The Black Prince: Part I (24 page)

He might still marry, but it would be at the duke’s behest; to serve him, and the kingdom. Love and marriage were two entirely separate things, as his own conception had surely proved. And was Hart even capable of true love? He didn’t know.

He’d surely never felt anything approaching the single-minded devotion that Isla seemed to feel for her lord. He truly was pleased for her, though. Isla, above all others, deserved joy. She’d given so much to others, throughout her life, and received so little in return.

Lissa had asked, why her? And the truth was, Hart couldn’t have said. When he examined his own thoughts, as he had often since that first night, his only answer was that something had struck him. Like a thunderbolt. The feel of her skin, how she trembled. That first shy, darting smile. All were seared into his memory. Her only life had been as a servant and then, as a vessel for other men’s pleasure. And yet she was still so innocent. So pure. He wanted, needed something of that for himself. Needed to guard it. To protect it. Or so he told himself. In truth, he wanted to hoard it for his own. Jealously, like a dragon lying atop its treasure pile.

In her presence, he felt…almost whole again.

He knew that he was stealing it from her and he didn’t care. He knew, too, even if she didn’t, that other men would come along. Men who could, and would offer marriage. A real life. Not all the ladies at court had begun life as ladies.

It wasn’t—couldn’t be—love. He barely knew her. And yet he’d meant what he’d said, that he wouldn’t abandon her. If only for his own selfish reasons. A man who’d truly loved her would have left her alone, to seek her fortunes among the worthy. Not preyed upon a self-loathing he recognized, because it sang out to those same feelings in himself.

It takes one to know one
was one of Apple’s favorite phrases. Apple, whom he’d bedded under his father’s nose more times than he could count. He could only say in his defense that she’d sought him out and not the other way around. She was nothing to him but a warm cunt, and an opportunity for revenge. He didn’t even find her attractive.

He’d fucked her near the time of Isla’s wedding and again in the mountains, because she was there and because she’d begged him to. Her begging, more than her failing charms, had been the aphrodisiac. She’d come; her muscles had tightened around him in a way they didn’t when a woman was putting on a show. And he’d been simultaneously thrilled and revolted.

What was he doing?

Who was he?

These days, he was a stranger even to himself.

Callas was right on another score, too: he didn’t need marriage to have a woman.

If he died in battle, as Bjorn had, as he probably would, he’d still end up inflicting the same tortures on Lissa as if they had married. He knew that. But there wouldn’t be the same expectation. With him, she could retain a certain independence. Open her own shop, if she wanted. Save her own money. Life as she chose, within reason. As her benefactor, he expected certain rights. And loyalties. All of which he believed she understood, without their being spelled out. But other than that….

He wondered if choosing this path made him like his father. Although his rational mind knew, on some level, that it did not. Unlike his father, he’d acknowledge his children. All of them. Because he wasn’t weak. And because he’d chosen to live in the North, where such was expected. A man’s seed gained no magical powers through marriage.

Hart thought idly of Father Justin, and this time his lips curved into a true smile.

In the North, free from the corrupting influence of creatures like the now deceased priest, children were merely a fact of life.

In the South, the commission of sexual sin, as it was known, was considered equal to that of murder. Sexual sin or, in other words, doing the exact same thing in the exact same place and in some cases with the exact same person but without the virtual presence of a man like Father Justin sharing in the fun. And they’d called him idiot, back home.

Hart enjoyed the traditional pose, which was all that the church technically allowed, but he also enjoyed exploring a woman’s mouth as well as her third orifice, the last particularly because there was no possibility whatsoever of her conceiving a child and because, too, most women, while they might protest a little at first, came to crave the sensation. Like all sex, it was only pleasurable if it was done right. Many women, in the North too although mostly from the South, had been under the mistaken impression before they met him that they didn’t enjoy sex. Merely because they’d never been with a man capable of giving them pleasure.

Hart had been told, his whole life, that he was a sinner and that his existence in and of itself was indeed a sin. That, regardless of whether he lived out his days in an abbey, praying and doing penance for the souls of others, there was still no hope for his resurrection. Because he’d been born in sin. So why not enjoy himself why he could?

From a louche to a demon wasn’t that much of a transformation; he’d always embraced the dark side. All that had changed was that the dark had gotten a little darker. But he’d always, since he was a child, lived an existence without hope.

Which, ironically, was why he’d always been so willing to help others.

He, for the most part, viewed their circumstances without judgment. In his previous life, he’d brought more than one girl to Cariad for pennyroyal and tansy. Not girls he’d impregnated but girls he knew as friends. Girls desperate that no one find out they weren’t to be virgins on their wedding nights or their families would turn them out. Or worse.

Girls whose betrotheds would leave them, even if those betrotheds were the cause of the problem.

The whole idea made Hart sick.

Yet he was the sinner.

He knew, too, that that was why he’d been so immediately drawn to Tristan: the duke was a like soul and Tristan, too, had understood what simmered underneath Hart’s façade. When Tristan had offered Hart a position in his household, there had truly never been a doubt that Hart would accept. Hart might have lied to himself, for awhile, but his true path had ever been mapped out for him.

Ignoring the cold, which numbed his fingers and toes and damn near stopped his heart when the wind gusted even through his layers of wool and leather, he turned his thoughts back to Lissa.

He in his shirt, vest and trousers and she in his cloak, they’d gone downstairs to speak to the innkeeper. That pasty, bloated maggot of a man was taking his ease at the kitchen table. A broad, scarred slab of a thing where he had most assuredly never labored.

And Lissa defended this man?

Then again, as his thrall, she hadn’t much of a choice. She had to think well of him, and convince him to think well of her, if she wanted to survive life under his roof with the minimum of pain. Or survive at all.

