Then she froze, staring.
It was a life-size portrait of a boy. A beautiful, golden boy, not more than seven or eight years old, but already wearing a sky-blue suit, white lace falling at his throat and wrists, diamond buckles on his shoes. He was formally posed, a foot outthrust, the opposite hand on his waist, a pink velvet cape with ermine trim draped over one shoulder and arm. The other hand held a small, jeweled dagger, offered to the viewer.
The boy stood in a stateroom of some sort. Draperies and formal furniture on either side of him. Bridget had seen portraits of aristocratic children in other homes. Unlike those children, this boy had no pets, no toys, and no trappings of childhood about him.
He stood alone in a world of adults.
And his azure eyes were unbearably sad.
“She hated me even then.”
Bridget turned to find Val eyeing the sad little boy dispassionately. “I would’ve thought she’d have that burned years ago. I remember sitting for the painter. I couldn’t stand still, but my father wanted the portrait. She told me if I didn’t stand still she’d chop off my ears.” He smiled at Bridget as if sharing a joke. “I was too young to realize she’d never do it. Father would’ve killed her had she marred his heir in any way. So I stood still. I think it took him three weeks to paint it.”
Bridget wanted to weep. Could he not even say the word mother?
She glanced behind him and was relieved to see that the other servants had left the room. “Why did she hate you so much?”
“I’m my father’s son.” He shrugged. “I look exactly like him and she rather hated him as well. I suppose that was enough.”
She stared. “But you aren’t your father.”
“Aren’t I?” he murmured, his eyes weary. “He did make me in his image, after all.”
She caught his hand impulsively. “Just because you look the same doesn’t mean you’re the same man as your father. You’re not. You’re not.”
He cocked his head at her, his eyebrows drawn together as if he were considering her words doubtfully.
If the old duchess had been alive, Bridget would’ve given her a piece of her mind.
She cleared her throat. “Shall I have it hung again, perhaps in the dining room?”
“What?” He glanced at the painting. “Oh, if you want. It certainly cost Father enough and the painter is supposed to be good.” He looked around the room. “I wonder why she put it here, though. She was such a vindictive old thing. Hated my father. Hated this castle. Hated me.” He kicked a small stack of packing crates. They fell over and something smashed. “You should’ve heard her yelling after me when I left. I was the very Devil, the spitting image of Father. Just like him in every—”
He was interrupted by a thin but very clear cat’s meow.
Val froze, his eyes rolling to her.
Bridget frowned, looking around. Where—?
The meow came again.
“Can you hear that?” Val hissed.
She waved at him to be quiet. The room held two tables—heavy medieval things and quite worm-eaten—the fallen crates, what looked like more paintings under cloths—
Another meow.
She moved toward the only remaining large piece of furniture, a sort of cupboard, as tall as a man and intricately spindled and carved. Two doors stood at the front and she tried them, but they were locked.
“Here.” Val shouldered her aside and brought out his curved dagger.
“Don’t—!” she started.
But he’d already shoved the blade between the doors and levered them open by breaking the lock from the wood.
“Oh,” she said with deep disapproval, “you needn’t have done that.”
“No, but I thought you wanted to look inside,” he said. “And I’ve seldom seen such an ugly cupboard. I think it’s one my mother had in her rooms. Do you want to look in it or not?”
“I do,” she said, but when she opened the doors all she found was an empty mouse nest and a lot of dust.
The meow came again, quite close.
She leaned her head inside the cupboard. She would’ve sworn the cat—or kitten, for it sounded quite small—was right in front of her, but there was nothing there.
She straightened and glanced at Val.
His azure eyes were alight with amusement. “Phantom cats and ghostly kittens.”
She frowned at him. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Boring.” He kissed her on the nose and, while she was still blinking in surprise, leaned down and did something to the back of the cupboard.
Suddenly one of the boards came away in his hands.
She leaned down again to look.
Staring back at them was a ginger cat, her green eyes wide, and at her teats were a row of wriggling kittens in a rainbow of colors. She was curled in the small space of what was evidently a false back to the cupboard.
“But how did she get in?” Bridget breathed, enchanted. The kittens were at that wee fluffy stage and absolutely adorable.
“Magic,” Val said promptly, and then, more prosaically, “or the back of the cupboard’s rotted away.”
Bridget laughed. “What shall we name them?”
But that made him stiffen and pull away. “Nothing. They’re not ours, are they?”
“No,” she said slowly, watching him. She remembered what his father had done to him, the long litany of pet cats—cats he’d named—and her heart nearly broke. “But…”
“Then leave them be,” he said, crossing the room and toeing the fallen packing crates again. “No cause to be imposing names on cats, is there? Seems rather rude if you ask me. No one asks the cats if they like being named.”
She glanced at the mother cat, who was purring, her eyes half-closed, and then back at him. She should leave it be, she knew, but… “You liked cats as a boy, didn’t you?”
He whirled on her, looking outraged. “Who told you that?”
“You did,” she said gently. “When you were delirious from the poison, remember?”
