Edge of the Wild (The Drake Chronicles Book 2) Page 2
Not that King Erik was interested in anyone’s daughter, Amelia thought with an inward chuckle.
“She’s beautiful and gracious to be sure,” Reginald said. “With the loveliest manners.” This with a pointed glance toward Amelia. His features tweaked with regret, and it might have been true, but he was the consummate actor. “I had hoped…” He trailed off, and his gaze dropped to the tabletop.
Lady Daphne touched his arm and said, “Reggie has always been very fond of Tessa.”
Amelia remembered a May Day tourney, and Tessa’s blushing face as she leaned down from the stands to tie a ribbon to Reginald’s lance. He’d winked at her, after, with the lazy, roguish, disingenuous flair of a womanizer. Amelia fought to keep her lip from curling.
“It would have been a smart match,” Katherine agreed. “But with you off to war, my lord, there was no way to be sure if it was a possible match.” A clever way, Amelia thought, of saying we thought you might die.
The scar on his throat proved that had been a correct thought.
“But now,” Katherine said, “Tessa is in Aeretoll and affianced. I cannot in good conscience rescind that offer. We must make do with the alliances we have available to us. Which is why I wanted to host this dinner.”
With a sudden, sick drop of dread in her stomach, Amelia set her fork down. “Mother.”
“Amelia, I propose that you and Lord Reginald wed.”
Silence.
Uncomfortable silence.
Mr. Whitman drew in a deep breath.
Amelia said, “Mother, that’s ludicrous.”
Katherine’s resultant look should have turned her to stone.
“I think it is plain, Mother – from this dinner alone – that we would not, would never suit. It would be more of a war than a marriage.”
“A war?” Katherine’s tone went very flat, and her brows lifted. “Even now, we stay awake at night worrying when the Sels will finally march through Inglewood to come battering down our doors, but marriage would be a war for you.”
Amelia frowned.
“You may dress up as a man, and go gallivanting through the forest all you like, but in this moment you sound every inch the child, Amelia, and I raised you better than that.”
The words hit her like a slap.
But Katherine wasn’t done. She was so stalwart, it was easy, at times, to forget all that she’d lost, too; that beneath her cold and commanding veneer, she was as jagged and raw-edged as Amelia, as all of them. “Do you think I wanted to marry when I was eighteen? No, but I did, and I found love and understanding with your father. You are a Drake of Drakewell, and it is your duty – to this duchy, to this people, to your family, and to the crown – to marry so that our lands and titles might be defended. Your sister – your younger sister – never protested, even when I sent her up to that barbarian twice her age.”
Amelia’s eyes burned. She’d always had trouble holding her tongue, and now was no exception. “Well, Tessa’s not marrying him, is she?” she snapped.
“She isn’t?” Lady Daphne said.
“No?” Reginald asked, much more eagerly. He sat forward in his chair, so that his neckcloth slid down, and the scar on his throat was brought closer to the candlelight, dark and ugly.
It was that, more than anything – the sight of someone she disliked so much having been marked horribly by their common enemy – that fueled the flare of rage in her chest. That had her turning to the L’Espoirs and saying, “No, she’s marrying the nephew. It’s Oliver who’s fucking the king.”
Reginald’s eyes flew wide with true shock.
Daphne gasped.
Katherine bolted to her feet, swaying with her anger. “Amelia.”
Amelia drained her wine and stood. “Don’t worry, I’m leaving.”
She was still shaking, a half-hour later, when a quiet knock sounded at her bedroom door. She’d taken off her boots and stockings, but still wore her leathers: the brown jerkin and laced chaps over her linen tunic and breeches; the squeak of leather was oddly comforting as she paced the length of her carpet, worrying her rein-callused hands together, glancing out the window for – for she didn’t know what. For something to latch onto, perhaps.
That something – someone – it seemed, had come to her.
