Bound To You: Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
John
Resigned.
The heir to Holyrood.
The man who once took the oath to serve the Crown until his dying day.
As if I’ve been struck by an invisible fist, I sway backward on unstable legs. It’s only by the grace of soft, feminine hands that I remain standing upright. Blanche catches me, her fingers locking around my forearms, and for one blessed moment, I soak in the gravity of her touch. The warmth of her, the utter vibrancy of her soul. But just as clearly, I hear the wind howling through the open ruins of Holyrood Abbey as if those same gusts are barreling through my bones.
Most of all, I hear him.
Live your goddamn fairy tale life with your princess and your heirs and leave me the hell out of it.
Deep down, I knew that it wasn’t an idle threat.
Henry wanted distance.
He needed space to breathe and a chance to live far, far away from me. We ruined ourselves. Destroyed any chance of friendship the moment my lips touched his and I breathed in a corner of his soul to mark it as my own. I hate the distance he demanded, but I understand his need for it. I understand him. And every night that I’ve trekked across the palace grounds, I’ve renewed my vow to let him go. To abide by his wishes and set him free.
I owed him that.
Except now . . . now he’s gone so far as to—fucking hell.
At my low curse, Blanche fingers twitch around my arms, the gesture skittish and unsure. “John?” she asks, softly, when I gently urge her aside. “Who resigned from what? Is everything all—”
I strike without warning.
Matthews collides with one of the stone columns with a low grunt, his hands immediately trying to dislodge my grip on his shirt. “Your Highness,” he gasps, “please don’t—”
“No one resigns from Holyrood.”
He makes a choking sound, and I feel my nostrils flare. “That’s why you came to me with this,” I growl, shaking him, “isn’t it? You came to me because you know what’ll happen to him if he’s caught.”
“I don’t know anything!” The breathless words slip away on the howling wind. “I don’t know,” he reiterates, gripping my hand. “Xander Lancaster, he came in two days ago. Said that Godwin wouldn’t be making it up to Edinburgh for tonight. It didn’t—it didn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t he come when he was expected to perform the ceremony? And then—”
“Get to the fucking point.”
“I-I went to his flat the first chance I had.” Dark eyes flit away from me, scanning the abbey for any stragglers who might be eavesdropping. “He’s always been kind to me. Even convinced his old man that letting me attend university wouldn’t be a bad thing when that meant Holyrood would always have a surgeon on standby. Offered to pay for it all himself, even though I could foot the tuition myself.”
My eyes slam closed.
Beneath Henry’s stoic exterior beats the heart of a battle-worn warrior.
And yet, his calloused hands always find mercy and the steel in his green eyes softens, always, for those he tucks under his wings to shield from the storm. Holyrood sharpened that softness, and it took jagged knives to that mercy, in an attempt to harden him beyond redemption.
To make him ruthless.
In all ways that matter, Holyrood failed.
Despite the wind tearing through the ruins, I struggle to pull oxygen into my lungs. Holyrood is a law unto itself. Strict. Unforgiving. The Godwins have stood at the forefront since its inception, at the turn of the century, and there’s nothing that they value more than complete secrecy for an agency that operates in the shadowed periphery of society.
None shall leave.
The first rule of Holyrood that I remember Henry ever telling me, when I was just a lad of ten and barely old enough to understand the consequences. But now . . . Fucking hell, now it’s all I can do not to think of Henry being hunted by his own brothers-in-arms.
For leaving Holyrood means death.
Henry, what have you done?
Choking on a ragged breath, I sense Blanche behind me. Feel her hand on my lower back, silently ordering me to step away from Matthews and let the poor bloke regain his composure. But I’m stuck, frozen in place, as if through the miasma of touch, I can pull apart the man’s memories of stepping inside Henry’s flat and make them my own.
“What did you find?” I ask, my voice raw. “Was there anything—”
“He left a letter,” Matthews says, kicking his chin toward the ground. “I shouldn’t have taken it . . . It wasn’t—well, it wasn’t meant for me, obviously.”
I’ve turned away before he’s even finished talking.
Bending low, I snatch the paper off the ground and curse the sparse moonlight when I’m unable to make out Henry’s messily script. I cut a hard glance toward the young Holyrood agent. “What does it say?”
“It’s . . . it’s for his father.”
Oh, bloody hell.
“Let me try.”
