Chapter Fifteen
The parlor lay at the end of a short branching corridor, overlooking the gardens, with a broad set of doors leading out onto a terrace. My page had clearly run quickly and executed his orders with aplomb. When I entered, the drapes had already been drawn back to let in the gloomy gray daylight, a cheerful blaze had been lit in the fireplace, and several servants paused, bowed, and went back to their hasty work of laying the table for a full meal when they’d expected to be bringing a more casual lunch for two into my study.
“Beg pardon for the delay, Your Grace,” said the butler. “There’s hot punch ready by the fire, if you please to have it while you wait.”
One of the cooks was a witch, and while her powers weren’t extensive she could get things hot much more quickly than the stove could manage. Hot punch in five minutes was one of her specialties, one reason why I’d been reluctant to replace the kitchen staff. If she’d been responsible for the poisoning, I might cry. And then shrug and accept my doom, because I’d never sack her.
I took the goblet the butler handed me, warming my hands on it while both Benedict and Tavius followed me in at last, greatly to my disappointment. Their stiff postures suggested they’d probably been snarling at one another in the corridor.
Benedict made a beeline for me, frowning gaze fixed on my wine.
“I haven’t had any yet, it’s a bit too hot,” I said, understanding what he hadn’t said. “Careful with yours, gentlemen.”
Benedict nodded jerkily, eyes softening in relief despite the tension in every line of his big body. He approached, standing so close to me that I had to tip my head up to meet his gaze. Despite my irritation, his nearness warmed me more than the fire.
“Don’t trust him, there’s something off about him,” he said softly, leaning down a little, almost as if he meant to kiss me. Don’t trust him? How dare he! The air between us thickened and stretched, every part of me close to Benedict quivering with the need for his touch, like a flower straining to the sun—and gods, how could I react like this to him, even when he angered me the most? “I know you didn’t want me here, but I’m not leaving you alone with him. I don’t care if it annoys you.”
He reached up and quickly wrapped his hand around the goblet, out of sight of the rest of the room, flicking the surface of the liquid with the tip of his finger. And then he nodded and stepped away to the sideboard, ladling out a cup and saying something to one of the servants about the proper proportion of brandy in a wine punch, his tone easy and smooth, as unconcerned and casual as if he wasn’t considering cutting my cousin’s throat at the lunch table.
“…as long as the beef’s really hot,” Tavius was saying, and I could hear the rattle of a serving cart in the hallway, probably carrying our first course. Thank Ennolu, and the kitchen staff—even the ones who’d colluded to try to poison me. If they were efficient enough today that I could get this over with quickly, I might forgive them anything, even treason.
Benedict turned from the sideboard and held out the goblet he’d filled. “Have some punch, Lord Tavius,” he said, in much the same tone he’d have used to say, “Go bugger yourself and die.”
“Have it yourself,” Tavius snapped. “I don’t need you to play host, you fucking usurping parasite. I’ll pour my own.”
A fraught silence fell, Tavius glaring at Benedict, teeth bared, as if daring him to respond in kind, Benedict frozen in place with the goblet held out.
And then Benedict half-smiled, shrugged, and stepped aside with the air of a man washing his hands of a situation in which he’d done his best. He took a drink. Tavius edged around him, bristling like an angry cat, and filled his own goblet. Benedict smiled slightly and sat in the nearest chair to me, stretching his feet out toward the fire.
Oh, for…I reviewed the last few moments in my mind. Benedict had poured a glass, checked it for poison, and tried to give it to Tavius, but had not, as far as I had noticed, checked the punch bowl itself.
I opened my mouth, trying to think of what I could say, but Tavius had already knocked back half of his goblet and begun to refill it.
Too late.
My raised-eyebrow stare bounced right off the side of Benedict’s stupid smug face.
Not that I could really blame him for not trying particularly hard, after Tavius’s blatant insult…but would he simply sit there getting drunk and shrugging while Tavius dropped dead, if it came to that?
Almost certainly he would, damn him.
Tavius took up a position beside me with his back to the fire, sipping at his second glass of hopefully non-lethal punch. In the momentary lull of hostilities, I dared to take a drink of my own wine at last, letting the heat of it soothe my chest and the bite of the brandy begin to sand down some of the jagged edges of my mood. Would I survive Tavius’s visit, dealing with both of them?
Would they survive? Even if they didn’t fight a duel or allow the other to be murdered by a third party, I might lose my own temper and stab them both in the neck.
