Chapter 15
Betrayal
My heart breaks at the betrayal.
I trusted Maeve and so did Rhys.
“Let’s just say I believe you now, so no need to pack your bags for the funny farm as you say,” he says quietly after we watched her disappear through a door.
“I’m sorry.”
“Nay, hen,” he says sadly as he wraps me tightly in his arms and drops his forehead to mine. “It is I who am sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s no’,” he replies. “I should have believed you.”
“You should have, but you didn’t,” I state honestly. “And I really wish you had but we can’t go back, only forward.”
“Aye.”
“So, please, maybe don’t do that again because it hurt me.”
“You kill me, hen,” he says.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I admit. “But I don’t want to be hurt by you anymore either. I know that we will from time to time, that it can’t always be avoided, but I don’t like it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well now it’s done and you didn’t ship me off to an asylum, so no harm, no foul,” I add.
“You’re never going to let me forget that?” he asks with a heavy sigh.
“Husband, with my dying breath, when I’m old and gray, I’ll remind you of that moment.”
“I figured as much,” he says. “Besides, I like the sound of that.”
“The sound of what?”
“I like the sound of you calling me your husband,” he answers.
“Well,” I stumble. “You are.”
“Aye,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “I am.”
I let out a breath, realizing we’ve just had a heavy conversation in a garden while everyone is still inside at the reception and there might be a dead body somewhere on the castle grounds. Worse still, someone we trusted is playing a dangerous game.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
“We,” he says, emphasizing the word, “are no’ going to do anything. You are going to go to our rooms, to be locked down with Dahlia, where I know that you’ll both be safe. The team and I will find Maeve and get to the bottom of where Lady Thomley is.”
“No,” I start. I don’t want to be separated from him now that he knows I wasn’t lying. Or crazy. “Don’t go. I don’t want to be alone.”
“You won’t be,” he says.
“But you don’t need to go either,” I beg. “This is dangerous. I watched him strangle her.”
“He can’t harm me,” he scoffs.
“Please,” I plead, grabbing onto his arm.
“You’re really rattled by this, aren’t you?” he asks, sounding surprised.
“Yes,” I gasp. “Wouldn’t you be?”
He just gives me a be serious look.
“Okay, well maybe not you.” I roll my eyes. “But I am scared. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Nothing is going to happen to me, hen,” he says gently. “But I need to get you somewhere safe now.”
“No,” I cry out, and he hushes me so that I won’t draw attention to us while we’re out here unguarded. “I don’t want you to leave me. I’m not safe without you.”
“Shhh… shhhh,” he says as he brushes my hair back from my face, freeing the strands that stick to my face in my tears. “It’s going to be all right. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you. You have my word.”
“I’m just so tired of people trying to kill me,” I whisper.
“I know. It’ll be over soon.”
“I can’t tell if you’re lying to me or not,” I sniffle. “Right now, I’m kind of okay with it but later I’m going to be really mad.”
“That sounds lovely, hen.” He guided me back to the building but we take a different passageway so that we bypass the room full of people. I’m sure I look like an absolute mess after my slight breakdown.
Rhys motions to Leo as he passes by and he follows us through these back hallways.
This must be how the staff move throughout the castle unseen.
Leo pushes open a door and ducks his head out to see if it’s safe before motioning to Rhys and me to follow.
This passageway opens up into the far end of the hallway we live off of, opposite of how we normally make our way through to the traditional hall.
I let out a gasp when I realize there are secret passageways. I’m more unsafe than I realized.
Leo hurries us down the hall and to our suite.
He pushes open the door, and we follow him in as he clears the rooms. When he comes back ito the sitting room, he looks at Rhys and me and demands, “What the fuck is going on?” Rhys looks at him with a raised eyebrow and Leo lets out a heavy breath before adding, “Respectfully.”
“It would appear,” Rhys answers, “that Stella was correct when she said that Lady Thomley had been, at the very least, attacked at the opera.”
“She’s dead. I know it,” I interject.
After a tense moment where no one speaks, Rhys finally speaks, breaking the silence. “I think that’s a fair assessment to make at this point.”
“And the earl is responsible?” Leo asks.
“I saw him strangle her,” I pipe in. “I know it.”
“But people have seen her around,” Leo adds.
“Have they?” I ask. “Or have they just heard someone else say they saw her?”
“Shite.”
“Agreed,” Rhys says.
“But who else besides the earl?” Leo questions. “The dowager?”
“Aye,” Rhys answers. “And Maeve.”
That news seems to startle Leo. “But her relationship with the late King…”
“I know,” Rhys says cryptically with his brows drawn down.
