Chapter Eighteen
Stefan didn’t come home until nearly midnight, a full six hours after my return from the temple.
That gave me more than enough time to seethe with anger, to nearly drown myself in strong tea—I’d have preferred wine to settle my humming nerves, but I needed to keep my wits about me—and to vividly imagine all the ways he could respond to the confrontation.
Rage, which I rather expected. Violence, perhaps not so far his forte with me, but certainly in his repertoire, whatever he might claim.
Shame and regret. My belly clenched up at that thought, a strange breathlessness overtaking me.
What if he apologized? Gods, I couldn’t possibly accept it.
It’d be as false as our marriage. But Stefan, remorseful and pleading…
That fantasy belonged in the same category as everyone in a crowded ballroom falling silent at the sight of my beauty. Perhaps I ought to have Aldrich slap me a few times until I stopped being so stupid.
But at least fatuous fantasies were better than the searing pain of wallowing in every moment I’d spent with Stefan.
I’d begun to trust him, or at least that he wouldn’t hurt me.
I’d harbored a wishful belief that he’d been forced into this marriage just as I had.
That we could be allies, if nothing else.
And that the heat and sweetness of his kisses and the pleasure he’d wrung from me with his hands and his body and his cock, his strength and his experience and his gentleness, had meant something more than him making the best of the bargain he’d struck.
Not with me. No one had bargained with me. I’d been the commodity, not a party to the negotiation.
By the time the front door thumped and I heard Stefan’s voice in the hall downstairs, I’d paced a visible track in the carpet and choked down enough tears to refill the empty teapot.
I’d followed the time-honored aristocratic method of communicating with a disliked society spouse: leaving a snide message with the staff. So I knew he’d come to see me. All I had to do was wait a few seconds longer.
It felt like another hour.
Stefan’s footsteps approached and stopped outside. There was a long pause—for what? His usual schooling of his face into something so neutral it hurt?—that had my nerves moving past humming and into screaming. And then at last he knocked.
My fists curled by my sides as I called out to him to enter, and I had to force my hands to open and relax.
Stefan stepped inside. “My apologies for the late hour,” he said, and shut the door behind him.
His rumpled tunic and trousers, black wool rather than his usual colorful silk or satin, bore streaks of dirt, and more had dusted his hair.
Where the hell had he been? Did his informants that he’d mentioned live in a chimney?
“But I was told downstairs that you required me to wait upon you at my earliest convenience.”
Good, they’d given the message verbatim, rather than changing it to something more polite and friendly—and his tone, as he repeated it back, held the faintest note of surprise.
He’d be more surprised in a moment.
No, I would not soften in the face of his obvious exhaustion, the dark shadows under his weary eyes or the faint slump to his posture as he leaned back against the door instead of coming into the room, as if he wanted to stay as far from me as possible.
That certainly helped me stiffen my own spine.
“Yes. I did. We have matters to discuss that can’t wait.
” He gazed at me steadily, unmoving. Waiting.
My mouth had gone dry, my pulse hammering in my wrists and temples.
Courtiers had tact, approached topics obliquely, hinted rather than outright speaking their minds.
I had no idea how to be a courtier. “I went to see the High Priest of Ennolu today. The one who married us, in case you were too busy thinking about yourself to notice. I’m not sure if he’s a truly devout man, or if he merely hates your father as much as the rest of us, but he was very sympathetic to my situation. ”
That got his attention. Stefan pushed off the door, finally taking a step toward me, eyes sharpening. “Your situation,” he repeated. “And you would describe that how, exactly?”
I sucked in a breath. I’d rehearsed this so many times in the last few hours, but my voice still shook as I said, “A pious young devotee of Ennolu, taken from my religious order and forced into a marriage with a powerful man who’s conspiring with his father to blackmail me and steal my inheritance.
” Stefan had gone pale, and as I spoke, more color drained out of his face with every word.
“His Eminence particularly liked the part where I was poisoned. And consummated my forced marriage while in the throes of my curse, unable to say no.”