“No.” He shook his head decisively. “I’ve found that it’s much easier if one forgets certain things, so I’ve made a habit of it. Sometimes when I’m introduced to a man I forget his name immediately, just to stay in practice. It’s wonderfully useful, forgetfulness.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that. How much had he forgotten over his lifetime? How much had he been made to endure?
“Well.” She inhaled. “You did tell me. You said you had four cats, Pretty, Marmalade, Opal, and—”
“Tiger,” he said, stalking toward her, “Tiger whom I strung up and murdered so Father wouldn’t. Are you absolutely certain you want to go down this path, Séraphine, mine?”
“My name is Bridget,” she said, holding her ground bravely.
“Oh, no,” he replied, catching her upper arms, holding her tight, almost hurting her. “Right now you are burning Séraphine, sitting in judgment, and I am the unholy Duke of Montgomery and if you want to know, if you really, truly want to know with all your pure saint’s soul, there were many more than Pretty, Marmalade, Opal, and Tiger. Dozens of cats. He made sure there were cats. Who do you think kept me supplied in cats as a boy? Father did. He’d bring me a pretty fluffy kitten and place it on my pillow at night so that I’d wake with it curled against my face, trusting and purring and soft, so soft, just for me. Innocent and lovely. I’d name it—I named all of them. And he’d wait until I loved that cat, until it was my best friend, my only friend, and then he’d wring its neck in front of my eyes.” He leaned his forehead against hers, his eyes closed and still—still!—incredibly dry. “Until I was old enough and strong enough and smart enough and I knew I knew I knew that you have to kill the thing you love, Séraphine, or they’ll use it against you. They’ll wring its neck before your eyes and you’ll hurt. Your insides will bleed screams and despair and you’ll want death, you’ll love death.”
He stopped, panting, openmouthed and still, and said very qu
ietly and precisely, “So you see. It’s better. Much better. Not to love at all.”
Slowly, carefully, she inched her hand up his heaving chest, up his neck and to his dry, dry face. “I do see, yes. I see.”
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him, softly, on the lips. A gentle brush, a sweet reminder that she stood here and his father did not.
She cupped his face in her hands and leaned back to look up at him.
His azure eyes were drowsy and a little calmer.
He inhaled.
And then his gaze went past her to the open cupboard and he started laughing. Deep, racking guffaws that made her stare in horror.
He held his belly and pointed.
She turned and looked, expecting something awful.
All she saw was that the cat had left her kittens. They either slept or stood on trembling legs, exploring their small box at the back of the cupboard.
“What?”
“Look,” he rasped. “Oh, look. That bitch.” He went off again, laughing and staggering about the room as if possessed.
She bent to look again.
There was something white under the kittens.
She reached and took out an oblong ivory box, intricately carved all over. It looked very old and very dear and she tutted under her breath at the thought that it had been used as a cat’s bed.
“Is this what you mean?” she asked the maddened man.
She tried to open it, but the lid appeared stuck.
“No, no,” said Val, suddenly beside her. “You know nothing of Montgomerys and their intrigues.”
He took the box from her hands, turned it upside down, and pressed his thumbnail to a carving on the bottom. A sliver popped out of the side of the box and he slid it sideways, and then opened the lid.
Bridget peered over his shoulder.
Inside was a sealed letter.
“She never smiled,” he said, staring at the letter, “not even on the day I left. She sat in her bed, Cal by her side, and I watched her place this letter in this box. She swore she would keep it and would have it published if I ever returned to England before she died. But I never truly believed her. What a fool I, it seems. Her venom was true. One can’t fault her for that. Eleven years later and it poisons me still, though she rots in the ground. Brava, madam, brava!”
He contemplated the letter for a second longer.
Then he looked up at her and handed her the open casket. “Here, take it. This is my heart, blackened, my soul, unshriven. Do this in remembrance of me.”
She stared at the ivory box. “I can’t take that!”
He cocked his head. “Why not?”
“Because…” Because she didn’t want to have the means to betray him. She looked at him. “What is in the letter?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You just said that your mother cursed you from the grave with it,” she retorted, exasperated.
“And she most likely did,” he said. “But I don’t know. The letter is sealed. I haven’t read it.”
She narrowed her eyes. “But if she wrote what you think she wrote…?”
He smiled. “Then the contents will hang me.”
She stopped breathing. He’d said, “will.” Not “might.” So certain. So sure. Very few crimes resulted in the death penalty for a duke.
And he wanted her to take the evidence of his crime.
She wanted to tell him to destroy it instead. It was on the very tip of her tongue.
But Bridget was a morally upright person at heart. If he’d done something so truly terrible…
“Ah, there’s the inquisitor,” he whispered.
And placed the awful casket in her hands.
Chapter Fifteen
Prue and King Heartless brought their baskets of yarn to show the magician.
He glanced at their lumpy yarn and smiled. “What fine work, Your Majesty!”
The king and Prue looked at each other, then the king arched a disbelieving eyebrow.
The magician hastily cleared his throat. “Now you’ll need to weave a fine cloth by moonlight.”
The king swore again while Prue merely sighed.…
—From King Heartless
It was a whim. Perhaps a fatal whim, but whims often were—at least his certainly were.