“Where’s Fabian?” Tavius said, and I glanced up at him sharply, startled out of my sour contemplation of the hearth rug. “Shouldn’t he be here somewhere serving you? Don’t tell me Rathenas ran him off. Are you driving away anyone who might talk some sense into him, eh? Anyone close to him? You’ll regret it if you try it on me.”
Oh, by all that was holy, he simply wouldn’t let up, would he?
But his dogged insistence on being as unpleasant as possible didn’t disturb me nearly as much as the horrible shiver that the sound of my dead valet’s name sent through me, his pain-twisted, rapidly cooling corpse flashing before my eyes.
Hang on a moment. The sound of his name…why in the world would Tavius even know his name, or remember it if he’d ever heard it in the first place? He didn’t give a damn about the names or doings of any of his servants or anyone he considered beneath him, as evidenced by his carrying on about Benedict in front of the guards and pages in the hallway a few minutes ago.
“He would be attending on me,” I replied, keeping my voice even with an effort. “But he’s dead, I’m sorry to say.”
Tavius jolted and then went as still as death himself, staring at me with his blue eyes bugging out. The pink washed out of his cheeks as if someone had taken a sponge to him. “Dead? He’s— dead ? How the fuck did he die, then? Why the fuck didn’t he tell—who killed—was he killed?”
All the hair rose on the back of my neck, and Benedict leaned forward slightly, eyes fixed on Tavius, his entire demeanor that of a hunting hound on the scent.
Who killed him . No one knew he’d been murdered but me and Benedict—and presumably whoever had planned the murder in the first place. Tavius couldn’t have, he couldn’t. The room seemed to spin around me, my head going too light, I couldn’t answer him, I couldn’t—
“He fell and hit his head,” Benedict put in, and thank the gods for that. I didn’t think I could have spoken without screaming. “It was a terrible thing. Why’d you think someone killed him?”
Tavius’s open-mouthed hesitation lasted a moment too long.
Don’t trust him, there’s something off about him .
“Why do I—I don’t!” Tavius closed his mouth, opened it again, and then raised his goblet in a motion so jerky the punch sloshed and dripped onto the floor, tipping his head back and draining it. He lowered the cup, his hand so tight around it his knuckles had gone white. His face matched, still chalky under his tan, with deep grooves around his mouth. “It’s a shock, that’s all. Someone’s dead. I need to—Lucian, you’ll have to excuse me,” he went on, and he was clearly trying to sound like himself. But failing, badly. He spoke so rapidly his words almost slurred together. “I’m not as hungry as I thought. Tired, that’s what I am. Have one of these fellows take me to my room to wash up a bit, eh?”
As a cousin and a friend, I wanted nothing more than to put my hand on Tavius’s arm. Ask him what the hell was wrong, shake an explanation out of him if I had to, and offer my help—because surely he’d accept it. He cared for me. Whatever this mystery, he’d never hurt me.
As a duke and a born-and-bred courtier and a man who’d found his valet’s murdered body on his bedroom rug, I damn well knew better. What had happened to his determination to separate me from Benedict? None of his behavior made the slightest bit of sense.
I found my voice at last, although it rasped as if I’d been screaming after all.
“Of course, Tavius. It was a long journey. Tiring. Of course.” I waved at one of the footmen, and he approached and bowed. “Show Lord Tavius to his room. And—and see to anything else he or his party requires.”
“Brandy’s what I’ll want.” Tavius shot me a smile that approximated his usual brash arrogance, but on the haggard pallor of his face it just looked ghastly. “The best in the cellars.”
“The very best,” I said. My own smile probably looked even worse than his. “The duke’s own, if you please.”
Tavius barked out a harsh, ugly laugh. “That’s the stuff. Now are we going, or not?” he snarled at the footman.
He stomped off, almost knocking into Benedict’s chair as he did and not troubling to acknowledge him at all otherwise, not even with an insult. The footman all but danced out the door in Tavius’s wake, murmuring apologies.
A nervously cleared throat drew my attention to the butler. “The table’s ready, if it please you, Your Grace,” he said—tentatively, and I couldn’t blame him.
“Thank you,” I managed. The table. I might never have an appetite again. But I couldn’t think of a plausible excuse for Tavius’s behavior or for dismissing the butler and footmen before they’d served the remaining two of us lunch. Fuck it. Let them talk. After Benedict’s and my behavior at the ball last night, it hardly mattered. I simply said, “You can all go.”
The door shut behind them, and Benedict and I regarded each other in silence for a long moment. Dread sat so heavily on my chest that I could hardly draw a breath.
