Chapter Nine #2
“Stop calling me that, for the love of Ennolu,” I snapped, breathless and prickling with sweat and vividly recollecting the way his lips had crushed mine and his tongue had penetrated my mouth, and all the more angry because of it.
But damn it, I couldn’t hiss my vitriol at his cravat without feeling like a complete idiot, and so I looked up and met his dark gaze even though he’d told me to.
“I hate my name! I hate it even more now that it’s joined to yours! ”
“Remi Ettori has a light, sweet sort of a sound to it,” Lord Stefan said.
“And you’re anything but sweet, as I’m coming to learn.
Remigius suits you better. You shouldn’t give free rein to that sharp tongue of yours unless you’re prepared to fight your own battles.
Didn’t I tell you specifically not to get me into a duel? ”
“He’s very obviously not the dueling kind, and anyway, he called me a carrot! Lord Stefan, if you—”
“Lord Stefan? Lord Stefan? We’re married! You’re quarrelling with my use of your full name and you can’t even use mine, which is the most absurd—”
“—had the slightest interest in behaving like a husband—wait, you’re saying Remigius suits me better, which is incredibly offensive, and also taking issue with my use of your title? You’re a hypocrite!”
He shut his mouth and then said, “All right,” after a moment’s consideration.
“Fine. Remi. Remi?” I nodded, unable to do more than that.
Damn this corset anyway, for making it so hard to be furious without struggling for breath.
“If you want me to stop calling you Remigius, then you call me Stefan. You’re the damn hypocrite.
And that asshole Griset’s not going to forget this.
You made an enemy tonight. And appearances can be deceptive.
” The corner of his mouth quirked, as if he knew damn well that applied to him, too.
“Griset handles a rapier very well, but he knows I’m better.
I almost wish he bloody well had challenged me.
Then I could’ve skewered him and been done with it. ”
He and Griset might be fops, but I could believe his assertion that they both had skill with a sword; all men of our station, and many of the women, learned to fence. I’d had weekly lessons myself until my banishment to the abbey, though I’d never gotten good at it.
But his oh-so-casual attitude toward killing another man was a different matter. Under other circumstances, or from a different person, I’d have taken it as pure bravado.
Except that I knew otherwise. I’d seen his mask slip.
That moment in the carriage when he’d denied any tendency to violence came rushing back, along with the shiver of real fear his attempt at reassurance had given me.
He meant it. If given a reason, he’d run Lord Griset through and walk away without a qualm.
The man who still had me pinned to a wall, the thickness between his legs nudging into my corseted stomach, might be a cold-blooded killer.
My breath came audibly fast in the small space between us, somehow overwhelming the bright, rhythmic noise of the musicians and the dancers’ feet.
My heart raced, my limbs restless. Fear didn’t usually affect me like this, and gods, could my curse be acting up?
“Why wouldn’t you want to fight a duel, then?
” I asked, horribly, morbidly curious. “If—you’re a good swordsman, good enough that others would avoid you, why would you be afraid to duel?
Or is it that you’re afraid everyone would know you’re not really what they think you are? What you’re pretending to be?”
He stared at me for a moment, face blank.
And then I yelped as I staggered and fell against the wall, taking a moment to understand that my sudden lack of balance had come from Lord Stefan releasing me abruptly and stepping back as if my touch had become poisonous.
“I’m not pretending to be anything,” he said, tugging at his sleeves and smoothing down his coat lapels. “A gentleman can care about his appearance and also be willing to pick up a sword when his honor’s in question. Or when some fool’s trying to cuckold him.”
My stomach lurched, almost as it had while I’d been on board the ship that had brought me here—almost precisely as it had while Ser Prendian had chastised me for allowing the sailors to see me outside my cabin while on my way to become Lord Stefan’s property.
“Trying to cuckold you,” I repeated, that churning sensation calming down and solidifying into a red-hot lump of anger. “You. Your fucking honor?”
I almost choked as the words left my mouth, all of the abbot’s—and my mother’s, before that—strictures on foul language clamoring into my mind. But…no. Fuck that. I’d been brought back to court, forced to marry, and dressed in a gods-damned corset, and I could swear if I wanted to!
My heart pounded with my own boldness as I snarled, “Fuck you, Lord Stefan! Ennolu forbid that you’d fight him for trying to force his attentions on me when I obviously wanted nothing to do with him.
No, you’d only take the trouble if he might make you look like a fool.
I suppose if he raped me but no one knew about it, you wouldn’t even care! ”
He’d gone rigidly still, jaw clamped so tight his teeth must be aching, so perhaps that had hit home.
Not that it mattered. Surely he already knew himself to be a completely selfish prick with no morals, and he still hadn’t bothered to alter his behavior for the better.
Further insults would serve no practical purpose.
Well, not everything had to be practical.
“I was forced to marry you,” I went on, feeling wildly like a millstone rolling downhill, unstoppably picking up speed and just as likely to shatter at the bottom of a cliff, “and you can believe that, because no one with his entire cranium intact would be foolish enough to marry you voluntarily. You’re too much like your father.
