This will be fun, p.17
This Will Be Fun, page 17
“I thought you said you were a gentleman,” she hissed. “In case you were unaware, this is highly ungentlemanly behavior.”
His smile was lazy and one she hadn’t seen in years. Pure devastating delight, sliding over his face like Vesper oils into water. The warmth spreading through her whole body had nothing to do with the bath.
“Your stubbornness and ill temper have worn my chivalry down. I’ll redouble my efforts tomorrow,” he promised. He leaned forward. “When you’re fully dressed.”
His voice was no sweet-scented oil. It was rough, yet it lit up her skin like no sudsy confection ever could. Oh, the way his voice worked on her. Even when her outlook on matrimony was its most hopeful, Robert de Noughton’s polite inquiries into whether she would like to lay with him had done nothing for her desire.
Not like how Clare’s uncouth charm was currently raising her temperature even hotter. Thank the Ghosts her cheeks were already flushed from the bath.
“You’re here”—no matter the horror she tried to muster, her delivery only managed to sound hungry—“using my vulnerability to hold me hostage while you . . . what, convince me to go on your silly quest? Or did you merely wish for me to read to you?”
She held up her novel.
“Romancing the Warlock King is quite engaging, you know,” she informed him. “I was just getting to the action.”
The instant the words left her lips, she felt like she had when she’d spilled red wine on her favorite white slippers—may they rest in peace. Had she just flirted with him?
Yes, she decided. She was feeling reckless, and manipulative. Why should he, with his unannounced entries, have the upper hand? How much longing and lust could she compel him to reveal?
“I’ll admit, it’s an intriguing option,” Clare replied. His eyes said he was imagining the way the pages’ sultry words would sound in her mouth, and, oh, now so was she, and— “Perhaps I’ll join you in there.”
She held her head high, heart hammering. “What’s it to me? Be my guest.”
Now his jaw tightened. He paused, regarding her. War unfolded in his eyes, campaigns she watched from the protected ramparts of her heart. One man caught in furious combat with his own restraint.
“Careful, Beatrice,” he warned finally. His gaze held hers. “We could pretend we’re nothing to each other all the way to you beneath me in your sheets.”
She had no choice then except to dunk her head entirely underwater.
Vainly she hoped he would have gone when she emerged, leaving nothing except sunset smoke hanging in the empty room.
He had not, of course. He remained—though, she noticed, he’d exchanged his raw guile for rumination. He’d just run his hands through his hair, tousling his sun-colored locks. Impatience hummed in her. He had, she reminded herself, very much overstayed his welcome. “I’m not going on your quest,” she informed him, hoping the denial would usher him from the room.
“Did I bring up the quest?” He was playing innocent. It did not become him, she felt.
“Did you come here to reconcile with me?” she charged on vindictively. “Now? After what we did to each other? If that’s your purpose, you’d have better luck with the quest.”
She welcomed the excuse to invoke their shared hurt, inviting the memories into the room with them. What were more unwanted, undeniable guests? The pain met her like too-hot bathwater, distracting her from worse hurts.
Yet Clare did not rise to her sharp words.
Unnerving her, his expression turned serious.
“How did you know which stones opened the secret passageway today?” he asked.
His voice was not rough now. It was constricted, clenched with uncommon cold. The Four’s quest had sent them to the Far Northern Mountains, where they were warned of snowsnakes who choked their prey in embraces of ice. Clare sounded like he had one wrapped around his throat.
“I remembered,” she said, not following the change of subject.
Clare glanced down grimly.
“How often do you remember them?” His question was quiet, unlike she’d ever heard him. “How often do you return to . . . that day within your magic?”
Now she looked past him to the door. She could not meet Clare’s eyes, prying impossibly gently. Instead, she focused on the too-hot water, the purifying zeal of the pain. It made her honesty come easily.
“Every night,” she said.
In the corner of her gaze, she watched the revelation hit him, his frame weakening with the gut-punch confession. She did not care. She felt nothing. Feeling nothing was the only way not to feel everything.
“You can’t keep living in your past, love,” he replied. “Even with your powers.”
Love. It was pub-speak for affection. Like “reckon,” it was the sound of Clare speaking in his sincerest voice. His honest self.
It enraged her. The gentleness, the words of endearment, the care. How could he pretend he cared? He understood nothing of her guilt. Nothing of how, in holding on to her worst memory, she had found the only way she knew not to vanish into the darkness.
“You accuse me of living in the past?” she spat in retaliation. “You’re the one living as a hero for deeds done a decade ago. I tried to move on,” she reminded him. “I married. I made a life for myself. And for what? It all crashed down.”
She descended deeper into the water.
“The past is all I have,” she said. “It’s all we have.”
Clare shifted in his seat.
“If we go on this quest, it won’t be,” he replied.
He didn’t understand. He didn’t understand her. “We’re over, Clare. We never even really began,” she said.
He shook his head. “I don’t mean us—though we could have that conversation, if you want.”
Grasping onto the distraction, she welcomed its weight. “What is there to say? You slept with someone the day of the funeral—and you had every right to. We weren’t together. You made it clear to me the morning you first snuck out of my bed.”
