CHAPTER FOUR
W HEN IT CAME to hatreds, Tomas strove to be even-handed. Take capital cities swarming with people, and royal palaces swarming with courtiers, for example. Tomas happily loathed both. Not for him the niceties needed to traverse such terrain. He didn’t suffer fools. He wasn’t one for idle conversation. Even his conversations with Casimir bordered on brutally brief.
He was heading into the mountains tomorrow to check on the greater spotted eagle pairs, because at some point he wanted to introduce a new pair. All he had to do before he left was dress up in his royal finest and travel to the palace for an afternoon audience with his king and some kind of banquet in the evening. Didn’t matter that he couldn’t remember what the banquet was for, they were all the same. Get showered, get dressed, go to the capital and the palace he loathed because it was too full of random guards he didn’t recognise and Claudia hadn’t been safe there, and see duty done. That was the shape of his day, and he was all for getting through it efficiently.
Shower first, to wash off the stench of owl droppings and get clean again.
And then the rest.
Five minutes later he made his exit from the shower as Lor entered his quarters without knocking. She didn’t usually intrude on his private space unless she felt it necessary. Like that time when a golden eagle had scored his shoulder and all down his back in a botched landing. Or when that fighting hawk had almost taken his finger off. Or like now, as she carried a pile of spruce green fabric and gold braid over one arm.
‘I freshened your coat. It was dusty.’
‘Thanks.’ He tightened his grip on the towel that covered him from low on his hips to the start of his knees. While the trousers and shirt of his dress uniform fitted him well enough, the coat was a masterpiece fit for a coronation. It was tight fitting through the shoulders and chest and split back and front for ease of riding, but that was where practicality ended and the dust-collecting gold braid began. Embellished cuffs ran from wrist to elbow, tightened by leather buckles. He supposed a raptor could land on his forearm easily enough without damaging his skin, but the heavy gold braid embellishment didn’t stop there. It formed a stiff collar around his neck, became a tight belt around his waist and dripped from the coat shoulders. It was terrible, and beautiful, and ridiculous. It was the King’s Falconer’s ceremonial dress. ‘Do you have any idea what all this is about?’
Lor too wore her finest royal livery and her eyes, kind as they were, suggested she knew something he didn’t.
‘I’m afraid Lor is bound to secrecy,’ said another voice from the doorway, and he sighed, because of course it was Claudia and doubtless his emotions would start acting up again.
His heels came together and he bowed his head as befitting his status and hers. Enforced formality was his last line of defence against Claudia, bane of his existence. That and speechlessness. Not that he ever seemed to stay speechless for long in her presence. His grip on his towel tightened.
‘Hey.’ She smiled and he didn’t trust that very appreciative smile one little bit. ‘You’re running late.’
‘Someone brought in an owl with a broken wing.’
‘And not one of your apprentices could see to it without your supervision, hmm?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Nothing at all to do with you not wanting to go to the palace in the first place.’
‘Nothing at all.’
That was the other problem with Claudia. She knew him too well and he didn’t know how. He was a closed book. An impenetrable fortress. A cypher of his own making.
Who’d been blabbing about him?
‘The helicopter leaves in twenty minutes,’ she murmured in dulcet tones. ‘The King is expecting you, me, Silas and Lor to be on it.’
‘I’ll be there.’ She wore a royal purple travelling cloak and her long, thick hair had been wound in an elaborate crown. Her make-up was perfect. He tightened his grip on his towel, wondering if her composure would falter if he dropped it. Maybe she’d flee and give him some small reprieve from those all-seeing eyes. There was no earthly reason for her to even be in his quarters. Was there? ‘Was there anything else?’
‘I’ll take it from here, Lor. We’ll meet you at the helicopter,’ Claudia said, and Lor nodded, hung the coat from a hook on his wardrobe door, and left.
Claudia stayed.
‘I need to get dressed.’ Chivalry demanded he give fair warning.
‘What a good idea.’ Claudia glanced at her delicate wristwatch that doubtless cost more than his annual wage. ‘Eighteen minutes.’
Frustration bubbled. ‘Leave.’
But all she did was lift an eyebrow. ‘Your bathroom’s right there if it’s privacy you need. Your King, my brother, tasked me with getting you to the palace on time and I take my duties extremely seriously.’
He didn’t need the twitch of her lips to know she was teasing. Her capacity to break rules, tradition and anything else that stood in her way was fast becoming legend.
