeon, and with it the trail that Akilina wants finally, finally, finally comes to Gallin.

BELINDA PRIMROSE / BEATRICE IRVINE

4 January 1588 Lutetia

Belinda chafed. As Beatrice Irvine, widowed wife to a depraved Lanyarchan lordling, she had become accustomed to a certain amount of freedom. It had been the limited freedom of a woman, unable to cross certain thresholds, reluctantly lent money to, wooed by those who might want a n.o.bleman's t.i.tle to add to their names, but it had been freedom.

Beatrice Irvine, fiancee to Javier de Castille, crown prince of Gallin, had no such freedom.

That the watching guards and constant eyes were bothersome came as a surprise to her. She would have imagined Beatrice's freedoms to be overwhelming-and they were, but in a different manner than she might have expected. Accustomed to a lifetime of hiding and going unnoticed, she had thought that playing an obvious role, one in the public eye, would alarm her; that a habit of circ.u.mspection would keep her from enjoying the part. Instead she'd taken to it, a truth that made her wonder, though only briefly, if Beatrice's easy laugh might have been her own, had circ.u.mstances been different. It was a speculation to be let go unpondered; her life was what it was, and imagining it otherwise sent a shudder of confused revulsion down her spine.

Still, those small freedoms that she'd known were now gone, and she found herself resenting the fine life she lived. She picked at embroidery, surrounded by court ladies and under the watchful eyes of guards, until her fingers and her brain both seemed to bleed with weariness of it all. None of her discontent spilled outward; she kept it wrapped inside as thoroughly as she was caught under the guards' gazes. It was far more difficult, she'd discovered, to call the witchpower stillness and disappear from view when someone was actively watching her. That she'd done it with Javier and Sacha in the room suggested to her that intimacy was key there, as well; whatever connection a joining of flesh offered seemed to provide inroads to the minds of the men around her. The guards, patient, un.o.btrusive, watching, turned their focus on her more pointedly when she called witchpower and tried to hide herself in the shadows of plain sight. Ultimately more concerned with secrecy than proving, if only to herself, her ability to fade away and escape her polite jailers, she gave up trying and resigned herself to the boredom of st.i.tching.

Weeks. It had been weeks, weeks, and for once Belinda shared a.s.selin's impatience. Her access to Javier had been whittled away, her ability to write freely to "dearest Jayne" compromised, and the thing that kept a stranglehold on her was that she could see no way to slip free the bonds that held her and escape into a different world for a while without threatening the position she now held. and for once Belinda shared a.s.selin's impatience. Her access to Javier had been whittled away, her ability to write freely to "dearest Jayne" compromised, and the thing that kept a stranglehold on her was that she could see no way to slip free the bonds that held her and escape into a different world for a while without threatening the position she now held.

For the first time in her life, Belinda thought she might understand, truly understand, the constraints that held Lorraine in place.

She, though, had advantages that Lorraine didn't share. It was possible, not even difficult, to surround herself with shadow and escape the palace, escape the guards and the narrow definition of what a court lady was, at least at night. Daytime belonged to dull interactions with women Belinda had nothing in common with, but nighttime, at least, was her own.

She had not, in weeks of plying Viktor and prowling the palace at night, found where it was that Sandalia and Akilina met, nor learned their subjects of discussion. The handful of times she touched skin against either woman, she'd stolen thoughts of open disregard from Sandalia; unlike Javier, the queen regarded Belinda as no more than a means to an end, and perhaps as a test of loyalty for her own son. It was not that Sandalia disliked her; on the contrary, she seemed to be more amused by Beatrice's inability to keep her tongue in her head than she let on, and she admitted to a personal weakness for Lanyarchans, whose king had been the first step on the path she now travelled.

Belinda closed her hand carefully around the edge of her embroidery hoop, turning the wood to more easily reach another set of st.i.tches rather than flinging the whole mess away. Sandalia was as guarded in her thoughts as Belinda was, no more allowing herself active dreams of a pretender's crown than Belinda permitting herself remembrances of her true heritage. Even if Sandalia had, thoughts couldn't be proven, and Belinda required proof that was hard in the finding. That it would come through Akilina, she felt sure, but as yet there'd been no hint of it.

