Chapter Twelve
Stefan crossed his arms and leaned back against the door, staring down at the carpet and letting the silence grow. I pulled the covers up around my chest in a gesture that probably looked laughably prim to someone like him. Not that he’d be wrong. It was a bit late for primness.
I had no idea what to expect, but when he finally looked up, his face set in grim lines, his first words still took me by surprise. “Remigius and Edelfina Hunziker? Were your parents playing some kind of cruel joke?”
I’d often wondered the same thing, damn him.
“Our names carry the nobility of generations of Calatria’s aristocracy,” I said with a sniff.
Surely a man who’d taken his husband’s cock in his marriage bed could be allowed to use whatever vocabulary suited the occasion, couldn’t he?
Even if profanity displeased abbots and mothers. “Also, go fuck yourself.”
“Only Remi from now on, I promise you,” he said, and sighed. Another silence fell. “Are you hurt?” he demanded abruptly, sounding as if he wanted to be anywhere but here. “Did I hurt you?”
There were too many possible answers to that question, some more philosophical than others.
“No,” I finally said, because in the sense that he’d intended the question, it was technically true. Where he’d taken me, I had a warm, stinging discomfort—barely enough pain to suggest how much he could have truly injured me if he’d been careless or cruel.
“I don’t believe you.” Stefan tipped his head back and surveyed me from under half-lowered lids. If his dark gaze hadn’t been quite so piercing and observant, I almost could’ve believed I saw before me a lazy, debauched fop. “I’m not sure you’d tell me if you—”
“I would’ve preferred to be honest with you from the moment we met,” I managed to say, through a throat thickening with anger—and more fucking tears. “And now you know the truth about me. About everything. Why would I lie to you now?”
“Because I don’t deserve anything better?” He pushed off the door, sighed, and came closer to the bed—but not too close, as if he approached a wild animal that might bite.
Or as if he thought I’d be afraid he’d bite me.
“You’re right, you don’t deserve anything better,” I said, because as I’d just pointed out, what reason did I have to lie now?
His minute flinch gave me a disproportionate surge of satisfaction.
“But if I needed a doctor or a mage, I’d tell you, because I’m not so squeamish that I’d let myself suffer for it.
Besides, I’d think Lord Benedict would’ve noticed when he examined me, wouldn’t he? ”
Through all of my reading in the abbey’s library, I had a good theoretical idea of how to use magic to examine my own body and how to heal it once I had.
But I didn’t think a delicate part of me that I couldn’t see would be a good first test. I had a little over two days before I’d need to take my potion again, presuming it worked—or do something else I refused to think about until necessary if it didn’t.
I’d have time to experiment. Maybe I’d start with something more along the lines of the blisters I’d probably gotten from those new heeled shoes.
Stefan nodded. “If you’re not hurt, then I’ll send in Aldrich to look after you.
If there’s anything else you require, you’ll have it.
I won’t trouble you again until tomorrow unless you send for me.
I may be out for a part of the night, or very early in the morning.
But everyone in the house will have instructions to follow any order you might give for your own comfort. ”
Out? For a part of the night? He’d taken me, little as either of us wanted it, and now he meant to leave me here, going straight from our tainted marriage bed to a brothel? To wash the figurative taste of me out of his mouth with real pleasure.
What a bastard.
“I have no need for you whatsoever.” My voice came out almost as hard as I wanted, with only the faintest little betraying hitch. “No doubt whoever you mean to visit tonight will be much happier to—”
“I beg your pardon,” he cut in, leaning forward, eyes blazing, “but what exactly are you thinking I mean to do tonight?”
“What you do every night!” I shoved up on my elbows, too annoyed to keep still and too incensed to euphemize. “Don’t pretend to be indignant at the accusation of spending a night whoring and drinking, Stefan, when you flaunt your degenerate behavior at every opportunity!”
Silence fell for a long, long moment.
“I could make a number of replies to that,” he said at last, in that overly controlled tone I’d already learned he used when he wanted nothing of his real feelings to show.
