Toren nodded, his look starting to sear into her. “He had other pursuits?”
She lifted her cards, then began methodically collapsing and spreading them out evenly in her hands. Again and again. Her tell, and she knew it—her brothers had called her on it each and every time. But Toren didn’t know it. Not yet.
She cleared her throat. “Pipworth had a mistress with much more rotund assets than what I possess. That was the direction his pursuits were focused. She was his main vice. He did everything with her. I imagine he loved her.”
“Why do you say that?”
She collapsed her cards into her right hand, avoiding his eyes. “He jumped into the Thames to save her after a horse bumped her off a bridge. He must have loved her in order to do so. And he did save her. He saved her and drowned in the process.”
She fiddled with the top right corner of her fore card.
Toren leaned forward, laying a nine of hearts on the table between them. “You have suffered disappointments, Adalia—far too many for one so young. Yet from what I have seen of you, it has not become you. I find that admirable.”
A compliment? That did give her pause. She looked up at him, a smile curling the tips of her mouth. “Yes, well, thank you. But my friends are the admirable ones. They have not allowed me to lose the person I am.”
She laid down her queen of hearts, her smile widening. “And now, Toren, I will need you to please remove your trousers.”
He stood, tossing the remaining cards in his hand onto the table. The devil grin that crossed his face made her momentarily question the poor plays of his hand. He inclined his head to her. “Then I bow to your needs, Adalia.”
She smiled.
She liked those words. Liked them beyond all others.
Words that could very well make her happy.
{ Chapter 10 }
Adalia stepped out into the bright sunlight from the rear entrance of the castle. Summertime did this land good—the ducal estate alive with green fields, busy sheep, birds tweeting from sunup till sundown. Alive. The entire place felt alive, and that spirit had taken root in her soul, lightening her heart more and more each day.
Eight nights in Toren’s bed hadn’t hurt with that in the slightest.
A blush creeping up her neck at the mere thought of how he had twisted her body the previous night, Adalia searched the close-by gardens and fields, looking for Josalyn and Mary. Toren’s ancient butler had said Lucy, the young maid turned nanny for the girls, had brought them out to the gardens.
Adalia started down the garden path, aiming for the expansive rose garden beyond the evergreen border since the girls had discovered the joy of digging small creatures out of the rose beds.
The heat creeping along her scalp not abating, her mind remained consumed with her husband. Nights with Toren were the least of her concerns. Nights with him had made her feel, of all things, normal. Normal in her body, and all it had ever yearned for. He had requested her to join him night after night, without fail, and Adalia had begun to find her mouth watering for his bedroom hours before the twins went to bed.
There was never a thing she could not ask him about—ask him to do—that he did not contemplate with good will, and he had never refused her. His body was hers to explore, and she had taken to the opportunity with gusto. That his body was a molded specimen, worthy of stone and chisel, had made the nights all the more delicious.
For a man who could not love, Toren had an amazing capacity to make her feel. Right down to the curling of her toes. Again and again. And again.
Two rabbits sprinted in front of her, diving under the evergreen hedge. Fat rabbits that had surely been snitching Cook’s parsnips again.
She smirked at them as their white tails disappeared. Cook would not be happy.
Opening the gate to the rose garden, Adalia heard Mary’s laugh floating in the air, and her head tilted to the sound. Toren was right—her laugh was more of a chortle.
Shaking her head to herself, she went through the gate expecting to see the girls up to their elbows in dirt.
Instead, her heart stopped.
They weren’t in the dirt of the rose beds.
On ponies.
Both of them by the stables. Both of the girls on ponies, riding.
Her feet started running before her mind caught up to the sight. The girls so high. So high off the ground and so vulnerable to falling.
She couldn’t scream, couldn’t do anything but run.
Through the rose garden and halfway to them, Josalyn spotted Adalia running toward her. Her niece squealed in excitement, her hand coming up high and waving, pride shining so bright at her accomplishment that Adalia thought she would burst into a thousand rays of sunlight.
