Chapter Five
The carriage rattled down the hill and around endless corners for a full quarter of an hour.
My rage grew and grew with every passing moment.
While my understanding of Calatria’s capital city’s layout might be vague and based in childhood memories, I did know that the better neighborhoods and more elegant houses in Nevaia—including both Lord Stefan’s and his parents’—were clustered around the tops of several hills rising to the palace’s high vantage point.
If my husband had come to collect me, I’d have spent only a few minutes in a carriage. Instead, to facilitate his extended sojourn in his den of iniquity, I’d had to ready myself early and go all the way down to collect him, and then all the way back up.
The insult rankled.
All of the insults rankled, his and his father’s, and my fear began to sizzle away in the heat of my anger with every turn and stop and jolt of the carriage. I might suffer for the insolence of wearing this cassock once my husband got me alone, but I’d started not to care.
The carriage rolled to a stop at last and then bounced as the footman climbed down from behind.
I peeked out the window, watching him trot down a narrow alley.
Torchlight spilled from an open window, but otherwise the alley seemed very dark indeed compared to the broader street, where the last remnants of the sunset still reflected from white walls.
Despite the dimness and the uneven paving stones, the footman went unerringly to one of several identical doors.
So. Not the first time this servant had collected his master in this particular seedy byway. Should I be impressed by Lord Stefan’s fidelity to whatever house of ill repute lurked behind that door, or critical of his lack of imagination?
The door opened. My husband stepped out, and my stomach gave a new little twinge. The footman’s bow had identified him, but I’d known him instantly anyway by the arrogance of his bearing and the breadth of his shoulders in another ridiculous satin coat.
This one, a rich and gleaming violet, sported gold embroidery all down the sleeves, I saw as he approached. My fist clenched around a handful of my rough cassock and my heart beat faster.
The carriage door opened.
Lord Stefan finished drawling his orders to the footman, turned his head, set his foot upon the carriage step, and—stopped.
His very presence seemed to suck all the air out of the carriage.
Dark, flashing eyes raked me up and down, and his lip curled.
Finally he moved, stepping in and dropping down beside me. The door shut, the footman climbed on, and the coachman nudged the horses into motion.
My breath whooshed out of me.
Where was his rage? His violence? If that had been a reaction to my cassock, it’d been disappointing in the extreme. Damn him!
I could smell him in the near-darkness, a rich, cloying blend of strong liquor and jasmine perfume and the same lemony something—hair pomade, perhaps?
—he’d been wearing when we married. And beneath that, the scent of him, male skin and a hint of fresh sweat, and also…
oh, gods. That had to be the smell of sex, didn’t it? Salty and musky and tangy.
He hadn’t even bathed thoroughly before crawling out of that disgusting place to make a mockery of me at his parents’ dining table.
Disjointed images flashed through my mind: Lord Stefan with his breeches undone and someone pretty kneeling at his feet, or his bared teeth as he drove into a smooth, round ass from behind, muscular back gleaming with perspiration…
“I can feel you nearly vibrating out of your skin,” Lord Stefan said, his tone low and smooth, and I gasped, jolting back to my own body, chest heaving. “Say it. Whatever it is.”
I hate you. You sicken me. I’ve had more than one fantasy about your headless corpse, and unfortunately several others just now about how you perform in the bedchamber.
Ugh.
“Are you going to tell your father that you reek of, of, low pleasures because you’ve been so busy corrupting me? Do you really think he’ll believe that?” My voice cracked, my effort to emulate his calm and control failing miserably.
“He will if you reinforce the impression.” Lord Stefan’s voice dipped even lower, with a rasp like a rapier sliding out of its sheath.
“And you know perfectly well you’ll need to for your own sake, and with shining-eyed sincerity.
Low pleasures? Corrupting? Really? This prim and proper act of yours grows rather tiresome, Remigius, even though I’ve spent only a few minutes in your company.
I’ll leave it to you to reconcile your vapors—”
A red haze descended over my vision, and I spun on him, every muscle rigid with the urge to strike him.
“My vapors? My vapors? I’m neither prim and proper nor am I—”
“Your vapors!” he repeated, snarling at last, his face inches from mine.
