Catching a Man

by Elizabeth Corrigan

  The duke sat back in his chair. “You do realize I’ve never made a cup of java in my life.”

  Snobbery is not helpful. “Well, neither have I. You at least drink the stuff, so you have one up on me.” Kadin pointed at the mug. “Now tell me what’s wrong with it.”

  He furrowed his brow and stared down at the cup. “I think there’s something wrong with your filter. There’s java sediment in the cup.”

  “Hm.” Kadin spun on her heel and headed back toward the kitchen. When she got there, she opened the top of the java machine. She pinched her nose to block some of the odor of java and peered into the container. Sure enough, the filter had torn, allowing some of the grounds to seep through. She scooped the mess out as best she could, and then started peeling off another filter to try again.

  She didn’t need to turn around to feel the duke’s presence behind her. “What are you doing?”

  She looked over her shoulder. His tall, broad frame leaned in the doorway. She swallowed, then held up the filters. “I’m getting a new filter.”

  “I gathered that. I meant, why were you ripping it apart.” Kadin must have looked confused because he took a step forward. “This thing here?” He reached out to grab the pile from her. “This is one filter.”

  He leaned in past her, so close she felt the hairs on her arms stand up to get closer to him, and dropped the filter into the top of the machine. As he backed up, his arm brushed hers, and her breath caught.

  Because I’m afraid of him, she reminded herself. Because he’s a murderer.

  She added the water and turned the machine on again. As she leaned against the counter, she thought she heard a noise outside. She jumped, terrified that it was Octavira returning. She didn’t want to imagine what her sister-in-law would say if she came home and found Baurus DeValeriel at her kitchen table.

  Kadin, did you let a duke into my house? But I haven’t dusted in nearly a week, and I don’t think I remembered to wipe the counters after dinner. And what if he notices the rip on the back of the sofa? It’s against the wall, I know, but imagine if he dropped something back there. And, didn’t I hear that he killed the queen? How could you let a murderer into the house with my children? Especially with the playroom such an absolute mess! I simply cannot get Drena to—

  Duke Baurus cocked his head to the side and regarded her. “You have the oddest look on your face. What are you thinking?”

  Make something up. Anything. “You don’t want to know.”

  For a moment, his face looked as it had when she saw him in the library the day before. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”

  He stood so close to her in the tiny kitchen, and she could feel his anger radiating off him. She felt defiant. “I was wondering whether my sister-in-law would be more upset that I had let you into her house because you were a duke—and she hadn’t had time to clean or, you know, buy completely new furniture—or because you were a murderer.”

  He scowled and leaned even closer to her. “I did not kill Callista.”

  “Yes, well,” Kadin’s irritation fled, and she concentrated on taking even breaths. “Octavira doesn’t know that. And, quite frankly, neither do I.”

  He glared at her, but the intensity had left his expression. “Why would I kill Callista? How could I kill Callista? She was the only thing I ever wanted.” His gaze lost its focus as it roamed to the blue checked curtain framing the top of the kitchen’s only window. “Well, almost the only thing.”

  “Almost?” What else could a duke possibly want? What doesn’t he have?

  He stayed silent for so long that Kadin thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then she heard him whisper, “Magic.”

  Kadin blinked. “Magic, as in the Society of Mages?”

  He nodded once, still staring out the window at the red swing on the back porch.

  She couldn’t quite keep the incredulousness from her tone. “You do realize that there haven’t been any confirmed members of the Society in Valeriel in twenty years, don’t you? And even before that it was just hearsay. Most people don’t think that they even exist anymore.”

  Baurus’s jaw tightened, and she could tell she’d hit a sore spot. “They’re not gone. At least, not forever. Historically, they’ve been in and out of Valeriel society. They’ve disappeared for as long as a century before, but they always come back.” He got a faraway look in his eye. “If I traveled to other countries, I bet they would have records of the Society for times we have lapses. And maybe I could find them there and ask to join.”

  “Ah. I see.” The java machine beeped, and the light went off. Kadin reached for another mug and surreptitiously inspected it for cracks. When she felt sure it was intact, she poured a fresh cup.

  Duke Baurus followed her with his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘I see’? What do you see?”

  Kadin shrugged. “You want what you can’t have.” He opened his mouth to protest, but Kadin held up a finger. “The one thing that you wanted more than anything else was Queen Callista, who, in addition being engaged to marry your cousin since before you knew her, was, by all accounts, incapable of emotional attachment. And now you tell me that you, who have wealth and influence most people only dream about, want the kind of power unavailable to you.”

  He leaned forward and grabbed the java out of her hand. When he straightened he seemed too close again, so she backed up an inch.

  He gave her a level stare. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, surprising her. “But what’s the point in wanting something you can have? What do you and other people waste your time wanting that’s so attainable?”

  Kadin pondered this for a second. Her goal of finding someone to marry her so she could move out of her brother’s house was attainable. But is that really what I want? She wasn’t sure, and she still didn’t want to lie to him.

  She settled for the short-term instead. “I want to know whether that java is drinkable.”

