"It isn't you. It's the Andalyssians."
He looked confused. "Why should a group of foreign northerners with their noses out of joint upset you? Granted, their fashion is somewhat eye-watering, but..." He raised an eyebrow at her, inviting her to fill him in.
"Because I was part of that mission to Andalyssia that went...wrong. The reason their northern noses are out of joint, as you say," she said, bracing herself for his reaction. "You didn't know that?"
He frowned, head tilting. "No. Why should I?"
"Because everybody knows about that mission," she said. Because it had taken her this long to overcome the blot on her record and earn another chance. But maybe the son of a duq didn't know much about having to fight for each step forward in a career. Or having to overcome setbacks. She doubted he'd faced many of those.
Jean-Paul shrugged. "I'm cavalry. You didn't cause a war, so we don't get involved." He held up a large hand. "I knew something had gone wrong and that Alexei Berain resigned, but I never heard the details or any gossip about the junior officers."
Making him one of the few people in the army who hadn't.
"Well, there was plenty of gossip. And plenty of recriminations to go around. So I don't think it's a good idea if they see me at the emperor's ball."
"Why, Lieutenant, that sounds like you're running from a fight."
"I'm a diplomat. I'm supposed to avoid fights. In fact, that's my entire job."
"Not exactly. It's more that you're supposed to win the fight without getting blood on the ground. Or the carpet, I suppose." He grinned down at her. "I promise you there will be no bloodshed in the ballroom. Major Perrine has the place crawling with his men."
"And doesn't that tell you the situation is precarious?"
"Perrine is cautious. It's his job. But he didn't strike me as a man on high alert. Well, no more than he usually does. Given I've spent half my time with him the last few days, I would hope he would have told me if he was expecting any real trouble."
"If he's not expecting trouble, then why are the cavalry involved?" Imogene asked.
Chapter 12
Jean-Paul pulled a face. "Not so much the cavalry as just me. And I'm mostly being decorative."
He certainly glittered in his black dress uniform, with medals and ribbons of honor arrayed across the impressive expanse of his chest. Some were marks of his regiment and rank, but others were from actual fighting. He hadn't just stayed safely in the capital, it seemed. "Decorative? Did the emperor think his ballroom would lack for handsome men tonight?"
His smile grew wider, his expression delighted. "Handsome, am I?"
She shook her head. "Some might think so. Those who weren't waiting for an answer to their question."
He laughed. "A point, Lieutenant. Very well. No, not that kind of decorative. Even if Aristides was inclined to admire men's faces, not women's, I doubt I would be high on his list. No, my value comes in my rank. If dealing with disgruntled diplomats from the outer reaches of the empire, it can be useful to have the son of a duq or someone equally impressive-sounding to dance attendance on them. Make them feel important."
She understood that much. "I see. But if that’s your role here tonight, then shouldn't you already be at the ball doing whatever it is dancing attendance involves? Not consorting in dimly lit rooms with women who would probably not please said disgruntled diplomats."
"Consorting? That hardly seems a fair assessment, Lieutenant. We've barely touched." He brushed his hand over hers, then pulled it back.
For a moment she forgot what the point of their conversation was. Something about...Andalyssians. Right. Bloody inconvenient Andalyssians. Because if not for them, his hand could be doing more than just wafting over her fingers right now.
"Let's not argue about terminology. You should be back in there"—she jerked her head in the direction of the ballroom—"doing what you’re here for today." She tapped a finger on the biggest and the brightest of the medals on his chest. An imperial commendation, she thought it was, though she had never seen one up close. A golden star with a spray of tiny sapphires embedded in each point. "You're in uniform. You have a job to do." She peered up at him. "And you must have known that when you invited me here tonight. So how exactly were you expecting this evening to go, Major?"