Val watched his burning angel take the vile little box, his mother’s bitter bile neatly and elegantly condensed and contained. She’d been a stickler for what she considered the societal refinements, his dam. Séraphine’s countenance was troubled. She didn’t like taking the burden of his sins—of one rather damning sin in particular, though she did not know it—but she bravely clasped the disgusting thing to her bosom nonetheless.
He’d expected nothing less from a grand inquisitor.
It satisfied him somehow, knowing she held his destruction, his peril, in her plump, practical little housekeeper’s hands. That if he riled her too much, if she woke one day and found him completely objectionable, then she could, with the flick of her wool-clad wrist, have him obliterated. It seemed to balance the world somehow. After all, she had a conscience, while he did not.
Besides. Even Achilles had his heel.
“Come,” he said gently, for he knew she’d been through travail. “I sought you out amongst your labors to bend my knee and plead that you leave the dust and spiders and mouse droppings to come and lounge awhile and perhaps partake of luncheon.”
Interestingly, she blushed. “I can’t do that,” she hissed under her breath.
“Why not?” he asked, deeply diverted by her reaction.
“The other servants.”
He blinked. “I assure you, I do let all my servants partake of luncheon.”
“But if I am with you…” Her blush deepened.
He cocked his head, studying her, entirely baffled. “I didn’t mean luncheon as a euphemism; however, I’m entirely happy to adjourn to my rooms right at this moment if that is—”
“No,” she said with what some might take as unflattering emphasis. She rolled her eyes as if he were the one being difficult, which, to be fair, he often was. “Let’s go have luncheon.”
He smiled. “Splendid!”
She looked at him a little shyly. Absolutely enchanting. “I’m dusty. I’ll go wash first and meet you in the dining room, shall I?”
He bowed with a flourish. “I await your presence.”
She looked flustered at that and he was very tempted to perhaps lean her up against one of the tables and—
“No,” she said, very firmly, backing away, and, much lower, “It’s the middle of the day!”
So very Puritan! Who knew the lower classes were so staid in their lovemaking?
Val contemplated this as he made his way to his dining room. He’d always vaguely imagined the servants having at it at all hours behind the kitchen doors. Well, when he thought about it. Which wasn’t often because they were servants. But it was one of those old canards the pamphleteers were always going on about—that the lower classes were too sexed and too fertile—and yet here was his housekeeper refusing him her favors, bizarrely because it was the middle of the day.
What, exactly, he wondered, was wrong with the middle of the day? The light? Surely being able to see the person one was about to tumble was a good thing? Was it the lack of bed? But no—last night she’d ridden him in a chair. And very enjoyable it’d been.
Or at least he’d thought so.
Val paused on the stairs, a sudden and very unwelcome notion having come into his mind—one that had never, ever occurred to him before. What if Bridget hadn’t found it enjoyable?
He contemplated the notion for two seconds.
No. She’d come all over his cock—he’d both felt it and witnessed it. And besides.
He was Valentine Napier, the Duke of Montgomery. There simply wasn’t a better lover in the world.
Satisfied, he continued his descent.
The butler—whose name he still couldn’t remember—met him at the
bottom of the stair. “The Duke of Dyemore to see you, Your Grace. He’s waiting in the library.”
Ah, fate had come to call. The old man had traveled to his country seat—in the next county to Ainsdale—faster than he’d expected. Well. He must be eager, then.
To business, to business.
But for a moment Val hesitated. He could… he could simply send Dyemore away. Spend the afternoon luxuriating with Séraphine.
Séraphine… he blinked. Oh, but there was Séraphine, now. Someone to protect from the masked men of the world. No. Nonononono. Better to go through with it.
The one with the power did not have to grieve the next day.
Val nodded to the butler. “Ask him if he cares to take luncheon with me.”
He entered the dining room and found a room polished and clean and not as dour as he remembered. Of course his memories were mainly of bacchanals that ended in rape and ravage.
It’d once been the castle’s hall and the ceiling was high and bore ancient painted coats of arms along the eaves. The table was long and nearly black, the walls hung with paintings of various no doubt demonic ancestors. Father had pride of place over a gray stone fireplace, attired in gray periwig and silk hose, his sapphire-blue robes draped about his elegant form.
Val took his seat and contemplated his father’s blank azure eyes. He supposed he could have the bloody portrait burned, now that he was master of the castle.
“Montgomery,” Dyemore croaked in his old man’s voice as he tottered across the dining room. “You’re looking in good health. I heard rumors that you were taken ill after your ball.”
“Ah, rumors,” Val said, standing to greet his guest. “They’re best left to old women and those that are soft in the head, don’t you agree? Unless, of course, they can be verified.”
“Of course,” Dyemore said, shaking his hand with a lingering touch. “But then I did have the tale from one of your maids.”
“Did you?” Val smiled as he took his seat again. “Tell me her name so I might have the wench tossed in the street.”
Dyemore chuckled. “Ah, you remind me of your father.”
“So my mother was wont to tell me,” Val said lightly as he poured the old man a glass of wine.
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