Page 50 of The Captive's Curse
Bruno’s glare could’ve stripped the paint from a wall, but it bounced right off of Hans’s smug, self-satisfied, blandly handsome face.
“You had no right,” Bruno growled. “He’s my brother. Unless you have some reason for wanting him to come home, eh?”
“Of course not! That was—damn it, we’ve been over that. It was a mistake,” Hans protested, face flushing crimson. Oh, very nice. What an asshole. He’d known who I was, I was almostcertain! The mistake had been mine, not his! “And anyway, you weren’t even troubling to ransom your own brother, Montefime, so it’s not as if I overstepped your authority. I’m the Lord Constable in this region, on thequeen’sauthority…”
He kept going, but the words faded in and out. My jaw had begun to clamp down with the effort of preventing my teeth from clacking together from the shivers that ran up and down my entire body. And my stomach gurgled and growled, twisting into an aching lump. When had I last eaten? I’d be fainting at any moment. And no one would even bother to catch me!
A footman went by, carrying my trunk toward the stairs, and movement at the top of them caught my eye. Bruno’s valet, Aldo, was beckoning urgently to me as if to say,Come on, make a run for it while they’re distracted arguing with each other!
He didn’t need to tell me twice.
I followed in the footman’s wake, plodding up the stairs as quickly as my exhausted, trembling legs would bear me.
Behind me, Bruno and Hans still hadn’t thought to address me directly, too lost in what had become mutual shouting.
“…the queen ought to know what kind of man she’s chosen to represent…”
“…if you maintained any sort of law and order on your lands, or protected your own family, I wouldn’t need to…”
“…dare talk about protecting my family, you’ve fucked two of them and married neither…”
Ouch. In front of the servants, too. Bruno had really lost it. I winced, shook my head, and stepped off the stairs and into the gallery, Aldo taking my arm and drawing me down the hall toward my rooms.
“Welcome home, Cyril,” Aldo said, bending down a bit to speak more privately into my ear, and giving my arm a squeeze. “Thank the gods you’re all right.”
We hadn’t been lovers in quite some time—he’d struck up an understanding with one of the gardeners, a cheerful young woman who could grow roses the size of dinner plates and seemed to make him blissfully happy. But the old habit of friendly intimacy had stuck. And at leastsomeonecared that I’d been kidnapped. Even my own mother hadn’t come to greet me, after all.
“Th-thank you,” I stammered, through teeth that were really chattering now. “Wh-hat the fuck is H-hans still doing here? When he a-and Bruno h-hate each other? And wh-where’s m-my mother?”
“If you’re up to heating your bath water, it’ll be much faster.” I nodded vigorously, with a clack of teeth. “Excellent. We’ll have you sorted out in a trice. The ladies are spending a few weeks with Lady Angelica, because things here were too tense for anyone to bear. Milady’s written every day to ask Lord Montefime if there’s been word of you, though.” I managed another nod, glad that my eyes seemed to have run out of moisture. That was more than I’d expected of my mother at this point, honestly. “And Lord Graf’s here because Lord Montefime thinks it’s beneath his dignity to throw the queen’s representative out on his ass just because of whose parts went in whose mouths.”
The look I shot him ought to have had him babbling apologies, but instead it made him chuckle.
“Sorry,” he added, belatedly and insufficiently. “But it’s the truth. Milord can’t admit why he hates Lord Graf, so he won’t make him leave. And Lord Graf insists on staying even though Lady Rivina’s not here, gods only know why.”
“D-did she break, break off-f, f-f-fuck—”
“Stop trying to talk,” Aldo said, and guided me into my bedchamber. I blinked around me at my familiar bed and dresser and the sofa in front of the fire…except that it didn’tseem familiar at all. I’d lived in it for decades, and it was so strange to me now, as if I’d only seen it in a dream.
Aldo immediately towed me through to a little tiled bath chamber I’d had converted from a dressing room. Since I could heat my own water, I could have a hot bath at a moment’s notice anywhere a pipe could be run from the well, one of the small compensations for my stupid curse.
He helped me to a bench against one wall of the bath chamber and set about pumping water into the tub. A lit oil lamp stood in the corner, and he’d laid out fresh towels, presumably as soon as the sentries on the ramparts had spotted me.
Fine, I forgave him for the crack about parts in mouths, damn him.
He turned from filling the tub and crouched down to get my boots off.
“There we are. And to go back to your question, yes, Lady Rivina broke it off, but I think Lord Graf is planning to try to change her mind when she returns. I don’t know why he hasn’t followed her. He’d show to much better advantage somewhere he’s not quarrelling with Lord Montefime and chasing that captor of yours, who’s been making him look like a fool. Not to mention that she thinks he wants you, and so staying in the same house with you is bound to hurt his case with her.”
I could only do my best to audibly scoff at that last bit, although the wordsthat captor of yourshad me shivering nearly as much as the sodden clothes Aldo was efficiently peeling off of me. He took my arm and pulled me up, and I laid my hand against the bathtub, funneling a burst of power into it that had the water steaming instantly.
But even though I didn’t have the energy to spare to debate Aldo and also to warm my bath, I disagreed completely with his assessment of Hans. I didn’t think that fucker would’ve shown to much advantage elsewhere, either. Rivina had onlyagreed to marry him because she’d been stuck here with such limited options for society and flirtation that even the bland, blond, ruddy cheeked, stocky Lord Graf had seemed appealing.
There really wasn’t anything interesting about him at all. Now black hair and flashing dark eyes, broad shoulders and a lean body, a quick wit and a sardonic twist to the mouth…those caught the attention.
Damn it. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force Enzo’s face out of my mind.
No, I wouldn’t think about him at all. I stepped into the bath, the shock of the hot water on my frigid feet burning me up to my knees. Glorious.