"I'm on duty, but I'm not part of the guard itself. My job is to mingle and ensure that the Andalyssians meet the right members of the court. The ones who will make them feel valued. I was reliably informed that they will retire early, and then my time will be my own. Or all yours, Lieutenant." His gaze skimmed over her body. "And seeing you in that dress, I must tell you I am very tempted to go fetch a sleeping draught of some sort and pour it into their damned campenois to hurry their departure along."
"I'm not sure drugging a delegation is the way to repair relations." She tried to pretend she couldn't feel the weight of his gaze on her skin like the heat from the flames. Her skin prickled with the need to move closer to him.
"Andalyssia can rot for all I care right now," he said. He reached out a hand, settled it on her waist. "Stay."
"That wouldn't be helpful." It would be everything every inch of her body wanted, but not helpful to anything but her worse instincts. "This can only be a fleeting thing, you and me. It's not worth a diplomatic incident." But she made no move to shift his hand from her waist. Instead she stepped closer, unthinking as his fingers tugged her toward him.
"Fuck diplomacy," he growled and bent his mouth to hers.
And oh, his mouth.
She'd never had a man deploy a kiss like a weapon before, but his found her like an arrow flying true and shattered her defenses.
One taste of him and her common sense dissolved under a rush of lightning-hot want. It was like the first time she'd touched a ley line, back when her powers had manifested. A sense of the world being forever changed as power and emotion surged through her. A sense of wanting nothing more than to remain suspended in the sensation forever. If he'd been an illusioner, she would have suspected him of using magic to sway her senses, but she felt nothing magical flaring from him as he poured his kiss into her, only desire that was as intoxicating as any touch of magic she'd known.
She swayed into him, opening her lips and kissing him back just as fiercely. Let herself take what he was offering and offer something of her own in return. Lost in the moment and the touch of him. Until he pulled back, staring down at her with eyes that were black now, his pupils blown wide with only the faintest rim of gray around them. There was no mistaking how much he wanted her. His lips had left hers, but his hands still held her fast against him, and even through the layers of ball gown and petticoats, she could feel him pressing into her.
"Stay," he muttered again. "Please, Imogene."
Goddess. The way he said her name. She could cope with his teasing “Lieutenant,” but not with him speaking the three syllables of her name like they were half a prayer. Her blood was roaring in her ears, her pulse still pounding from his kiss, and she couldn't have moved away from him in that moment if the emperor himself had appeared and demanded it.
"I don't want to cause trouble. And I can't afford another blot on my record." Her invitation to bond a sanctii could vanish as swiftly as it had been extended.
He shook his head. "If there was any concern over you attending this ball, Major Perrine would have told me. He vets the invitation list thoroughly."
Of course he had. She felt foolish. In her surprise, she hadn't stopped to think that, of course, the emperor knew each guest who attended his balls. And she had been approved. Relief swept over her. Followed by a second rush of nerves. Not caused by the Andalyssians but by the awareness that if she did stay, if she went back to the ballroom with Jean-Paul, then... She stared up at him, wondering again if it was a mistake to give in to wanting him.
"Stay, Imogene. I will get the damned Andalyssians out of the ballroom as soon as I can. Then I will find you and we will dance. And then, unless you tell me no, I will ta
ke you back to my apartment and remove that delectable dress and we will finish what we just started."
It was just as well that he was still holding her because her knees wobbled a little at the words. Which was ridiculous. She wasn't a woman whose knees wobbled because a man announced that he wanted her. She hadn't been that way even when she'd been a virgin. She'd chosen her first lover—and everyone since—with care and deliberation. She'd enjoyed herself. She'd learned what pleased her and what pleased them, but she had never been at risk of coming undone from just a kiss. Never been more certain that she should walk away before he could do anything more. Never been more certain that she had no intention of doing so.
"I'll stay," she said. "I'll wait for you."
"And then?" he asked, voice half a growl.
"And then, Major, we will...dance."