My gaze snaps up to find Blanche standing just an arm’s length away. Her blond hair catches in the breeze, dancing and twining about her head like a wild, tangled crown. She looks beautiful. Ethereal, even, like some vengeful Valkyrie who’s swooped in to take lay of the land and conquer every hidden corner. This night was meant to belong to us, the final step in solidifying our marriage before the eyes of Holyrood, as has been done for nearly a century now. Except that her face is devoid of emotion and I feel guilt swinging at me like a heavy pendulum.
“Little wolf,” I breathe, but she cuts off my apology with a curt flick of her wrist toward Henry’s letter.
“Let me, John.”
I hand it over, knowing that we’ve crossed a line that can never be redrawn. Silently, I watch her lift the paper toward the sky, angling it just right so that the moon slants across Henry’s poor penmanship. Her mouth moves as she reads, forming words that don’t reach my ears, no matter how I strain to hear the soul of Henry on that page.
Finally, after what feels like eternity, she says, “He’s asked for his father to grant him a fortnight.”
A fortnight.
Two weeks, possibly less now, considering that he must have written that letter days ago.
“Who else knows about this?” I ask Matthews.
He rubs his throat, as if still feeling the sting of my grip. “No one.”
“No one?” I demand. “Are you certain?”
“Maybe Xander,” he adds, grimacing. “It’s possible, at least, considering that he’s the one that said Godwin wouldn’t be making it tonight. If he knew that, then it stands to reason that he went to Godwin’s flat before I did.”
“What will happen to him?”
Both Matthews and I stop cold, our attentions diverted to Blanche, who stands with her legs spread and her arms linked across her breasts, the letter folded crisply between two fingers. She doesn’t waver under our joint scrutiny, only tilts her head with a defiant edge that screams she will not yield.
Not anymore.
And certainly not to me.
“In the span of an hour,” she continues, her voice rough with obvious exhaustion and fury, “I have been forced down to my knees and bled, all while understanding absolutely nothing about what in the bloody hell is even going on.”
“Blanche,” I start, taking a single step in her direction before her hand flies up to halt me in my tracks.
“No,” she growls, jabbing the letter in my direction. “You’ve kept me in the dark long enough, John. Now answer my question. What will happen to him—this Godwin—if he’s caught?”
“He . . .” Matthews trails off, as if the thought alone is enough to render him mute. Shaking his head, he stuffs his hands inside his pockets and slants his gaze down to the ground.
Amber eyes hold me captive. “Tell me.”
My hand finds my heart, the gesture completely instinctual—and my wife misses nothing. Her teeth sink into her bottom lip and though society dictates that she make eye contact while I speak, she never tears her gaze away from the way I rub my palm in small circles, as if I can ease the growing ache that’s spreading like toxin.
Softly, so softly that I can barely hear myself, I give her the answer she seeks: “He’ll be killed.”
She doesn’t gasp.
Nor does she even make a single sound of distress.
Instead, she knocks me right on my ass with a hushed, “He’s trying to escape his gilded cage, isn’t he.”
It’s not a question.
It doesn’t need to be, because she reads the truth in the jerk of my limbs that I can’t hide. Swallowing roughly, I drop my hand from my chest to ball into a tight fist at my side. “Holyrood protects us, but there are . . . when it was created, there were rules put in place—jurisdictions, if you will, that the Crown was not allowed to interfere with. How the head of Holyrood deals with traitors is one of those jurisdictions.”
Blanche’s lips part in dismay. “But if he’s resigning—”
“Once we take the oath,” Matthews says, “that’s it. Godwin isn’t . . . He won’t be allowed to leave, Princess, and he knows it.”
“So, he’s asked for a two-week head start? A chance to live, briefly, when his only option is to die?” Sliding the letter open, she stares down at the paper. “Why would anyone stay if they’ve been made to feel like they’re stuck? How is that fair?”
Life is never fair.
We live and still we mourn the dreams that come to us that we’re never allowed to grasp with both hands. We die, shells of the men and women we were as children who saw opportunity around every corner.
“I made the choice to join,” Matthews says, as if he feels the need to defend the organization that has given him the chance to see the world at large while protecting the Crown. “It’s not a cage when you’ve opened the door and stepped inside on your own.”
“But did he choose it?” She waves the letter with angry flourish. “You said that his father is the head of Holyrood, so did he—did Godwin—have a choice when it came to belonging to—”
“No.”
Her gaze flickers to where I stand. “He never had a choice, not when he was born to it and began training when he was just a lad. And not when he was sixteen—barely old enough to tackle the world on his own—and was told that every dream he had, every hope, would be put aside to see me safe.” I inhale sharply. “He was my shadow.”