His capacity to ignore her was rapidly becoming non-existent.
There was absolutely no ignoring this woman.
He didn’t even know if he wanted to ignore what had been brewing between them.
With a shrug and what he hoped she took as unconcealed irritation rather than challenge accepted, he dropped his towel to the floor and strode to his chest of drawers in search of underwear. He took his time, allowed himself a flex of muscle here and a slight stretch there. His lifestyle hardly encouraged softness and his body was the result. Strongly muscled arms and shoulders gave way to a sculpted midsection that carried no fat. Long legs, strong thighs, and heavy manhood that he had every right to be proud of. He could almost feel her gaze travelling from that spot between his shoulder blades, all the way down his spine and over the globes of his buttocks. Modesty failed him in the same way propriety constantly failed her.
He half turned, noting with satisfaction the hot colour that rode her cheeks. ‘What’s wrong? You look a little glazed.’
‘Hmm?’ She dragged her gaze away from his nether regions with no small amount of effort and finally let him see the expression in her eyes. It was hot, fierce and appreciative, and his body stiffened in all the right places. ‘Glazed, no. This is my so impressed I’m practically speechless face. Sixteen minutes.’
A lot could happen in sixteen minutes.
He could reach for her. Muss up those perfect lips with biting needy kisses. Bury his fingers in her hair and tilt her head just so, the better to see every tiny expression to cross her face.
Instead, he stepped into his underwear and reached for his trousers, smiling wolfishly at the regretful little sigh that reached his ears.
He reached for his shirt next and let the buttery soft ivory linen encase his arms and shoulders as if it had been made for him and not his great-grandfather. He didn’t fumble the buttons at his chest, but the tiny buttons on the cuffs of the sleeves were another matter.
‘Here.’ She crossed the room to stand in front of him. ‘Let me help.’
So he held his arm out, wrists turned up like a supplicant, as she fastened the half dozen buttons on first one cuff and then the other. He’d never been this up close and personal with her before—not as an adult. Those times when they were kids and had stretched out on the rug in front of his father’s hearth as they pored over picture books of falcons didn’t count. He hadn’t been aware of her back then as anything but a forbidden friend who needed protection.
Her fingers were warm against his skin and her delicate touch set up a chain reaction that fizzed along his veins. She brushed her thumb over his wrist when she was done and he wondered whether it was normal for a man’s pulse rate to triple beneath the act of a woman helping him put his clothes on .
‘Coat next or boots?’ she asked, and the words were plain as could be but the husky intimacy of her voice did nothing to slow his heart rate.
‘Boots.’ He sat on the hard wooden seat of the blanket box at the end of his bed and reached for them. Never had his room felt so small. ‘Why are you here?’
‘To help you prepare for your meeting with my brother. For some strange reason, he suspected an emergency might lead you elsewhere.’
She went to kneel before him and he stood abruptly and stopped her with a hand beneath her elbow. He shouldn’t be touching her uninvited, but he couldn’t be thinking about that now. ‘Don’t ever kneel before me.’ He might never let her up.
‘It’s not weakness to honour a man so.’ She held his gaze with a steady one of her own and he was the first to look away.
‘Within the borders of intimacy, maybe. Not for the likes of you and me.’
‘Why not you and me? You might like it.’
He definitely would like it just a little too much.
‘You’re sister to a king. I am my father’s son. We shouldn’t be doing any of this. Not the fighting. Not the flirting. Not this.’ He let her go and stepped into his boots and lifted his foot up on the chest and started on the laces. ‘I am but your humble servant.’
‘Humble servant?’ He glanced up just in time to see the ghost of a wry smile on her lips. ‘Hardly. A week ago, the falcon you bred and trained for speed won the most prestigious race in four kingdoms and fifty million dollars in prize money.’
So it had.
‘Your brother’s bird, your brother’s money.’
‘And your win. Your face as it happened was as proud and fierce as any king’s.’
‘You should have been watching the falcon.’
‘And miss seeing you in action? I’m not that stupid. As for my royal blood being a barrier to any future association between us, my blood may not be as blue as you think. My so-called father believed my mother slept with his brother and had decided I was no child of his long before I was born. A cuckoo in his nest, so to speak.’
Tomas couldn’t hide his shock. He’d never heard such rumours—and he would have if they’d ever been circulated. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Cas.’
