Page 35 of The Traitor's Curse
But on the afternoon of that eleventh day, Mattia cleared his throat meaningfully as I stood to leave my study for the day.
“Will Lord General Rathenas be escorting you to the reception this evening, Your Grace?” he asked. “You haven’t danced in so long. You used to enjoy it, I thought?”
The world came to a swift and grinding halt. I had to blink to bring it back into focus. The reception. Oh, fuckingfuck. The Surbini ambassador, he of the overly complex tariff negotiations, had only recently joined us at court after replacing a much older lady who’d reached the end of her career and gone home. His wife hadn’t been well enough to join him in Calatria immediately, and so we’d put off holding a reception for them at the palace until she could travel and join him.
Put it off until tonight, in fact.
“Why didn’t you remind me earlier? I’d forgotten all about it.” I didn’t mean to sound so peevish, but I’d thought my evening would be free of obligations.
Benedict hadn’t fucked me that morning, saying something about a pre-dawn cavalry training exercise as he slipped away with a kiss to my shoulder, which meant he’d need me—or at least insist on having me—as soon as we both finished our work for the day. I’d be able to spend as long as I liked in a hot bath after he’d spread me out and filled me, made me sore and sweaty and aching in my tired limbs, kissed me until my lips tingled and possibly, if he happened to be in the mood, kissed and sucked and licked me in other places, too. Or stood over me as he instructed me on how to kiss and suck and lick him the way he liked it, instead. My breath came a little faster at the thought of it, my cock stirring and that now-familiar heaviness beginning between my legs.
Of course, Benedict himself was an obligation. But the bath afterward would be delicious, feeling the heat soaking into my well-used body and knowing Benedict would be just outside, keeping the world at bay. And my supper and wine would be all the more satisfying after working up an appetite.
“I did remind you, Your Grace, beg pardon,” Mattia said. “Two days ago, I’m quite certain we discussed it.”
Damn it, we had. He’d spoken to me about it while I drank my coffee, but I’d been distracted from the topic at hand by the effort of settling into my chair in a way that didn’t remindme too vividly of what my ass had been doing an hour before.
“You did, but you could’ve reminded me again earlier today.” Damn it, I knew perfectly well my disappointment and annoyance had made me unfair.
But dread curdled in my gut at the thought of facing down all the lords and ladies of my court at last, particularly since I could be quite certain of one thing: Benedict would not be escorting me to the reception, because he’d never think of doing it on his own and I’d rather leap off the palace’s highest tower than ask him. I wasn’t some pathetic, needy little plaything who craved his public attention and acknowledgment.
“My apologies, Your Grace,” Mattias said, sounding far more subdued, and bowed lower than was his wont. “I’m sorry. I hope you enjoy yourself at least a little?”
“I doubt it, but that’s not your fault.” I had to go right now if I were going to dress for the occasion, and I also doubted Benedict would have finished with his day’s work yet. I wouldn’t even see him until after this bloody party. “Don’t spend too long here after I leave. Find a party of your own to attend, a better one, if you’ll take my advice.”
Mattia murmured his good nights as I swept out of the room and collected my guards, but I didn’t reply. Anything I said would only have sounded angry, which wouldn’t be fair at all. It wasn’t Mattia’s fault that his innocent question about Benedict escorting me had struck directly on a nerve I hadn’t quite realized I’d had exposed—or even possessed at all.
And now I’d have it exposed in front of the whole court, and I’d need to smile and bear it.
Chapter Twelve
Smiling and bearing it proved to be much more difficult than I’d feared. Difficult enough that my cheeks ached with the effort of holding my expression steady, and I had to keep consciously unclenching my hand so that I didn’t snap my wine glass in half.
I’d arrived breathless, in a hurry, and with my hair all wild around my face instead of neatly arranged, since I’d run out of time after doing up all the million little buttons on my silk waistcoat. I really needed to replace Fabian.
The herald had announced the ambassador and his lady a mere moment later, right as I took up my position at the far end of the ballroom, where a marble step led to a not-quite-a-throne set beneath a huge silver-embroidered tapestry showing my house’s arms. I gave a gracious half-bow and said all the right things, the ambassador and his wife bowed and curtsied and complimented the palace, Calatrian scenery, and the musicians currently playing softly in the gallery, and I led the lady out onto the floor to open the ball.
After one dance, a sedate pavane that didn’t require me to do more than step and smile and nod, a young lord in my diplomatic service appeared and whisked the lady and her husband away to be introduced to the other guests while I returned to my ducal dais.
And then I’d had all of five seconds to snatch a glass of sparkling wine from a footman and slug half of it before thefirst of an endless parade of courtiers approached me. Benedict would be furious if he saw me drinking without his by-your-leave, but first of all, he hadn’t troubled to show his stupid face, and second, the same wine was being passed around the room to everyone. No one had dropped dead yet. I liked my odds.
In any case, each of the lords and ladies descending upon me was more ravenously eager than the last for any scrap of gossip they could glean, and dying instantly had its appeal when contrasted with facing them sober.
“You are now eight-and-twenty, are you not, Your Grace? Duke Treviso married at twenty-nine, as I recall,” said the sharp-eyed dowager currently before me. Her two terrifying cronies nodded and tutted along, the tall feathers in their elaborately jeweled headdresses bobbing, not quite close enough to tickle my nose. All three of them had been friends of my grandparents. Given what I knew of my father’s parents, they’d all bloody well deserved each other. “Asuitablemarriage. Which produced you, Your Grace.” Her tone suggested that they had all, upon that occasion, been obliged to make the best of it. “And your lady mother, whatever her other eccentricities, was not known to frequent houses of ill repute in the lower town.”
A low, frantic buzzing had begun between my temples.
Marriage.
Houses of ill repute.
Marrying Benedict. She thought I meant tomarry Benedict.
At least she appeared to be the only person in Calatria besides me who didn’t blindly adore him.
The buzzing grew to more of a hum, my skull seeming to expand too large to fit inside my head.
I forced my already forced smile to ratchet up another painful notch. Would my face actually crack and fall off? Probably not. Even at the advanced, unmarried age of twenty-eight, I hadn’t yet started resorting to cosmetics.