Laughing, Josalyn waved again, her whole body lifting from the sidesaddle. The pony turned.
In the next breath, Josalyn missed grabbing the reins and slipped to the side.
Her little body dropping.
Slow.
Time stopping. Falling.
Thunk.
The sound of Josalyn’s body hitting the ground overtook Adalia’s world.
Her feet sped, a thousand deals made with the devil before she skidded to her knees at Josalyn’s prone body.
Gasping for breath. No breath, no breath.
Gulping air that didn’t reach her lungs, her hands shook, and she was terrified to touch Josalyn. Yet her hands managed to land softly on the girl’s head, her fingers wrapping into her niece’s blonde hair.
She tilted Josalyn’s face to her. The girl’s eyes remained closed, her body motionless on the ground, her arm twisted grotesquely behind her back.
Adalia lifted her into her arms, clutching Josalyn to her body. A scream stuck in her chest. Stuck below the gulps of air she gasped.
She looked up to see Toren, frozen, standing next to Mary and holding the reins of the pony she was on.
At the sight of him, air flooded into her chest, a tornado of horror. “How could you do this, you bastard?”
The scream echoed across the lands, stilling all sound.
Whimpers cut into the dead air, Mary’s face contorting as she stared at her sister on the ground. Toren jumped at the sound, then swiftly lifted Mary from the speckled pony and set her softly to her feet on the ground.
Swaying back and forth, clutching Josalyn tighter, Adalia heaved another breath and found sound again in her lungs, her face contorting at Toren. “You bloody bastard.”
“Auntie.” The sound, muffled, vibrated against her chest.
Adalia yanked Josalyn away from her chest—from the terrified clutch she had her gripped in.
Josalyn blinked, looking up at her, confusion filling her sweet blue eyes. “Auntie, why are you yelling?”
Adalia let out a garbled screech, her fingers tightening into Josalyn’s hair as her body nearly collapsed.
Josalyn smiled up at her, still confused. “I was riding, Auntie Ada. Did you see me? I was good. Very, very good. Uncle Toren said so himself.”
Tears flooding down her cheeks, Adalia gasped for breath after breath, straining to believe that Josalyn was alive, smiling up at her. That it wasn’t a dream. Wasn’t a hallucination. She smothered Josalyn to her chest once more, the air lodged in her lungs unable to move.
She gave Josalyn space only after the girl began to squirm. Room to breathe, but Adalia could give her no more than that, keeping her hands on Josalyn’s shoulders, not willing to free her niece just yet.
“Did you see?” Josalyn asked again, the earlier pride still beaming bright.
“I did, sweetheart. I did.” Adalia nodded, her hands running down the sides of Josalyn’s face. “Does anything hurt?”
“Just where you are squeezing me, Auntie.”
A monumental feat—Adalia forced her fingers to unclench from Josalyn’s shoulders.
Josalyn looked around. “Where did my pony go? Uncle Toren said Sparkles could be mine. I named her. Mary got to choose first, but she didn’t choose Sp
arkles and I wanted Sparkles from the start. I don’t want to lose her before I even have her.”
Adalia looked up out of the tiny bubble that her world had just been reduced to, her eyes squinting in the light.
Birds still chirped. Sheep still ambled across the fields. The breeze still rustled the leaves of the forest beyond the stables. She pointed. “There. She is over there, Josalyn, nibbling on grass.”
An enormous smile split across Josalyn’s face. “I want to ride more. It was fun, fun, fun, Auntie.”
“No.” Adalia had to swallow back the screech that threatened to come with the word.
“No? But Auntie Ada, I was quite good at it. Did you not see? You said you saw.” Josalyn wiggled the rest of the way out of Adalia’s grip and sprang to her feet. No cracked bones, not even the smallest flicker of pain in Josalyn’s face.