She hurried across the room to unlock the door and found Malcolm leaned negligently against the frame, arms folded. He’d changed into clean shirt and trousers, hair curling damp and freshly-washed on his shoulders. He lifted his brows. “You didn’t stay long at dinner.”
Amelia grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him inside her room.
“Shit,” he chuckled, stumbling. He managed to right himself, heel the door shut, and reach back to lock it. “Gods, you’re–”
She stood up on her toes, flung her arms around his neck, and silenced him with a kiss.
Shock held him still a moment, but this between them, this heat born of knowledge and affection, was long-familiar; his hands found her waist, and he kissed her back, mouth slanting hot over hers, tongue pressing for entry – one she welcomed. He smelled like soap, and sun-bleached linen, and still, under that, horses and hay. Like home.
When he pulled back – their foreheads resting together so they could both catch their breath – he petted over her ribs and said, “Was L’Espoir even worse than usual tonight?”
“Even worse: Mother wants me to marry him.”
His head lifted with a jerk; his hands stilled.
“Can you believe that?” She felt hysteria building, a hard knot of it at the base of her throat. “Can you believe she would even suggest such a thing?”
His expression closed off. He wet his lips, and said, carefully, “I actually can, yeah.”
The knot in her throat became a spiked ball, sharply painful. “What?” When she pushed him, he released her and stepped back. “You what?”
“Lia, it makes sense–”
“No! No, it makes no sense, because I can’t stand that damnable fop!”
“Lia–”
“Why would you defend this?” She threw up her hands, whirled, and stormed away, unable to look at his expression of quiet resign. He was her best friend – he was supposed to agree with her, damn it. She stood in front of the window, hands on her hips, pulse pounding, trying to catch her breath. She felt as if she’d been sprinting.
Behind her. Malcolm sighed. His booted footfalls padded across the rug, and she heard the faint shakiness of his next inhale; felt the warmth of the exhale on the back of her neck. She was trembling – with so many emotions – but she didn’t try to bat him away when he slowly, deliberately wrapped both arms around her waist and snugged up against her back.
Angry as she was, she leaned back against him. Moments like these were too rare and precious to waste.
And, if she was being honest, she wasn’t angry with him. It was a fleeting, fruitless sort of anger, anyway: the kind that lived as a low, simmering coal fire in her belly, but which boiled up at moments, when she was reminded that what she wanted – who she wanted – was something she could never have. The roar of fury faded, now; her shaking eased, as his warmth bled into her, but there was no stemming the prickling heat in her eyes.
Malcolm folded his hands together over her stomach, and nosed her hair aside, lips ghosting across the sensitive skin below her ear. “If it isn’t Lord Reginald,” he said, very quietly, very heavily, “it will be someone else. Maybe someone worse. A fop is better than an animal.”
She closed her eyes against the sting of tears. “It wouldn’t matter if it was the bloody king of Aquitainia,” she said through gritted teeth. “I don’t want to marry anyone.” Unless it’s you, she didn’t say, because she’d said it too many times before, and having him remind her, sadly, that that was impossible always left her fuming.
“Sweetheart,” he murmured. When she didn’t respond –
half-choked on useless emotions – he turned her gently around and took her face in hands that were rough from hard work, but soft in the way they touched her. His thumbs swept the dampness from the corners of her eyes. “Look at me.” It was a plea.
When she opened her eyes, the look on his face devastated her.
“Wherever you go,” he said, “whether it’s Hope Hall, or Nede, or Aeretoll, or across the Western Sea, I’ll go with you. Whether it’s Reginald L’Espoir, or the king of the Inglewood outlaws–”
She snorted, and he grinned, fleetingly, before he grew serious again.
“–I know you must marry for Drakewell. It’s your duty. But we can still be together, you and me.”
“In secret?”
“As we have been.”
Her next breath hurt. “You would have me cuckold my husband.”
“Husband in name only. It would be a strategic alliance, and not a love match.”
She shook her head within the careful cradle of his hands – strong, familiar, working man’s hands, expert on bow or hunting knife or reins. “Strategic or not, I would have to consummate it. I would have to produce heirs.”
