Chapter 26
Separate Accommodations
MARC
Noah leans against Minty’s mahogany bar, fresh from an urban revitalization summit in his suit and tie. A pair of crystal tumblers rests in front of us, each with a single sphere of hand-carved ice clinking against the glass.
My friend releases a breath. “This succession fight…” he says, when we’ve exhausted the topics of sports and weather. “I know how busy you are. Thanks for keeping your eye on things.” He tips his glass and takes a swallow.
Though my parliamentary duties are supposed to be strictly ceremonial, I have been seen stalking down legislators in the halls of the Grousehof, my robes billowing around me like the wings of a black dragon.
It’s not difficult to perform any office that might take that tense, anxious look off Ella’s face.
“How are things at the palace?” I ask like I don’t know.
Noah makes a juvenile noise. “Alma is worse than useless. She goes jaunting off to Djolny every other weekend to crash on Jacob’s mother’s sofa.”
I smile into my whiskey.
“What?” he clips.
“The idea of Alma, of all people, going all that distance to make out on a couch. It’s funny.” I shake my head.
Noah glances around the shadow-blurred interior of the private club. “It’s not funny.”
I nod, mock-serious and he punches me in the arm.
“I don’t think she even cares that he’s the crown prince.”
“People do fall in love,” I counter. It’s no longer an abstraction for me, but Noah has an answer for that, too.
“Alma isn’t people. I’m not people. None of our family is. Love is not a reason to lose your head, and you know the rule. First comes the crown, then comes the consort.”
“That’s some highly refined Wolffe garbage,” I say, stretching my back. “You’re going to pick a wife by how well she knows her place?”
His brows gather. “Don’t be a vailys.”
“Who’s the lucky girl who gets to walk two paces behind you for the rest of her life? One of those models?”
“What is your problem?” he asks, but there isn’t much heat in the question. “You know there will be compensations for accepting the role of a future queen. Connections. Jewels. A title. Respect.”
I cough through a laugh. “Chilly bedfellows on a frigid Sondish night.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I am in a mood to kick down some doors. “I mean that it’s stupid how hard your family runs away from happiness. Love matters, even if you’re a future king.”
Noah and I were both born into the privileges of wealth and the pressures of rank, but I don’t understand a man who could be happy and won’t.
I stare into my glass. “Did she not care for your compensations?” I ask.
He knows exactly who I mean. I can see it in the stone-carved set of his shoulders. I don’t even have to say Caroline’s name, but still, she’s there.
He’d like to think he’s too good for love, but even the heir to the House of Wolffe can’t practice emotional austerity all the time.
A hum of light conversation lays over a lazy piano melody, and the atmosphere of the bar is warm, inviting patrons to sit and talk. But between me and my oldest friend, the air seems to shimmer with heat.
His voice is almost too low to hear. “You’re crossing a line.”
I reach for the tumbler and take a swallow. Noah draws a sharp breath. A reset. We’re dissecting his love life, but what would he say if I told him that I need to figure out a way to keep Ella from leaving the country?
My responsibilities spread across several businesses, trade organizations, and the estate, and I used to think it would be impossible to balance and bear them all. With Ella, everything seems easier.
“My sister mentioned Alix’s proposal for Lindenholm,” Noah says. This isn’t my biggest problem, but it’s simpler to let him think it is.
“Ella wants me to take Alix up on her offer.” I lean back in the bar chair, swirling the amber liquid against the ice, and let myself feel the drag of temptation. “Lindenholm is too big for a dozen families, never mind one bachelor.”
“But?”
“But my mother sacrificed decades to the running of it, and what is it going to look like when I put it on my sister’s shoulders now that it’s finally my turn?” I shake my head. “It’s selfish.”
“Alix wouldn’t be taking on all of it, and she is a grown woman—”
“Hey, now.”
Noah laughs, raising innocent hands. I couldn’t do the same. “Duty doesn’t have to be a bitter pill.”
I release a cynical grunt and wish I could take him back to that moment on the beach we’re still not talking about. The moment when I saw everything he wanted and wouldn’t let himself have.
“Say yes to your sister and, if you really want to solve all your problems, go get that girl from BLUSH while you’re at it,” he says, always the matchmaker.
“BLUSH? What are we talking about?” Ella fetches up to us, and I scramble to my feet like a child caught with his hand in the Kyriekager tin.
She’s wearing a perfectly ordinary outfit—a pair of gray slacks, conservative hoop earrings, and a creamy blouse with inspired draping. Her gaze darts to a booth—the booth—and a warm flush works up her neck.
Noah settles deeper into his bar chair. “None of your business.”
I cuff Noah with the flat of my hand. “Show some manners to the lady.”
He rubs the spot with a grin. “That’s no lady. That’s my sister.”
