Chapter Five #2
With her hand in his, he led her out the back doors of the ballroom. There were many people out on the terrace, and they slipped through the knot of the crowd easily, heading down the stairs and toward the garden.
“I need…” He grabbed her, tugged her behind a hedge, like he was a green boy, and pulled her into his arms. He kissed her like he was starving, because he was.
Because there had never been anything before her like this, and he feared that there would be nothing after.
Because she was singular, and his need for her was something like he had never imagined possible.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, her body arching forward. He cupped the back of her head, and kissed her. Deep and long. “You came,” he said.
“Of course,” she whispered. “I had to… I had to see you.”
There would be time for talking later. He needed to know her.
Everything about her. All of his good intentions, the idea of taking this slow.
I’m not claiming her tonight… All of his thoughts melted away.
Because he needed her. He moved his hand down to cup her breast. It felt fuller than when they had been together last. Or maybe it was just that she was better than any dream he’d ever had.
Maybe it was just that it had been so good his own imagination had blunted it, because not even he could believe it. Even having experienced it. He moved his hand down to her waist, and then around to her stomach.
Her rounded stomach.
He had taken her without a condom. That night, he had taken her without a condom. He had known that, but somewhere in the back of his mind he had assumed that if a woman had come to him, if she’d slept with him without any mention of birth control, that she was protected.
He ended the kiss, his hand planted firmly on her stomach. “Are you…?”
“I… Yes,” she said.
“Why didn’t you tell me before this? You knew where to find me. I had no idea where to find you.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” she whispered. “But…perhaps…it’s a good thing?”
She was so hopeful. But nothing about this was good. Her pregnancy would announce to the world that he had taken another woman the night he had buried his wife. The disrespect on Circe’s legacy, on his own, was unfathomable. And of course that wasn’t her fault, unless…
He didn’t know who she was.
She had come to him, they had spoken no words, they hadn’t used protection and she hadn’t protested. All this had been a plot. To get herself pregnant with the heir. Or perhaps to pass her pregnancy off as his.
The look on Lady Tremaine’s face when she’d come in…
“Who are you?” he asked.
He grabbed the edge of her mask and took it away from her face, revealing herself to him.
Yes, it was the woman from that night. But it was…
The moonlight illuminated her more than the harsh firelight of the study. And suddenly, those features looked familiar. Much more than they had that night, and yet, he questioned how he hadn’t seen it.
Of course.
She wasn’t noble. She wasn’t a princess, a duchess, anything.
It was the maid.
And she had contrived to carry the heir, she had overheard about the ball…
It might not even be his child. She might just be trying to pass it off as his.
That would make perfect sense. If she had fallen pregnant by some no-account man, and had decided to take an opportunity to use his grief against him.
Coming to him under cover of darkness, touching him when he was vulnerable…
“You,” he said, the word filled with all the poison now flooding his veins. “How dare you?”
“Your Highness,” she said. “I can explain. I…”
He couldn’t bear to hear her speak. Couldn’t bear to hear her lies, not now.
“You will be explaining. At length. But away from here. You will not go back to the ball, you will go to my study. I know you know where it is.”
Her eyes were round and glimmering, like she was innocent, like she was the victim. “Are you angry with me?”
“Angry doesn’t begin to cover it,” he ground out. “Angry isn’t strong enough.”
He would tear down the whole sky and leave them standing in the shattered stars. He would bring down the moon. He would…
He would blot out the night, the day, everything, right the wrong that had been done here.
A maid. A commoner.
Another trap.
“But I don’t understand. You want me. You want this.” As if she were so confused about why he would be angry. About the abuse she’d committed here.
“I would never have wanted you if I would’ve known who you were,” he said. “And you must have known that. Otherwise, you would’ve revealed yourself. Otherwise, you would’ve revealed your pregnancy.”
She clasped her hands in front of her, still trying to play the innocent. “I came into the study the next day and you clearly didn’t know. I thought you did. I—”
“Liar. Go to my office. I must finish here, and then I will go and find you.”
She shook her head. Gathered the dress in her arms, and moved away from him. “No.”
He took a step toward her, rage driving him. “You dare to defy me?”
It was her turn to hold her ground, that innocence transforming then to outrage.
“I’m not going to subject myself to more of your scorn.
I’ve had enough of it. For the whole rest of my life.
I’ve taken it from my family for years, I’ll be damned if I take it from you.
If I ever expose my child to such a thing. ”
She pulled away from him, stepping back and tripping in the grass, before kicking her shoes off. Then she turned and ran from him. Leaving him shocked. He moved slowly over to where she had discarded the first shoe, bending down and picking it up, holding it in his hand.
He heard movement behind him, and he turned. Andrei was there.
“How much of that did you hear?”
“I only heard a yell, and came over.” He looked down and saw the shoe in Onyx’s hand. “I take it that didn’t go well.”
“I need you to send your guards to her house.”
“Who? The woman that you…”
“Yes.”
“Who is she?”
He looked grimly at the empty expanse of darkness that she’d vanished into. “The maid.”