Repeating what he’d done, how he’d wounded her, nearly left her gasping. Unlike memories of Galwell, the day of the funeral was one she never revisited. The novelty left the sting sharp, like a sword fresh from the weaponeer’s forge.
It had wrecked her when she found out he’d sought comfort in someone else’s arms the night of the funeral. How he’d discarded her when she needed him dearest.
Next to her now, he darkened. The emotion on him, replacing his shimmering charm, would never cease to startle her. Glowering, he looked like some sinister wraith wearing Clare Grandhart’s face. “I know my wrongs,” he replied. “I think about them every day of my life. What about yours?”
He paused. His voice was scathing, full of pain and loathing.
“You tried to sacrifice yourself,” he said.
She scoffed in reckless resistance. “Like you would have cared if I’d succeeded,” she challenged him, throwing her deepest fear into the room like a weapon aimed to kill.
Clare stood, furious. Before she could react, he was leaning over the tub, hands clasping the porcelain lip, knuckles white. Her heart pounding, she held his gaze. Daring him.
His eyes fixed on hers, he plunged his hand into the water.
When his fingers skimmed her thigh, she gasped. His touch continued up until he found—her hand. His grip clutched her urgently.
“Use your magic on me,” he insisted, not caring that he’d submerged his shirtsleeve. “Watch the worst moment of my life.”
“I—” She looked down. “I’ve seen Galwell’s death often enough.”
“A terrible day,” Clare intoned. “Not the one you’ll find, though.”
Heated water or not, chills chased over her skin. She could not mistake what he meant. Nevertheless, she scoffed again, determined to reject every demonstration of care he attempted. “Do you mean the day you slept with another woman?” she replied. “Or the day the scribesheets printed the gossip and I found out?”
He did not flinch from her invocation of what he’d done. Perhaps he really had reckoned with his wrongs.
“She was . . . irrelevant,” Clare said of the fling. No doubt noticing her reproach, he went on. “Yes, yes. Call me a rake for not caring for her. Ghosts know I’ve earned the description. But I didn’t sleep with her to hurt you.”
“Then why did you?” She hated the desperation in her own voice. Proof of how the question had been burning in her for ten years.
He met her eyes, and there was nothing sharp in his gaze. Only kindness and regret. “When you kissed me before the battle, I thought . . .” He swallowed. “I thought it meant something. I thought it was a promise that after we prevailed, you and I would finally be together.”
Beatrice felt suddenly cold in the warm water. She had never let herself relive that kiss, though even without her magic she could have recalled every detail. She’d held him back from the others, picked a silly fight over nothing just as an excuse to have him to herself, then she’d tugged his lips to hers in the midst of the argument.
He’d kissed her back, his hands cradling her face like she was something precious. The kiss was . . . everything she’d ever imagined, and she’d done some imagining. It overwhelmed her, confusing her senses. He’d smelled like the night sky. He’d tasted like music.
When she’d pulled away, he stared, his expression awestruck as she joined the others. It had given her the strength she needed to walk into battle. She would sacrifice herself knowing she’d had one last kiss with Clare Grandhart.
“I was wrong. It wasn’t a kiss promising more. It was a kiss goodbye,” he went on, softer. “The worst moment of my life was the funeral, when I found out what you had tried to do.”
It had been Elowen, with the carelessness of the wounded, wrathful from their fight, who revealed it to him.
“I realized then that we had nothing,” Clare continued. “I had been a fool, wanting something from you that you had never even considered. You weren’t imagining our future. You were doing the opposite, imagining the future you never expected to have. I realized . . . I had to get over you.” He looked down. “I got drunk. And for just minutes I used someone else to convince myself that I could.”
Her fury flickered. He had wounded her enough she could hardly contemplate listening to him. Yet . . . he wasn’t entirely wrong. She had made no promises to him, for she had expected to die. She had rejected the idea of a future with him in the deepest way she could. With Elowen’s revelation at the funeral, he knew it.
Fiercely, she remembered how she’d felt when she found out. Even if they owed each other no promises, dashed promises weren’t the only way to hurt someone, were they? Instead of holding on to her—helping her feel like he was glad she was still here—he’d run in the opposite direction. How could he not have understood the depth of her regret? “You should have stayed,” she said.
“I should have stayed?” he repeated, his voice incredulous. “You almost left me forever. Why do you care that I slept with someone else? If you’d succeeded, you would have consigned me to women who aren’t you for the rest of my life.”
How dare he, she fumed. While she’d struggled in mazes of memory, his vaunting had brought him fame and comfort. How dare he pretend she’d consigned him to anything?
“Well, I didn’t succeed,” she snapped. “And every gossip pamphlet I’ve seen over the years has shown me just how many other women you’ve suffered.”
“You were married!” he roared.
They stared at each other, chests heaving with anger. She had nothing more she could say. Neither of them did. They’d said everything. It couldn’t help. The past was the past.
He released her hand, understanding she would not use her magic. Withdrawing, he returned to the footstool. He looked empty, she found. Resolute in exhaustion, water soaking the rest of his shirt.
“This quest isn’t about us,” he said finally. “That’s not why you should do it. You relive Galwell’s death every day like there is a way to save him. There isn’t.”
