The Black Prince: Part I (22 page)

“Go home to your wife.” The words were flat. Spoken without affect.

“Like…like this?”

Lissa couldn’t see Hart’s face. He stood with his back to her. But whatever her now former customer saw there, he shrieked. Actually shrieked. Like a little girl. And he ran. Leaving most of his things behind. Including his boots, which looked expensive.

And then he was gone.

The door banged shut, and they were alone.

For a long minute, there was silence.

“I’ll get in trouble.” It wasn’t what she’d meant to say. Her knuckles on the wool were white.

Hart sheathed his knife and, ignoring her, went to stand before the window. Glass divided into perfect diamond panes, with a circular version of the duke’s crest set into the upper center to show loyalty. The window looked down onto the street, which is where Hart stared. He said nothing. She didn’t imagine he could see much, it was dark.

Then again, who knew.

“No,” he said finally. “You won’t.”

And she believed him.

He was wearing leather gloves. Black. Like the rest of him. He stripped them off and tossed them aside, revealing, instead of the well manicured hands she remembered, knuckles crisscrossed with lacerations and fingernails grimed with dirt.

And what looked very like dried blood.

He threw himself down in the room’s one chair, before the fire, and sat facing her.

“Hello,” she said, her voice small. That wasn’t right, either. She’d imagined this moment so many times over the past fortnight and in each separate vision she was full of witty banter. She was charming. She was seductive. She was…oh, anything but this.

This was miserable.

And so, she realized after a moment, was he.

He looked…hollow-eyed. Hollowed out. Like this was the first time he’d sat down in a year.

“I’m a bad man.”

She didn’t try to contradict him. Merely accepted his assessment of himself. She’d discovered, long before coming to Barghast, that good and bad were relative terms. And that many good men weren’t. He was what he was and she was what she was, and neither of them had found themselves in this room, at this moment, because everything in their lives had gone according to plan.

“We were ambushed,” he said simply. “Betrayed from within. And by more than one of the brothers I’m supposed to trust.” He paused. She waited. His eyes never left hers. And then, “my friend is dead.”

And then he told her about the children.

“I
’ll call for a bath.”

She didn’t know what else to say. Or do. It was all so surreal. Half an hour before she’d been with the merchant, whose name she couldn’t now remember. If she’d ever known it. That seemed like a lifetime ago. She’d been castigating herself for hoping to see this man again, this terrifying man, knowing that hope was more dangerous than anything. And now here he was.

As though he’d always been here.

She slipped on a shift and, hurriedly, tied her hair back. She must look terrible. But she didn’t have time to think about that now. Nor the opportunity to change things.

She stepped out into the hall, and motioned to one of the serving girls. One of her master’s daughters, training under him to one day run the inn in his place. He might make them scrub floors on their hands and knees, but he’d never let a customer touch them.

Ten minutes later the girl returned with her sisters, carrying a bath. They placed it before the fire and began filling it. No one said a word.

They, too, spared anxious glances for Hart. Although they tried to be more discreet than the merchant had been. Tried, and failed. Their terror was almost palpable.

They left.

Hart hadn’t moved.

Lissa drew a deep breath and exhaled, steadying herself. There were things she knew how to do and things she didn’t know how to do. She’d focus on the first group first and worry about the second later. Either that, or she’d go insane.

“Clothes off,” she said, sounding surer than she felt.

Hart said nothing.

“Into the water.”

With slow deliberation, he stood. If he cared that she’d just ordered him around, he gave no sign. Merely unhooked his quilted vest and, sliding it off over his shoulders, laid it on the back of the chair. He winced slightly when he moved his arm, she saw. A bare trace of expression, there and gone. He unhooked his belt next. “Help me,” he said.

Stepping forward, she lifted his shirt up over his chest.

She gasped. She couldn’t help the reaction: he looked like he’d just spent a month in his own dungeon. How had he survived such wounds? And he’d
ridden
back from the mountains like this? A man with a hole in his side that must surely have pierced his innards?

He slid his hand up her neck, and under her chin. And then let it drop to his side. She finished removing his belt and unlacing his breeches before realizing that she hadn’t removed his boots. He sat down again, to let her.

And then, obediently, he sank into the warm water of the bath.

Leaning his head back, he shut his eyes. His hands rested on the polished rim of the tub. It was generously sized, meant for the use of the inn’s richer clients.

Kneeling down beside him, she began to wash his wounds.

She dipped the sponge in the water and, squeezing it out, slid it gently over his skin. The inn kept all manner of soaps and lotions, again for its richest clients and charging mightily for their use. But Lissa didn’t care about the bill. She doubted Hart did, either.

Moralists viewed bathing with suspicion as it unveiled the attractions of the body. Whole catalogues had been compiled of the sins that ensued when men and women were allowed to bathe together. Or even on their own, discovering their own bodies. Her time servicing clients had taught Lissa that they were right to do so; bathing was a tremendous aphrodisiac.

Or could be so.

There was nothing of the sensual here though, simply the bone-deep relief of being able to finally relax. Lissa could sense Hart’s tension and sense, too, as it ebbed out of him. She massaged his shoulders, his arms, being careful to avoid his wounds. Of which there were so, so many. She used a lavender oil, which was antiseptic.

The wound in his side frightened her, although it had been stitched together with a deft hand. And there was no sign of infection, at least that she could see. But still.

“I survived, because I was left for dead.” He sounded bitter.

“You survived.” She squeezed out the sponge again.

“Better men still lie beneath the ruins of that village. Men with wives, and children.”

“Now you might also have those things.”

“No.” And then, “I don’t see myself as a father.”

