The Rose Bargain

Chapter Thirty-One

I push myself up off the ground, my knees bloody with carpet burn. “Excuse me?”

She steps down from her throne and crosses the carpeted floor to wrap me in an awkward hug. It’s like she’s never hugged anyone before. It’s too tight. Too sharp. She smells of lilies that wilted days ago.

She pulls back, both hands on my shoulders, and sighs. “Don’t tell Bram, but I always wanted a daughter.”

“Forgive me, Your Majesty, I’m confused.”

“Bram is going to be thrilled. You always were his favorite.”

My heartbeat kicks up, and the floor tips under me. “But I lost.”

She shakes her head. “It was my final little taste of fun. You passed with flying colors. You should have seen the others. Olive begged. Emmy just stood there. Faith tried to cry but could barely squeeze out a tear. Marion laughed, which I found most unsettling. What an odd girl she turned out to be.”

She pauses. “But you. You were the picture of dignity. Exactly what a princess should be.”

I stand, stock-still, like I’m floating somewhere out of my body. She’s speaking so quickly I can barely keep up.

“Bram will propose tonight at the Kendalls’ ball. You two will be the talk of the town. We’ll have the wedding here, of course, on the solstice. You have a sister, right? We can arrange for her to be a lady-in-waiting if you wish, but I will choose the rest.”

“I’m—I won?”

I still can’t wrap my head around what it is she’s saying.

“Keep up, please.”

I think of the very first night of the season, when Emmett pulled me into that room at the ball and said If you let me help you, Ivy Benton, you could be queen.

“There’s only one matter left to settle,”

she says. “The matter of your bargain.”

“I didn’t make a bargain, ma’am.”

She tuts her tongue. “That’s exactly the problem. I’ve lived a long time, and I try to learn from my mistakes. I married my most recent husband without him having made a bargain. He used that bargain for the benefit of another woman’s child and has resented me every day for the rest of our marriage for it. I can’t have that happening to Bram. You must make a bargain, and then we can proceed.”

She looks over me carefully and cocks her head. “I could tame your hair? Make you a croquet prodigy? We can just do something small, get it off the table.”

“Oh—”

I sputter.

A storm cloud passes over her face, and she levels me at once with a glare so venomous it’s as if the light in the room dims.

“Unless you want something else?”

Her tone is sickly sweet, like rotted fruit.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I will ask you this just once, Lady Ivy, then we put the matter to bed forever.”

“All right.”

My voice shakes.

“Would you rather have Prince Emmett De Vere?”

I freeze, my blood sluicing in my veins. “I’m sorry?”

“I’m not ignorant of what happens within the walls of my palace. I’ve noticed an . . . affection between the two of you. Would you rather have him? Bram deserves a wife who is devoted to him completely. My son has a big heart. It won’t do to have it smashed by the people he loves most.”

There’s a knock at the side door closest to the throne. Queen Mor and I both pause. Prince Consort Edgar is leaning against the doorframe. He’s got a pair of wire spectacles on his nose and a book in his hand. “Just wanted to let you know breakfast has been served, darling. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Is it a coincidence that he’s back?

“I’ll be along shortly,”

she answers, and I watch Emmett’s father walk back through the door and know immediately what I have to do.

“No,”

I say decisively. I excise my mind from my body. I float somewhere up on the muraled ceiling so I don’t feel the cracks in my heart so intense it’s like my ribs are breaking.

“Emmett and I are merely friends. He was only helping me get to know Bram.”

The queen looks me up and down. I’m not sure she believes me.

“As for the matter of the bargain,”

I continue. “I need time to consider. May I have an hour?”

“I suppose tea is ready, and this would give me time to drink it.”

She nods. “See you in an hour, Lady Ivy.”

I read in a book once that if sharks stop moving, they die. I feel like that now, like if I stop walking and consider what I’ve just done, my heart will cease to beat.

I walk down the stairs, out the door, and into the same carriage that brought me here. “Savile Row,”

I direct the driver.

The footman helps me down from the carriage, his face still bloody from my scratch, but he betrays no emotion. I instruct the driver to wait. “I won’t be long.”

