Chapter 20 #2
I dropped the cross and threw my arms around Raleigh’s waist. He stood frozen while I caught my breath, arms askew at awkward angles to avoid returning the hug. Eventually he choked out, ‘I can still see it, Clara. Cover it … please.’
I released him. He turned away at once and shed his coat when asked so I could conceal the cross once more. He visibly relaxed.
‘What happened?’
I tried to stammer out an explanation, but my heart was still racing too quickly to thread the thoughts with any needle of logic.
He understood enough. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should never have left you alone.’
I didn’t want an apology, I wanted an explanation – a real one. ‘Tell me what’s happening, Raleigh. Why are they here? What deal did you make with the Queen?’
‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Come on. Let’s get you somewhere safe.’
He set off, and when we reached a tightly coiled staircase I realised he was taking me to his tower.
We had to snake our way upwards single file, curling in on our tracks again and again.
The stairs were well worn, the stone concave under the feet of ten generations of Linfords.
Had these always been the prince’s quarters?
It would be impractical for any human to trudge these stairs day in, day out.
In a siege it would be defensible, but inescapable.
Unless you had an enchantment to protect you.
Raleigh’s quarters lay waiting at the top of the tower.
Though he’d been in my room a handful of times, it felt so much stranger being in his.
His bedchamber had the pokey feel of a room that longed to be larger but had been crammed to fit into the roof space.
It was furnished in the same deep Linford crimson as my own room, with heavy drapery concealing four windows, one for each point of the compass.
Something littered every available surface – a stack of books, a discarded coat, unread letters bearing the Queen’s arms – but it was the frame of a shattered mirror hanging on the wall that struck me most of all.
The glass had long since been cleared away and in its place was a collage of sketches I recognised as being from Moira’s hand.
Each one bore a rendition of Raleigh’s face captured perfectly again and again from every angle imaginable.
Raleigh smiling, Raleigh frowning. In profile, from the front, his hair mussed, groomed, allowed to grow too long.
It had never occurred to me until then to consider how it must feel to live with no reflection.
Even without a mirror, a passing glimpse of myself in a puddle or darkened window grounded me in reality.
I couldn’t imagine losing myself so completely that not even that part of me remained. One day I wouldn’t need to.
‘You’re safe here.’ Raleigh must have mistaken my expression for fear. ‘No one can enter unless they can break through the enchantment. You can sleep without worrying.’
‘Sleep …’ I trailed off. He meant in his bed. Between his sheets.
I scolded myself. It was just a normal bed, albeit one laden with more blankets and furs than any one person could possibly need. Still, I couldn’t make myself move. After all that had happened, how could I possibly sleep?
‘Is something wrong?’
‘Can they hear us from here?’
Raleigh considered the question. A simple lie could have ended the conversation he so clearly wanted to avoid. ‘No,’ he said instead.
‘Then tell me about your deal with the Queen.’ I wasn’t asking this time.
His whole body went taut. ‘You don’t need to know about that.’
But I did need to know. Lukas could have killed me – still could. How could I plan to protect myself if I didn’t know what I was protecting myself from? One way or another I was tangled in this bargain, and every question Raleigh refused to answer felt like another nail in my coffin.
‘Did it involve me?’
He looked away. ‘No.’
‘Does it involve me now?’
The silence dragged out for so long that my fatigue beckoned me ever closer to the bed.
I sat on the edge of it, trying not to think about how strangely intimate it felt to brush my hands over furs Raleigh had slept under.
Sheets that had cocooned his body. When he still didn’t reply, I thought our conversation was over, that he was waiting for me to give in and fall asleep so he could be free of me.
But then he said, ‘Yes.’
I swallowed. ‘Tell me,’ I said.
‘I can’t.’
‘If it involves me, I have a right to know.’
He didn’t reply. His expression was distant, as though he had stepped out of his body entirely.
‘What happened at court, Raleigh?’
‘You don’t need to know that.’
‘Do I not?’ I asked. ‘You’ll force me to marry you, but you won’t tell me why?
’ I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking anymore.
‘I thought we were through with secrets. After everything, I thought that we—’ I couldn’t make myself say it.
My feelings for Raleigh had grown into a complex vortex of emotions.