“I think you’d be a good one.” His expression became unreadable again but she forged on, regardless. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “You have the means to support a household. To see that your son had the opportunity to learn a trade, or your daughter to make a good marriage.” She dropped her gaze to the water. “You wouldn’t abandon them.”

“That’s little enough.”

“It’s more than most men can claim.”

For awhile, there was silence.

“You’re skilled at this.”

“I grew up on a farm.” Her lips curved into a soft smile as she remembered. The open spaces. The smells. The freedom. To finish her chores and then spend whatever remained of the afternoon lying amidst the wildflowers gazing up at the clouds. Drawing creatures from their shapes with her mind’s eye, as they moved across the sky.

“I helped a sow give birth once. I turned one of her babies.” Her smile grew sheepish. “I like pigs. They’re very smart, you know. Smarter than dogs.”

She felt his fingers in her hair, tucking an errant strand behind her ear. His touch was gentle. “Lissa,” he said, “look at me.” There was just the merest hint of command in his tone.

She forced herself to meet his gaze once again.

“How did you come to Barghast?”

“My father was a drunkard and we lost our farm.” There. It was out. “There was a merchant.” She paused, and drew a deep breath. “He agreed to accept my sister and I in exchange for my father’s debts. My sister stayed with him—the merchant—and I was sold to Marcus. Master Holm,” she corrected herself.

“How long?”

“I came to this inn when I was sixteen. I am now nineteen.” Seven years was the standard term. That meant four more years of this. That was, if Marcus let her leave.

She couldn’t prove her age. Her master kept her paperwork. She didn’t have access to it and, even if she did, she wouldn’t know what to do with it. She couldn’t read.

She returned her gaze to the water. She felt so ashamed. What must he think of her?

“My father was…undesirable also.”

She supposed he must have been. Had had the same thoughts about the man, herself. Even though she didn’t know his name. Someone must, perhaps up at the castle. But Hart moved in more rarified circles than she. In town, nothing was known about the duke’s dreaded captain save the reputation he’d built for himself since his arrival.

“You’re educated.” It seemed impossible that he could be so bad, if he’d given his son that gift.

“Yes. My father would never have stood for a son who wasn’t, even if he refused to recognize me as such.”

“You can read.” She was unable to keep the wistfulness out of her voice.

She’d seen him reading a dispatch, before.

“I can teach you, if you’d like.”

“Oh.”

“Lissa, what would you have wanted for yourself? If you could have chosen?”

Sitting down beside the tub, she drew her knees up to her chest. Her shift was thin, designed to allure rather than to keep her warm, but they were close enough to the fire that it didn’t matter. She considered her answer. It wasn’t a question that anyone had ever posed to her before. And not one that, truth be told, she’d allowed herself much to consider.

“Family. A home. Love.” She shrugged. “The same things everyone wants.”

“Little enough.”

To him, perhaps. She turned. “And you?”

His expression darkened. “Don’t ask me that.”

She felt a quick stab of fear. “I…I’m sorry.”

The storm was there and gone, although his habitual coldness remained. Reaching out, he stroked her with that same gentle touch. Gentle, but masterful. The touch of a man who knew what he was doing. In all things. “Don’t be.”

Still, she understood. That part of him was closed to her. Perhaps to everyone.

“Do you…enjoy it?”

She told him the truth. “Sometimes. Once in awhile a man comes in who’s handsome enough. Then it’s not so bad. But most of them are…not men I’d choose, on my own.”

“Did that creature who gave me his boots have a big cock?”

She made a pinching motion between her thumb and forefinger.

“Well that’s reassuring.”

Lissa couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing. And for a minute, the tension was gone.

“And me?”

“Yours is most heroic.”

“No. I mean, do I give you pleasure.”

The tension was back. She felt the blood suffuse her face. “Yes,” she whispered.

He stood, rivulets of water running over his taut flesh. She froze, uncertain of what was happening. He stepped out of the tub and, leaning down, picked her up as though she weighed no more than a stack of kindling. Heedless of the fact that he was naked, and wet. Heedless of the fact, too, that she was still coated in the dried sweat of another man.

He carried her over to the bed where he sat down, with her on his lap. He studied her, his expression searching. She’s never noticed, before, how green his eyes were. The color of fresh-cut grass. Skin the color of buttermilk, eyes like fresh-cut grass. Hair the color of ripened wheat. All the colors of the world she’d left behind.

“You have no reason to feel ashamed.”

She felt the tears threaten. This was all so different. And so strange.

“Your body might belong to others, but your soul is your own.”

The hot, incessant pricking coalesced into a pair of single tears, fat droplets of salt water that ran down her cheeks.

His lips met hers as her arms wrapped around him. She opened her mouth to his, letting him explore her. He tasted of wine, and cloves, and something that was just him. His touch grew less gentle, more demanding, as he molded her to him. His fingers dug into the back of her scalp, twining in her hair and pulling it from the roots. The comb she’d used to secure her hasty bun earlier fell out and clattered to the floor.

He was here. She still couldn’t believe that he was here. With her. In the flesh. That she was in his arms.

She didn’t know the first thing about him. Other than that he had a sculpted, flat stomach and a massive cock and the sight of his black-gloved fingers knotted her insides. He was a stranger to her, and a dangerous one. Like the viper for which he was named, he could strike without warning. And he, too, was famous for toying with his prey. Not killing it outright, as would a wolf or a bear but injecting it with venom and then following it for days as it sought, futilely, to escape. They might be able to outrun him, but they could never outrun his mark.

And now this snake was coiled around her, moving on top of her as he pushed her down onto the bed. She no longer cared about the dirty, stinking sheets or the fact that she herself was in dire need of a bath. She no longer cared about anything as his sheer presence overwhelmed her.