“Unable to—you were begging. You—”
Fury shot through me like a galvanic shock, my hands tingling. “I was begging? You throw that in my face, you, you hypocrite! You’re the one who told me to find a better lover if he claims I wanted it when I—”
“You would’ve died, Remi!” His voice had risen to a shout, but it broke on my name, and a tremor went through me. No. No, I would not falter. “Fucking hell. You would’ve died. I had nothing to do with the poison. You know that!”
He’d taken another step, hand outstretched, eyes as dark and pleading as they’d been in my misbegotten imagination.
“I know nothing of the kind,” I forced myself to reply, even though I did believe him on that specific point.
But it didn’t matter! I had to remember that it didn’t matter.
His betrayal had been the same, even if he was innocent of one particular crime.
“I don’t know anything about you. I only know that you agreed to this marriage for a reason.
You had a choice, no matter how much your mother wanted you home or how much your parents could disinherit you, or whatever else they said and did to bend you to their plans.
You chose to be part of forcing me into it.
And you’ve been lying to me every moment we’ve spent together. ”
“I have not lied to you,” he ground out. “I haven’t perhaps told you the whole tru—”
“What did my father own that was valuable enough for you and your horrid father to do this to me?”
Stefan’s mouth hung open for a moment before he pressed his lips together in a flat line. If his jaw tightened any more, it’d snap in half.
I let the silence stretch. Stefan ran a hand over his face, keeping it there for a moment to cover his eyes. And then he sighed and dropped it, drawing himself up so that he stood rigidly straight, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
He met my eyes steadily, so much so that I had to force myself not to look away. I’d never seen that expression on his face, and it chilled me, all the way down to my bones.
His voice stayed as level as his gaze, as even as his posture, as he said, “An estate in Arthovia, right on our border with them. Not huge, but large enough to allow its owner a seat in the Arthovi landholders’ council.
It was…forgotten about, after your father’s execution, because as it’s outside of Calatria, it couldn’t legally be confiscated by the Calatrian throne.
Now it’s yours.” He paused, jaw working. “And mine, of course.”
Of course. My mind had ground to a halt, my mouth too dry to answer him.
Forgotten about. Hidden, he meant. Since it couldn’t be confiscated, the Lord Chancellor had been able to slip it past whichever clerks audited my father’s property records.
That had been my inference, hadn’t it? That the Lord Chancellor had needed me to legitimize his family’s possession of something he couldn’t openly use otherwise.
And that Stefan had known about it and had endorsed his father’s plan to do so.
And yet hearing him admit it aloud hurt, a stabbing in my side like I’d been running for too long.
“We’ve had tension with Arthovia of late,” he went on. “The full explanation would surely bore you—”
“Bore me?” Oh, how dare he? The condescending ass! “Bore me, Stefan? You mean you don’t want to give me a full explanation. I suggest you try. And if I’m too stupid to comprehend it, you can use smaller words until I do.”
“I beg your pardon,” he said, after a startled pause, his eyebrows rising. “I didn’t mean to imply—”
“Yes, you bloody well did!”
Stefan’s lips pressed together tightly. Trying to keep in another reflexive lie?
It shocked me when he said simply, “Yes, I did. Please excuse me. You’re right that I didn’t want to explain fully, but it’s largely because the crown can’t afford loose lips on this matter.
I trust your discretion, but—it’s not only my reputation at stake here.
It’s not my own business, but Calatria’s. ”
The crown couldn’t afford loose lips on this matter?
That strongly implied that Lord Benedict had been lying to my face, too, at least by omission.
Maybe the mighty Lord Consort didn’t owe me a damn thing, and certainly not state secrets, but after his fine words about fellow twilight mages and understanding what I was going through, it cut like a lash.
I couldn’t afford to feel it now. Later, but not now.
“You’ve made it my business, though. And it was from the beginning, whether you like it or not, because the land was mine by right.”
A short silence fell, broken by my uneven breathing. Stefan’s face hardened, as if he’d come to a decision.