Page 28 of Trick

Wicked hell. I never said he wasn’t altogether enticing, or that I wore my professionalism like armor. He knew about me, yet he offered himself, riding that impulsive current without concern. Fiendish, selfish me wondered if I’d misjudged his resilience like the rest of them. Perhaps I didn’t have to wound him after all and could make him feel good, indulge him without hurting him, for a brief turn until his crush wore off.

I tried again. “There’s something I—”

“Yes?” Eliot urged.

“What happened last night—”

Royal footsteps crashed to a halt on the path. A disapproving heat scorched me from the sideline. I caught the red shock of her hair in my peripheral vision, the flaming tresses burning from a shrub to my left.

My mouth tingled. When I had spied on her, it honed her thorns. Yet she could do whatever she wanted, could she?

I pulled back from Eliot and pressed a finger to my mouth.Hush.

Striding to the bush, I thrust out my arms and whipped the vegetation apart. My favorite distraction jumped back and glared at me from within the gap.

“Good evening, Princess,” I said, then mouthed,I’ve missed you.

That got her going. Hiking up her chin, Briar stepped through the greenery and onto the gravel lane.

Eliot’s eyes widened. He bowed, and his voice stiffened with fake formality. “Your Highness.”

With a defeated look, she waved him off. “He knows about us, Eliot.”

The minstrel’s face bunched in confusion as he glanced between me and her.

I couldn’t fathom why it took me this long to question it, but how had this Royal come to befriend Eliot? However much I fancied the notion, she didn’t strike me as a person who rebelled against the elitist rules of social class.

Eliot stared at the princess, beseeching her with a silent question that made her fidget, which I found oddly endearing. She cared about him, about what he thought and how he felt.

Her eyes tripped over to me, silently imploring. I could guess why. She was deciding how much to confess about our encounter last night. Unsurprisingly, she intended to leave out the good parts.

“Poet was taking a stroll,” she said. “He saw us talking at the ruins before the feast.”

Eliot blanched. If his eyes had been bulging earlier, they now launched from their sockets. “Did you, um, hear what we said?” he asked me.

“No,” she interjected. “He was too far away for that.”

Eliot didn’t listen to her. As if on the brink of a panic attack, he gaped my way.

I pretended to mull this over. Whilst doing so, I relished seeing the princess cringe. Though, I couldn’t say the same about the hyperventilating minstrel beside me.

So they’d met at the ancient garden ruins. From the covert sound of it, this happened on a consistent basis. And whatever they said during their most recent rendezvous must have been about me.

Again, I could guess.

I’d mentioned this to her before: Jesters didn’t lie.

I should have amended that rule: Most of the time.

“I didn’t hear a thing,” I assured Eliot. “But a princess and a minstrel alone together? How could such an intriguing sight not ensnare me?”

“After we said goodbye, I caught him idling and was compelled to explain,” the princess bullshitted. “I should have made something up, but I was taken off guard.”

Relief swept across Eliot’s face. His posture relaxed as he cupped her shoulder. “It’s all right. We can trust Poet.”

Briar placed her hand over his, unable to meet his gaze.

Huh. Why did she feel the need to keep our real meeting from him? Nothing naked had occurred in the hallway last night. It’s not as though I’d backed the princess into a darkened corner, wrenched up her skirt, hefted her against a wall, and strapped her legs around my waist.

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