The tailor’s sharp scissors glide through a row of gray tweed. The shop smells of sewing machine oil and warm wool. He pauses as I walk in. “Lady Ivy, a pleasure. Your order is ready. Would you like to examine it, or should I wrap it up?”

“Wrap it up, please. Thank you.”

I’m grateful I had the foresight to commission the coat weeks ago, back on a lazy day between Viscountess Bolingbroke’s lessons. At the time, I’d pictured delivering it to Emmett as a joke, something to commemorate the end of the season.

Package in hand, I hop back into the carriage and race back to the palace. An hour isn’t long, and I have so much I need to say.

Caledonia Cottage feels like a haunted house without the six of us in it. I walk into the sitting room and can see us, like ghosts, sitting around the fire.

But I am alone now, and I have to be strong.

There’s a fountain pen and parchment on a small writing desk by the window. I sit down in the hard wooden chair, dip the metal nib into the dark ink, and drag it across the page.

I can’t make anything better. I only hope I can make him understand.

Tears stream down my face and neck and into the collar of my dress as I write, but I don’t stop to brush them away. I don’t have time.

When I am done, I fold the letter and slip it under the ribbon of the box from the tailor.

With only minutes left to spare, I race back across the main palace, shove the box at a footman, and ask that it be delivered to Emmett. I’m running, a clumsy escape on heavy feet. But it will be a bloodless goodbye.

There was never going to be another end to our story. I can see that now.

I burst back into the throne room, hunched over, my hands on my knees, gasping.

“Well,”

the queen asks. “What have you decided?”

I brush a sweaty lock of hair off my forehead and take the deepest breath I can muster. “I want you to make me forget Prince Emmett.”

Prince Emmett De Vere

There’s a knock at the door, but I don’t bother getting out of bed. The golden clock on the mantel says it’s past nine, but I haven’t moved since Ivy left at dawn.

It’s playing in my head on a loop, her pale skin in the dark, how she looked splayed out under me and undone. She let me touch her like I’d been dying to since that night in the coaching inn. Earlier than that, if I’m being honest with myself.

I’d had to keep my hands balled into fists at my sides to keep from devouring her as she whimpered in her sleep and wrapped her arms and legs around me. I thought that was torture, but now I realize I didn’t know anything about pain, or how bad it was about to get for me.

If I were a better man, good, like Bram, I’d feel guilt or shame about what we did last night, but I’m not good and I’m not ashamed.

I wish I could relive last night forever, nothing else, just Ivy on an endless loop. There was a man who bargained for something like that a few years ago. He ended up going mad and throwing himself into the Thames.

Bram lets himself in, as he always does. Dread punches me in the stomach at the sight of him. He and Ivy should be on the road by now.

He greets me. “As productive as ever, I see.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be getting engaged tomorrow?”

I ask as casually as I can manage. My voice is hoarse. A discarded ribbon from Ivy’s nightdress is beside me. I shove it under the quilt hastily before he sees.

Bram throws opens my curtains, flooding the room with light. I squint my eyes and groan.

“That’s what I came here to talk about. I’ve had quite the morning.”

He plops himself down at my desk and kicks his boots up all over the papers.

“I hate it when you do that,” I say.

“I had a little predawn visit from Ivy Benton.”

“Oh?”

I feign surprise but want to throw up. Her face flashes through my mind, how she looked on top of me, her porcelain skin in the dark.

I love her. I should have told her that.

Bram smiles a little. “She said my mother told her she’d lost. Classic Mother, always with the power plays.”

“What did you say?”

I’m desperate for more information. Where is Ivy? Is she safe?

“I asked her to elope with me. Who else was I going to marry? Olive, who was so obsessed with the idea of me she nearly swooned every single time I spoke to her? Marion Thorne, who literally fell asleep the only time I tried to have a full conversation with her? Emmy was suitable, but there’s something special about Ivy, even if you don’t agree.”

“But here you are, not eloped.”

“I’m getting to that part. I was packing my things, ready to go, when Mother came to my room, very unlike her, and said, ‘It’ll be Lady Ivy Benton, is that suitable?’ I said yes, of course.”