I turn my bar chair out, and Ella slides in with a brief smile, her scent trailing after her. Her curls drag along my skin and, when she leans back, she traps my fingertips where I grip the chair.
I twist myself free, discreetly tugging a curl. Now she’s going to get us caught.
“What brings you down to Minty’s, little sister?” Noah asks, nodding at her soft-sided laptop case.
Color washes the freckles high on the ridge of her cheeks and she scuffs the toe of her shoe on the brass footrest. We’re about to be lied to. “Change of atmosphere. I had some work to do.”
“Is your suite too cramped?”
The toe traces a pattern on the metal as she cooks up another lie. “I was hoping to run into Marc. He promised to teach me how to play Fate.”
I almost laugh. Over the years, I’ve spent hours trying to teach Ella the game, played with a deck of illustrated cards depicting, among other things, the rising moon and flying cranes.
They say there are as many ways to play as there are citizens of Seong, and while she has a knack for the forehead flicking—willing to do it even when she hasn’t earned the right, holding a man down, even—she’s never developed a sense of when to bid and when to hold.
“Don’t you know how to play by now?” Noah asks.
“Listen,” she clips. “There is a world of difference between a game invented by corporate focus groups and one that evolved in the hills of Seong for a thousand years.”
Noah knocks back the rest of his drink. “As fun as this is, I’ve got to get going,” he says. “I have to walk the dog and Mama wants to finalize the itinerary for Clara’s tour.”
“San Sabao, Tzeke, Kleingeshaft,” Ella recites, leaning up for a kiss. “I wondered if Mama was going to cancel Clara’s Tour of Middling Matrimonial Prospects now that she’s met Max.”
“It’s a chance for her to get some practice. Coming?” he asks me. “Or are you really going to play my sister’s games?”
With a shrug, I lift my drink.
“What kind of answer was that?” Ella laughs when he goes.
“Was I supposed to tell him that I can’t wait to play your games?”
“Even when I’m dressed like a grandmother?”
Even in ripped jeans and a hoodie. Even in flannel pajamas. “Stop acting like you don’t know I’m wrecked by your work clothes. Is your mother happy about this change?”
She looks down, frowning at her trousers, and twists in the narrow chair, her pointed heels peeping from the wide-legged hems. “She’s too tense about Freja to be happy about me.”
I lean against the bar. If Noah doubles back he’ll see me standing too close and this game will be over. I reach past Ella for a pistachio, feel the leap in my blood as the distance between us narrows, peel the shell away, and tuck it between her lips.
“You don’t look like a grandmother,” I tell her.
She chews quickly and swallows. I watch her lips purse and want to kiss her. Nothing new. “A Lauza Erdo blouse is not exactly earth shattering.”
Lauza Erdo deserves an Order of the Dragonslayer.
“Maybe it’s the glasses,” I say.
She half-removes them, looking at me over the tortoiseshell rims, and the wooshing sound in my ears must be all the air being sucked out of the North Sea Confederation.
I brace my hands on the arms of her chair until we’re practically lip to lip. “What are you doing? Put them back on. Or take them off. You look like—”
She laughs. “Someone with mild astigmatism?”
A light cough sounds, and we look into the urbane, faintly disapproving look of the head waiter. His expression reads, “I had hoped it would not come to this.”
“Will you be needing anything, ma’am, sir?” His tone is dry. “A room, perhaps?”
Ella’s nose wrinkles at the ‘ma’am’. “I could use a private booth to work, Arne.” She glances at our booth.
“Work?” he echos, a little squint in his eyes. “Of course.”
He makes a discreet series of movements with his head, summoning staff forward to clear the place settings and situate her workspace.
A notepad is placed at one side with a sleek fountain pen.
A bottle of Vestfyn is decanted next to a tall-necked glass.
A pillow is brought forth to support her back.
She flips it down and sits on it instead, adjusts her ergonomics, and looks up with a smile, “Thank you.”
I move forward and the head waiter shoots me a quelling glance. “For you, sir? Will you be needing separate accommodations of your own in another part of the club, perhaps?”
“It was a one-time thing, Arne,” I insist. “I can be relied upon.”
His head tilts up, as though deep in his memories. “I wish I had the innocent, trusting nature of a younger man,” he observes.
“I could do with a coffee,” I say, sliding in next to Ella as she opens her laptop.
“What are you doing?” she whispers. “You’re going to get us in trouble again, and I really am working.”
I slide my arm over the back of the booth and let gravity do the rest. My hand lands lightly on her hip. “In Minty’s? What are you up to?”
“You won’t like it,” she warns, adjusting herself to my embrace.
“This is pretty basic tech,” I say, tipping the computer up, examining the brand and specs. “Is this…a burner laptop?”
She nods and I continue my examination. “You’re being awfully careful and you’re nowhere near the palace.”
Again, she nods.
“Ella.” My tone is level but she lifts her chin.
“Here’s the thing…”