Marissa Day (26 page)

“I would do anything!”

“I am becoming concerned about Sir Thomas. I fear his mission may be proving too much for him.”

“Sir Thomas?” Fiora struggled to set aside her torrential emotions and think clearly. What did the queen want to hear? What would please her most? Fiora’s mind scrabbled frantically for the proper answer. “I have seen no sign of his faltering, Majesty.”

“I am glad to hear it. But I require you to watch him closely, Fiora. And should he begin to falter, you are to warn me at once.”

It was the chance she had longed for down the endless years. It had filled her voice with sorrow as she sang sentimental ballads in the cramped and stinking theaters. It had tinted her very soul, allowing her to become one of the most celebrated tragediennes of the age. All that feigned sorrow, all that counterfeit longing rooted only in this single wish; give me another chance. Please. Just one more chance.

“I live only to serve Your Majesty,” whispered Fiora.

“And should you serve me well in this, you will be rewarded.”

The light poured down, and Fiora felt it filling her. It straightened her back and limbs and banished the pain. She looked down and saw her hands were young, strong and capable as they should be. She touched her face, and her cheeks were full and flush. The strength of her body was dizzying. She could dance again. She could sing like a bird. She leapt up and spun on her toes, made speechless in her delight. The queen lifted her chin and smiled. Fiora’s heart swelled to the point of breaking. How many times had she tried to remember that smile with its infinite warmth and the way all that was goodness flowed her queen’s regard?

Fiora dropped to her knees again, light and easy in her youthful frame. The queen held out her hand, and Fiora kissed it.

“See you keep your vows this time, Fiora.” Queen Tatiana laid her finger on Fiora’s brow. “The daemon realms will accept your soul in payment of our bargain as readily as they did Cullen’s.”

Then she was gone.

Fiora woke, on her back, in her bed, beneath the heap of quilts. Age clamped down on her once more, robbing her of breath and life. The dream of youth and strength made the sensation of her wizened body that much more horrible.

“I will not fail,” Fiora whispered to the night, certain her queen would hear. “I swear it.”

Thomas cradled Jane close against his chest and felt her drift away into sleep. He should rouse her, clothe her once more in her rumpled nightdress and send her back to her room. But he could not separate his flesh from hers. It was as far beyond him as swimming the broad ocean.

What am I doing?
He closed his eyes.
What is happening to me?

He had been sent to seduce this woman, to fuck her until she was ready to run any hazard to have his cock in her again, and through her repeated invitation to him, he would be able to widen the crack in the defenses of Kensington House to allow Her Majesty’s other servants entrance. They would determine whether the child the duchess carried was the one foretold in the prophecy of the daemon realms. After that . . . well, it was none of his business what happened after that. He was the loyal knight to his queen. He must not question her will or her actions.

Jane would question them though. His arm tightened around her of its own accord. For all their games of obedience and mastery, Jane would question what happened, and want to know his part in it.

Not that she would get a chance to ask him anything. He would be gone back to the Fae realms and the queen’s court where he belonged before she even understood the nature of the questions she should put to him. That was good. That was what he should be longing for now. Because there he’d be able to lose himself among the glamours that were of a more familiar kind, and infinitely safer.

God’s legs, he’d thought he’d spill himself like a raw youth as he watched Jane playing with the ivory toy he’d left out to tempt her. When she’d taken it into her sweet, pink mouth, he hadn’t been able to keep from touching himself, and when she’d slipped it into her pussy and called his name . . . he’d been undone. Utterly on fire.

He’d see far more erotic acts in the Seelie court. The queen enjoyed sexual sport, and her courtiers regularly vied to entice and entertain her. He himself had serviced three women at once so she could take her pleasure in watching and then fucked her in full view of her cavorting servants. Nothing could match the queen’s beauty, her inventiveness or appetite.

Despite all his experience, the pleasures of this one human woman were driving him to madness, for it was madness for him to think of love. Queen Tatiana permitted her knights to seduce mortal women. She might even encourage it for sport or spite, or if she had a use for the woman as she did now. But if the queen became convinced his heart was no longer wholly hers . . . Fiora’s lover would have company in the fires to which he had been sent. Which would leave Jane alone, and defenseless before the wrath of Her Glorious Majesty. She already suspected him. She was granting him mercy, but her mercy was always short-lived.

Terror rushed through Thomas, filling every crevasse of his being, followed fast by an anger that seared his soul. God’s teeth, he was a thousand kinds of fool!

“Thomas?” Jane shifted in his arms, her hands moving instinctively to caress him, to soothe and comfort him.

Thomas squeezed his eyes closed.
No, no. This cannot be.
He would protect her with all his strength, all his soul. But against the queen, the strength and soul of one mortal man could never be enough. He had to get away from Jane. Now. While there was still a chance the queen might be willing to overlook his flirtation with treason.

Jane shifted again. “Thomas. What is it?”

He steeled himself. “Nothing, sweetheart,” he said lightly. “It is only that it is time to get you back where you belong.”

