by Nicole Locke
And he didn’t want to move at all or, if he did, it was to pull them both closer. Until he clasped close to his chest, to his heart, his daughter and this unknown woman. This woman whose eyes were as wide and absorbing as Grace’s.
But nothing about her gaze was innocent. Eyes warming, pupils dilating, a flush that bridged across her cheeks and nose. The rose red of her lips parted, slightly damp with the tip of her tongue and softening.
Just as her body was softening against him. Incredibly, her delicate body pressed more against his. A leg brushing, a hand, her hair laying along Grace’s back and across his chest. This woman, who hadn’t expected to stumble into him.
Until he was at war with himself. One part wanting to shake her and make her come to heel. The other part all too aware he touched her in an almost embrace with his daughter between them and he couldn’t let her go.
And his body, his soul, the very marrow of his bones knew exactly why. Because he saw it. Something he shouldn’t for both their sanity. He saw it.
She wanted him, too.
Reynold couldn’t climb the stairs to his rooms quick enough. If he stood much longer in the courtyard, his men would see his reaction to them both. One he struggled to contain.
He strode into the study and whirled for one moment. Why did he come here again when it brought him no peace before? What was he to do with the child in his arms?
Light chatting by the thief, absolute silence from the two men coming up behind her. One carrying a basket. The other wine, bread, some fruit to break his fast.
When they had arranged the tray and basket, and turned to leave the room, he said, ‘Close the door.’ Something he rarely ordered. Always he wanted the door parted to hear intruders, to ease access for escape.
More and more with the thief and the child, he needed it closed. With one simple pull of the latch, the doors were shut, cocooning them inside. Reynold couldn’t contain his restlessness. Holding the child, he picked up a trinket, set it down, adjusted a pillow and ambled completely around his desk until he stood in front of it again. His child simply watched his every action.
His child.
‘Didn’t I make it clear what would happen if you disobeyed me?’
The woman eyed Grace in his arms, her lips pursed, a question in her eyes as if she wanted to demand her back. He wouldn’t oblige.
‘I haven’t disobeyed you,’ she said finally.
‘I told you to remain with the child. I came down from my rooms to see her being passed from one mercenary to another. You weren’t in sight.’
‘That’s disobeying you?’ she said.
‘Do you know who they are? Hired swords. Men who—’
‘Murder or worse,’ she interrupted. ‘You’re angry because I was gone for a moment, when it was you who invited murderers in a home with a child?’
Just like that, she turned the game on him. Reynold wasn’t fooled. He wasn’t at fault. ‘Do you think that in this house I would be on the defensive? I told you yesterday that you were this child’s mother. Maybe given your background you don’t know what mothering means. Maybe—’ Reynold stopped.
The woman before him had paled, her eyes shocked wide with his words that struck deep and quick. He’d sliced his sword into men who bore such a look.
Clasping Grace more firmly, he stepped until his legs hit his desk. My God, he had hurt her. Truly hurt her. With words. He meant to, but not like this.
Before he could recover, before he could soften his statement, her eyes narrowed and her chin jutted. The pale expression gone, in its place was an expression of intent, of determination, anger.
‘How long were you watching your murderers handle Grace?’
‘How long was I aware?’ His thoughts running rampant on what he’d unintentionally done and why it mattered, Reynold couldn’t comprehend what she was talking about. For years he’d hurt people with his words and his swords. Why would it matter if he hurt her? She was at fault. They were always at fault.
‘How long were you in the courtyard watching Grace being passed from one mercenary to the other?’ she said. ‘Because it couldn’t have been long.’
‘How do you know it wasn’t long?’ he said. ‘Are you saying you allowed them to take her?’
‘I have allowed nothing since you forced me here.’
‘Don’t pretend you had somewhere better to go.’
Her lips clamped shut.
Secrets. Could it be possible that one such as her would have them? ‘What are you not telling me.’
A sound of frustration ripped from her throat. ‘What is this? I agreed to take care of Grace, but you have no right to my thoughts!’
‘Thoughts?’
‘I was thinking. That’s all. Plucking a bird and thinking. That’s what people do when they’re not reading other’s opinions and advice. When I was done, I went to the courtyard. It’s good the men took her from the kitchens. There’s blood, innards. The air is full of feathers, dust from the flour and the fire doesn’t draw properly.’
This was her confession, that she was lost in thought. A pathetic excuse. Weak.
Except when she said it to him, gone was Artemis brandishing her arrow, now she looked vulnerable. As if she had revealed a true weakness. What were her thoughts; what didn’t she want to reveal to him?
He didn’t know this thief, no matter what he had witnessed yesterday morning at the market. He’d only seen her in the clutches of the guard, he didn’t know if she had taken the bread.
After that, she cared for Grace, fed, bathed and held her gently. Yet he was the one who accused her of not knowing how to mother. As if...as if he understood that kind of care. His mother was trying to kill him.
