Chapter Sixteen #3
And then there was the way I wanted to have him under me, to taste every bit of him before I slowly took him apart. I wanted to fuck him until he couldn’t remember family trees or legal disputes or even his own name. To be the reason he stopped thinking.
I was still watching him when my phone buzzed.
Study. Now.
Foreboding spiked in my gut, heavy and familiar as I shoved the phone back in my pocket and set the letters to one side.
I didn’t seriously think about ignoring the summons, but for an instant, I was tempted.
Ben was looking at me, hazel eyes questioning, and something about his calm, a solidity that went beyond his physical body, made me want to stay here, with him.
It wasn’t fucking fair that Rhodri could reach in and, with two words, disrupt that.
I didn’t tell Ben where I was going. I didn’t say anything as I left. And I wasn’t even sure why, just that I didn’t owe him an explanation. I didn’t owe anyone anything.
Rhodri was behind his desk when I entered the study, which felt like a statement.
I took the chair he indicated, in front of the desk, and waited to find out what this was about.
He’d probably been thinking about my answers to Mortimer last night and had found new ways in which I’d failed the family.
“Robin told me that they’re establishing a more open relationship with the Burrell family, following the success of their Moot-mandated visit.
” His words were clipped with anger. I hadn’t been forgiven for the way I’d fucked that up for our family with the Carlews.
But at least he didn’t linger on it this time.
“If that pattern’s being repeated across the board, then I don’t want to be isolated.
I’m considering opening lines of communication with families we don’t normally deal with.
I want to know any gossip you’ve picked up over the years about the other families. Start with the Welsh ones.”
I didn’t know how he could leave me both excited at the prospect of working with him—he’d asked me for something, and he’d actually told me why—and seriously pissed off that all I was good for was idle gossip.
He wasn’t wrong, though, that I knew things he didn’t.
Like the fact Heath’s youngest brother was head over heels in love with one of the Morgan family, but Robin had made it clear he disapproved.
I couldn’t immediately see how that could be useful politically, but maybe…
Maybe if Robin and David fell out over it, that might become a pressure point for Rhodri to use, if ever he needed to.
I rooted around in my hoard of facts and laid them in front of him. He listened to me intently, eyes gripping mine as if he could measure my truthfulness that way.
When I finally shrugged and said, “That’s it, really.
Can’t think of anything else,” he sat back, and his eyes were almost warm.
Maybe because I’d weighed everything I knew for usefulness before deciding whether to mention it—I didn’t think the fact Heath’s little sister was terrified of birds would exactly help anyone, unless we were going to send in squadrons of attack seagulls to declare war.
“Thank you,” he said, and I almost fell off my chair. It felt good to be part of something, to be playing the role that had been set out for me since I’d been born but which I’d always been forbidden. And I hated that it felt so good. I hated that I felt grateful.
In the following silence, he reached out to alter the angle of a silver-framed photo on his desk that, until now, I’d only seen the back of. And my breath froze in my lungs. I could see just enough to know that was my mother’s face smiling out at him, beautiful, and forever young.
His eyes were back on me, and thankfully he didn’t seem to notice I was having issues breathing. “Lunch?”
I nodded, because I didn’t know what my voice would do if I tried to say anything.
By the time we walked into the dining room, I’d got my balance back.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise that he missed her, or thought of her.
I just… Well, I guessed I hadn’t thought about it at all.
I had a handful of memories of my mother, but only one of my father from that before-time.
He’d swooped down and lifted me onto his shoulders, and run around the house as I wound my hands in his hair and shrieked with laughter.
My throat was so full it wasn’t easy to choke down the lunch that Glenys had made. Rhodri said nothing more to me, but it didn’t feel the same as usual. He wasn’t ignoring me. He just had nothing to say to me.
I flicked a glance around the table and noticed Ben was missing.
He’d probably lost track of time, deep in clothing receipts from the eighth century or something equally fascinating.
Unless one of those full bookshelves had toppled over and trapped him underneath, a kind of archive avalanche.
No, much more likely he’d found two different spellings of Thomas in the same record and was still trying to understand why.
Rhodri nodded to me as he got up to leave, and then I was left in an almost-empty dining room.
I thought about taking lunch up to Ben, but he probably wouldn’t want food around those old papers—and actually, that’d be a great way to encourage the mice to come back.
I didn’t know why mice weren’t frightened of us, but they seemed determined to live here.
Maybe we were just so big compared to them that they didn’t notice we were also apex predators?
Who knew. Not like I could interrogate a mouse.
So taking Ben lunch was out, but I should probably go and roust him out of his history-induced daze.
Except… I still hadn’t settled from that time with Rhodri, the hope that this was the start of something.
The hope that fought with fear that it wasn’t.
Ben’s presence was soothing, in a way I didn’t understand, but right now, I wasn’t ready to be soothed.
I needed to let some of this energy out but it was still fucking daylight so I couldn’t fly.
I ended up striding through the woods, away from the castle, away from the house, away from my father.
Of course I knew he’d mourned my mother, but it was only now I wondered if that was part of why he was this way.
One childhood memory wasn’t enough to build on, but there had been a time when he’d not been disappointed in me.
Maybe her loss had caused this hardness in him, this need to control everything.
And maybe it didn’t matter, because his behaviour was what it was, whatever the reason for it. I reached the top of the hill and looked out over the countryside, countless rolling hills, trees, and rain. Of course there was rain, moving in this direction.
Not particularly wanting to get wet, I headed back.
The rain caught me anyway, so heavy that I sheltered for a while under a handy horse chestnut tree, until it became clear that the dying leaves were acting not so much as a canopy as a funnel, sending a stream of cold water down my neck.
That was when I spotted it, a spiky green case that had burst partly open to reveal a shiny new conker.
Teddy would love it. Rae, not so much, already having to negotiate a serious collection of pine cones in Teddy’s room. I wasn’t sure if it was the thought of Teddy’s delight or Rae absolutely blaming me that made me bend down and carefully pick it up. I’d give it to Teddy. The rest was up to them.