Page 27 of The Consort's Curse
Stefan growled, “The hell I will. I’m not leaving.”
“Yes, you are. Actually, Lord Remi. Your choice. Do you want your husband here while we discuss what’s happened to you tonight? We’ll do whatever will put you more at your ease.” At my ease? Ha! He smiled as I let out a pathetic, watery chuckle, the closest I could come to amusement at the present. “I know better than anyone that this isn’t easy, Lord Remi. I promise, I do, from experience. And Stefan won’t hold it against you if you have me throw him out.” He turned to Stefan and raised an eyebrow. “Will you?”
“Of course not, but that doesn’t mean I want to leave you alone with him!”
Lord Benedict’s glare could’ve peeled paint off a wall, but Stefan’s matched it. “All right,” Lord Benedict said, and his mild tone held far more danger than a sharp one would’ve. “I’ll take you to see Lucian, shall I? And you can look him in the eye and explain what danger, precisely, you think I pose to your lovely young consort.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Ben,” Stefan said, and ran a hand over his face. “I know you wouldn’t—that’s not why. He’s the one who doesn’t know you.”
Ben? He could summon the Lord Consort peremptorily in the middle of the night to attend to my health, and he called himBen? Not for the first time, and almost certainly not for the last…who the bloody hell had I married?
Too addled by the appearance of yet another mystery to add to the list of what I didn’t understand about my husband, and addled even more by the very attractive Lord Benedict’s use of the word “lovely,” I didn’t think before saying my first thought aloud. “I don’t really know you, either,” I told Stefan. “So it’s not as if your staying makes any difference.”
“I can go in the next room,” Stefan said stiffly, and I watched in fascination as a dark red flush rose up his neck.Anger? Embarrassment? “Of course I won’t blame you for wanting me gone.”
I had no idea what to say to that.
“Don’t be so touchy, Stefan,” Lord Benedict put in after a moment, with a roll of his eyes. “He’s always been given to amateur dramatics, Lord Remi. He carries a quizzing glass, by all that’s holy.” Stefan muttered something under his breath about people who wore one earring and still felt entitled to criticize the choices of others, and Lord Benedict flashed a grin. “Ignore him. You’re safe with me and my magic, you have my word. But he might as well stay if you’ve no objection, so that we won’t need to repeat ourselves later.”
I glanced over at Stefan and found him staring at me again, jaw set tight, so intent on me that it sent a little shiver skittering down my back.
“He can stay,” I whispered, and Stefan nodded jerkily and turned away, going to the fireplace and leaning on the mantel, gazing down at the hearth. Or hiding his expression from me, anyway.
“Very well,” Lord Benedict said, and drew a deep breath. His eyes went unfocused and distant, and he sketched his hand through the air. And something shifted, something incredibly subtle, making me shake my head to clear it.
After a moment, I realized I couldn’t hear anything from outside the room. A moment ago, a breeze had been rustling through the vines hanging down over my balcony, and a wagon or a carriage had been passing out on the street, the clopping and rattling echoing up to my window. And those sounds had vanished instantly.
“I don’t think anyone outside this room should hear our conversation,” he said with a shrug.
I gazed at him in wonder I couldn’t conceal. All of the mages I’d ever met were twilight mages who suppressed theirmagic, and to see one use his so readily, so skillfully, so casually…
He went on with, “Did anyone, like your very informative valet, happen to tell you that I’m a dusk mage myself? Or that I was poisoned and nearly murdered a few months ago?”
“Ben, you shouldn’t,” Stefan said heavily. “You know why he’s here.”
Why I was here? Shouldn’t what?
Before I could ask, Lord Benedict shot back, “Yes, I know he’s here because your father brought him here and probably expects him to report on you, but Zettine already knows what happened to me, and it’s my decision to tell Lord Remi my business, in any case.” Lord Benedict quirked a smile at me as I gaped up at him, frozen in horror as his meaning penetrated the haze in my sluggish mind. “Zettine is hoping you’ll spy for him, isn’t he? That’s not a hard conclusion to come to, either.”
His tone held only the faintest mockery as he repeated my words back to me, but it was enough to have my cheeks burning with shame and confusion. And my stomach churning anew with fear. Aldrich had mentioned, in the offhand way of someone imparting information that everyone already knew, that Lord Benedict and my father-in-law weren’t the best of friends. But Stefan and Lord Benedict obviously were. What would this immensely powerful man do to someone who’d been placed in Stefan’s household to manipulate him on behalf of one of his enemies?
“You’re frightening him.” Stefan had taken a step toward the bed, and the look on his face frightened me even more. He couldn’t possibly be defending me! “He almost died tonight. You don’t need to give him state secrets, but lay off a bit, will you?”
Gods. Hewas. His eyes flicked to me and caught mine. The impact of that momentary connection shot down into thecore of me, my heart giving an unsteady lurch. And then he looked back at Lord Benedict and I could breathe again.
“I’m not laying on,” Lord Benedict said, surprisingly mildly for a man of his authority who’d been spoken to so sharply. “I’m simply acknowledging the reality we’re all aware of already. You didn’t want to marry Lord Remi.” He turned back to me. “And Stefan told me that earlier tonight you said you’d been forced into this.”
Earlier tonight…oh, Ennolu’s mercy. I’d been already in the grips of my curse, my self-control fraying in all directions, and I barely remembered what I’d said. But now that he reminded me, Ihad. I’d told him straight-out that Lord Ettori had forced me to marry him, and I had a hazy recollection of saying that I wanted to go back to the abbey.
Precisely what Lord Ettori had warned me not to say. My fingers curled into the blanket like claws.
Lord Benedict sighed. “You might as well tell us, and speak freely. Whatever you’re afraid of, and you’re obviously afraid. Of the three people in this room, I suspect you actually dislike him the least.”
My heart pounded crazily, trying to beat its way through my ribs. Ennolu’s mercy, could I really risk it? Trust them? After the way Stefan had accused me and hectored me and told me he’d rather fuck a venomous snake? And now that I’d given myself away and lost any chance of lying convincingly to Stefan about my motives, did I even have a choice? He already knew. Now it was simply a matter of whether he’d help me lie to his father, or not. If he chose to tell Lord Ettori what I’d revealed, then Fina would be doomed…unless he and Lord Benedict, one of the only men capable of contravening Lord Ettori’s plans, stepped in.
Would Lord Benedict’s hatred for Lord Ettori outweigh his fear of a possible plot against his husband, Duke Lucian? I didn’t know him well enough to even guess.
But I couldn’t read anything but sincerity in Lord Benedict’s gray eyes, although he probably wouldn’t let me see anything he didn’t want me to.