As for his men, his soul and hands were more bloodstained than theirs. They knew how to hold and talk to a child. Every time he held Grace, she felt breakable and he felt ill at ease with the flood of longing to hold her tighter. For him—
Self-reflection. Thought. When had he doubted himself? Never. Not once since he realised he must defeat his family. Foolish to do so and he would stop now.
This thief was dangerous to him. It wasn’t only the fact his body recognised her, it was her thoughts, her deeds. He couldn’t predict what she would do or say and, in one day, he couldn’t predict men who were paid to protect him.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Very well, then,’ said Darkness.
‘Very... What? I can have thoughts?’ Aliette didn’t hold back the bite to her words. For good measure, she looked at the door, which was closed. There was only one way to remedy that. ‘Can I have Grace before I leave?’
The man patted Grace’s back. She wasn’t certain he knew he did it. She was aware, however. Everything from the courtyard still flooded through her, the clumsy way she stood, the uneven way she breathed. She knew exactly how close he was, the parting of his legs, the crook of his arms as he cradled Grace to him. She almost felt those long fingers drum along her own back.
‘No, you cannot,’ he answered.
She huffed, pivoted on her heel. Did he think she had all the time to waste with whatever it was he wanted of her? ‘If you don’t want me taking care of the child since I left her to your men, release me.’
‘Why are you so eager to go.’
‘I’m not eager, I merely don’t want to be here.’
‘I require you here today. For her sake, you need to learn to read.’
‘There are tutors for that.’
He kept his silence. Constantly, this silence. Him, his men, even the child. ‘You don’t want other people here, do you? Didn’t you say you’d hire others? I was in the kitchens all morning. I saw no evidence of others.’
She walked near to him; enough to become painfully aware of herself around him. Her very skin felt too tight with a weakening underlying trembling that she internally wil
led to calm. ‘What is this place? It looks like one house from the outside, but it’s not. You took many houses and combined them, but no one can know that. Do your neighbours know of the armed men? Like a secret. Which begs the question, are you intending for me ever to leave?’
He brushed Grace’s head with his hand and sat her in the basket. Her hand immediately went to her mouth.
‘How can she be hungry?’ he said.
How can he not know this child? ‘It’s her teeth. A way to soothe them coming in.’
‘She’s not crying or distressed.’
She wasn’t and that worried her. Grace had been fed and slept well. She was sitting more and, though painfully thin, the weakness was lifting within one day. Still, she didn’t speak. Who was this child?
Aliette crouched before the basket and ran her hand over the child. ‘No, she’s not distressed. But—’
‘But?’
She wouldn’t put words to her worries. Simply kept her eyes on the child versus the man who now walked from table to table until he released a book from one of the stacks.
‘Do you know stories?’ he said.
Vernon and Helewise told many and he wasn’t entitled to know any of them. ‘When would I have time for stories?’
‘I only have one copy of this in English.’ He flipped through some pages. ‘You can hold it while I read.’
She stood. ‘How can you read it if I’m holding it.’
‘I know this version of the story well. Simply look at the book and I’ll speak each word slowly.’
He held the book out. She shook her head.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘It’s a story, that is all, not some other person’s advice.’
‘I’ve seen books before. There was a priest at church, cradling a Bible in his hands. It was colourful. I drew up close to it and could almost see it before he hurried it away.’
At her words, the soft confusion in his expression was destroyed by something which blackened his countenance. ‘Do you think you’re not worthy to read it?’
‘That’s not it.’ She looked at her hands and shook her head. ‘Yesterday I didn’t have a dress or shoes. The food I ate was from a pig’s trough. In one day, someone is handing me a book.’
She was spouting words that had no meaning to a man who had lived in a palace. Her life had only ever been survival. Here, kidnapped and held prisoner, it should have also only been about survival. Teaching her to read was a kindness. A gift. Darkness didn’t give gifts without taking something away. Would she never see her family again?
She glanced at the man beside her. His face implacable, his eyes steady. ‘I don’t suppose you’d understand.’ She shrugged. ‘Learned people read. Wealthy people own books. Books represent a life of abundance.’
‘Abundance,’ he said. ‘Interesting thought when I always thought they were all I had.’
His words were said so softly, evenly, she didn’t at first react. When she registered what they were, she wasn’t all certain they were meant for her.
Then he blinked, cleared his throat and she knew with certainty the achingly distant words weren’t meant for her, but she heard them all the same. She heard them.
‘You are...crying,’ he said, his voice a roughened timbre.
Embarrassed, she wiped her cheeks. ‘It’s the books. They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’
Reynold didn’t understand this thief he’d kidnapped because he needed her, a woman, a pretend mother. Now he found he was needing her in other ways. Ways that were difficult the more time he spent with her. It’d only been a day.
Her dark waving hair unbound, flowing against her shoulders, the serviceable brown of her gown. He didn’t like that. It wasn’t right against the paleness of her skin and the blue of her eyes. Her unbound hair would look magnificent against a different coloured gown, but not as fine as her own bare—He couldn’t think of the bath, not now, and remain rational.
