Bound To You: Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

John

Blanche stays silent while the men of Holyrood slip away from the abbey to melt into the darkness. She stands with her hands clasped before her, the newly injured one pressed to her lower diaphragm as if she seeks to protect it—and herself—from further harm.

            It’s Holyrood’s way, I want to tell her.

            They’ll give their life for yours now.

            Instead, I keep my mouth shut while the remaining agents take their leave. A few of the newer blokes spare me cursory glances—and I don’t miss the way Henry’s new recruit, Robert Guthram, shuffles them out of the abbey and toward the dirt-lined paths that wind back into town. He never once looks back to check on me, as Henry would have if he were here.

            Then again, if Henry were here, tonight would have been a different beast entirely.

            As if to prove my point, one of the older agents stops in front of me. Moonlight gleams off his bald head, his gaze straying south of my throat. His wrinkled hand reaches for mine while he drops one knee to the pebbled ground. “Your Highness,” he murmurs.

            Like my sliced-open palm, reverence bleeds from the man’s tone.

            The urge to run from such bone-deep devotion tangles in my gut.

            I ought to let him take my hand and thank him for his service. For the oath that he took, years ago, and continues to fulfill even when his limbs are gnarled with age. Only, I can’t help but stare at his palm the same way I would a snake offering to slither its scaled body around my own.

            We bow to our chosen god.

            We bow to loved ones, those bound by blood and those by choice.

            But seeing this man kneel before me—a man like any other aside from the crown on my head and the throne under my ass—carries a depth of power that feels . . . wrong. Like an abuse of authority when he’s already served an entire lifetime to keep my family at the top of the food chain.

            If anyone should be putting their knee to the soil and lowering their head in gratitude, it ought to be me.

            “Your Highness?” His tone is uncertain, wavering in a way that it didn’t the first time. Stepping into the role I was born to, I put aside my misgivings and let him press his mouth to the ruby signet ring that sits on my fourth finger. I smile and squeeze his shoulder, as my father would do, and don’t let myself look at the woman standing to my right. If I turn and meet those warm, amber eyes, I’ll say to hell with it all.

            A toxic cocktail of grief and guilt has kept me away for too many days.

            Nathaniel Matthews is the last to visit, but he doesn’t take my hand and he doesn’t make a point of crooning over me like I’m the second coming of Christ. Instead, he reaches for Blanche’s wrist and gently lifts her right hand into a stream of moonlight. In his posh Mayfair accent, he says, “I tried not to cut too deep.”

            Blanche blinks. “I don’t—”

            “He’s a doctor,” I tell her, reading the confusion on her face. “At least, he’s attending university to become one. We’ll see if his hard work pays off by the time his professors are through with him.”

            A flash of white gleams in Matthews’ dark face, a smile so fleeting that it’s there and gone again before it can truly take shape. “It’ll pay off when one of these idiots loses a limb and comes around begging for me to sew him back together again, good as new.” Bowing his head to get a better look, he turns Blanche’s hand over to inspect her cut from the blade. “The palm is a fragile thing—a nick too deep and you’ll lose all sensation.”

            “Then why do it?” she demands.

            “The moon follows the sun, doesn’t it?”

            “Is that what they’re teaching at university these days?” Her eyes roll. “I’m pretty sure Copernicus is turning over in his grave as we speak.”

            Amusement deepens Matthews’ grin. “Not one for metaphors, are you, Princess?”

            “Metaphors are pretty but deceptive, just like the fairy tales we’re told as children.” Pulling back, she tucks the wrappings back into place. “I prefer reality. Case in point: calling the loo a powder room doesn’t make it smell any less foul.”

            “Touché.” Matthews sinks his hands into his trouser pockets. Clearly trying to disguise a smile, he adds, “Humor me, then. We’re bound to protect the royal family from birth until death. Which means, in a roundabout way, that we’re destined to follow the sun wherever it leads. And since we exist in the shadows . . .”

            “Scientifically speaking, wouldn’t that make you Pluto?”

            Matthews blinks. “Why would we be Pluto?”

            “It’s the last in line of the nine planets,” she returns swiftly, her gaze bouncing to me for half a beat before returning to Matthews, “and it gets little to no sun. Just enough to light a corridor, and only for a handful of minutes every day at noon. Hence, your shadow analogy.”