“Reconcile those and your fucking absurd potato sack, for that matter, with the story you’ll need to sell my father, namely, that my low reek came from consummating our marriage in any number of ways.
Rubbing myself on you a bit to spread it would probably help your story, but I don’t,” and he raised his voice yet again as I began to protest, “think I’m inclined to be helpful! ”
A scream of pure rage rose up in me, but I choked it down, instead making a sound like a strangled cat.
But I couldn’t choke down the urge to strike out, to seize a fistful of his lacy cravat and tear it to shreds.
Lord Stefan caught my wrist so quickly I could hardly blink. His strong fingers dug into my wrist, squeezed—and I fell back against the seat cushions, biting my lip, the pain in my arm bringing me back to something like sanity.
My pulse throbbed in his grip. He had to be able to feel it.
He released me slowly, putting my hand in my lap. Gently. Oddly gently. It only emphasized how easily he could have broken my arm.
“My apologies if I hurt you.” Lord Stefan leaned back into his own corner of the carriage, putting some distance between us—and his face into shadow.
“You know, despite your limited experience with me, violence isn’t really my forte,” he added, putting some of that foppish drawl into his voice that had vanished entirely in the last few minutes.
He couldn’t possibly have said anything more likely to convince me, with a bit of a shudder down my spine, that despite his appearance and affectations, and the way he’d released me immediately when I’d been so frightened three days ago and again right now, violence was very much his forte.
Making it even more bizarre, his apology had sounded entirely genuine. Who the hell had I married?
Trying to wet my lips failed, my tongue like sandpaper, and I sat dry-mouthed and silent.
“By the way, I’m well aware you’re not actually prim and proper,” he went on.
“You wouldn’t have married me if you were.
Stop playacting for my benefit and save your efforts for convincing my father.
And get used to the idea that we’ll need to make it real sooner rather than later, whether we like it or not. ”
“You just told me violence isn’t your forte,” I whispered, the word sooner beating in my ears like a drum. “Unless you’re lying, you won’t beat me or—”
“I could just leave you to molder your youth away in a locked attic,” Lord Stefan said mildly.
“That would cause me no inconvenience whatsoever. I’d spread a rumor you’d gone mad.
Such a tragedy. So young. But you’d be well cared for, of course.
Plenty of gruel, and stern servants to prevent you from hurting yourself or escaping the confines of safety. ”
A sudden stab of hope assailed me. “If you want to spread the story that I’m mad and need confinement, you could send me back to the abbey. You could send me home—”
My voice broke on the word home, as images of my mother’s smile and the sunlight in my cozy bedroom in our old house and butterflies flittering through its rose garden, snippets of my peaceful childhood, all ran through my mind.
Not the abbey, but home. Except that the home I remembered had evaporated like mist in the rising sun, never to be found again.
“Abbey, hah! Don’t make me laugh,” Lord Stefan ground out, jolting me out of my memories. “Sending you back where you came from wouldn’t suit anyone’s plans.”
That flicker of hope winked out, surprisingly painful given how unlikely it had been that he’d agree.
Utter bewilderment replaced it. Abbey, hah? “What’s so amusing about an abbey?”
The wheels rattled on the cobblestones, suddenly loud in his silence.
“Nothing,” he replied after a moment. “What’s amusing is the idea that you’d want to go back to one when you’ve only just traded austerity and exile for wealth and an entry into the court.”
“Do you think I’m lying to you? I just asked you to go—” I bit down on my lip so hard I saw stars.
In my anger, I’d almost forgotten that if I did go back to the abbey or to my mother’s house, if I even admitted how much I wished I could, the Lord Chancellor would be furious.
Murderously so. “You haven’t exactly given me wealth and an entry into court, my lord,” I said, trying to moderate my tone.
Sound conciliatory rather than filled with loathing.
“I’m wearing this because I didn’t have anything else.
You didn’t give me anything else. I don’t want to go back, but I might as well if you’re only going to—to—”
“Remigius, precisely how stupid do you think I am?” He leaned forward, eyes glittering. “Of course you’re lying to me!”
And I was, and I hated it, because while Stefan had been raised by a liar and spent his whole life with court liars, and probably wouldn’t recognize honesty if it rose up and beat him over the head, I’d spent my whole life telling the truth.