Fear strikes me. “Do you think she knew you were planning on running away?”

Bram shrugs, unbothered. “If she did, she gave no indication. I think she just wanted to play one final game, you know how she gets.”

“I do.”

The damn fae and their love of games. With Bram, it’s endless games of billiards. Sometimes he whips himself into a near frenzy over it, and we play until dawn. The queen’s tastes lean bloodier.

I should be happy. I’m getting everything I wanted. In a few short weeks, if I’m right, her reign will be over and my kind, reasonable brother will be king.

Bram stands. “Anyway, just thought you’d like to know your favorite brother is engaged. I’ll let you sleep. You look like absolute shit. Hungover?”

“Yes.”

It feels like it. I’m wrecked.

Bram reaches the door, bends down, and tosses a large white box onto my bed. “This was at your door.”

“Thanks,”

I reply, and the door shuts behind him.

I lift the lid and find a black wool coat folded neatly and wrapped in tissue paper. On top, tucked under the ribbon, is a letter with a single crease and my name.

I unfold it and begin to read.

Emmett,

I love you. No, that’s not how I should begin. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can only hope that one day you’ll understand. If you don’t understand, then I can only hope that you hate me. It would be easier if you hate me. Please hate me.

I was told this morning that I am to marry Bram.

It appears that telling me I had lost was just another of Mor’s tricks. He will propose tomorrow and I will say yes.

Please believe that I wanted to flee the throne room screaming. That I wanted to run away with you. I wanted it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.

But this is bigger than the two of us. If we run, we may be destroying our only chance at unseating Queen Mor. I’m doing this for Greer. For my sister. For Eduart. But mostly I’m doing this for you and your father.

Bram deserves a wife who loves him, but I know I could never love him if he’s competing with you. So I finally know what bargain I will make. Once I have written this letter, I am going to ask Queen Mor to remove all memory of you from my head. It’s the only chance any of us have for peace. I know you will find happiness with someone who isn’t me. I pray I am able to become the wife Bram deserves.

Somewhere, across time and space, there’s a version of me and a version of you, wearing matching rings, tangled up in front of a fireplace, together. I have to believe that’s true.

In another life, it would have been us, but not in this one.

I can’t have you in the way you deserve to be had.

Know how desperately I love you.

Know how sorry I am.

And know that I’m doing the best that I can.

Ivy

p.s. I owed you a coat.

I read the letter twice more, trying to understand. It isn’t until I set it down that I realize I’ve torn the edges, that’s how tightly I’ve been gripping it.

There’s nothing but roaring in my head. White-hot fear like a forest fire has been set alight, and there’s nothing but the animal instinct to run.

I nearly throw the door off its hinges sprinting out of my room and down the marble staircase. I have to stop her, if I could just explain—

I pause at the second-floor landing. Do I make a break for the throne room or the cottage?

There are voices coming from the main hall, the sound of hooves as a carriage pulls up.

I grip the railing, taking the stairs two at a time.

Ivy and Queen Mor are standing in the middle of the soaring foyer. Ivy’s blond hair is in two braids. She’s wearing a simple gray dress, and her pale skin is covered with dappled light filtering in through the leaves of the tree growing up through the staircase.

I stand there panting, and they both turn to me.

There’s a dazed look in Ivy’s soft brown eyes. She sinks her teeth into the skin of her full bottom lip and tilts her head. She’s so beautiful, it nearly knocks the wind out of me.

She curtsies to me hurriedly, saying, “Your Highness, it’s nice to finally meet.”

There’s something odd about her teeth. I look closer and realize there’s blood stuck between the gaps of them. She presses her lips together self-consciously, as if she realizes it at the same moment I do.

She can’t meet my eye as she tucks a stray golden curl behind her ear. “Bram speaks highly of you. I was quite hoping we could be friends.”

It feels like I’ve been shot. I look down at my own torso, surprised to find my rib cage intact. Musket balls don’t pierce. They blow everything wide open into a bloody mess. That’s how this feels.

“Friends?”