He didn’t want to believe any of it. And yet...
‘Explains a lot, doesn’t it,’ Claudia continued. ‘My mother took her own life—can’t ask her. Cas believes his father murdered my father. Fratricide, they call it. All of them taking their secrets to the grave. Cas doesn’t care who sired me so long as I stand by his side as his sister, serve as a bridge between Byzenmaach and the north, and keep our family secrets secret.’
‘Then why tell me? Why not do as your king commands and hold your tongue ?’
‘Because before we reach the palace, I want you to believe beyond doubt that I’m in no way bound by titles and blood status. You could have befriended me at any time these past months. You must know I crave your company.’
‘I know you think you do. I still haven’t figured out why.’
‘Look to your character. I like it. Hell, look in a mirror. Think about what happens whenever we touch.’
‘Nothing happens.’
‘Speak for yourself. I get shivers.’
‘Nothing happens.’
‘Imagine what would happen if we ever had sex. If you say nothing happens I’m going to revert to toddlerhood and pull your hair.’
He smirked. He couldn’t help it.
‘Are you ever going to put more clothes on, or am I just going to stand here and pant?’ She slipped his coat from its hanger and held it out. The coat obscured her face but the impatient shake she gave it spoke volumes. ‘I’m about to be presented with a new title and home. I don’t know if I’m excited about it or not. Lor and Silas are getting stuff too. You’re being honoured for winning that falcon race. I can’t believe you haven’t guessed that last bit already. Thirteen minutes. Hurry up.’
Moved to action, he thrust his arms into the sleeves and shrugged into the ceremonial coat. He stayed absolutely still as she fussed with the positioning of the shoulders and brushed her hand across his broad back.
‘Hmm,’ she murmured.
‘What now?’
‘Tight fit.’
He knew that. ‘It’ll be worse when the buttons are done up, so I’ll leave them loose until we get to the capital.’ He’d done this before, he knew how to stay as comfortable as possible for as long as possible.
‘What about the buckles on the sleeves?’
‘They can be done now.’ He turned and caught a waft of faint fragrance, something velvety and rich. ‘Is that why Leonidas refused your return after the kidnapping? Because you weren’t his?’ It took a while, what with all her talk of craving him, but his brain did eventually kick in around their earlier conversation thread.
‘Probably.’ She reached for the first buckle, her fingers quick and nimble. ‘They’d have had better luck taking Cas. Instead, they snatched a second-born girl child and likely not even his. Little wonder the King reacted as he did.’
‘And yet your captors let you live.’
‘I know plenty of my political opponents think I’ve got Stockholm Syndrome, but my captors were not bad people. Misguided, yes. Na?ve to think they’d just be able to hand me back and take a seat at the negotiating table—Leonidas would have been perfectly capable of sitting them down and slaughtering them, don’t you think?’
‘Well, I do now .’
‘But my captors weren’t child killers. They didn’t cut off any of my body parts and send them back in the post. In many ways they were very kind to me. They reminded me of you and your father.’
He was aghast. ‘Is that supposed to be a compliment ?’
‘Clearly you don’t think so.’
He could do nothing but stare.
‘I had my very own pony, wolfhound and falcon, and substitute parents who treated me far better than my own ever had. I had other children all around me and a nomadic lifestyle that made every day an adventure. I begged them to keep me. Promised I’d be useful to them one day.’
He didn’t like her captors and never would. He would sooner gut Lord Ildris, her advisor, than look at him, and the other man knew it. They claimed ground around each other very, very carefully.
‘They took you as an act of ill intent. Ripped you from your home because they wanted more for themselves.’ Tomas didn’t forgive them their sins.
She’d finished with the buckles on one vambrace. He lowered his arm and raised the other. ‘Did you ever think of the people you left behind? The ones who grieved for you and thought of you and blamed themselves for years because they couldn’t keep you safe?’
As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew he’d revealed too much. He might as well have screamed What about me? Her fingers faltered, clumsy, and then she found the strap again and pulled the buckle way too tight. ‘Easy,’ he muttered.
‘Sorry.’ She loosened it and found the right buckle hole.
‘The apology is mine,’ he offered gruffly. ‘What you did to survive, how you coped after being taken, is none of my business. I’m glad your captors realised your worth and treated you kindly. I reserve the right to question their humanity.’