“By your reaction,” Benedict said at last, “you also don’t know of any good reason why your cousin ought to have been particularly attached to Fabian. Or why he might know or guess that his death wasn’t an accident.”
A gust of wind pattered a few drops of rain against the glass of the terrace door, a chill draft sweeping past my feet from under it. I hardly felt it. I’d gone cold all over. Apparently the past week’s fine weather had come to an end, both outdoors and for me.
“I can’t even think of a reason why Tavius would have known Fabian’s name. Or that he existed, except in the sense that he’d assume I’d have a valet.” I closed my eyes for a moment, knowing I couldn’t deny it to either myself or to Benedict, letting the pain of it course through me. “He knew. That wasn’t a wild guess. I know him. And he didn’t have any doubt about it.”
Benedict pushed to his feet and put his empty cup on the sideboard, coming to stand by the fire with me.
“I may be inferring too much from that,” he said slowly. “Tell me if you agree with my reasoning. But Lucian—if he immediately jumped to the idea that Fabian was murdered. If he wasn’t guessing, then that means he knows why someone would want Fabian dead. Are you with me so far?”
That made sense. I nodded, throat too tight for speech.
“All right. But don’t you see? That suggests the poison wasn’t meant for you at all. We’ve been assuming the murderer meant to kill you, because it was your wine and you’re the obvious target. But what if Fabian was the intended victim all along? What if he always drank a portion of your wine before he gave it to you, and someone had seen him do it often enough to know? It’d be a damn clever way to kill him,” he added, sounding more admiring than condemnatory.
I might not be applauding the cleverness of the killer—after all, unlike Benedict, I had some slight grasp on morality. But I couldn’t argue with his logic. I’d had the same thought when I realized how Fabian had died, hadn’t I? Wondering how many times Fabian had drunk from my cup and then possibly spit in it afterward. Every night, probably. Anyone in the kitchen could’ve seen him and made a note of his habit.
If that poison had really been for Fabian, if he’d been murdered on purpose…gods, no good and decent man would feel such a rush of relief, nearly enough to take me out at the knees. But knowing someone hated me enough to viscerally want me to suffer and die had been a constant, nagging, terrifying weight to bear. And more than that…hope struck me with sudden, breathtaking force.
“If it was Fabian the poisoner meant to kill, then whatever mystery this is about Tavius, it may have nothing at all to do with me. It might mean that—”
“Lucian, don’t waste your breath. Lord Tavius doesn’t seem like the sort to even notice the death of a servant. Tell me I’m wrong.” I wished I could, but I had to shake my head. “All right, so he certainly wouldn’t care why he’d died, unless he’d had some personal connection to him. Which he wouldn’t have had without your knowledge, particularly without wanting to admit to it now, unless he meant to—”
“No, I won’t believe it!” I couldn’t let him say it aloud. Not about the one person in the world I’d genuinely trusted until today. “He would never—”
“—betray you,” Benedict finished, his face and his tone equally grim. He took a step toward me, close enough that I could see the fine lines of tension at the corners of his eyes. “Lucian,” he said, gently but with no compromise at all, “the best thing I can say is that he didn’t kill Fabian himself. His surprise proves that. But he almost certainly knows who did. And that implies a plot that he’s part of, something that must have to do with you.”
A plot. Why the fuck didn’t he tell… Tavius hadn’t finished his sentence, and it’d almost passed me by in the moment, but it reoccurred to me now. Whoever had sent him word of my new understanding with Benedict? And who’d neglected to mention Fabian’s death, perhaps because he didn’t understand that it’d be important information for Tavius to know.
My hands shook so much that the cup of leftover wine I’d forgotten I held sloshed everywhere. Benedict took it from me and put it on the mantel, eyes never leaving my face.
I had to be as pale and wretched as Tavius had been a few minutes ago.
There must be some explanation, there must be, but if there was Tavius would already have given it, as Benedict had pointed out. And I couldn’t even imagine a convincing hypothetical. You might have secret dealings with a valet in order to blackmail him, buy information from him, or use him to manipulate his master. If Fabian had been younger, perhaps…but Tavius only took women to bed, anyway. And even if there could be some other explanation, no innocent reason for sneaking about with a duke’s servant resulted in death.
If Tavius had a co-conspirator, someone unconnected to Fabian, then that didn’t simply implicate Tavius in a plot. It made him the likely center of it.
“He’s my cousin,” I said, and my voice came out as broken as I felt. “I’ve always loved him like a brother. And I’d, gods. I’d have sworn on my own life he was the only person in the world who really loved me.”