  He raised his eyebrows with a smirk that said he knew she was avoiding the question, but he took a sip of the java.

  Again he cringed but swallowed, so Kadin decided to interpret that as improvement. “Drinkable? Possibly, but it’s the weakest java I’ve ever tasted. I don’t think you put enough grounds in the machine.”

  “But I put in how much it said on the side of the canister.” Kadin picked the canister up again. Right there on the side it said to put in four scoops for every four cups of java.

  Kadin eyed the java pot. It did look larger than four cups. Estimation of volume wasn’t her strongest suit. She squinted to read the raised print above the light, and, sure enough, it said that the machine made eight cups. Which meant she needed eight scoops of java grounds.

  Kadin swiped the used filter and grounds out of the machine, noting with some satisfaction that this time the filter hadn’t ripped. She then set up the entire process again, this time using two scoops of java.

  Duke Baurus watched the process with an amused glint in his eyes. “So what are you going to do if this pot is perfect? Your life’s work will be achieved, and things will get awfully dull from here on out.”

  She crossed her arms. Smartass. “Okay, you know what else I want? I want to know who killed Queen Callista.”

  He sobered, and the haunted, desolate look came back into his eyes. “You and me both.”

  Kadin’s breathing slowed. “And by that standard, I should be bringing you to the office for questioning right now. After all, you are a highly involved party who has to this point remained unquestioned.”

  “Ah, but you won’t.” His tone was light, but his face remained serious. “Because you aren’t sure capturing me is urgent enough to justify the expense of emergency responders. Besides, you’re watching your brother’s children, and you can’t afford to leave them alone should I choose to run, or to pro
tect them should I choose to respond with violence. Why do you think I came here tonight instead of dropping by your office?”

  Kadin froze. He’s not going to hurt me. I know he’s not going to hurt me. But what was I thinking, joking with him, giving him java. He killed someone. And even if he didn’t, he’s unstable. Did you forget about the book throwing incident? You shouldn’t do… whatever you were doing with him.

  Duke Baurus leaned back. “Calm down. I’m not going to hurt you. I told you, I came to tell you my side of the story. But I have no intention of allowing myself to be taken anywhere, as I suspect it would be a long time before I saw the light of day again.”

  Kadin’s heart didn’t slow. “Well, at this point, you are only wanted for questioning, though that is likely to change the longer you avoid the investigation team.”

  He gaped at her. “I knew Callista better than anyone, and I have a pretty good guess what all your interviewees said about both her and me during your investigation. They don’t just want me for questioning. I can’t let them take me in.” He studied her face, as if expecting her to give something away. “I do want to help with the investigation, so I came here so you could ask your questions.”

  Kadin almost laughed in his face. I can’t tell Fellows that Duke Baurus was in my house but I didn’t take him into custody, even if he would listen to me. That’s if this whole visit isn’t a plot on the duke’s part to throw me off his trail. Her brain considered everything for a moment, then came to a decision. I might as well collect what evidence I can. Maybe someone will want it at some point.

  “Why me? I’m hardly the senior member of the team.” She went into Tobin’s study and opened the top drawer of the desk.

  Duke Baurus followed her. “You seemed the least threatening.”

  Well, I did ask. Kadin pulled out a notebook and pencil, returned to the kitchen, and sat down. “Tell me about your relationship with Queen Callista.”

  Baurus sat down in the chair he had vacated, pushing it back from the table to give himself room to stretch out his legs. “I loved Callista.” His voice held a grim fierceness, as if he thought Kadin would deny what he was saying. “Everyone said I was crazy for it, that I wasn’t seeing her for who she was, but I did. I always knew exactly who she was, from the first time I saw her. I was visiting her father Count Reuben on some matter of business when she entered the room, and it was as though I had never seen the sun before.”

  He ran his hand over his face. “It sounds like ridiculous and superbly trite hyperbole, I know, but it’s the only way I can think to describe the effect she had on me. She was always harsh, incredibly searing, and she always had a dozen other satellites orbiting her. But it didn’t matter because without her, my world was cold and dark, and I would rather be one of her hangers-on than be without her. I’m not saying that I didn’t wish she could love me as I loved her, because I did, more than anything, but what she was willing to give was better than nothing.”

  He loved her, Kadin wrote, though that seemed insufficient to describe the emotion he laid before her. What would it be like to love someone that much? I doubt I even could. I don’t have that kind of… emotional capacity.

  Duke Baurus stared straight ahead, as if he were lost in a memory. “If I had been wise or politic or anything that my parents or Beatrin ever wanted me to be, I would have kept my feelings to myself rather than acting upon them. The gossip that our relationship created would have scared off many other men, and more than a few of her other lovers left for fear of damage to their reputations. But I’ve never seen the point of hiding my feelings and doing things because someone else wants me to.”

  He snorted, but still he did not come out of his reverie to look at Kadin. “Of course, the affair was not all sweetness and roses. Callista only ever accepted my affection in the absence of anything else to occupy her time and mind. I think she liked having someone who adored her so absolutely. Had I not been ready and willing to take her back every time without question or complaint, I’m certain that she would have been finished with me long ago. And thus did she develop a kind of fondness for me and our relationship.”

