Chapter 53
NOT A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS AND AN UNEXPECTED GIFT
The apprentice was stewing hotter than a witch’s cauldron at full boil. His grip was blistering on the princess’s elbow as he steadied her up the stairs. Finally, his pinching fingers became too insufferable to withstand. Millie tried to shake him off and couldn’t.
“I’m sorry I compared you to Viscount Saltreave, alright?” she snapped. “There’s a reason why I told him I’d rather be doused in honey and take my chances with a bunch of grizzly bears instead of marrying him. He would’ve ignored my plight. You didn’t. Congratulations, you’re the better man.”
Momentarily taken aback, Bradley asked, “He proposed to you?”
“Of course he did. I was that coxcomb’s ticket to a pampered lifestyle. Now unhand me.”
He didn’t, continuing to propel her up the stairs where the healing supplies awaited them.
“Only my hands are hurt. My legs work just fine. Let me go! What is the matter with you?”
“Why him?” Bradley demanded. “Why did you trust Jax to help you instead of me?”
“That’s what’s upsetting you?”
“I was right there—”
“Because he earned it!”
He jerked to halt as if he’d been slapped.
The princess finally wrenched herself free and whirled on him to poke him in the chest, remembered the state of her hands, and thought better of it.
“He’s showed up every day to teach me. He didn’t just up and abandon me.
He talks to me, doesn’t treat me like I’m a walking venereal disease.
And because he offered me help, you arrogant prick, not a rescue.
I may be a princess locked in a tower, sir, but I am certainly not a damsel in distress! ”
This was about their training sessions, or rather, the lack thereof.
Bradley had returned that duty to the old hedge knight, thrust it upon him, actually.
But how could he not after what had transpired between them?
He’d fantasized about her, and not merely in the safety of his dreams. How could he trust himself to touch her platonically, as her mentor, instead of the way that secret, buried part of him ached to?
He’d had no choice but to avoid her, to protect both their honors. Then she’d gone and claimed him kith and kin to Viscount Saltreave, a notorious poltroon, and that was a notion that she needed to be disabused of immediately.
Bradley voice was like granite. “I did not abandon you.”
With an exasperated scoff, Millie resumed her trudge up the stairs. “Whatever, sir.”
He lunged after her. “Not the way you think I did.”
It was important that she understand. Normally he could not care one whit about what anyone thought of him, but this mattered.
This was about his integrity, and that cut far deeper than any opinion about his humble origins or food preferences or obsessive perfectionism.
Perhaps it was because she had so much of it herself.
The princess dismissed his protest with a wave of her hand and a scornful pfft.
“It doesn’t even matter. We’re not friends, right?
” She said it as if to remind herself as much as him.
“We’re just tolerating each other for Dirk’s sake.
So you can keep your savior complex to yourself and I’ll focus on becoming the most infamous lady pirate captain this world has ever seen—on opposite ends of the tower. ”
That would be for the best, for reasons different than before.
It had taken far too much effort to ignore her when she’d climbed that rope this afternoon.
Then she’d started to tease him, her sassy, light-hearted banter making his pulse skip.
Enough to befuddle him into talking about his past. Caelus above, he shouldn’t have revealed anything about that.
Yes, opposite ends of the tower was the perfect solution. And it began here. “Tula, stop.”
Her booted feet resolutely stomped up the stairs, avoiding the glowing hermit crabs that scuttled to get out of the way.
“I’m not stopping until I’ve put at least half this tower between me and your ego or I get my hands on that healing kelp, whichever comes first. You want to keep arguing, keep up! ”
“There’s kelp right here.”
Millie halted a few stairs above him, checked the location of the kitchen archway relative to her position, and turned around. “Nice try. And damn you. I had really good momentum going there.”
“I’m serious.” With one hand on the (newly polished) door handle, he stretched the other towards her, beckoning. “You want to know why I’ve been elusive this past week? It’s not what you think.”
Scowling, she debated the distance required to the kitchen versus the few steps to the door he had already opened.
“There had better be kelp in here or I’m hitting every pressure point on your body and leaving you to fester in your own filth on the floor,” she grumbled, barging past him.
Millie stopped short, only a step over the threshold, mouth parting in a soundless gasp. Her throat bobbed, swallowing once, twice, then she croaked, “What is this place?”
“It’s for you.” Bradley placed a hand on the small of her back and guided her inside another step.
“This is . . . for me?”
The desert air stirred the curtains at the windows, the repaired shutters thrust open to encourage a cross-breeze. It fluttered in the orange gauze suspended over the canopy bed, rustled in the white fringe of the bedspread, and pulled the perfume from the potted desert rose atop the nightstand.
The desert rose motif was everywhere but not overwhelming. Stitched in the upholstery of the vanity stool, carved into the frame of the vanity mirror, painted on the silk screens that provided privacy for dressing.
Colorful tapestries depicting the beauty that could be found in the desert adorned the walls, and a rug with plush piling cushioned the stone floor.
Everywhere there was pink, orange, and lemony silk and accents of cobalt blue on the shutters and in the tiles in the adjoining bathroom.
And though the suite furnishings had been collected from many different rooms in the tower, they all shared the same rich chestnut hue that made the rest of the colors pop.
Millie’s vision began to glaze and gloss the longer she stared, and a single tear slipped down her cheek.
Bradley’s fingers twitched to reach up and brush it away. Instead he retreated to the bathroom and retrieved the kelp.
