Chapter 37 #2
A pang of jealousy flares behind my ribs. It’s not only useless, given Lachlan’s history—if I were jealous of all his former lovers, I’d never have the capacity for a single other emotion—but it’s also unfair, given I’m betrothed to two other men. I shove the feeling aside as he continues.
“Phaelyn was a quick study. She soon became the favored companion of Guy LaBeaumont, Lisande’s brother.
He treated her well enough at first. She’d gush to me about all the gifts he’d given her, the promises he’d made.
I warned her to be wary, but she wouldn’t listen.
She thought I was purposefully holding her back.
Like I was worried she’d outshine me.” He shook his head.
“She started to look worse every time I met with her. New bruises and cuts, a nervous, jumpy energy, a dullness in her eyes. Her light had been snuffed out. She always insisted Guy had nothing to do with it. Whatever sway he held over her, she was too afraid to speak against him. But I knew if I didn’t do something, he was going to break her.
“Guy had arranged a trip to Tír na Strelle for the winter solstice that year, and I manipulated my way into joining him, Phaelyn, and his friends. I awoke one night to screaming from Guy’s hotel room.
I rushed in to find her”—he swallows, paling, and I pre-emptively fold a hand over my mouth—“she was lying naked on the floor, battered beyond belief.
Guy was hunched over her, drenched in blood.
“As soon as I opened the door, he tried to scramble away, but I caught him. Bit into his neck to establish the diamrhán and sunk into his mind to learn why he’d … ” His voice breaks. “That she’d told him she was … ”
“Pregnant,” I whisper, my throat constricting.
Lachlan’s hand on the lip of the tub curls into a fist. “She was good enough to fuck, but not good enough to bear his child. And I just … I snapped. I left him in pieces.
“Since it happened in Tír na Strelle, Desmond presided over my case.
Pascal LaBeaumont wanted me executed. A trumped up orphan, a whore, had dared sever a vein in his bloodline?
Unacceptable. But Desmond spared me. Sentenced me to a monetary debt to the LaBeaumonts and then paid it himself, offering to make me a knight of his House to pay him back.
“I had never met Desmond before that day—I’d heard of him, of course. The youngest duke to ever preside over House Macán. He gave me hope for the first time in years. Hope that maybe the celestial kingdom could be better, if only someone like him could lead it.”
He remains silent for so long afterward that I realize he’s finally come to the end of his sad, horrible story.
So much about him makes more sense. Why he’s eschewed the excesses of his former lifestyle.
Why he’s so committed to Desmond’s cause.
Even the casual nature of their relationship makes sense—they are brothers-in-arms, attempting a revolution from the top down.
And the only way to ensure their success is for me to marry Desmond.
Lachlan stares at me from across the tub, so full of yearning and cautious hope. For his would-be king. For the common people of the kingdom. Maybe even for me.
I rise, water sluicing down my naked body, and hold out my hand. “Let’s go to bed.”
He takes it, allows me to pull him from the tub and towel him off. We put on our nightclothes, then tumble into his warm featherbed. But before we succumb to sleep, I have a request.
“Would you let me draw you?”
I’ve already drawn him so many times. In so many real and imagined poses, some innocent, most naughty. But this is our last night together. I want something enduring to remember him by.
He smiles, flattered. “Of course.”
I patter through the bathing chamber and into my room to grab my sketchbook and a pencil, and when I return, Lachlan’s sprawled along the mattress with an arm behind his head.
“Get my good side, little queen.”
I snicker, then climb on top of him, straddling his waist. “They’re all good sides.” I run my fingers down the intricate script of his tattoos, shocked to recognize one. I stop on it. “Does this say—”
“Smythe Children’s House, yes. The entire tattoo is a letter that Garred’s father wrote to me toward the end of my days as a courtesan. When I was struggling the hardest to find my place in this world. He provided many words of wisdom worth being permanently inked on one’s flesh.”
“I should hope so,” I mumble and he laughs, guiding my fingers toward the line across his heart.
“This is the one I try to live by. Some days it’s easier than others.”
I trace my fingertips along the sloping letters, and Lachlan makes a low, grumbly sound like the purr of a jungle cat. “What does it say?”
“Noble deeds need not a noble birth.”
“That’s beautiful.”
“Yes.” When our eyes reconnect, I find him already staring at me. “It is.”
The illustration takes little time. I’ve memorized every line, every plane of him; I hardly need him as a live model.
But I would regret not capturing his specific expression tonight—contentment and vulnerability and such deep longing that I know it will be painful to look upon this piece afterward.
Once finished, I lay down next to him. “Thank you.”
“For what?” His voice is thick, languid.
“For everything. I would not have made it this far without you. Thank you for helping me. For protecting me.”
He doesn’t respond, pulls me into him and tucks me against his chest. We hold each other until the sky outside turns the color of bruised plums.
The next morning, after I wake in my own bed with no memory of how I got there, I notice the door to the bathing chamber is open.
So is the one that leads into Lachlan’s room. Which is empty.
He’s gone.
All that’s left of him are the marks on my body and a note next to his drawing in my sketchbook.
You helped me, too, Charlotte. More than you know. With my deepest affection, Lachlan.