The discussion of books was dangerous as well. The way she gazed with wary hunger at the book in his hand. Her telling him of her life of survival. His own confession. She’d looked at the book as if it was all that she could dream of. For him, they were precious, but meagre to the stories inside. When she heard them, what would she think of the books then?
‘You should read.’
‘Such a skill isn’t useful in my world,’ she said.
‘Grace needs to learn and you must be the one to teach her.’
‘That’ll be years away.’ The alarm on her face faded to mutiny. ‘Are you saying I’ll never see the outside again?’
Logically, he’d want his daughter outside these walls and, of course, he’d soon have to change home again. Not that she needed to be aware of that. He never told his own men until the last moment.
If she thought herself trapped, he could alleviate her fears. ‘You help in the kitchens and it is only right you go to market for supplies...with a chaperon, of course.’
One eyebrow raised in challenge, she said, ‘With one of your mercenaries?’
‘Who else?’
Snatching the book, she plunked down in the bench’s well-padded corner, once his spot and now hers, and tucked her feet under her. Setting the book on her lap, she opened it to the page he had shown her. The correct page. So...though she protested, she had noticed. What else did she see in his home, in him?
He burned to know her thoughts. With the parchment’s illustrations twinkling brightly on her lap and the weak winter sun framing her dark hair, he could not want her more.
To cover his need, he sat on the bench and adjusted his body not to touch her. For in this delicate moment, he knew if even her drab clothing brushed against him, he could not control his impulses.
He was all too aware he had almost held her in an embrace in the courtyard. He knew the radiance of her bared skin was more beautiful than the illuminations of gold in his books.
He began to read, and slowly revealed the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. Of a man who risked all to save his wife from Hades, only to stumble at the end. To turn around too soon and watch her fall back to the Underworld.
Each page he read again, knew every word, every picture. Knew when to tell the thief to turn the page.
Watched her roughened fingers lovingly lift each sliver of paper, watched her eyes widen and absorb the tiny inscriptions, the few pictures drawn. Saw her close the book when the story was completed and pressed her hand against it as if to keep it permanently there.
‘He played the lyre,’ she said on a shaking breath.
‘It was said Hades wept iron tears when Orpheus played. I did not think this is what you would talk of.’
‘I can’t talk of the rest. Why did you pick that one? Out of all the books here, why was this the first story you wanted to tell me?’
Insightful. It hadn’t been random when he chose it. It was a reminder for himself not to lose his own way. Guy, his brother, was dead and he was close to procuring the Jewel of Kings. Having Grace, seeing the thief bathing...he could not lose his way.
‘It’s a lesson.’
‘A lesson?’
‘Orpheus was warned what would happen if he looked back too soon. All the toil, the hardships, the trials he went through to save Eurydice from Hades. He risked his life and, because he wanted to give his wife comfort...or wanted to give himself comfort when he doubted she was behind him, he forgot his purpose. Just when he was to gain everything, he looked back and lost it all.’
‘Oh.’
Such an insignificant comment, but there was a wealth of meaning. ‘You don’t agree with me.’
‘It’s not for me to agree or not.’ She pointed to the book. ‘It’s only a story, is it not? Not some opinions or advice from a great thinker.’
He rested his arm on the back of plump pillows. ‘I gave you an opinion and thus you can give me you
rs about the story. I can tell you don’t agree with what I said. Don’t you have an opinion?’
‘I have opinions on many matters.’
‘Tell me them.’ The words were out before he thought about them or why it mattered. ‘You were lost in your thoughts today, surely you can share a few.’
She frowned. ‘You kidnapped me and hold me prisoner here. Why would you care about my thoughts?’
Good question and one he couldn’t answer without revealing more of himself. ‘I never said I cared, just that I want them.’
‘Are you always this arrogant, or is it just to me, a mere street thief?’
He revelled in her rebuke of him. ‘Ah, it appears you do hold opinions that you’re willing to share, but perhaps I was merely born this way.’
She shook her head. ‘You talk to a mere thief. You give respect to your men. You surround yourself with stories that contain adventures and thoughts of great thinkers and you read to me about the foibles of people. You don’t act like a man who was born a certain way, but a man who knows it’s the journey that makes him.’
His heart stopped and he didn’t dare answer her with the truth or how much he wanted to believe her words. That he wasn’t simply his father’s son, that he could be something different. ‘Such great thought and you still won’t tell me about your feelings on some characters in a story.’
She huffed as if disappointed in his flippant answer. It had been years since he’d answered anyone with the truth. For all their sakes he couldn’t start now. Still, her disappointment didn’t sit well with him.
She straightened on the bench as if to get up. He didn’t want her to leave. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said, pleased that she stilled. ‘I’ve had wealth all my life, the books are only more of that wealth, but the stories—the stories inside the books are abundant to me.’
Her eyes so blue and clear they were like looking at an untarnished sky. He held his breath, wanting to know what she would say next. He couldn’t help but feel that she knew him somehow and that he could share these tiny bits of his soul with her. That—