Chapter 20 #3
“I hope not,” he said, summoning a roguish smile that sat painfully on his face.
Lady Helena took the opening, lowering her gaze and pinching her features sorrowfully.
“Oh dear,” she said, blinking rapidly. “I think there’s some dust in my eyes.”
Xavier was practiced enough to understand what was expected of him. He barely had to decide to act, letting habit take over as he lifted a hand. One finger slid along Lady Helena’s jaw, ending at the point of her chin, with the perfect amount of pressure to tilt her face up to his.
She was trying to look demure, but she couldn’t hide the gloating in her eyes. Xavier tried to summon the amused derision he usually felt, but all he could find was derision. Knowing that giving her what she wanted was the fastest way to extricate himself, he smiled down into her face.
“They look perfect to me.”
She let out a breathless little giggle that didn’t adequately cover the sound of movement behind Xavier. He looked around, his finger still resting on Lady Helena’s chin, and his stomach dropped.
Alina was only a few feet away. She’d obviously just come to a stop, and her eyes flew between the pair before her. Xavier dropped his hand, but it did little to reduce his mortified frustration as Alina’s clear gaze took in not just their proximity, but his ruffled, unlaced tunic.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, dipping into a quick curtsy before turning away.
Xavier stood frozen for a moment too long, incapacitated by his dismay.
Lady Helena wasn’t equally troubled. She giggled again. “I think she disapproves.”
“Excuse me.” Xavier didn’t care if the Torrenese girl complained to her father.
He didn’t even look back as he strode after Alina.
There was no sign of her when he rounded the corner, and he broke into a run, desperate to reach the next branch before she got further out of sight.
This part of the castle could be a maze if you took a wrong turn.
He skidded to a halt, his head swiveling left and right. He was relieved to catch a flick of green skirts around the corner to his left.
“Alina!” He ran after her, catching her halfway down a silent, empty corridor.
“Xavier.” She smiled in a friendly way, folding her hands into her skirts just behind her back. “I seem to have gone the wrong way. I thought I knew where I was, but this doesn’t look familiar.”
“This wing is guest suites now,” he said, panting a little. His shortness of breath was less from the exertion of the short run and more from the tight fear in his chest. “It’s only used when we host large events. The rest of the time, it’s abandoned.”
“I see.” Alina nodded, seeming at a loss for what else to say.
Her eyes flicked down to the untied laces of his tunic, and he bitterly regretted not taking the time to properly don it before leaving the training yard.
“Alina, about what you just saw…” Xavier trailed off. He couldn’t remember the last time it had been so hard to find words.
Alina considered him for a moment before her face dimpled in amusement. It was the last expression he wanted to see.
“It was very tactless of me to come around the corner just then, wasn’t it?
” she said, her voice light. “Terrible timing. I’d received your message from Charles, and someone told me to look for you in this part of the castle.
But if I had any decency, I would have backed away more quietly when I found you already occupied. ”
“Alina, don’t get the wrong impression,” he said urgently.
She raised an eyebrow. “My impression was that you were indulging in some flirtation with that young lady. Is that the wrong impression?”
“Yes!” Xavier insisted. Seeing her politely bewildered expression, he amended in frustration, “Well, no. I suppose I was flirting. But not indulging. What I mean is, I wasn’t enjoying it.”
“That’s a shame.” Alina was laughing again, but it wasn’t the laugh that delighted him. “I can’t decide if that’s a poor reflection on her abilities or yours.”
“Alina, please.” Something like desperation was clawing at him. He would have been so much less alarmed if she’d been angry and reproachful. “I was just doing what I was expected to do.”
“You do have a lot of demand on you, don’t you?” Alina said, her sympathy not reaching her eyes. “But you only have yourself to blame, after all.”
“Yes.” Xavier’s voice was hoarse and low. He felt defeated. “I know.”
Alina didn’t match his tone, hers still so light it grated against his raw emotions.
“If you go around creating certain expectations, it becomes almost cruel to fail to fulfill them. Girls around here are suffering that cruelty on all sides, it seems.” She paused, glancing back the way they’d come. “Although not that one, I suppose.”
Her pleasant good humor was unbearable given the depth of what Xavier was feeling.
He could see his hard-fought progress with her ebbing away, and he couldn’t seem to find the words to catch at it as it slipped through his fingers.
Possibly for the first time in his life, he let himself really feel the stab of regret for the choices he’d made.
It was almost too painful a feeling to bear.
Why had he let go of himself when Alina left so suddenly?
If only he’d kept his head for a few more years, then chased her down as soon as he was old enough to be his own master.
Maybe he could have been living an entirely different life, one where an incident like this could never have the power to make those who really knew him doubt him.
Instead, in his blundering attempts to feel in control, he’d made a joke of himself and a mess of his life.
But he couldn’t say all of that to Alina now.
Not when she was smiling at him in that horribly pleasant way.
She knew what she was doing. He’d seen enough to know she wasn’t as unaffected as she was pretending.
Refusing to let him properly explain was unkind.
It was her own way to attempt control, and it flattened him in its path.
Anger rose up in him, and it was easy to drum up the recklessness he’d lived by for so long.
“You want me to live up to expectations?” He shifted forward, the space between them becoming uncomfortably small. “Is that what you want?”
“It certainly makes things easier for everyone,” Alina said calmly, not backing down.