It felt like he was stabbing his own arm, but Thomas made himself sit up and settle Jane onto the pillows. She shivered and wrapped her arms around her breasts. He almost ordered her not to. He wanted to feast his gaze upon her. But she really was cold. He lifted a broad fold of the silken coverlet and drew it around her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He said nothing. He didn’t trust his voice. She looked so lost, so young, bundled up like that. He thought of chaffing her arms to warm her, which would, of course, lead him to pull her close to cradle and kiss. Then he would reach beneath that coverlet to fondle her breasts. She’d sigh against his mouth and then . . .

Thomas’s groin tightened, and he turned away with a muffled curse to pick up her nightdress. It was all but ruined. He’d been careless of the hooks and seams when he’d shoved it down across her hips to get to her. He wished he could repair it somehow, but the queen had not thought to grant him such powers. He smoothed out the fabric as best he could, but there was nothing he could do about the torn lace, or the rent he now saw in the shoulder. Suddenly, Thomas hated himself, as fully and viciously as he had ever hated an enemy. He hands itched to hold a cutlass and to swing it hard against some target, any target that would splinter beneath his blow.

All he could do was hold out the ruined nightclothes for Jane.

“Thank you,” she said flatly, and his heart shattered.

Awkwardly, and by degrees, she shed the silk coverlet and set about dressing herself. Thomas struggled against the unaccountable urge to turn away and give her a moment’s privacy. Instead, he began righting his own clothing in awkward silence. This was ridiculous. Why was it like this? He should be fastening her gown tenderly, laughing with her, kissing and touching in merry lover’s parting as he always had before.

He stomped his foot into his hessian boot, cursing the tight footwear roundly. What was the matter with the men of this age that they insisted on wearing clothing it was impossible to move freely in?

“Thomas?”

His head snapped around. Jane was back in her robe. A bit of lace dangled from the neckline as sadly as her disarranged curls dangled about her shoulders. All at once, he could not see her as a woman who had been well and passionately loved. She looked like she’d been brutalized. Like he had brutalized her.

“Have I done something wrong?”

“What? No!” He straightened at once, and folded her into his embrace. The way she wrapped her arms tight around him made him curse himself in every tongue he knew, mortal and Fae alike. Here he was wondering what to do about the fact that the sight of her filled not just his cock but his heart to overflowing, and she was wondering if he was angry with her.

“You’ve done nothing,” He cupped her head with one hand to cradle her closer to him. The gentle weight of her cheek against his shoulder seared him. He would bear the sensation like a brand the rest of his life, however long that might be. “I am only sorry that I must leave you now.” This was true, as far as it went. But it did not go nearly far enough.

Jane seemed to accept it though. She tilted her head back to look at him. “Will I see you today?”

His throat tightened painfully. “You are coming to visit F . . . my godmother, are you not? She said she was expecting you for an early supper.”

“Yes. But will you be there?”

He opened his mouth to say no, to tell her he had an errand that was more important. But he could not do it. The words simply would not come while he looked into Jane’s dark eyes and understood that this afternoon, during a polite, private supper, might be the last time he would ever see her.

This one last time. One last moment with Jane in the sunlight.
“I’ll be there.”

“Then kiss me, Thomas, and let me go.”

Thomas obeyed, as swiftly and as readily as she had ever obeyed him. Then, she walked away and left him standing there. As the door closed, it made a hollow sound, as hollow as the space inside where his heart had once been.

T
he morning was horrendous.

Previously, the trysts Jane had kept with Thomas had felt as restorative as sleep. But this time, she climbed laboriously out of her bed and slumped stupid and thick-headed down to breakfast. No amount of coffee could make any difference. Certainly, as far as the duchess was concerned, Jane could get nothing right—not the placement of pillows, not the translations for the letters and invitations that needed to be answered, not even the temperature of the cloth she ordered for her forehead.

“Enough!” Her Grace cried, flinging the towel away. “Oh, get along, Jane. Today you visit Mrs. Beauchamp, so? You go and come back when you discover where you have left your wits.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Jane all but slunk from the room to change into her walking costume.

Now she rode in the landau with Tilly, who was sneaking glances in between stitches. Jane hadn’t had a chance to make the dismissal yet. But this felt like a minor irritation. How was she supposed to endure this call? Mrs. Beauchamp was a fine woman, but she was prone to prattling, and would be relying on Jane for a heaping spoon of gossip to go with their supper. What on earth was she going to say? She could barely remember what had passed at the drawing room yesterday. In fact, she could barely remember anything she’d done since she returned to England, unless it involved Thomas.

Of Thomas, she could remember every detail. Her skin held tight to every word and every touch, but most clearly she remembered the way he’d looked at her the night before, the moment he’d bent down to kiss her before she’d hurried away.

For she could not shake the feeling that in her mind she’d heard Thomas speak a single word with that kiss.
Farewell
.

Perhaps it’s for the best,
Jane tried to tell herself as she watched the traffic jostling slowly alongside their carriage. The rain that had so obligingly held off yesterday now poured down steadily, turning the day as gray and miserable as her thoughts.
I must have frightened him with all this talk of leaving my position to be with him. Surely, it’s better to know I’ve had all he can give sooner rather than later. Isn’t that the way of
affaires du coeur?