  Kadin rolled her pencil in her fingers, feeling the bevels against her skin, unsure how to capture his emotions as dispassionate evidence.

  He cleared his throat. “Objectively, I knew that’s all it was, but emotionally… Somehow I always managed to fool myself into thinking that it meant more, that this time she had realized I was more to her than some convenient groupie. Then every time she would decide to end things and shatter the delusion. I would get so angry, mostly at myself for being such an idiot, and I would lash out at everyone around me. Eventually I would stop being angry and just miss her. Then, after a few weeks or months, she would come back to me, and the sun was back in my sky. And the cycle would continue. Until two days ago.”

  “When she died,” Kadin whispered.

  “No.” He shook his head but still didn’t look at her. “Before that, in the afternoon, when I went to see her. Beatrin asked me to get something from Callista—I don’t even remember what—and I used that as an excuse to go see her. Stopping by unannounced to see Callista was always a bit of a risk. Sometimes she was fine with it, but sometimes she was irritated by my presumption. This time she said she was glad that I had stopped by. She even looked happy. I had seen her in any number of moods over the years, but I had never seen her look so joyful.”

  He closed his eyes. “She told me that during one of our off-again periods about a year ago, she had been with someone she had fallen in love with. I don’t know who he was, just that he ended things with no explanation. She said that he was back now, and for the first time she understood how I could keep going back to her every time, because she wanted nothing more than to go back to him. She told me that it was over between us, permanently this time.”

  His eyes opened, and he stared back into space. “The whole thing made no sense. The Callista I knew was too hard to love anyone, and if she did love someone, why wasn’t it me, who loved her more than anyone else possibly could? But I could tell that she meant it, that she loved this other man, whoever he was, and I knew that we were finished for good.”

  “Okay…” Kadin knew she should be writing it down, but she kept getting caught up in the story, in his emotions. She found she felt… jealous. Because she knew no one would ever love her as much as he had loved Queen Callista, and surely she, who didn’t make a habit of stringing men along for the express purpose of breaking their hearts, deserved it more. “What did you do then?” The king and Lady Beatrin had already told her, but she wanted to hear his side.

  “I got angry.” He frowned, remembering. He turned his attention to Kadin for the first time since he started telling his story. “That’s what I do when things go wrong, I get angry. You got to witness some of that the other day.” His lips held a trace of a smile.

  His eyes lost their focus, and he was gone again, back into the past. “I was angry with Callista for being so cold, for not loving me the way I wished she would. When I shouted at her to try and have a heart for once, she asked me to leave, as she always did. I was angry with Ralvin for not bothering to control his wife, for letting this happen in the first place. I probably accused him of insane things like trying to keep us apart, which he never did. I was angry with Beatrin for sending me over in the first place, allowing Callista to end the relationship and my delusions a full day before she otherwise would have. Mostly, though, I was angry with myself for being idiot enough to believe, yet again, that she would eventually love me if I kept trying. And underneath all that was heartbreak and despair that this time, we really were finished.”

  He met Kadin’s gaze again. “So I railed at Callista. I railed at Ralvin. I railed at Beatrin. And then I went home, stared in the mirror, and railed at myself. I consumed enough alcohol that I should have forgotten the name Callista
DeValeriel. But when I finally passed out, I dreamed of her. I slept straight through to the morning, when someone finally woke me to tell me that Callista was dead.”

  Claims he was passed out drunk at time of murder, Kadin wrote, glad to have something as stable as an alibi, even if she couldn’t confirm it. She supposed she could go to the duke’s servants and ask them if he had stayed home all night, but she couldn’t trust them not to lie for their master. Nothing she could do could outweigh the money and intimidation he could use to make them keep their stories straight.

  Duke Baurus fiddled with a button on his jacket. “I didn’t believe it at first. I had been angry with her and devastated by her, but never for a moment did I want her dead. A part of me, which probably would have been a larger part as time went on, was glad to see her happy for once. Even if she didn’t love me, even if I couldn’t be with her, her existence was still a light in an otherwise dark world.

  “But I went to the palace, and I saw people from your little company carrying out the body, and the reality of her death hit me. I was so angry, angrier than I’d ever been in my life, angrier than I thought I was capable of being. I wanted to find whoever had done this and choke the life out of them with my bare hands.” His jaw tensed, and Kadin feared he might look for things to throw. But then he took a deep breath and unclenched his fists. His gaze met hers. “That was pretty much the state I was in when you saw me.”

  Kadin stared into his eyes, and what she saw in their depths nearly overwhelmed her. All the emotions he described—love, rage, despair, regret—he felt them, all at once, with a passion she, in her relentless pragmatism, could never match. The intensity became too much for her, and she turned her head back to her notes. “What were you doing in Callista’s library when I saw you?” Queen Callista. Just because you’re having java with someone on first name basis with the royals—who is practically one of the royals himself—doesn’t mean you get to drop the formalities.