“But I won’t. As it happens, I have my own sources of information, and I’d like to see if there’s anything to learn about what happened tonight beyond what we’ve already guessed and Benedict will discover.
But I assure you, I have no intention of leaving you without adequate assistance, or of staying away for long.
Like it or not, you’re my bloody responsibility now. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go.”
That odd, quivering ache in my chest could only be…
yet another thing I didn’t want to acknowledge.
It would be so much easier to continue detesting Stefan without any moderation.
And I could have, if he’d only made some pretense, some false show of having become better or softer, or of liking me at all.
But that rough, annoyed admission that he meant to take care of me meant more than any honeyed words would have.
If nothing else, his rudeness convinced me that he’d told me the truth.
He had his hand on the doorknob, his face turned away, and in a moment he’d be gone. Something tugged beneath my breastbone, stealing my breath and making my fingers twitch as if they wanted to reach out to him. Something…my magic.
That was my magic, curling out of me like mischievous smoke, stretching delicate pale tendrils toward the man who’d set it free.
I could see it. And if it hadn’t had a mind of its own, I might have been left speechless with wonder.
But instead, it commandeered my mouth in a desperate, transparent attempt to keep him in the room where it could feel his presence.
“I thought he believed us the other night, at dinner,” I said. “That we’d already—consummated.”
Stefan kept his hand on the door, but he turned to look over his shoulder.
“I thought he did too, actually. But I’m also not surprised that in the end, he chose to leave nothing to chance.
” The corner of his mouth curled up almost imperceptibly.
“It wouldn’t be the first time he’d hedged his bets based on my lack of reliability.
The two of you agree on almost nothing, but I imagine you can sympathize with that, anyway. ”
“Except that I doubt you fool him any more than you do me.”
Stefan went very still. Finally he let go of the door, turned, and leaned against it again, hands in his trouser pockets.
The slump to his posture made him look far too tired to be contemplating going out into the night again.
As Stefan gazed at me contemplatively, I grew more and more conscious of my naked body under the coverlet, as if he could see straight through it and trace my contours—as if he hadn’t seen everything already.
When I couldn’t stand it anymore and gave it another tug, trying to hide as much of my skin as I could, the rustle of the sheets sounded obscenely suggestive in the silence.
Stefan’s eyes flickered down for a moment, and he shifted his posture against the door. “Did I ever deceive you?” His wry tone had a tinge of bitterness to it. “Or did you see me for what I am the moment we met?”
For a fleeting second, I wondered again—for perhaps the hundredth time since marrying this man, and certainly not for the last—what it might be like to be in this situation with the education, training, and experience to handle him properly.
A man with more poise and sophistication…
well, such a man wouldn’t be clutching the blankets to his naked chest, either.
But he’d know what to say here: a laughing insult, something that would put Stefan entirely in his place.
Instead, I told the truth, because anything else tasted unfamiliar and unpleasant on my abbey-trained tongue.
“You dropped your fop pretense quickly enough when we were alone, so I knew that wasn’t the truth.
And I also knew you didn’t care about my opinion, since you weren’t bothering to keep up the front.
But I still don’t understand why you keep up a front at all, or what you’re trying to hide.
And I still don’t know what you are. So I don’t think I can really answer your question. ”
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his shadowed eyes.
“I think you have some very unflattering thoughts about what I am. You’re merely too worn out to tell me.
Or maybe I’m not worth the trouble. For the record, your opinion does matter to me.
More than I expected,” he added almost under his breath.
“Anyway, you’re right that he’s one of the few people who knows I’m not entirely a drunken, lecherous idiot who cares for nothing but the cut of my coats.
And I didn’t see the point in pretending to be one for the benefit of someone reporting to him.
Most people see what I want them to see.
It’s helpful when you’re a diplomat, and close to the throne, to have people underestimate you. ”
It took me a moment to digest that. When I had, the sound that came out of me rather horrifyingly resembled one of Abbot Junius’s dreaded huffing scoffs.