Mor’s gaze snaps to mine, and she shakes her head slightly. If I didn’t know her better, I might think she feels sorry for me.

“Ivy—”

I say it under my breath. I can’t help myself. Every inch of me is begging to reach out to my girl, take her in my arms, kiss her until she remembers. My guts are splattered all over the frescoes on the wall behind me, and the only one who knows I’m bleeding is Mor.

Ivy’s eyes flit to the ground. “If you’ll excuse me—”

She curtsies again, and the footman takes her hand in his and helps her down the steps and into the carriage. Leaving me standing in the foyer, frozen.

Mor turns to me. “It’s for the best,” she says.

“What did you take in return?”

I ask, thinking of her bloody teeth.

She huffs out a small laugh. “Only a molar. The bargain itself seemed punishment enough. But you’ll find another girl of the week and Bram will be happy. It’s a win-win situation as far as I’m concerned.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You always win.”

She walks back into the palace, and I follow her up the stairs to our respective quarters. She pauses at the top and shrewdly sizes me up with those uncanny eyes of hers. “I gave her the option to marry you.”

The fae can’t lie. I used to love that about them, but I hate knowing that she’s telling the truth.

Reckless, selfless Ivy. It only makes me love her more.

I don’t sleep for the next twenty-four hours.

I spend every waking minute in the library, pulling book after book off the shelf, hoping for some new clue, any message from my father.

It’s agonizing, like an infected wound, to know he’s under the same roof I am and we cannot speak. What will we do when the bargains are broken? I can only hope my father knows, because I do not.

I’ve never been this reckless before. I’m usually meticulous to leave no trace, lest the queen get wise to us, but I don’t care anymore. The shelves are mostly empty, and I’m standing in a sea of half-open books scattered around the library.

Finally, in a volume of medieval poetry, I find a series of faint pencil lines, each underneath a new letter. SOON.

I’ve only ever known love through codes and things half-said. Ivy says exactly what she’s thinking at all times. I wish I could be more like her, instead of constantly chewing at the ropes I’ve tied myself in.

SOON.

It has to be soon, or I’ll have lost her forever, and that’s not something I’m strong enough to bear.

I think of my father, somewhere in this same palace, but he feels farther away than ever. I can’t help but feel that I’m failing him, the mission, all of England. Ivy was only ever supposed to be a means to an end, not a weakness I couldn’t afford. But I know now, the thing about love is that you don’t realize you’re in it until it’s too late.

The next day, Bram bursts into my room as I’m preparing for the ball at the Kendalls, I know I shouldn’t go. I should make the same excuses I always do and go drink until I can’t remember my own name at some shitty pub in the East End. I dismiss my valet as my brother walks in.

Bram sinks down into the chair across from me, his face tight with paternal worry. “Are you going to tell me why you asked your valet to collect your bank statements?”

“I should fire him for gossiping.”

“It’s not gossip, it’s valid concern.”

“You’re always encouraging me to be more responsible.”

Bram sighs. “Please don’t tell me you’re planning on gambling it away.”

“You have to spend money to make money,”

I reply with a smile I know will drive him up the wall.

“You’re not nearly as funny as you think you are.”

“I’m laughing.”

Bram passes me the stack of papers from the bank. A quick glance at the statements confirm what I suspected. My stipend from the Crown is basically zero, but I have enough inherited from my mother’s side of the family that I could take Ivy and me anywhere in the world and build her the kind of life she deserves, then leave the rest to her family.

I asked for the statements a week ago, but I was too late. Now I think I’ll go somewhere alone, somewhere I don’t have to see Ivy at Bram’s side every day.

“Please don’t tell me you’re thinking of doing something stupid,”

Bram grumbles.

“I’ve never done anything stupid in my whole entire life.”

I grin, even though it hurts.

Bram pulls a small green leather box out of his jacket pocket and flips it open. Inside is a rose-cut diamond set on a narrow gold band.

My stomach hurts.

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

“She’s going to love it,”

I say honestly.