Marcus, who, on further reflection, reminded Hart not so much of a maggot as a toad, had pretended reticence at first. A fat, blinking toad. Harmless enough, when one considered its existence rationally, and yet obscurely terrifying.

Lissa had been frightened. As time and circumstance had trained her to be. Hart had not been. He’d been annoyed. But when he’d suggested that instead of coins, Marcus could accept his own balls in the purse he was offering, Marcus had reconsidered his point of view. Hart had demanded paperwork. Marcus had demurred, claiming there wasn’t any. Which meant either that he was a fool for not keeping it or an even bigger fool for lying to Hart. And imagining—what? That he could wait until Hart’s back was turned and spirit Lissa back to the inn?

Hart had made his knife appear, reminding Marcus that he had it, and made it disappear within the space of seconds. And then acted like nothing had happened. When Marcus had raised frightened eyes to his, Hart had smiled.

Hart had suggested drawing up a new contract.

Marcus had agreed.

Lissa had watched in awed silence as he dipped the quill in ink and applied it to the cheap paper. Most paper was made from rotted rags, and smelled like it; this paper had smelled like, after the rags were rotted, a thousand goats had pissed into the vat. The contract he wrote was simple, as much from an urge to roll up the paper and secrete it as far away from his nose as possible as from an urge to leave the inn. Even so, he’d had about enough of this place and wanted to go home. He hadn’t slept properly in days.

Marcus signed his name in an unsteady hand and then Hart signed his in a great, sweeping flourish. He produced a long, thin stick from an inside pocket and used the candle on the kitchen table to heat it. A mix of beeswax and dragon’s blood resin, it had been dyed a deep emerald that glittered as it melted. A drop fell, causing the candle to flare, and everyone jumped. Everyone except Hart.

The slack-jawed thing that Hart presumed was the innkeeper’s wife made the sign against evil.

Pressing the tip of the stick into the paper he swiped on a large daub of wax and then, curling his hand into a fist, pressed the first knuckle of his little finger into it. He counted to five before pulling free, leaving a perfect impression of his personal seal in the wax. The signet ring had been a gift from Isla, and he treasured it.

The right to use a personal seal had been a gift from the duke.

And then he and Lissa had left the inn together.

He’d put her up at a different inn, one run by a former guardsman, before taking his leave. He’d been too tired to do more than promise to return. Which he would, as soon as he got some sleep. If nothing else, he had to return to the city soon to file her paperwork. The appropriate offices had been, rather obviously, closed.

His choice of establishment meant that Marcus wouldn’t get far if he did try something. Although he might lose those balls after all. What balls there were to lose.

It wasn’t pimping, precisely, to which Hart objected. It was the fact that this ungenerous toad of a man had somehow managed to convince Lissa—and most likely his other girls, too—that he was some kind of benefactor. That he was doing them some kind of favor, collectively, by not killing them. Had any of them any idea what fortunes they’d made for him? Men flocked to that inn night and day, men and, on occasion, women too and it wasn’t for that dried up bint’s mutton stew.

But Lissa was his now, his to protect and cherish and direct as he liked. His, and no one else’s. The one thing, perhaps, that truly was his.

Which, he supposed, was the true reason he hadn’t taken her home with him.

Married or no, he could still share his room with a woman. But then other men would see her and just the idea of their eyes raking her flesh, of them smiling and her smiling in return was unbearable. She wasn’t theirs, not even to chat with at dinner.

And he didn’t want her…exposed, to what he really was.

She might think she understood, but she didn’t.

And so he’d keep her, where he chose to keep her, and cherish her after his own fashion.

There would be one part of his life that would remain pure.

H
alf an hour later, he walked into a madhouse.

His rooms were in the same main keep as Isla’s and Tristan’s. He’d accepted them to be near Isla. To guard her. After the guards passed him through the iron-banded door, he’d stalked down the corridor and through the great hall, where servants still slept on benches. It wouldn’t be full light yet for another hour. His plan had been to enter the family’s private quarters through the small living room, where Tristan kept his collection of oddities.

Small for Caer Addanc.

Up the stairs and left down the hall was the quickest route to his bed. Which he’d anticipated meeting in short order; he hadn’t expected anyone to be up, except perhaps Tristan. He’d expected to arrive at his destination unmolested, and sleep for a week.

So he could only stare in stupefied silence at a room full of people, Rowena holding court over all.

The fire was roaring. The candle stands blazed. The room was near as light as day and it contained, at that moment, almost everyone he knew.

Rowena strode back and forth, declaiming like a minstrel’s barker. Apple, seated, alternately drank and shouted back at her. Isla, pale faced, said nothing. Her eyes were red rimmed, like she’d been crying. Tristan stood behind her, one clawed hand resting protectively on her shoulder. His expression was inscrutable.

Callas was there too, and looked like he’d like to throttle Rowena. Well, he was welcome to. Unlike Isla, Hart had never had much use for her. Her only point had been to marry Rudolph and perhaps bring some stability to the manor, but it looked like even that wasn’t happening. Which appeared to be the point of Rowena’s tantrum.

As usual, she was blaming the wrong person.

Thrust into the middle of a fight that appeared to have gone on for hours, it took Hart a few minutes to grasp the nature of the problem. Because no one was discussing it. No one appeared to care about it at all.

“I demand that we leave
now
. I want to get married and I—”

“Rowena,” Apple bellowed, “this is hardly appropriate!”

Apple was slurring her words. Callas rolled his eyes. Tristan’s eyes met Hart’s and he nodded fractionally. Hart returned the gesture. No one else appeared to notice that he’d arrived. He sat down next to Isla, who was staring into space. She
had
been crying. Still, it might be his imagination but she looked a bit healthier. Less like she might blow over in a strong wind. She turned her head slightly, pressed her lips into a small smile, but said nothing. Soon she was back to staring into space.