Chapter 13
She was growing convinced that someone was manipulating with time in the ballroom. Jean-Paul had said he would try to get the Andalyssians to leave as soon as possible, but two hours had passed since she and Chloe had returned to the ballroom, and the Andalyssians showed no sign of leaving yet. She'd tried to stay inconspicuous, lingering near the edges of the room farthest from the emperor's party, but she'd had to accept several invitations to dance. Her nerves had eased somewhat after the first time she'd been whirled past the end of the room where the emperor and most of the Andalyssians were seated. None of them had so much as blinked at her, reducing her fear that one of them would recognize her and demand that she be removed from the palace. But she still didn't want to chance a close encounter.
On the third or fourth dance, she'd briefly caught Jean-Paul's eye from where he stood talking with the emperor, and he'd offered a quick smile and a small shrug of apology before she'd whirled on. The Andalyssians had started to join in some of the dances, and she thought someone had been giving them lessons, as they seemed adept at the fast-paced waltzes and gigues, which were different to the slow elaborate patterns of the set dances she'd seen in their country.
Still, their participation in the dances had made her think it wiser to decline the next offer she'd had from a dance partner and to go instead to find Chloe.
She made her way down the far side of the ballroom where there were thoughtfully placed niches curtained in gold-worked satin to allow the courtiers to retire in small groups or twosomes for more private discussions or entertainments. Probably the latter. Anyone who wanted to discuss anything truly private would be taking a risk. They could, of course, use a ward, but using magic in the emperor's presence was not encouraged.
Of course, they risked being overheard if they chose to undertake a liaison of a more intimate nature in one of the niches as well, but that didn't seem to be of as much concern judging by the sounds coming from the first two she passed.
The third was empty, as was the fourth. She paused there, taking a moment to enjoy the spectacle of the dancers swirling past. But her attention was dragged back when an oddly familiar voice caught her ear.
Not speaking Illvyan. No, the words were Andalyssian. The sounds of it were unmistakable. She'd studied the language before her mission there. She'd not reached any great degree of fluency, but she knew its rhythms. The peculiar combination of sharp consonants and hissing sibilants that made it stand out from the more liquid rhythm of Illvyan.
And the voices were coming from the fifth niche. Its curtains were closed, a signal that those within were not to be disturbed. But what were Andalyssians doing in a secret conversation in the middle of the ball?
It seemed an odd choice. One that sent a prickle of alarm down her spine.
Unable to stop herself, she ducked back into the alcove next to the Andalyssians, pulling the curtains fast behind her.
The voices next door paused as though those within had maybe heard her. She froze, hoping she hadn't scared them off. Apparently she hadn't. The quiet conversation started up again. Definitely Andalyssian. But it seemed after months of not using the language, much of the vocabulary she'd known had faded from her memory. She couldn't understand much. Whoever it was—she wasn't sure if there were three or four separate voices—they were speaking in low tones. One, who spoke least but with the most assured cadence, was, she thought, the voice that had caught her attention. Familiar, but she couldn't quite put a face to the voice when it wasn't clear.
She'd only recognized two of the Andalyssians she'd seen so far, both men she remembered being as junior as she had been at the time she'd met them. It wasn't either one of them speaking. But Andalyssians tended to run to tall and blond, the men wore their hair in very similar braided lengths, and they were all wearing the orange and green of the royal house's robes rather than those that might indicate any personal rank so it was difficult to distinguish them at a distance. She hadn't yet seen all their faces, so she didn't know if there were others amongst the party who she had met.
And strain her ears as she might, the muffled words were hard to distinguish. She heard the name Deephilm, the Andalyssian capital, and several references to time and what she thought might be “waiting,” or maybe that was “patience.” It was one of those tricky tongues where sometimes only a slight twist of emphasis altered the meaning of words that otherwise sounded the same.