Pain flickered through his gaze.
“Could you live with that?” she pressed, knowing it was cruel. “Could you stand knowing that I got up from his bed, wiped his sweat off my body–”
“Lia.”
“–and then came to you? In your servant’s quarters?”
“Lia.”
“How am I supposed to spread my legs for someone I hate? Am I to think of you, while he’s inside me? Pretend it’s your child I’m carrying?”
He gazed at her with horror, with helplessness, and she felt wretched for having said those things – because they were the truth, and because they hurt them both. All the ride home from Inglewood, she’d imagined this moment, the two of them in her room, and it had been heated and vigorous and fun, and then she’d walked into the dining room and reality had come crashing back.
“What are we going to do?” she whispered.
He took a sharp breath. “If you were less loyal to your family, I would ask you to run away with me. We could join the outlaws. But” – a wry smile – “I wouldn’t love you so bloody much if you were the sort of woman who ran away.”
They leaned in together, this time, and the kiss tasted of impending loss; after the first press, like desperation.
His hands slid down her throat, her shoulders; his fingers found the ties of her jerkin and tugged them loose expertly, deft with long practice.
She pushed up his shirt in turn, pressed her hands to bare, warm skin, and felt the leap of muscle in reaction; scratched her nails through the trail of dark hair between his navel and his waistband.
Her jerkin gapped, and slithered down around her hips; he slipped his hands inside the loose laces of her shirt and cupped her breasts, pressed firmly on her nipples in the way he knew she liked.
They’d been lovers since they were both fifteen; Amelia had been a virgin, and Malcolm might as well have been, having only inexpertly tumbled a prostitute. It had been in a horse stall, the straw poking and scratching them, their hearts pounding and nerves ratcheted high. It had been crossing two kinds of line: that of their respective ranks, and, even more frightening for Amelia, the line of friendship.
It had only brought them closer, though. Added a new steel thread through their already-inseparable bond. They’d learned one another: scars, and birthmarks, and ticklish places; learned each other’s sighs, and moans, and cues to press harder, faster, more desperately to heighten the pleasure.
Amelia loved him madly, and had never wanted another.
Tonight, they left their clothes puddled on the rug, and he carried her to her high, canopied bed. Laid her down and stretched out over her; stroked her until she was slippery and clawing at his back; and then he was filling her, pinning her wrists and kissing her neck and showering her with love words while his hips worked his cock deep, deep inside her.
She cried out when she came – half ecstasy, half despair – and he quieted her with a kiss, one he had to end with a gasp as he sought his own end with a few last, strong thrusts.
They slumped, tangled, limbs sliding, sweat on sweat.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured against his throat. “I don’t mean to be so vicious.”
“You aren’t.” He pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. “It’s the world that’s vicious.”
True enough.
Malcolm had always possessed the skill of being able to sleep deeply anywhere. When he began to snore into her hair, Amelia slid from beneath his arm, tugged on a dressed gown, and went out into the hallway on silent, slippered feet. There was a balcony between the family wing and the guest wing of the house, and that was where she headed. The door creaked, faintly, when she opened it, and cold, crisp winter air blew straight through the silk of her gown. She shivered, belted it tighter, but was glad of the sharpness against her face, the still-cooling sweat on her neck. Most of the ladies of Aquitainia kept indoors as much as possible, only venturing out beneath the shade of parasols on the warmest of summer days, and even then, only in the garden. If they traveled for any distance, it was via carriage; if they went riding, it was only on fine, sunny afternoons, on carefully-tended bridle paths.
They’d never galloped through the forest with a knife on their hip, the sound of pursuit hot behind them. They’d never sat round a fire, chafing their hands together; never worn men’s clothes and ate meat straight off the bone with anyone beneath their station.
Amelia liked the cold because it reminded her that she was alive – that she was a flesh and blood woman, and not just an object to be passed around and acquired and kept on a shelf until an heir might be produced.