And he’d become so much more.
My friend.
The brother I never had.
The man who’d wrangled my wild soul with kindness and taught me mercy when he’d been born to know only violence and stealth.
I turn to Matthews. “You’ll take the letter back to Henry’s flat.”
“Why in the world would I do—”
“Because,” I grunt, motioning for Blanche to hand it over, “it’s only a matter of time before someone else goes over there and pokes around. They’ll sweep the place, Nathaniel, and you don’t want to risk any chance of this somehow coming back on you.”
“But I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“You confiscated evidence,” I say. “You ran to me with this information instead of Godwin Senior. No matter how you spin it, it won’t look good for you. So long as the letter is back where you found it, you can claim that you never saw it all.”
He skims his palm over his head. “I don’t like this, you know.”
“It’s not your fault that you don’t have a single deceitful bone in your body.”
“Is that meant to make me laugh?”
“It’s meant to shut you up long enough to take the damned letter and go back to London before anyone thinks that you’ve gone missing too.”
A grin tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Godwin said that you had a sense of humor. Suppose I figured that since you’re a prince and all, laughter is beneath you.”
Fighting the urge to roll my eyes, just like Blanche did, I watch as the aspiring doctor takes the letter from my wife’s hand with a half-bow. We stay quiet until his footsteps have faded to silence, and all that’s left is the battering wind to keep us company.
The air is strained with a tension that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with simmering distrust.
I plow my fingers through my hair, thinking of all the ways I wish this night had gone differently. How if I had just stopped in the courtyard, when I’d first felt the hair on the back of my neck stand tall with awareness, I could have erased the tired lines bracketing her full mouth. If I could turn back the clock, I would shirk Holyrood’s traditions and walk my wife, hand in hand, into the abbey.
The nightmare would disappear.
The fear would disintegrate.
And all that would be left is a troth that would bind us today, tomorrow, and until Ever After knocks on our door to claim us both.
“Blanche . . .” My fingers flex with unease. “I want you to know that I’m sorry. I broke your trust tonight, and I shouldn’t have let—”
“Is it him?”
I blink.
Feel my heart give an extra thump against my ribcage because she’s staring at me in a way that turns my unease into something that feels entirely foreign. Panic. Dread. Exhilaration that stems from a rush of adrenaline that makes me feel queasy. Dragging my teeth across my bottom lip, I shake my head. “I don’t understand what you—”
“I’m only going to ask you this once, John.”
Amber eyes burrow into my soul, plucking at the threads of emotion until I’m breathing, hard. My wife doesn’t take mercy on me. Her fingers catch the wild strands of blond hair to fist against her collarbone, and I suspect she’s about to do the same thing to me.
Take hold of me.
Bend me to her will.
Bring me to my knees.
“Little wolf,” I rasp, “don’t do this.”
She won’t be deterred.
One step narrows the distance between us.
Two more has my spine colliding with the same stone column that I shoved Matthews against. Karma must be swift tonight because my wife fists my shirt, just as I did with Nathaniel’s, and she drags me down until we’re nose to nose.
Heart to heart.
Bare, bleeding, and broken though it is.
“Before we married, I asked you if you loved another.” Her lips graze my chin, the weight of her breasts teasing my chest before she shifts upward so that she can look me dead in the eye while she carves out my soul. “You didn’t give me an answer, not really. So I’m going to ask you the same question now, and if you don’t . . . if you don’t give me an answer, I’ll walk away for good. And I promise you that I will never look back.”
My hands find the curve of her waist.
Hers find my shoulders.
“Ask me,” I utter softly.
The wind shrieks between us, an angry mistress that cuts through the fabric of my clothes and leaves me bare and shaken. Blanche shivers, but whether it’s from the chill or nerves I’ll never know for she opens her mouth, then, and strips me down: “Is it him that you love?”
She doesn’t need to say his name.
A man she’s met just once, at our wedding, and the same man who signed his own death warrant to escape my hold on him. A man, I realize mutely, that I’ll chase through the foothills of Hell, if need be, just to make sure that he stays free of Holyrood.
I meet my wife’s gaze, and let my answer join the gust of wind that billows between us:
“Yes.”
It’s him.
___________
Ahhh who else is screaming right along with me right now? I can’t even handle all the emotion and let me just say, the ride is not over yet!
I can’t WAIT to share Chapters 19 & 20 with you in two weeks, so buckle up and drop your theories below. Or pop them into BBA with a spoiler alert note at the top of the post!