Of grief, of frustration, often irritation, but underscoring them all was something softer.
I wanted to protect him, and for him to protect me.
I wanted to be able to walk arm in arm without wondering where it fitted into his strategy.
I wanted to hold him, to be held, to be able to sit on the edge of his bed without feeling like an intruder.
And I hoped, after everything, that perhaps the smallest part of him felt the same.
‘You thought what?’ Raleigh asked, and his tone told me all I needed to know. This was no gentle coaxing of a confession. No invitation for sweet nothings. His tone was clipped, icy.
He’s trying to prove a point, Lukas had said. We were all liars in this castle, one way or another. Perhaps Lukas was the only one telling the truth.
‘I thought we were growing closer,’ I said.
Raleigh moved so he was standing over me, and suddenly my every nerve was on high alert. He looked down at me with the cool detachment of the Prince of Rostenburg. ‘Do I need to pretend to be in love with you when we’re alone too?’
Pretend. The echo lodged in my mind, the implication sickening.
He bent over me. His knee pushed its way between mine. My mind scrambled to make sense of what was happening. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Is this not what you wanted?’
My retort lodged in my throat. This was wrong. This wasn’t him. I couldn’t understand where this was coming from, what point in the conversation had made him think this was remotely what I was angling for.
My palms turned hot, but when his fingers found my shoulder I found myself falling back without him needing to push me.
There was no heady scent of glamour; my body was moving to its own impulses, fighting against the rational part of me begging to stop.
A single memory kept rushing back to the surface from months ago, when I’d first come to Castle Rostenburg: a fleeting chaste kiss at my neck.
Suddenly the enormity of that moment came crashing in.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his lips, even as he bent over me and they swam out of focus, hovering a breath away from mine.
‘Let’s speak no more of court,’ Raleigh whispered.
He was distracting me. Whatever it was he didn’t want to tell me was worse to him than whatever this was.
His hands were tangled in the sheets on either side of my head, knee pressed into the mattress.
No parts of us were touching, but I felt like he had swallowed me whole.
I pushed down the desire to arch into him, to taste him, to claim him and let myself be claimed.
But I couldn’t relax. This wasn’t right.
He wasn’t right. Every warm feeling I held for him felt clammy.
I scanned his face, looking for some sign, any sign, that this was affecting him like it was affecting me, but all that I found were glassy eyes, staring into another era.
‘Raleigh …’
‘Yes, my love?’ Every empty syllable ghosted against my lips. My breath hitched. Part of me wanted to close the distance, to take this chance while I had it, knowing it wouldn’t come again.
I couldn’t do it to him.
‘Get off me.’
Raleigh froze, and I saw the feeling part of him he had tried to push down return to the surface.
He stared down at me, as though suddenly realising what he was doing, then jerked away.
‘I’m sorry.’ The words rushed out. He scrambled to distance himself from me, backing away as far as he could until he hit the edge of a settee crammed into the curve of the wall.
He dropped onto it and I realised he was shaking.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
‘Stop apologising.’
‘Sor—’ He bit his lip and lapsed into silence.
I let the quiet ring out around us while I steadied my breathing and tried to convince the aching throb within me that I had done the right thing.
I couldn’t make sense of his reaction. If I’d said the same to Yann he would have tried to coax me to continue, or eventually peel off in a sulk.
Raleigh was acting like I was the one who’d pushed him down.
Like I was the one who’d scorned his affection. Like he was the victim in my abduction.
It unsettled me. Had this happened six months ago I would have been the one trembling on the other side of the room, and I had no intention of being the one to comfort him when he was the one who’d pinned me down.
But I’d glimpsed this part of him before.
The shaking, the panic, the disproportionate apology.
The trace of loathing in his expression as he stared at the ground.
He reacted the same way on the day I blindfolded him.
Where did he go, when his eyes glazed over?
‘I should leave,’ he said.
‘Don’t.’ I wished he would, but there were worse things than a night of awkwardness. ‘The castle’s enchantment is tuned to protect you. I feel safer with you here.’
‘Even now?’
I met his eye. ‘I didn’t push you away for my sake. I wasn’t the one who didn’t want it.’