She dropped her gaze to his vambrace, long lashes shielding her expression. ‘I missed Cas terribly at first. Then I decided he’d take far fewer beatings if I wasn’t around because he wouldn’t have to protect me. I decided I was protecting him for once. I was a hero in my own imagination.’ She finished doing up the buckles and he let his hand drop as she looked up at him through her lashes, her eyes glittering with tears. ‘I missed you and your father and the falcons most of all. I knew you’d be worried and that you’d...grieve...if you thought me dead.’
‘I prayed for you,’ he confessed gruffly. He’d hidden himself away in places no one could find him and prayed as hard as he could for her safe return. ‘I grieved.’
She’d held a special place in his heart for so many years. Beloved. Untouchable.
Dead.
And yet here she was, spinning him round, twisting him inside out, because he didn’t know what to feel when he was in her presence.
‘I’m sorry.’ She was going to ruin her make-up if she let those tears fall. ‘All I wanted was to feel safe. And loved. Both. That’s still my guiding star and something I seek again as an adult. In a lover.’
There was too much honesty in this conversation for him to reply.
He shrugged away from her instead. Heaven, give him space.
‘I called my first pony Tomas. My first wolfhound Tom-Tom. My first falcon Toot Lolo,’ she told him and then took a step back. ‘Call me obsessed. I won’t deny it. I wanted to remember you any way I could.’ Delicate colour stained her cheeks as she tugged the sleeve of her travelling cloak aside to glance at her wristwatch again. ‘Three minutes,’ she said, as if she could force briskness upon them. ‘You might want to do something with your hair. It’s sticking up all over the place.’
He retreated to the bathroom, feeling flayed around the edges. Heartsore over the naming of a bird. He normally took a towel to his hair then ran his fingers through it for good measure, but he was six weeks past due for a haircut and maybe this time he could use a comb.
Maybe doing something so menial would bury the urge to take his fingers to her hair and mess it up beyond redemption as he pressed slow kisses to her cheeks and her eyes and inevitably her mouth.
He met his own gaze in the mirror and narrowed his eyes and flattened his mouth until he looked fierce and forbidding, all other emotions forcefully contained.
Better.
She smiled when he exited the bathroom and he scowled his reply, but did that deter her?
‘You look amazing,’ she murmured approvingly. ‘I’m grateful you’re not yet married or otherwise attached. Why is that? Lack of opportunity? Hidden vice? A solitary nature?’
‘I am what I am.’ It wasn’t his fault he’d never yet found a woman who could handle him in the long term. ‘Don’t analyse me.’
‘You’re asking the impossible.’
‘You’ve risen from the dead once already.’ As far as he was concerned, she was mistress of the impossible. ‘Just do it.’
Claudia waited impatiently as her brother’s equerry stood by the closed double doors to the throne room and ticked her, Tomas, Silas and Lor off the guest list. It was an honours day with Cas in residence, intent on bestowing riches on the worthy. Silas and Lor—being well past retirement age—were being gifted a grace-and-favour cottage within the walls of the winter fortress and a generous stipend to replace their wages. If they weren’t yet ready to retire, there was now a plan in place for them to step back gradually from their vast responsibilities. Silas’s bones had been brittle of late. It was time to slow down.
Claudia was being gifted a previously mothballed duchy on Byzenmaach’s northernmost border, and it encompassed the winter fortress in its entirety. Henceforth, she would be known as Princess Claudia, the Princess Royal, King’s Counsel and Duchess of Ayerlon. So many daunting titles and she vowed to do them all justice.
As for Tomas, he too would receive his due.
She’d had a hand in it, of course. All he had to do was keep an open mind.
The King was waiting for them just inside the doors and Tomas entered and bowed as he was introduced by name and lineage. His family had been falcon masters for centuries and in service to the King for the last three generations, and he was proud of that legacy. He knew he would have to take a wife soon to secure the family name, but he was still in his early thirties. There was still time to find someone suitable.
Don’t go there , he told himself fiercely. Do not picture Claudia of Byzenmaach in your bed.
He who’d spent years honing his senses so he would always be in control of his reactions and his raptors had a dominant streak a mile wide in the bedroom. He liked being in control. It was a point of pride that he could just as easily satisfy his partners with soft, slow kisses and attentiveness as he could when he got his edge on. The point was, he never lost his head. He never stopped noticing and analysing everything about the person he was with.
He did not want to think about what might happen if he added Claudia and a mountain of unresolved feelings to that mix.