She pressed as close to the wall between the alcoves as she dared, but nothing else in the soft phrases came clear in her mind, making her wish once more for a sanctii. Or that she'd been offered the option of learning Andalyssian with the assistance of a sanctii's magic via a reveilé. But the army preferred its junior officers to learn languages the old-fashioned way, except in times of extreme need. The theory being that then, when they were more senior and perhaps in need of the level of fluency a reveilé could grant, they would have the basic understanding and vocabulary that made a reveilé more effective. Besides, her language tutors in the army had insisted you could learn much about a people and a country from the way their languages worked and that linguistics were another tool in a diplomat's arsenal. Language lessons came with history and politics and geography to underpin the words.
She remembered more of that than she did of the language itself, it seemed. Which left her only frustrated as the voices went silent. A swish of fabric, a low laugh, and the sound of footsteps were all she heard as the men left the niche. It was an effort not to follow immediately, but it would be difficult to explain what she had been doing lurking in a niche by herself. Unfortunately, by the time she deemed it safe to exit, there were no Andalyssians nearby at all, leaving her with nothing more than a vague sense that she'd missed something important for her pains.
Chapter 14
“Bored with me already?” Jean-Paul murmured as he dipped Imogene into the next move of the dance. She was following him seamlessly, but her expression was distracted. Hardly the emotion he was trying to evoke.
Her gaze came back to him, and she made an apologetic face and then smiled. "Not bored, no."
They were moving closer to where the emperor still stood talking to the empress, who had made a late and somewhat unusual appearance at the ball. Liane was pregnant with their fifth child, and if the rumors he had heard over the years were true, her pregnancies had been difficult and there had been losses in between. Aristides’s expression as he talked with his wife was tender. The Andalyssians had departed for bed twenty minutes or so ago, and Jean-Paul had excused himself from Aristides and gone in search of Imogene. Who now seemed more fascinated by the emperor than the dance.
"Perhaps if you tell me what is so distracting, we can solve the issue?" he said gently.
Her eyes whipped back to him again. "It's nothing."
"It's not nothing. Something is bothering you. If it's something I've done, I would prefer to know. If it's something larger—which I am hoping it is given your attention returning to the emperor every time we get near him—then I would say it's my duty to know."
"No, I was just wondering how the Andalyssians enjoyed the ball."
"Ever the di
plomat?" he said, one side of his mouth quirking. "You can be at ease, Lieutenant. No blood was shed. They appeared to enjoy themselves. Even the Ashmeiser Elannon, and he seems to have been born with no fraction of a sense of humor."
Imogene nearly stumbled, the movement the slightest pause before he steadied her.
She was flushed from the dance, but beneath the pink, he fancied her cheeks were paler than they had been before he had mentioned the Ashmeiser.
He tightened his grasp on her waist a fraction, wanting to let her know she was safe. "You know him, the Ashmeiser?"
"He was one of the king's advisors when we were in Andalyssia," she said. "I never liked him. And he definitely didn't seem to like Illvyans. I always wondered if..."
"If?" Jean-Paul prompted, steering them around a wayward couple who had careened somewhat out of the path of the dance. This particular waltz was complicated and fast, which was good because it would mean that everybody was too busy concentrating on the steps to pay attention to anyone else's conversation.
"If there was more to our mission going wrong than just Captain Berain being an idiot. I mean, it started well enough, but then things seemed to fall apart far too quickly and for reasons that never entirely made sense. I thought perhaps the Andalyssians—or some of them, at least, as the king himself was cordial in the beginning—were undermining us. If I were to choose the Andalyssian most likely to be doing so, the Ashmeiser would be high on the list."
Jean-Paul still wasn't certain what the Ashmeiser did. Andalyssians didn't have a noble class that operated in the same way as Illvya's. They had more elaborate family obligations and ties that balanced with rank. The Ashmeiser was head of one of those families. And some sort of senior counselor to the king. A man of power. Important enough to be sent to repair relations. But if Imogene's instincts were right—and he saw no reason she would dissemble about the mission when she had been honest with him so far—he was an interesting choice of man for the job.
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