I turned my head away and stared down at the fire, focusing on the jump and dance of the flames, hoping that I could pretend the stinging in my eyes came from keeping them open in the heat rather than something else.
Benedict didn’t make a sound. The hand hanging down by his side in the corner of my vision had balled into a fist.
“I’m sorry,” I managed at last, as the horrid silence stretched. “You must think I’m pathetic. I think I’m pathetic. I know I ought to be thinking about what to do next. And I will, I promise. I’ll get over it in a mom—”
“It’s not just that fucking cretin who loves you, Lucian. Not when you’re—damn it, look at me!”
He caught me by the chin and turned my head up to face him. Resisting wouldn’t have done any good, not that I wanted to—not when I found him bending down, peering at me as intently as if he wanted to see into my soul. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“I have no doubt you’re more beloved than you know,” he said, very low. His other hand had come to my waist, somehow, his arm sliding around me. His attempt at a smile didn’t convince me at all, and it came nowhere near his troubled eyes. “Probably you have a dozen courtiers pining over you at this moment. Writing terrible poetry about your rose petal lips. That idiot who was flirting with you when I arrived last night seems like the type.”
“Even good poetry isn’t much use to me, although thank you for your suggestion that only idiots would address it to me in the first place.”
He didn’t even pretend to laugh at that. Anger built in me like a banked fire flaring up in response to fresh fuel, and I welcomed it in the place of some of my betrayal and grief. Damn it, he didn’t need to find my halfhearted jests amusing, but he also shouldn’t treat me like an idiot! He didn’t want me for more than quenching his curse or putting me on my knees—and he expected me to believe he thought someone else would?
“Don’t patronize me, Benedict. No one’s pining. And even if they were, it’s not the same. Tavius—” and my voice broke again, damn it all, “—is my cousin, and the only real family I have left. Unless I count you. And we can’t even agree on whether we are family, or on whether it’d be worse if we are or aren’t! Are you going to claim to love me, or—ow!”
“I’m sorry, fuck,” he muttered, and let go of my jaw where his fingers had dug in painfully.
But he didn’t release me altogether, the arm around my waist only pulling me closer. Close enough that I could’ve stretched a few inches and pressed my lips to the side of his neck. Caught that ridiculous ruby earring between my teeth and tugged on it, made him gasp. My heart beat faster and my cock thickened, pressing against the front of my trousers.
“Lucian,” he whispered, his breath ruffling my hair and tickling the top of my ear. “Do you want me to tell you I love you? Hmm?”
What I wanted was for him to throw me down on the rug before the fire, strip me bare, force my legs open and take me. That was better than anything anyone could say to me, because at least his lust was honest. And for a few minutes I might forget about everything else.
Oddly, I didn’t think he was mocking me. But his pity might be even worse.
“For the gods’ sakes, no,” I said, and put my hands on his hips—and pushed him away, even though I thought I might break in half as I stepped back, my fingers not wanting to release him. His arm felt like steel around me, unbreakable, but at last he let it drop. “I’ve had enough of being lied to for one day.”
Benedict turned away from me and back to the sideboard. He didn’t bother with the punch, going straight for the brandy decanter. Like a fool, I wished I hadn’t made him let me go. Gods. At least he wouldn’t see me rubbing my eyes.
When I blinked them open again, the dining parlor was exactly the same: the table laid, the silver covers gleaming, a few drops of rain spattering the windows.
And yet everything was different, just as it had been in the moments after I’d heard my father had died, and after I’d seen his body, and after I’d found Fabian’s. Less genuine, as if I couldn’t quite feel real in a world where everything I’d thought I could depend on had turned out to be false. A flimsy stage set with props. Would I ever have a crucial juncture in my life after which everything would be different and also better ? Probably not.
Benedict put down the empty brandy glass with a click.
“All right,” he said roughly. “Only the truth for you, then, if you insist. You have two choices. You can arrest Tavius now on suspicion of treason, lock him up and interrogate him. Or you can give him enough rope to hang himself with and watch him while he plays it out.”
My stomach churned. I had to swallow down bile before I could say, “No. No, I won’t be—I won’t turn into my father. Imprisoning my relatives. Assuming the worst of everyone. If I’d wanted to reign like that I’d have clapped you in magic-suppressing irons long ago, wouldn’t I?”
Benedict’s laugh didn’t have any humor in it. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten you threatened to. And I agree that he should be left at liberty, but not because I think he deserves any benefit of the doubt. Your father assumed the worst of people who’d never hurt anyone,” he said, his face twisting with fury, his tone laced with venom.