            “Why do you know so much about Pluto?”

            Blanche narrows her eyes. “Why do you pretend to care about my hand when you took such joy in cornering me like a lamb to the slaughter?”

            At the helpless glance Matthews slings my way, I can only grin. She’s quick-witted, my wife. And clearly more brilliant than she’s already let on—which is saying something because no ordinary person can do what she can with investments and profits. Aside from Henry, I don’t know any other civilian who can rattle off data and facts about outer space as she just did.

            Before I can get a word in, she jumps back into the fray. “Say we go along with this lackluster metaphor—”

            “I wouldn’t call it lackluster,” Matthews grunts.

            “—of yours. If you’re the moon and the royal family is the sun, that would make me . . . what?”

            “Earth,” he answers with a shrug. “Mercury, Venus. Take your pick. From what I understand of marriage, you’re doomed to chase Prince John for the rest of his natural life. Perhaps even from beyond the grave, if misfortune strikes.”

            “Matthews,” I utter, voice low, “that’s enough.”

            Dark eyes immediately flicker to me. “My apologies, Princess. I didn’t . . .” He clears his throat awkwardly. “What I meant to say is, it wasn’t my intention to imply that you won’t live longer than your husband. The likelihood of that happening, actually, is rather slim. According to many studies, men are more likely to die—”

            “Enough, Nathaniel.”

            Matthews skates his palm over his short afro while the sound of his Adam’s apple bobbing ricochets through our little corner of the abbey. It doesn’t go unnoticed. Blanche’s expression softens, and she surprises us both by tipping back her head and letting loose a free-spirited laugh.

            Stunning.

            With hair shimmering like beams of pale moonlight down her back, she tucks the strands behind one ear and offers Matthews a bold grin. “Didn’t you know?” Leaning in conspiratorially, her gaze lands on me while she beckons the young spy closer with a flick of her fingers. “I’m married to a vampire,” she mock-whispers. “He comes and goes at all hours of the night, never telling anyone of his midnight adventures. I’d think he’s off sucking blood from little old ladies, but I know from experience that he prefers the taste of wolves instead.”

            It’s a double entendre if I’ve ever heard one.

            An innuendo that stiffens my cock at the carnal memory of licking scotch from her sweet cunt, of the way she trembled in my arms and dug her fingernails into my spine to pull me closer and hang on tight.

            I swallow, roughly, and keep my attention rooted in the present . . . and on the clear-as-day resentment lingering at the corner of her mouth.

            There’s no doubt in my mind that the moment Matthews walks away, the gloves will come off and it’ll be my blood she sucks dry. She hasn’t forgiven me for disappearing, night after night. Truth be told, she shouldn’t forgive me at all. I sensed her following me from Holyroodhouse and I heard her startled cry just before Guthram carted her off to the abbey. Tradition or not, I let my wife believe that she was being kidnapped. Whatever penance I owe her for that deception, I’ll gladly pay it tenfold.

            With a tilt of her chin, the moonlight exposes her amber eyes glistening with challenge.

            Tell me I’m wrong for caring, that look says.

            Or maybe it says nothing of the kind.

            Maybe I’m painting her with brushstrokes of affection after spying her silhouette framed in her bedroom window. She’d stood with one palm pressed to the beveled glass, her expression lost to shadow and cloudless skies. But I’d felt her uncertainty; then spotted her frustration as she twisted away from the beveled glass to disappear into her bedroom. To my surprise, she’d returned the next night, and the next, all while looking like a haunted soul standing at the edge of a cliff, her gaze forever locked on the sea.

            Like a woman who knows her mate is dead, Blanche didn’t expect my return.

            I hate how close I’ve come to turning her doubts into reality.

            Before I drop to my knees and beg her forgiveness, I tear my gaze away from her face and turn to Matthews. “Did you need something before heading back to London?”

            He spares Blanche a surreptitious glance before facing me completely. His lips compress into a grim line. Then, “It’s about Godwin—the younger, I mean. Not his father.”

            My entire body turns to stone.

            If he notices my preternaturally stillness, Matthews doesn’t mention it out loud. Instead, he snags a piece of paper from his pocket and holds it out for me to take, his brows furrowing with worry. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Your Highness, but—”

            “Just spit it out, man.”

            “Godwin resigned.”

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