The princess was still trance-like when he returned, blinking in stunned silence, little gasps the only breath keeping her from succumbing to unconsciousness. She didn’t even seem aware of him as he treated and bound her hands with kelp and gauze.
Uncomfortable with her silence, for this princess always had an opinion about everything, he launched into a tour.
“It’s got its own bathroom with a tub, of course. And there’s literally every medicinal salve, poultice, and cream I could find in the tower—and the kelp—in the bathroom cupboard. Figured you’d be needing one or all of them in the future with your training.”
No reply.
“Over here”—he strode quickly to the wardrobe and flung it open—“all of your shoes. I converted the shelves into shoe racks. And over here”—he drew her attention to the dresser—
“all your nightclothes and, uh, undergarments. I found more, obviously, so you can return those boxer briefs anytime.”
His joke felt flat, the princess only blinking long wet lashes.
Bradley swallowed and fought against the unease rising in his stomach like buttermilk after a vigorous beating in the butter churn.
Why wasn’t she smiling? Skipping? Running amok with the same glee she had when looting the rooms?
She should be happy, ecstatic as a puppy racing through a field of wildflowers after her favorite human. But she just stood there, dumb.
“This is what’s really exciting about this room, though,” he rallied, flinging open a set of double doors. “A walk-in closet. The biggest one this tower has to offer, actually. And look at this—Duncan installed it.”
“Duncan?” she echoed.
“All the Heroes helped.” He struck a match and shielded it from the crosswind. “I snuck them out while you trained with Sir Roger. They cleaned and moved furniture and didn’t have any time to brawl.”
Bradley lit the taper candle positioned just inside the closet doorway and blew out the match.
The mirror behind the candle flame threw the light forward, and the convex glass positioned in front of the flame beamed the light across the closet to another mirror.
Then another. The light bounced off an entire series of little mirrors until the entire space was illuminated with a soft yellow glow.
Millie joined him inside the closet with her bandaged hands cradled to her chest. Turned a small circle.
All of her clothes were neatly hung, and there were far more hanging from the racks than she’d ever amassed herself.
He’d collected it all for her: Silks, linens, taffeta, tulle.
Dresses, skirts, blouses, corsets, robes, shawls.
Some embroidered with beads, others trimmed in ribbon or lace.
She even recognized one beautiful damask dress that had once been too small for her now tailored to fit perfectly.
There were hat boxes lining the shelves above the clothes, which she couldn’t wait to unbox, but she was as stupefied as a gargoyle was petrified.
“When . . .?”
“I scavenged after you went to bed.”
“But your studies.”
“Before dawn.”
He had amended his precious routine for her. He had done far more than that.
Whether Bradley knew it or not, he had discerned the essence of her lady pirate persona and had carefully curated an entire wardrobe for her. All in her favorite colors and cuts, too.
For someone who wasn’t her friend, he’d paid an awful lot of attention to her preferences.
Even the bedroom furnishings reflected her personal taste: a king-sized bed to cradle her after a long day, rugs with piling as thick as moss so her feet wouldn’t ache on the stone floor, a tub she could submerge her whole body in, and while her favorite flower was a tulip instead of a desert rose, the decorative motif was exceptionally pleasant to look at.
It made her feel feminine again, something she felt she’d lost a little of since committing herself to a life of piracy.
The apprentice had created a space that was entirely hers. He had gifted her a home. Here, she could be her true self. Indulge in the things that made her happiest, like long soaks and beautiful clothes and watching the sunset from her western window.
Carefully, as if the fabric would evaporate the moment she touched it, Millie rubbed the lace hem of the nearby lemon dress between thumb and forefinger.
This shade of yellow was her favorite color, though her governesses had forbidden her to wear it for fear of washing out her complexion. “This was torn.”
“I mended it. They’re all fixed, actually. You’re rough on your clothes, Tula. Oh, and I added pockets to all of them, too. ”
Pockets? That meant she didn’t have to bother with reticules and satchels and the like unless she wanted to use them as fashion accessories. She turned, searching his face. “Why would you do this?”
He couldn’t look her in the eye.
A week ago, Bradley had been prepared to answer that question with a very different collection of reasons than the ones currently overwhelming his thoughts.
Because I can’t concentrate when we share the same air.
Because I’m not supposed to want you.
Because the more I fantasize about you, the more my future slips away from me.
Hells of the deep, he was the idiot Dirk said he was. He had five weeks left to change his fate, not lose all he’d worked for over a fantasy. The only way to save himself was to get away from her. Her smiles, her teasing, her kindness.
Yet when he reached over her shoulder for the candle, he couldn’t help but risk a look at her face. To check, against all sanity, if perhaps the same turmoil between ambition and desire plagued her. Her expression was hopeful, the gratitude in her eyes gutting.
Ever since he’d left the fishing village, no woman had looked at him without greed.
The female apprentices at the College had only sought him out for the advantages they would gain if they could twist the vulnerable, powerful apprentice around their little fingers.
When he denied them, they’d spat in his face and called him a freak. Stupid. Worthless.
But not this princess, who could gain the world with a sorcerer at her side. She’d wanted nothing from him, except now . . . was she leaning into the space between them, her bandaged hand reaching for his, or was he imagining it?
He couldn’t think about what he’d do if she touched him. How he might lose himself.
“Because I’m not an arrogant prick,” he answered her gruffly, and blew out the flame.