He stood in line, waiting his turn to stand before his King, and tried not to look too shocked when Claudia—regal and resplendent in a rose-coloured ballgown and diamond choker and earrings—received a duchy that encompassed the finest mountain wilderness in all the land. It included the winter fortress. That fortress so casually traded was his home , and indignation prickled at his skin, already held tight by the fine fabric of a coat that had been made for ceremony rather than for him.
He watched, silently seething but outwardly a picture of calm, as her brother held out his hand and she took it and rose and kissed him on each cheek before moving on.
Silas and Lor then took her place in front of Casimir and Tomas wondered, not for the first time, how old they were. Were they in their eighties already? Late seventies? They’d been old when he was a kid. Kind and patient with him, the grandparents of his heart in lieu of blood kin.
Tomas listened as Silas and Lor were given a pathway towards living out their days in a manner both generous and respectful of the many years they’d called the winter fortress home. It was fitting, and Tomas grudgingly approved.
And then it was his turn and he wondered exactly what Casimir had in mind for him.
He was too young to retire, so why was he here?
‘Tomas Sokolov, son of Andreas, grandson of Yos,’ King Casimir began. ‘Your skill and dedication to the sport of falconry has brought Byzenmaach great standing. Your breeding programmes for endangered species are acknowledged worldwide. My sister vouches for your kindness and protective nature when we were children. My wife and daughter cherish your patience and gentleness with them. Beyond that, I know you, Master Falconer. I see your dedication to the welfare of all in your care and your passion for your causes. It’s time to spread your wings.’
‘Are you firing me?’ Because he couldn’t. Surely he wouldn’t? Tomas had been nothing but loyal, and although he had apprentices to pass his knowledge on to, it would take years before any of the current crop could replace him. ‘Fair warning, many of the birds in my care will go where I go.’ It wasn’t an idle threat. ‘There’s no other way.’ Casimir knew this, surely. ‘They’re imprinted on me.’
‘Good thing I’m rewarding you rather than letting you go, then, isn’t it.’ Casimir sounded exasperated. ‘Happy surprise, my arse. I knew I should have warned you in advance.’
Tomas held his tongue as Equerry Dorn approached with a weathered scroll sitting atop a velvet pillow. Claudia held a similar scroll in her now gloved hand.
‘Kneel.’
Tomas held his tongue some more, bowed his head and knelt before his King.
‘Tomas Sokolov, I bequeath to you the Barony of Aergoveny, henceforth to be held by you and your descendants, male or female, for as long as your bloodline exists. The land is mountainous, with summer grazing in the high passes. There’s a village with several families in residence within your borders and they pay pennies in local government taxes in return for being left largely to themselves. I’m reliably informed that several people there have expressed interest in becoming apprenticed to you, should you want to encourage it.’
‘I already have apprentices,’ he murmured beneath his breath.
‘Have some more. A modest manor house surrounded by solid outer walls lies east of the village—I have stonemasons working to bring it back in good repair. There are aviaries, stables and animal enclosures that should please you. As for funds, which you’re going to need, I bestow upon you the prize money recently won by the falcon Sweetybird McTender Heart, otherwise known as Cloud—we seriously need to work on those bird names, Master Falconer, if we’re going to keep winning major competitions.’
‘Blame your daughter.’ Tomas sneaked a glance at the other man, unsure if this was some kind of elaborate joke, or maybe just a dream. But he’d never dreamed of being an aristocrat—and it wasn’t because he lacked ambition. He ran one of the most ambitious endangered raptor breed-and-release programmes in Europe. But he emphatically didn’t want the responsibility to people that came with an aristocrat’s title, and he’d make a terrible Lord. Could he refuse the honour? Maybe not publicly, maybe not now, but later?
Did he want to refuse fifty million dollars?
Casimir’s eyes narrowed and Tomas swiftly bowed his head.
‘In addition to the prize money, as per the competition rules of 1649, I grant you permission to keep two wives, now that you have the monetary means to do so.’
What?
‘Rules are rules.’
Tomas felt the tap of a ceremonial sword on each shoulder. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. He was no nobleman. He barely had table manners. But Casimir was smiling and taking a scroll from a purple velvet pillow and handing it to him and people were applauding, so maybe it wasn’t a dream after all.
‘Arise Lord Sokolov, King’s Falconer, Baron of Aergoveny. Welcome to the circus.’