Page 100 of Iron Blade

I don’t know how he was able to work out, but while I was exhausted by our sleepless nights, he seemed invigorated by it.

He’d always come back in a fresh set of clothes after showering somewhere else in the house. I had asked him about it.

“I don’t want to come back to you covered in grime.” He pinched at my side, tickling me until I laughed. “My sweet wife doesn’t need to see me when I look like a fright.”

I couldn’t ever imagine him looking frightening. He was so devilishly handsome, that even covered in sweat and dirt, he’d probably still take my breath away.

After two weeks in this house, I had learned a few things. The Greens were not early risers, and breakfast was an optional meal. As was lunch. The only thing that was mandatory was dinner. Thankfully, none of them had been as dramatic as the first night.

Poor Dairo had to sit there, playing the referee between Eoghan and my new father-in-law. I longed to talk to Aoibheann, though. There was something hauntingly beautiful about her. I wanted to ask Eoghan to paint her with that keen eye of his. The way she had this sacrificial, ethereal beauty that was hard to find in a modern woman.

There was something about her that looked like she was a woman in trouble.

I tended to skip meals if Eoghan wasn’t with me. I slept the days away in a kind of laziness I hadn't experienced since long before my father died. If I wanted to, I’d just lay naked in the sheets all day until he came back in the afternoons and could lay down with me.

I was losing weight, which was something that Eoghan commented on, and not in a good way. He had caressed the roundness of my stomach, and asked if I was feeling sick. Then he asked if the food was to my liking.

When I admitted that going outside without him made me uncomfortable - too many new faces, and some of the old ones just seemed terrifying - he looked at me with a puzzled expression.

“Has anyone been cruel to you?” he asked.

“No, not really. But sometimes they just look at me like…”

“Like what?” The fire that burned in his eyes would have been frightening, had they been directed at me. But they weren’t. They flamed for me instead. I knew he’d strike down anyone who tried to hurt me.

It was probably best not to tell Eoghan anything anyway. If I did, then he’d probably fire the lot of them - though maybe that was a good thing?

There are worse things in the world than a protective husband.

Still, I felt better just hiding in our room, and the studio.

After a while, I was hungry enough to brave the outside world without Eoghan.

I didn’t often have cravings. Food had long since lost its flavor, since my father died and I had to recover by getting up every day, and nourishing my body as best I could.

But today, the idea of a warm piece of bread was just orgasmic. Like it would cure the low-grade nausea that had been turning my stomach for days now.

It was probably just exhaustion. That made sense, because of so many sleepless nights in Eoghan’s arms. My insatiable husband might have had to leave me during the day, but he made sure to make up for it every single night.

“We’ll be gone after the funeral,” he promised me. Back home, to the penthouse; he even offered to move into my tiny apartment, or we could find somewhere new. It didn’t matter.

I popped over to the dining room, then to the kitchen. Women in black sheath dresses with the white aprons bustled around, shining and cleaning this and that.

The familiar red hair of Malinda trailed behind her like a bad perfume. Unlike Aoibheann, whose hair looked like it was the one mark of fierceness that she contained in a body that her husband tried to scare into subservience, Malinda’s hair looked like it was from the fires of hell.

Or maybe I was biased.

Probably the latter.

I pulled back my shoulders and looked at the staff. I remembered Eoghan’s words. What had he called me? The future Lady of the House?

I could pretend to be one, right?

So I summoned a voice that I had heard the authoritative bitties who had servants following them around, doing their bidding.

“Is there any toast?”

One girl jumped out of her skin, throwing a metal pan into the air. It came down hard in a clatter, as she placed a hand over her heart as if she’d had a heart attack.

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