Bram pockets the ring box. “You’ve been in a foul mood. Is it Faith Fairchild again? She’s all yours if you want her. I don’t get the appeal. She’s so goddamn mean. The one time I tried to kiss her, she bit me, but I know we have different tastes.”

I look at him in the mirror and force a smile. It looks unnatural on my face with the dark circles under my eyes and the too-long hair.

“You’re still coming tonight, right?” he asks.

If I had any sense of self-preservation, I wouldn’t, but I can’t make myself stay away. My father used to tell me I was a master at hurting my own feelings. No one tortures you like you do to yourself, my dear boy, he’d mutter as he bandaged my skinned knees. I didn’t understand what he meant at the time, but I do now. There’s never been a wound I won’t pick at just to make sure it still bleeds.

“Of course I am. I wouldn’t dream of missing my favorite brother’s engagement party.”

The Kendall estate is covered in candles and fresh roses. We’ve arrived late enough that it’s easy for me to slip through the crowd and find a corner to disappear into.

The band whines to a halt and the crowd parts as Bram strides to the center of the floor, Ivy’s hand in his.

She’s wearing a pale pink gown, pearls wound into her hair. The firelight catches her, and she looks like something from heaven. But there, right on the edge of her dress where her neck meets her shoulder, is the mottled yellow of a healing bruise. The one I left that night.

I’m never going to touch her again. The realization hits me like a blow.

Bram drops to his knee. He’s looking up at her with so much love it radiates through the room. Ivy blushes, smiles, clutches her hands to her chest. They’re happy. It should be enough, but I’ve never been a selfless person. It should be me. That’s all my one-track brain can fire off. That should be me. That should be me. That should be me.

I can’t take it. In the end, I’m not strong enough to look.

I push my way through the crowd as the clapping starts and white rose petals rain down from the rafters. Everyone is too distracted to watch me walk out through a side door into the night. I tilt my face up to the sky and try to catch my breath. It’s raining. It’s always raining in this goddamn country.

I vomit pure champagne into the Kendalls’ rosebushes. It burns like the devil coming up, makes my eyes water, or maybe I was already crying. I can’t really tell.

There are footsteps behind me, and I look up to see who is witness to my shame.

It’s Faith Fairchild, concern all over her face. I’ve seen Faith in a dozen different rooms, in the middle of the night and sleeping through midmorning. I’ve seen her so angry she’s thrown a glass at my head. I thought I’d seen her in every situation, but I’ve never seen her look quite like this.

“Emmett.”

Her voice is thick with pity. “It was always going to end this way.”

But Ivy was already mine inside my head.

“You’re getting all wet,”

I reply. The rain runs down across her face. Her hair is already ruined.

“I don’t care about that,”

she says gently. “I care about you.”

She approaches me like I’m a feral animal who might bite her and then lays a gloved hand on my shoulder. “You love her, don’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” I say.

“Of course it matters.”

I collapse onto her shoulder, unable to stop the sobs that rack my body. I haven’t cried like this since my father gave me up. I hate it. I’d rather be vomiting.

She doesn’t rub my back in circles or whisper hush into my ear. Instead, she grips me in a vice-tight embrace and holds me until I stop shaking.

We’re both soaked to the core now, not that it matters. I’m not going back to the party.

Faith ducks inside for a minute to get Marion, and together, the three of us hop into a carriage back to Kensington Palace.

“Do you want me to list Ivy’s worst qualities?”

asks Faith. “Would that help? She breathes so loud when she sleeps. It made me want to smother her.”

“I don’t think you’re helping, darling,”

Marion whispers.

Faith refuses to leave me alone. I give her and Marion my bed and sleep in the armchair by the fire. I tend to it all night, thinking of Ivy with each shower of sparks.

Bram is glowing with happiness the next morning and all through the next week. I should leave. I should beg off and drink myself into a stupor in some lord’s hunting lodge, like I have every other time something in my life gets hard. But I just can’t bring myself to. What if she needs me? That’s the thought that goes through my head anytime I get close to calling a carriage and running away.

We are getting fitted for new suits when my brother asks me the question I’ve been dreading. In the end, the answer comes easy. “Of course I’ll be your best man.”