Drake Hold’s lawn stretched before her, gently-sloping, frosted, moon-silvered, gleaming like gems beneath a clear sky. How long would it drowse beneath the moon like this? Marked only by the faint curls of chimney smoke, and the distant lowing of cattle? How long until the Sels came?
Down at the other end of the balcony, a throat cleared.
She wasn’t alone.
“After that impressive show of storming out earlier,” Lord Reginald drawled, “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon, my lady.”
She fought the urge to spin around and march back inside: this was her home, and she wouldn’t allow him to run her away from any part of it. “I wished to avoid further conflict with my mother,” she said with a sniff. “Trust I wasn’t afraid of sparring with you, my lord.”
A beat passed, and then he chuckled. “You hate me, don’t you?”
She turned to him, one hand on the cold, iron bannister, and saw the glint of moonlight on his hair, and on his eyes. He wore a heavy fur cloak over his shining silks, bulking him out in a way that, nevertheless, managed to draw attention to the line of his throat, and the scar that bisected it.
What she’d intended to say died on her tongue. Instead, she said, “I’ve never cared about you enough to hate you. I hate that I’ll have to marry you, or someone like you, for the sake of my family.”
The breeze gusted sharply behind her, streaming her hair over her face, pushing her closer to Reginald.
He inhaled audibly, and said, “Ah. Who is he?”
“Who’s who?”
“Forgive me, my lady, but you reek of sex. Who’s the man you want to marry but aren’t allowed to?”
She reacted on instinct. In a few strides, she charged across the balcony, gripped the front of his cloak, and cocked her fist back.
He didn’t resist. In fact, he bent back and showed her his throat, in all its scarred vulnerability. His teeth flashed as he grinned. “How ladylike.”
“Fuck you,” she spat, but, ashamed, released him, and turned away to stalk back down to the far end of the balcony. She was shaking, again, and had once more lost control of the fine tremors that had wracked her in her room, before Malcolm had come to her.
It was silent a l
ong moment, one in which she refused to retreat on principle, and wished that he would instead.
He stayed. And finally said, “For what it’s worth, I don’t want to marry you either.”
She turned back, shooting him a glare that she hoped he could see in the moonlight.
He’d moved to stand at the rail, one elbow resting on it; the wind tossed his curls. “I don’t mean it as an insult, but, truly, you and I would never suit.”
“That might be the first true thing I’ve ever heard you say,” she allowed, grudgingly.
He shrugged. “Oh, I’m full of truths, but they get so covered up by my being a pompous ass no one usually notices.”
She felt her brow smooth, anger ebbing.
“Here’s another truth for you: I really am sorry that your sister was sent to Aeretoll.”
“Whoever she marries, she won’t come home empty-handed, not my dutiful sister. She’s beyond your reach, now.”
“I know. I would have no hope of beating a Northman in a duel for her hand – not even before the war.” The hand at his side twitched, began to lift, and then stilled. She thought he might have been about to touch the scar on his throat. He said, “Did your cousin actually fuck the king?”
He sounded so genuinely curious, and thought of Oliver, with his temper, and his face flushed beneath his freckles tickled her so much that she felt a smile threaten. “Tessa would never use that word.”
“Oh, to be sure.”
“But from what she says, he’s to be made consort.”
Reginald whistled.
“He’s to attend the king on his trek to the Wastes for the Midwinter Festival.”
He chuckled. “Now there’s a place Oliver will fit in.”
“He’s not as overgroomed as you,” she shot back.
“No, but I’m not going to treat with clan barbarians, either.”
The silence that followed didn’t bristle quite like the first.
In a gentler voice than expected, Reginald said, “If your mother – if anyone – finds out you’ve taken a lover below your rank, you’ll be dragged through the mud.”
She snorted, and turned to rest her elbows on the railing. “Isn’t that just the way of things? A war on, strange happenings, winter here and hunger settling across the country, but my bedroom antics would set the tongues wagging.”