Of Silk and Steam (7 page)

“Please.” Mina’s throat constricted. “I don’t want to—”

“Not my face,” the queen instructed. “He won’t want it to be visible. But make certain it bruises.” Her chin lifted. “It wouldn’t do for my husband to think he needs to add his own, and if I can bear it…by God, you can do it to me.”

Sometimes being her queen’s strength was Mina’s own vile challenge.

“You’re late.”

Leo paused in the door of his father’s study. “Father,” he said, stripping off his coat and handing it to one of the hovering maids. “I’ve missed you too. The trip was successful”—only one assassination attempt by a Russian duke—“and the weather remained uneventful for our voyage, thanks for asking.”

The Duke of Caine turned away from the fireplace, light flickering over his pale skin before he dragged the hood of his cape up, hiding his face. “Do you think yourself amusing?”

“Frequently.”

The drapes were drawn, the room a smoky, heated den that Leo suspected the duke rarely ventured away from. A woman sat in the corner of the room, her fingers stilling on her needlework.

“Madeline,” Leo murmured, crossing to press his lips against her cheek.

She was his father’s oldest thrall, faint lines now forming around her dark eyes. A beautiful woman still, and one of the few who suffered Caine’s temper with any sense of aplomb. “Leo,” she replied, patting his cheek. “Look at you. You look like some dashing corsair.”

He raked a hand over his hair, where it touched his collar. “So I’ve been told.”

“Can you not do that elsewhere?” Caine snapped, gesturing to her.

Madeline’s smile faded, her dark gaze locking on the duke. “Perhaps I should leave you both to your chess game,” she demurred, though the faint lift of her brow indicated what she thought of Caine’s rudeness. Gathering her things, she smiled at Leo. “You know where you may find me.”

He’d much rather she’d stay. Her company was preferable to Caine’s. “Later,” he agreed.

His father owned six thralls, a sign of prosperity and influence, though, perhaps due to his illness, he’d begun to retire three of them. They were rarely kept in the manor house anymore, Caine having set them up in style in various houses around the city.

Leo himself supported two of his father’s thralls. They’d been a generous gift for his eighteenth birthday, though now he wondered if that hadn’t been his father’s attempt to hide the onset of his mysterious illness. Caine had become more reclusive not long after.

The only thrall that remained in the house was Madeline, though Leo wasn’t certain whose idea that had been.

He knew for a fact that Madeline refused Caine her flesh rights. She might have signed a thrall contract giving him unlimited access to her blood, but tradition dictated that a woman’s body was hers to give as she desired. A gift that was seldom spoken of in society.

That left him somewhat uncertain why she tolerated the old bastard.

“Send for me when you’re done,” she told Caine, drawing his chair back for him in front of their chess game. “You’ve not fed today.”

“I’ll drink my blood from a bottle,” the duke snapped.

“As you wish,” she replied, making her way toward the door and closing it behind her with the faintest slam.

Leo stared at Caine for a long time. His father was many things, but seldom rude. “If I were Madeline, I would have slapped you for that. You owe her an apology.”

“She’s not my wife.” The duke was peevish, settling in his chair and drawing his cloak around him as if he still felt the cold, despite the raging inferno that was the fire. “She needs to remember that.”

“Perhaps you need to remember your manners.” Leo crossed toward the chessboard. He took little pleasure in these visits; they were simply a duty to be performed. “Or are you forgetting them in your dotage?”

Caine’s jaw tightened.

“Your illness?” Leo inquired. “Does it make you peevish?”

“I am
not
ill.”

Leo sank down opposite him. A few years ago he might have still cared. Caine had burned away most of the empathy Leo had felt for him as a boy. Trying to please the old bastard had been an impossible task but one which Leo had set his mind to in every instance. But setting up Blade’s duel with Vickers had caused a rift between them that seemed impossibly wide. Leo had…stopped caring. Or no, not completely, though he often wished he had. Perhaps he’d finally come to the realization that he would never truly please the man he called a father.

They had nothing in common in face or appearance. Leo took after his mother—and the man who’d sired him. The dark eyes he’d been gifted with were remarkably similar to Honoria’s. Sometimes he wondered if Caine thought of that every time he looked at his wife’s bastard son. The thought sent a vicious wave of emotion through Leo. Another way to twist the knife in Caine’s chest.

They stared at each other across the chessboard.

“Don’t the Russians have valets? Or scissors?”

“I’ve grown fond of my hair longer.” At least he had now.

“Mmm.” Caine leaned forward over the board, studying the pieces that were already in play. “Talk to me about the Russians.”

So Leo did, falling back into the game they’d left off a month ago. He cut out all of the details Madeline might have enjoyed—the icy slash of wind against his cheeks as he peered over the prow of the dirigible, watching the Baltic pass by far below; the wonder of a foreign court; and the fiery burn of blood-laced vodka down his throat. He’d grown far too fond of that, sharing bottles of it with Captain Alexi as they laughed about the dangers of hunting boar in the Russian autumn and the far more dangerous pursuit of hunting Russian women.