Nor was stealing thoughts from the Khazarian countess an easy task. Belinda had been raised to that tongue as much as any other, but her witchpower had been brought to life in Gallin. The precious instant lost in grasping understanding of one language over another clouded her ability to follow Akilina's unspoken ambitions, though her flawless memory helped to bring back those things she feared she'd missed. That she appeared to be missing, in large part, Akilina's vast amus.e.m.e.nt at a Lanyarchan provincial wedding a Gallic prince, only p.r.i.c.ked her pride and made her that much more determined to pursue Akilina and Sandalia's hidden agenda.

Weeks of slipping through the palace at night, searching for the two women and their conspiracies, had largely left Belinda tired and snappish during the day, and none the wiser for her efforts. Viktor, voice thick with desire, insisted that they met in the queen's chambers, but even hidden by witchpower, Belinda had not dared those rooms, locked against visitors. She had learned pa.s.sageways within the palace, searching for a back path to Sandalia's rooms that way, but had met with no success, found neither queen nor countess nor hidden, private places in the palace where they might meet. It was not, she told herself, Viktor's fault; he couldn't be expected to stand guard within Sandalia's chambers unless invited in, and no queen would lower herself, or grace an ordinary guardsman so.

She finished the last st.i.tches on a rose and smoothed her thumb over the s.h.i.+ning crimson thread. The delicacy of her position seemed absurd; she must push toward a battle for a crown without seeming to, without stepping over a nearly invisible line that made her treachery a gift worth handing over to another queen, and find proof of a plot that her own words were part of creating. It was a balancing act worthy of a theatrical troupe. Her latest missive from Robert-nearly a month old now-made it vividly clear that Lorraine wouldn't act without written proof, and since then Belinda's newly elevated place in the Gallic court had made corresponding with Aulun's secret spymaster too dangerous. She didn't know for certain that her letters home were opened and read, but there was no reason to suppose they weren't, and she preferred to err on caution's side.

Quiet rumblings had come out of Aulun at the news, officially carried, of Javier's engagement to a Lanyarchan n.o.ble. Better still, raw delight had driven a clan of drunken Lanyarch men over the wall that defined their southern border and into a cattle raid on Aulunian territory. A Lanyarchan banner had been planted in the midst of a field and an entire herd of beefstock driven north. The outraged, frightened landowner had sent to Alunaer for help, and rumour whispered that Aulunian troops were ama.s.sing near the island nation's northern border, though there weren't yet stories of skirmishes fought along the border.

Still, troops encroaching on closetoLanyarchanterritory was excuse enough, even in the dead of winter. Stories flooded into Gallin, new tales every day. They said the clans gathered in Javier's name, in Beatrice's name, putting aside their own differences to come together and face the Reformation threat. They said that Lorraine grew agitated on her throne, unwilling to commit to battle in the middle of winter, but less willing still to lose her contentious northern neighbor from her empire. Even now, when Belinda turned her ear to the chatter shared by the embroidering women, they spoke of almost nothing else. She kept her tongue firmly between her teeth, resisting the urge to point out the unlikelihood of fresh news arriving from Aulun each morning. It didn't matter: the point was to build confidence in the Gallic people and their monarchs that Lanyarch would stand up and fight for itself and Cordula given even a hint of support from the world across the channel. Gossip had its place in creating that confidence.

The worst danger of playing a Lanyarchan uprising was that someone might think to ask who Beatrice Irvine was, and wonder why no one remembered her. Belinda trusted that Robert would deal with that; that there would be a handful or more of men and women who remembered growing up with her, who remembered her marriage to some loyalist whose grounds were a gift from Lorraine. They would plant half-certain recollections in the minds of others, until Beatrice took on a life of her own, but it was still, always, a risk.