“I did see.” Adalia had to cross her arms, tucking her hands under her elbows so they didn’t escape and snatch Josalyn again.
Josalyn might be fine, but she was not. Far from it.
“No more today, sweetheart,” Adalia said. “We will talk about it tomorrow. Are you sure you are steady on your feet?”
“Of course I am, silly auntie.”
Adalia tried to smile, but knew it didn’t make it to her lips. She inclined her head toward the castle. “Then you and Mary go inside and ask Cook for some lemonade. I believe she was having lemons squeezed earlier today. And sit, please. At least for a few minutes.”
Mary ran the few steps to her sister and grabbed Josalyn’s hand. The two of them ran up the long hill to the castle, their light skirts swinging merrily behind them.
On her knees, Adalia watched them as she collapsed downward onto her calves, her legs slowly splitting under her until she sat on the ground.
It wasn’t until the girls had long since disappeared into the door of the castle that her breathing slowed to normal and her body no longer felt as if every muscle would fail her if she tried to move. Slowly, she managed to gain her feet, her boots shuffling in the dirt, and she turned to her husband, venom twisting her lips. “I will not lose them, Toren.”
“Adalia—”
She ran at him and shoved him as hard as she could in the chest. “How could you? Alfred died when his skull was crushed by a horse, Toren. My brother dead by some stupid beast that could not control itself, and now you set them on top of those beasts? How in the bloody hell could you?”
Having lost only one backward step to her power, he grabbed her swinging wrists. “Calm yourself, Adalia. They have been persistent, both of them. Day after day pestering me about riding. I was no force to deny them.”
“No force to deny them?” Her forehead scrunched, incredulous as she grunted and wrenched her wrists free from his grip. “That is no excuse, Toren. They are little girls. They do not control you. You control them. You are a bloody duke, and you cannot control two wee girls?”
He opened his mouth in retort, then clamped it closed.
Her eyes went to slits. “What? You have something more to say on the matter?”
He stared at her, his face almost blank. Almost.
But she could see it. Fire in his eyes, leaching out to crack his carefully crafted indifference.
“What?” She thwapped him in the chest again with open palms. “What?”
He snatched one of her flailing wrists and turned, then dragged her with him down the hill and toward the stables.
Running to keep up with his strides, she tried to pry his fingers from her wrist. The clamp just grew harder.
He yanked on her. “The girls are watching, Adalia, their heads hanging out a window, and I’d rather not have this argument in front of them.”
She craned her neck, looking backward to the castle. Two little faces, eyes wide, staring down at them.
Avoiding the main stable, Toren veered, then stalked into the smaller side stable that housed mares when they were foaling. A stable boy, pitchfork in hand, jumped at the sight of them.
“Go,” Toren growled, and the boy dropped the pitchfork, running from the barn. “Door,” Toren yelled after him, and the boy quickly slid the heavy barn door closed.
He stopped in the middle of the stable, spinning her to him.
Adalia yanked her wrist free, red blurring her vision. How dare he? He had absolutely no right to his anger. Absolutely no defense for his idiotic, tyrannical actions.
She shoved him again. “What? You cannot possibly have more to say.”
His mask now shattered, fury palpitated across his brow. “Yet I do, Adalia. I do have something to say. I brought the twins out here so that they would learn to ride properly. So that they would not sneak out here and try for themselves without supervision. I could see how close they were to that very thing—I came upon them plotting that very escapade.”
“No, they would never—not when I told them expressly that I forbid it. Never.”
“And that was exactly what drove them.”
“What?” Her head shook. “What do you know of it?”
His head tilted back, eyes to the roof of the stable as his hand ran through his dark hair. His look dropped to her. “I know because I did the exact same thing when I was a year younger than the twins. My guardian, my governess forbade me to ride until I was sixteen. Sixteen. It was what had killed my father, after all. Tossed from a horse. They did not wish a repeat of that tragedy under their watch—the last in the Dellon line done in by a skittish horse. So I know—I know because I was them, Adalia.”