She started to interject, reminding him no person in Mythria knew as keenly as her how Galwell was past protecting—
“But there is a way to save Hugh,” Clare went on.
The point quieted her. She could only gaze down, where, in the opaque lavender of the water, she found her own pained eyes staring up.
“I know what you’ve gone through,” he explained. “I’ve . . . wandered the same dark labyrinth myself.”
She shifted, not entirely understanding him. With her movement, her reflection rippled, her features in the lavender water disappearing into wobbling shapes of color. He did not seem to mean Galwell, from the unexpected confessional note in his voice. She wondered what he did mean. However, she did not wish to seem curious, so she did not reply.
Whether understanding her unspoken incomprehension or just lost now in his own recollection, Clare continued.
“I lost every friend I had in the Grimauld Mines,” he said. “Horrible, unimaginable deaths. Galwell hired me to be your guide because I was the only one to survive.” He sighed. “You know how it feels to have the honor of being the one to live when others did not.”
She’d known he’d lost friends in the mines, but she’d never considered how Clare had dealt with his own survivor’s guilt. It was odd, she reckoned, how she could meet someone, even start caring for him, without entirely understanding the closed scars he bore from past wounds she couldn’t see.
She had the sudden urge to cry. Knowing Clare understood what she’d endured . . . Was it the worst condemnation, or the greatest reprieve? She did not know.
“Galwell offered me enough farthings to make me rich,” he said. “And I . . . didn’t much care. Farthings could not purchase what I wanted—revenge.”
She had to look up now.
“I didn’t take Galwell’s job for the money, or because I was bored.” His gaze held hers. “I took it because I needed to rend the Orb Weavers limb from limb. I didn’t care if I survived. In fact,” he confessed, “I expected I wouldn’t.”
Her heart pounded. “But you did,” she whispered.
“I did,” Clare replied. “After I met you.”
Curses could sound like poetry, she reminded herself. Damnation like invitation. She forced herself to laugh. “Please,” she pressed him. “Don’t expect me to fall for that. You had no intention of ever seeing me again. You said so yourself,” she reminded him, recalling their confrontation with the outlaws of the forest.
Clare remained imperturbable. “I admit,” he said evenly, “it was my habit to not stick around with the women who welcomed me to their beds. I couldn’t. I was . . . too lost. I was lost when I met you, too, Beatrice. I thought I would die the next day. But I didn’t. And . . . I kept living.”
Beatrice could not reply. Not when his words revealed that what she’d done to him was exactly what he’d done to her. Kisses exchanged on the eve of destruction. He’d slept with her, expecting the Orb Weavers to eviscerate him. She’d pressed her lips to his, planning to sacrifice herself for the realm.
What right did he have to resent her, then? her mind stubbornly queried. Except he had plenty, she knew. Other than their self-sacrifices, their situations had been utterly different. Clare had no one except one-night stands when he’d sought his revenge on the Weavers. She had . . . friends. Family. Friends like family.
She had him.
I kept living, her relentless mind repeated his words. Her heart had made living feel like a punishment. How had he made the sentiment ring like a victory herald?
“With Galwell, with Elowen—with you—I came back to myself,” Clare went on. “I couldn’t save the friends I had already lost. But I could do everything I could to help save the ones I was starting to love.”
His words scared her. She was used to her grief, her guilt. They were her constant companions, along with the memories she could never forget.
What Clare was offering her was something far more dangerous. Hope. Hope that she might finally heal. Finally move on.
“What if I fail again?” Her voice was small.
“Then you’ll return home and continue living the way you are now,” he replied. “It’s not the question you should be asking and you know it.”
She hated how logical, how insightful, his words were. Clare Grandhart? Insightful? She wished they could joke on the subject. Instead, she could only confront the import of what he was saying. She did not know if she could handle the responsibility for a man’s life again, yet she knew she needed to change. What if . . . what if she succeeded?
Could she finally close her eyes without racking herself with memories of Galwell?
Even considering the notion required every mote of strength in her. It required straining muscles she’d let collapse in exhaustion.
She hardly recognized the flicker of fight she felt in them. Something, some reckless impulse, made her push, forcing herself. Imagining what she might do instead of just regretting what she’d done.
It was terrifying. Yet she could not forsake the possibility, she knew. If Clare’s improbable, damnable quest held even the faintest chance of delivering her peace, she would go. While she could never even the scales of life, restoring what she’d destroyed, if she had the chance to make the weight more manageable, she needed to chase it.
Decisively, she stood up, exposing her skin to the cool air and to Clare’s gaze. Every inch of her.
She needed to have the upper hand on him in order to tolerate her next words. “You’re right,” she admitted, reaching for the robe nearby.
At the full view of Beatrice, Clare sat stunned. His mouth dropped open.
“About which”—his eyes roamed over her nakedness—“which parts?”
“Everything,” she replied.
She wrapped herself in the robe. He lifted his gaze to hers.
“I’ll do it. I’ll save Hugh. Or try,” she said. “And this quest is not about us.”
17
Elowen
“I cannot do another quest,” Elowen said, pacing her bedchambers.