You’re insisting that I stay here with you rather than going back to my abbey.
You made me come to this ball tonight, and your mother sent me a dresser who clothed me like the whore you keep accusing me of being.
I didn’t drag myself here to be leered at!
Or for you to laugh at me when I tried to defend myself from Lord Griset’s leering!
So the very least you could do would be to protect me from everyone else who isn’t a part of your dreadful family! ”
I subsided, chest heaving, and silence fell in our alcove. Outside of it, the musicians came to a stop, with a final flourish of a tambourine, and the dancers stomped their feet and applauded.
The hum of conversation picked back up again. Someone walked by, laughing loudly.
Lord Stefan brushed something off of his silk jacket cuff and raised an eyebrow.
Could he see my heart pounding in the hollow of my throat? Did he know I’d run completely out of courage? I curled my fingers into the plaster of the wall and bit my lip.
“Good, you’re really finished, then?” he said at last, his tone giving absolutely nothing away.
I glared at him with the last of my defiance, and he shrugged.
“Just making sure. Very well. A few points of order, if you will allow me my turn. First: my family is dreadful. I don’t deny it.
Second: if you are whoring yourself as my consort, you’re the most expensive lay in Calatria, if we’re judging by the bill I’ve received this morning from the tailors.
Not to mention the fact that you’ve achieved that without even going to bed with me.
Third: it’s Stefan without the lord, and don’t make me remind you again.
And fourth: don’t compare me to my father if you want to stay out of that attic. Are we clear so far?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Yes…?”
It took me a moment to realize what he meant. “Yes.” I had to swallow down a lump in my throat. It felt far more significant than it probably deserved. “Stefan.”
His dark eyes caught the moonlight with an unsettling gleam as he took a step forward.
“Good. Now last of all, and most importantly by far. I wasn’t laughing at you.
I was laughing at Griset. The fucking look on his face when you tore him into little shreds is going to live on in that section of my mind I reserve for my most treasured memories.
You’re not what I expected, Remi. Not at all.
Not in any particular. Except for…” He gestured up and down, as if indicating the apparently expensive entirety of my whorelike appearance. “I suppose I should’ve expected that.”
I blinked at him. “You should’ve expected me to be an abbey virgin who looks ridiculous in the clothing of an expensive whore?”
The words had a bitter flavor. And all at once, I wanted nothing so much as to go—home, I supposed I’d need to begin thinking of it, since my own home had been put out of my reach.
My bed, where Aldrich would bring me tea and pretend to ignore my tears as he puttered about putting my ridiculous clothes away.
Only Lord Griset, a lecher and an asshole, had seemed to find me particularly appealing, and he might simply prefer men who looked like easy targets for his disgusting attention.
No one else had gazed at me with helpless desire or begged me to dance or reproached Lord Stefan, bloody hell, Stefan, for his neglect of such a beautiful creature.
Aldrich would be so very disappointed. Of course, it’d been inevitable. How had either of us imagined anyone would overlook freckles and red hair, even when wrapped up in the finest, most whorish silk a dreadful family could buy?
A heaviness had gathered behind my eyes, in my temples, in my knees. Gods.
Stefan opened his mouth. Closed it. Shook his head, gazing at me with the strangest expression, one I couldn’t read in the slightest. “When I hear it repeated back to me,” he said at last, “it makes me sound like a real son of a bitch, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, because it really did. “Stefan,” I added, on a miserable little sigh I couldn’t keep in.
“Fucking Dromos’s balls,” he muttered, and passed a hand over his face. “Fuck. Dance with me? Or a drink? Whatever you want to do, Remi.”
A bit late for that, and I couldn’t help the laugh that fell off my lips, hurting my chest on its way out.
Dance with him? Our hands clasped, in front of everyone, doing steps that I hadn’t practiced in six years and had never been expert in to begin with.
If I threw up all over the dance floor, that might be the very best possible outcome; I could think of far worse.
“Your parents wanted us to be here tonight, and I’m sure they’ll have someone reporting what we do,” I said dully. “Another drink, I suppose. More of that wine, since I don’t have a head for anything stronger. How long before we can go?”
Stefan’s jaw tightened. “Now. We can go right now, if you like.” He took another step—close enough to have gathered me in his arms again, if he’d wanted to.
“As long as you’re willing to participate in another round of playacting, anyway.
Yes, that’s part of it if we stay, too,” he went on, answering the question I’d opened my mouth to ask.
His voice lowered even further, going husky, raising all the hair on the back of my neck, as he said, “But if we stay, we can simply pretend to be enjoying one another’s company.
We won’t need to look as if we’re leaving early so that I can complete your ravishment somewhere more private. ”
My skin warmed, suddenly too tight all over me. “Complete my ravishment. That would suggest you’d already begun it. Here?”
Stefan leaned down, lips now a breath away from mine, eyes glittering. “Right here,” he murmured, and closed the gap.