Had my father executed or exiled one of Benedict’s friends? Or…someone he loved? The constriction in my ribs ratcheted up a notch. Was that why Benedict had never spent more than a couple of nights with anyone? If he’d never stopped grieving for a lost love, pining for what could never be, then anyone who basked in his smiles or melted under his touch or surrendered to his kisses was a fool, doomed to disappointment and heartbreak.
“You’re not your father,” he went on. “You’re nothing like him. Nothing at all. He’d have had Lord Tavius strung up with his feet in the fire here in the dining parlor, and I’ll be honest with you, I’m tempted myself, bloody bastard. But Tavius wasn’t glad Fabian was dead. Quite the contrary. He’ll be out to pick a quarrel with whoever killed him, and all we need to do is let him lead us to his co-conspirators. And then I’ll be happy to do all the stringing up you could want. More than happy.”
Happy to do all the stringing up I could want? Gods. With Tavius’s feet in the fire. Surely Benedict would have the decorum to go downstairs to the dungeons for that and spare the dining parlor rugs.
I’d been trying to maintain some appearance of strength, but I’d had it. Two steps took me to the chair Benedict had been sitting in, and I dropped into it, elbows on my knees and head hanging down, and sucked in as much air as my lungs could manage.
My father had spent years suspecting his various relatives and vassals of betraying him, and his methods of dealing with possible treason had been harsh, dreadful, and often final.
Ironic, really, that I might truly have a treasonous cousin, and I didn’t think I’d be able to do what needed to be done and still look myself in the mirror afterward.
“He should’ve chosen you as his heir after all,” I muttered. “I am nothing like him, and I’m not sure I have the stomach to be. Why did you say I’d do him proud, then? The morning you left Calatria. I’ve always wondered.”
“I should never have said that.” I glanced up sharply, shocked out of my misery by Benedict’s anger. His eyes blazed as he looked down at me, lips pressed flat.
I shrugged. “We both said a few things that perhaps we ought not to have. But you did say it. And that he was right about me.” Without stopping to consider, I added, “You have no idea how much it bothered me, thinking about what the hell that meant.”
Benedict shook his head. “I’d have bet every silver crown in my pocket that you didn’t spare a single thought for me after I left.”
Oh, fucking hell.
“I was thinking about what my father might have thought of me in the last days of his life. Not about you , Benedict.”
“Of course not.” His faint smile didn’t reach his eyes at all—so bleak I’d have thought he was the one who’d been grieved by someone he loved. “I’ll try to explain what I meant—later. Or some other time. It’s not important right now. You ought to go back to your study and carry on as usual, let Tavius and anyone else involved with him think you don’t suspect him of anything. And I’ll see what he’s up to.”
Back to my study, where the trade agreement and a hundred other tasks awaited me. All the other business of ruling a duchy, none of which I could neglect no matter how many valets had been murdered or cousins had betrayed me. I pushed to my feet again, accepting the inevitable.
“He said he was going to his room to wash up,” I said. “I’m not sure what you think you’ll learn from lurking about while he bathes.”
“I doubt he’ll stay where he’s supposed to be. I’ll set someone I trust whom he won’t recognize to follow him. And if I don’t come to find you before you finish working for the day, I’ll meet you in your rooms.”
I nodded, and Benedict turned away, moving toward the door. He had his hand on the knob when the words burst out of me. “Don’t hurt him! We could be wrong about him. We could.”
Benedict hung his head down for a moment, and when he turned he had an expression I couldn’t read at all in his stormy gray eyes.
Three quick strides brought him back across the room, and then he had a hand on my hip and the other on my shoulder, and he’d bent down. My eyes closed. His mouth covered mine, warm and firm and sure, grounding me down to the soles of my boots. Gods, it wasn’t fair how quickly my body and my mind responded to him—how much I’d come to need him. In his arms, in his kiss, I was steady in my place in the universe, and all the edges of my nerves smoothed away.
Benedict lifted his head, leaving me dazed and half-hard and wishing I could simply drop my head on his shoulder and forget everything in the world but this.
“You’re too good for him,” he said, and then added, so low I almost couldn’t hear him, “and for me.”
He bent and kissed me again, fast and hard, and let me go abruptly enough that I stumbled back a step.
He’d already gone out and shut the door behind him before I could do more than open my mouth and stare.
Too good for him? I couldn’t have heard him clearly.
My little laugh sounded strange in the quiet, empty room. What next, would I be expecting him to write that poem to my lips?
I shook my head to clear away the nonsense, composed my face into the calm, authoritative mask of a duke, and followed Benedict out the door.