His fingers slipped around to the back of his neck, rubbing. “Only I sneaked out to the stables and stole a pony. Saddled it myself. Except I did not know how to attach a saddle—no one had ever taught me. But I was determined. Determined—just as the twins are. Only when I fell, I broke my arm.”
That gave her pause, his words only half sifting through the blood pounding in her ears. “What? You broke your arm?”
“Yes. And then I had to have my bone set.” His jaw shifted forward, and his voice dropped. “Do you know how much pain setting a bone is to a six-year-old?”
She exhaled and took a full, slow breath before answering. “I can imagine.”
His look veered to the left, then settled on the saddle bench in the empty stall next to them.
She eyed him, her ire abating. “You suffered it alone, didn’t you?”
“I managed.”
In that instant, her heart fractured slightly for the long-past boy Toren once had been.
No one to hold him. No one to wipe away his tears. No one to assure him all would be well. Just pain. Pain he’d had to live with alone.
But it gave him no right. No right at all.
That same pain could have just been Josalyn’s.
Her eyes closed. Josalyn’s body on the ground. It was too close. Too close to . . . Adalia had to cut short her own thoughts. She couldn’t think on that possibility.
She opened her eyes, her gaze centering on him, her voice shaking. “The twins, Toren—you cannot supersede my wishes just because they are enchanting little sprites.”
He met her look, his brown eyes earnest. “I will abide by your wishes, as long as you promise me you will consider easing the walls you have erected around them. You are trying to keep them too safe, Adalia.”
“There is no such thing.”
“There is. Believe me, there is. It will only do them harm, and they will resent you for it eventually.”
“That is not true.”
“Tell me, Adalia. How did your brothers raise you? Were you locked in a cage? Suffocated by rules? Sheltered at every turn? Did they ever say no to you?”
Her arms clamped together over her stomach. “That is different. My brothers didn’t know the first thing about raising a girl.”
“Exactly, and they could have made very different decisions regarding your childhood. But look at how strong you are now.”
“I am not strong—not when it comes to them.” Her head dropped, the toes of her b
oots kicking at the straw dusting the ground. “I . . . I cannot lose them, lose the girls, Toren. They are my everything.” Weak, she could not keep her voice from quivering in pain with the weight of the possibility.
“The best way to ensure that doesn’t happen is to give them the knowledge they need to make their own decisions, become their own people. Let them make the mistakes when you are there to catch them. To hold them. To make sure they know they can survive anything.”
He stepped to her and stopped right in front of her, his finger going under her chin, lifting her look to him. “Let that be the legacy of your brothers—their father, Adalia. Your brothers managed to raise you proud and independent and loyal and intelligent. Your nieces no longer have their father or their uncles to do that for them, so instead it falls to you. Continue their legacy.”
She stared at him, her lower jaw shifting to the side. “You are attempting to sway me on the matter with pretty words—I did not know you had the ability to do so.”
He chuckled. “Neither did I.”
“It won’t work. I am still too furious with you.”
His head tilted to the side, the calm facade back in place on his face. “But you must recognize the need the girls have to be set ever so slightly free?”
He wasn’t going to stop. Again with the needs. Always with the blasted needs.
She growled, frustration lifting her hands to ram him in the chest again. “And that is the only thing you care about—needs, needs, needs—what everyone needs.”
He shrugged, neither stopping her motion nor continuing to argue the point.
Frustrating to no end.
She was not done with the argument, and it had already been settled in his mind. Settled by the logic of the almighty need. “I am so sick of needs, Toren. Letting needs govern everything. There are other things beside logic to guide a person.”
“Such as?”
“Wants—desires—what about the fire in your gut that overrides the logic of needs? What about anger that spurs you into action—that tells you to your core what should be?”
Of Valor & Vice: A Revelry's Tempest Novel Page 10