All the more reason, Belinda thought, to try to hurry the matter. The less time spent venerating a minor Lanyarchan n.o.ble who'd caught the eye of the Gallic prince, the better. She smoothed her embroidery out again and scowled faintly at it, reveling in the expression. Besides, never mind Beatrice's history, Belinda was like to find herself bored to the very death if she had to st.i.tch roses onto a tapestry for much longer.

"My lady Beatrice." The voice was apologetic and unexpected; Belinda looked up to find Marius, elegant hat clenched in his hands, standing in the doorway. A t.i.tter arose from the women around her, sly looks exchanged as Marius bowed to all of them, perfunctory and polite, but left his gaze on Belinda. "May I speak with you, my lady?"

Genuine warmth lit Belinda's smile. "It would be my pleasure, m'sieur." She murmured an apology to the other women, leaving the room to a burst of laughter as the door closed. Marius, ever polite, offered his elbow, and Beatrice slipped her fingers through it. "It's been weeks, Marius." There was more question than reprimand in the statement, though Marius glanced at her to be certain of that. His dark eyes were mournful, as if he were an injured wild thing, not a man.

"I've been helping Sacha look for Eliza. It was...easier."

Belinda let the confession go a moment, tightening her fingers against his arm. "Have you had any luck?"

"Of course not." More realism coloured Marius's voice than had touched either a.s.selin's or Javier's when it came to the topic of Eliza's disappearance. "Liz won't be found unless she wants to be. If I were her, I'd have gone to Parna, or Essandia by now. Somewhere far away from all of this."

"Marius..." His name came to her lips again, too easily, and he shook his head in a preemptive denial.

"Maybe that's the advantage to her station. A prince and his friends may look for her, but she has no financial obligations or familial expectations to keep her in one place. Where would you go, Beatrice?"

"Aria Magli," Belinda answered, too much truth in the soft words. "If I were Eliza, as well-educated and as beautiful as she is, I would go to Aria Magli and become a courtesan or a rich man's mistress. I think I might make friends there."

"Liz isn't especially good at making friends." A guard opened a door for them and Belinda squinted against a sudden splatter of cold and rain.

"It's hardly the time of year for a stroll in the garden, Marius."

"There's a bower just down the walk. It'll keep the rain off, if not the cold. I won't keep you long." He quickened his pace as he spoke, moving against the rain and tugging Belinda with him. She groaned, half-laughing, and scurried to keep up.

"Please. Would you send me back to my st.i.tches? I hadn't thought you a cruel master, my lord. I'll bear the cold a while, so long as I don't have to go back into that stifling apartment. At least the air is refres.h.i.+ng." She smiled at her feet, watching the path, then transferred the smile to Marius as he ducked beneath an arch of leafless branches and into a gazebo well-protected from the weather. He didn't so much as pretend a smile in return, and the expression fell away from Belinda's face as her forehead wrinkled. "Marius?"

"My mother," he said in clipped, precise tones, "has decided it's well past time I was married."

Belinda caught her breath, dismayed laughter riding it. "Who is she?" From the way he spoke, there had to be a bride already selected, a match made of good financial sense and, if Marius were lucky, a t.i.tle to go with it. It ought not sting, that it did was discomfiting.

"Sarah a.s.selin," Marius said through his teeth. Belinda blinked at him, honest surprise warming her cheeks.

"Sacha's harpy-voiced sister? Marius, she's-" Belinda broke off, then said, helplessly and with perfect honesty, "She's a brilliant match, Marius. How-?"

"It seems Sacha was well-advised in sending me home to change clothes." Every word was spoken like a blade, cutting against Belinda's skin. "It seems I caught his sister's eye that day. Her mother has spoken with mine and the noose is all but tied. I do not want her, Beatrice. I do not love her and I do not desire her. I-"

"You," Belinda whispered, "are bound by financial and family ties where Eliza is not, and even if you and I had made promises of forever to one another, your parents have the strength to break those vows and send you where they will. She's a better match than I am, Marius. She's prettier, wealthier, and younger than I, and you've been friends with her family all your life."