“What am I missing?” I ask hesitantly.
Leo looks to Rhys for guidance on how to proceed, but it’s my husband who sighs before answering my question. “Mave was my father’s mistress for decades. I always thought their feelings for each other were true.”
“Then why did he marry Saoirse?” I ask. “Sorry, that was rude of me to ask.”
He hesitates before answering, and I want to pull the question out of the air and stuff it back in my mouth so it was never offered up. There’s a way about Rhys that makes me know with all of my being that I don’t want to hear the answer to my blurted out question.
“Sometimes, we have to make politically advantageous matches,” he says softly.
“Oh. Of course,” I whisper softly because how stupid can I be? I’m one of those politically advantageous matches. My chest aches and I want the ground to open up and swallow me whole.
“We are no’ that,” he says firmly, gripping my chin between his thumb and finger so I’m forced to look at him. “We were for about two seconds and then you were mine and you know it.”
“Sure,” I reply because what else am I supposed to say? Rhys forced my hand and then forced me to love him. I knew what it was the whole time after Saoirse dropped the truth in my lap. I just forget in the tender moments.
“I’ll just let you guys change while I get security sorted for a search party,” Leo says awkwardly.
“Bring Dahlia here,” Rhys orders, never taking his eyes from mine. “I want them to be safe together. Then we can focus on the search.”
“Aye,” Leo replies before slipping from the door.
“Now let’s get changed,” he says. “We don’t have anything else on the schedule so casual dress for home like nothing is wrong.”
“Okay.”
“Can I trust that you’re all right now?” he asks.
“Sure.”
“I don’t have time to fuck you out of this mood,” he says, “so let’s get dressed.”
He presses a hard, closed mouth kiss to my lips before dragging me through our bedroom and into the dressing room.
There, he unties the sash of my cloak and slides it from my shoulders before hanging it on a hanger.
Then he slips the banner sash from my body and lays it across the island in the middle of the dressing room, adding the shield brooch and my family order to the pile.
Rhys moves away from me then, and pulls a pair of soft wide-legged lounge pants and a sweater out of drawers. He piles on a pair of panties, a tank top, and a bra—my favorite ones—and walks over to hand them to me.
“You’ll feel better when you’re more comfortable,” he says. “It’ll all be over soon.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I mutter as I strip off my dress and sweater, laying them over a padded bench in the corner.
I watch as he strips off his uniform, painstakingly making sure it’s perfectly hung on a hanger before he grabs jeans from a drawer and draws them up his muscular legs.
“If you do no’ stop looking at me like that,” he says, “my sister and your guard will see me fucking you over that bench.”
I let out a little eep and turn away quickly to finish dressing myself while he does the same. When I turn back around, he’s topped his jeans with a navy blue V-neck sweater layered over a plain t-shirt. This is as casual as a king can get, besides naked that is.
There’s a knock on the primary door and Rhys calls out, “Coming!”
Without looking back, he grabs me by the hand and leads me to the sitting room as the door opens admitting Leo and Dahlia.
She’s dressed in a similar manner to me, as if we’re going to kick back and relax the night before the big ceremony—and we would if there wasn’t a woman pretending to be someone I think has been murdered.
“We’re going to join the team to search for Maeve and Suzanne,” Rhys says. “I want you two to stay here and lock the doors.”
“Fuck that.” Dahlia says what I’m thinking. “Why should we stay behind like sitting ducks?”
“Watch your tone,” Rhys warns.
“No,” she says, folding her arms across her chest.
“Be real,” Leo says. “You don’t know the first thing about a search. You’ll get yourselves killed.”
“Well, we’re dead anyway if we wait here for them to finish us off,” she snaps. “Well, Stella is. I’m probably fine since the murdering parties are my mother and grandfather. Sorry, babe,” she adds when she sees the shocked expression on my face.
“No need to apologize to me,” I tell her. “You haven’t tried to kill me. At least I don’t think you have.”
“I haven’t,” she says honestly. “I wouldn’t.”
“I know. I was just trying to lighten the mood,” I reply.
“Can we get back to the situation at hand,” Leo says. “Time is of the essence.”
“Yes, it is,” I interject. “And we’re going too.”
“Hen, be rational,” Rhys argues.
“I am,” I say, holding up my hand to stop his objections.
“Dahlia is right, we’re sitting ducks here and I won’t have it.
Maeve has a key, Rhys, and she has the whole time.
It doesn’t do us any good to stay here and you know it, so, we can either go with you, or we’ll search on our own. You choose.”