"Javier could-"

"Could what?" Belinda asked gently. "Forbid you to marry her? What would you do? Go to him and ask him to release me now? Ask him to set this game he plays with Aulun on its ear for the sake of our happiness? He's a prince. Even if you could ask him, he couldn't agree." She stepped closer, curling her fingers against the merchant lad's chest. "This does not end happily for the likes of you and me, Marius. We've known that all along." His heart beat too hard beneath her touch; Belinda's met it in rate, pulse quick and uncomfortable in her stomach. "Do you like her at all?"

Dismay and outrage, suffused with guilt, surged through the young man, flus.h.i.+ng his cheeks. "She's Sacha's sister, Beatrice. I've never thought thought about her-" about her-"

"-about her soft curves under your hands, or her mouth and body opening to accept you?" Belinda reached for his emotions with witchpower, striving for delicacy instead of heavy-handed overwhelming thought. An abstract fondness for the a.s.selin girl was there, no more thought of than a pa.s.sing admiration for a fine horse or well-bred dog. She whispered encouragement to that, tying abstraction to the impulse of desire that made Marius blush more deeply. That want served to accentuate his guilt and dismay, but it could, would, tie the merchant's son to the lord's daughter, if he didn't fight it. Belinda wondered at the gentleness in herself, to try to soften Marius's pain. "This game with Javier may go on for months, even years, Marius. Waiting on a possibility is throwing your life away."

Marius's jaw clenched. "It's my life to throw away."

"It isn't." Belinda closed her eyes, almost swaying with unexpected regret. "We all have duties, Marius. We all have things we must answer to. Wishes don't make horses, my love, or beggars would ride. You must like her," she said. "Find it in yourself to love her."

"I only love you."

"You must learn to let it go." Words were half at odds with the tangle of emotion she wove, binding his want for Belinda to his unexplored desire for Sarah a.s.selin. That it was meant for his benefit was true; the young man would be better off out of love with Belinda Primrose. But the interweaving could benefit her as well, a cool calculation that seemed more like herself than the concern for his heartache. Should his love for Sarah be permanently bound to his desire for Belinda, she would never lose him as an a.s.set. Whether true emotion, born on its own and growing in strength once the match was made, could undo what she put into place, Belinda didn't know. If so, using him again in the future might be lost to her, if unfettered emotion could sc.r.a.pe away the ties she wrought. But his loss would be no great matter in the longer term: she could not long antic.i.p.ate staying in Lutetia or Gallin once Javier's plan to shake Lorraine on her throne was seen to fruition, unless the prince had his way and the promises he'd made were real.

"I only want you," Marius repeated stubbornly. Belinda turned an unkind smile and stepped a little closer, bringing her lips close enough to brush his ear.

"Only me?" she asked. "Shall I tell Nina that, then, or have you forgotten her already, my lord? You wanted her surely enough. Imagine now that it's Sarah's pale form beneath you, and tell me that you only want me." She dropped a hand, brus.h.i.+ng her fingers over his groin, and chuckled at the hardness she found there. "Shall I come to your chambers on your wedding night, Marius, and watch you take a virgin as you took Nina? You will be the husband, strong, indomitable, and only I'll know the weakness in you that wishes to submit."

Witchpower set her blood on fire, pus.h.i.+ng off the winter cold until Belinda felt she could strip to the skin and go unscathed by wind and rain. She wet her lips, touching her tongue to Marius's earlobe, and he shuddered, a sound of desire strangled in his throat. Belinda's own rational mind warned her of danger, but the salty taste of Marius's skin and his too-fast pulse were a delight to her, making her smile against his throat. "Or would you risk it all for me? Your marriage, your stature, your friends.h.i.+p with the prince? Will you have me and d.a.m.n all consequences, Marius? We mustn't, you know," she breathed, mocking with laughter. "We mustn't grunt and grasp and twist against one another, or seek pleasure in sharing bodies. Or would you break that commandment, my love? Would you f.u.c.k your brother's wife?"

Marius groaned again and knotted his hands in Belinda's hair, bringing his mouth to hers, savagery in the kiss. She laughed at his bruising strength, giving in for a few seconds before pus.h.i.+ng away again, feeling her body flushed with desire and danger. "We mustn't," she said again.

And behind her, a woman's voice murmured, "Forgive me, my lord. I wish I had not been right."

Sickness curdled in Belinda's belly, birthing ice that burned the witchpower's heat from her blood. Marius flinched back, so much an admission of guilt that Belinda wanted to let fly a sharp cry of laughter. She turned away from him, faint curiosity c.o.c.king her eyebrow, no admission of guilt in her colour or expression. Her hands were not cold, despite the churning in her stomach and the shards of ice making their way through her body. She curtsied, brief perfunctory thing, then wrinkled her forehead as she looked from Javier to Akilina and back again. "Been right, my lady?"

"What are you doing, Beatrice?" Strain filled Javier's voice, shock sheeting off him as a precursor to the anger Belinda could sense growing in him. Akilina, at his side, stood as a bastion of smugness, though only severe disappointment and apology was visible in her demeanor. Belinda's witchpower remained chilled beneath the need to play out this scenario flawlessly, else she might give in to its impulse to step forward and slap the expression off Akilina's face. Javier, cheeks flushed with colour that did his complexion no favours, drew breath, and his voice cracked like a boy's when he spoke. "What are you doing with Marius?"

"Saying good-bye, my lord." Belinda dipped another brief curtsey, turning toward Marius as if in apology. "He's just come to tell me that he's to be wed."

"Marius?" Javier's voice cracked again, but this time with command. Marius blanched, then curled his hands into fists and let go a low laugh.

"Beatrice protects me from myself, my prince. I came here to beg her away from your side, rather than agree to the match my mother's made." He closed his eyes, his skin grey in the winter shadows. "More fool I, as she told me quite plainly that we were not meant to be. Forgive me, Jav, for my jealousy. Yes," he added dully. "It seems I'm to be wed. Sacha's sister, of all people, and by the ides of March, if my mother's will be done."

"Sacha's...? And you...you came here to-?"

"To play the part of the fool. That's always been my role, hasn't it, Jav? You the prince, Liza the lover, Sacha the strong right arm. I'm the young one, whose pa.s.sions and naivete rise and fall so quickly as to make you all laugh. I believed you, Javier." He spoke bitterly, ignoring Akilina's presence, and Belinda's stomach clenched again, this time in warning. She lifted a hand to stay Marius, and Javier lifted his to stay her. Fingers curled in reluctant acquiescence, she dropped her hand and watched Akilina from the corner of her eye. Smugness had left the countess as surely as it had filled her, and she cast her gaze from Marius to Javier, angry at losing control of a scenario she had clearly believed she owned.

"I thought you might find us a happy ending from all of this. Tell me, did you ever intend to give her up, or was it a story to make me hold on while you found a way to keep her close to you? I know as well as you do that she's like no other woman." Marius's eyes flickered to Belinda, poison in them instead of l.u.s.t, then returned to Javier. "She wakens desires I never dreamed I had. I can only hope she has the same effect on you."

"But you would take her from me whether she does or not?" Softness filled Javier's voice, more dangerous than cutting words. Marius barked laughter, more derision in the sound than Belinda had imagined he could convey.

"If I could, my prince. If I could. It seems, though, that she's as much under your spell as any of us. We can't tell you no, Jav. We never could. And I'm not that much of a fool. A prince is a far better pairing than a merchant's son. I would have accepted it." He spoke quietly, eyes hard on Javier. "I would have hated it, but d.a.m.n you, Jav, I would've accepted it if you'd said she was yours, and not thrown a bone. Am I worth so little as that?"

New softness, this time of pain, came into Javier's answer. "You're worth far more than I could ever give you. I told you that once, and its truth hasn't changed. You're better than I've ever deserved, and perhaps I thought...there could be a happy ending."

"It must be comforting to be a prince," Marius said with great precision, "for no one will tell you when you lie, even to yourself."