Instead he named alliances, power plays, the puppet masters of the Russian Court, and discussed the treaty that the prince consort was intent on forging with the blood-thirsty Russians.

Caine was silent for a long time after he finished, staring at the chessboard Leo was halfheartedly negotiating. “You’re not trying.”

I
haven’t been trying for years.
Still, his jaw twitched at the rebuke. Too many years of trying to please the man were ingrained in him.

Caine slammed his rook into place and glared at Leo over the board. “Check.”

“So it is.”

His bland acceptance seemed to enrage the duke. “Perhaps your attention’s elsewhere, hmm? On something it shouldn’t be.”

He knew exactly what his father was suggesting. “Do tell.”

“Who is she? I know you haven’t availed yourself of Chloe or Cecilia since your return.”

His thralls. Their eyes met and Leo saw the triumph in his father’s. “You’re having me watched?”

“They are my thralls, after all.” The duke shrugged.

“Nice to know.” Leo stood, giving the chessboard a barely concealed look of disgust. Chloe was not the sort to break his faith; the duke terrified her. Cecilia, however, would know where her dues were owed.

“Who is she?” Caine demanded again, moving with the kind of viperish grace that made Leo’s breath catch just a little.

Caine blocked the path to the door. Leo met the duke’s gaze. “You wouldn’t approve.”

“You might be surprised. She’s clearly not thrall material or you’d not be restraining yourself. You always had a soft heart. I might be able to help with the marriage negotiations—”

“It’s called respect, not weakness. And the negotiations are entirely between myself and the lady in question,” Leo shot back, though it burned on the tip of his tongue that he was leading his father to believe him engaged in pursuit of a consort.

A laughable matter. Mina would never agree to such an alliance, and he was hardly certain where his own intentions lay.

He wanted her. Caine would never understand that. A political alliance was all that mattered to the duke, not a personal one. How many times had the duke told him that giving a woman his heart would only weaken him?

“I’ll find out,” the duke warned.

“No, you won’t.” Only Mina knew of his desires. “Not until the matter is decided.”

He pushed past, surprised when Caine let him.

This was the only tool in his arsenal. He didn’t have to stay. Didn’t have to crawl after Caine’s scraps of praise the way he once had, and Caine knew it too.

The duke followed him to the door, hovering on the threshold, as though he were afraid to cross it and enter the world of the living. “Are you going to see Madeline before you leave?”

“Of course I am,” Leo replied, glancing back over his shoulder. “She’s the main reason I still visit.”

It could have been his imagination, but the duke seemed to flinch.

“Tell her I’m sorry,” the duke called.

“Tell her yourself,” Leo threw over his shoulder, taking the stairs two at a time. “I’m not your errand boy.”

Not anymore, anyway.

* * *

Sunlight dappled the sitting room when Leo returned to Waverly Place, the home he shared with Cecilia and Chloe, his two thralls.

Only one of them would be home at this time of day. Cecilia would be out shopping, spending her allowance on small gems and silk gowns, or perhaps taking tea with her friends. Chloe preferred to read and also preferred her own company.

Her face lit up in a smile when he entered the room. However, her blond curls gleamed so brightly in the dying sunlight that he almost winced. He did not share Caine’s aversion to sunlight, but he still preferred the dark of night.

“What are you doing out of bed at this time of the evening?” Chloe demanded, placing her book aside with a playful smile. “Have you even
been
to bed today?”

He shook his head. “Duty calls.”

Chloe grimaced. “The duke.”

Chloe’s thrall contract had been signed between her father and the duke, leaving her with few other options in life. She’d been all of seventeen when Caine had passed over her leash to Leo—seventeen, somewhat frightened, and entirely unsuited for service as a thrall.

Leo shared his bed with Cecilia on occasion, though not his confidences. Chloe, however, had become a friend over the years, once it became clear that he would demand nothing of her that she did not wish to give. Her throat was unmarred by the fine silvery scars Cecilia flaunted, because she preferred to offer him the veins in her wrist for her fortnightly blood-lettings.

Leo took a breath, mulling over the thoughts that had been plaguing him since he’d left Caine House. “Chloe, I’m going to let you go.”

There was no surprise in her green eyes, only a flare of nervousness. “To Caine?”

A relief to get the words out—and for her to take them so calmly. Cecilia would not accept his decision so easily. “No. If you wish, I shall arrange several meetings for you with prospective protectors.” Passing a thrall contract on to another was not unheard of in the Echelon, though rare. Few wanted what had been marked by another man. “Or I would be willing to settle you with an annual stipend. You could live independently if you chose.”

“An annual stipend,” she said breathlessly, and he knew there would be no meetings to arrange on her behalf.

“A generous one. It is my hope that our friendship shall continue.”

A sideways glance. “I should like that. However, that is entirely dependent on your wife’s say in this.”

He arched a brow. “I didn’t say I was contemplating—”

“You didn’t have to,” Chloe said. “I would not be surprised to guess the name of the fortunate young woman you’re interested in, either.” A faint smile touched her lips. “The duchess does not seem the type to share.”

Duchess…?
He stared at her. “How did you—?”

“It’s written all over your face when you see her, though I doubt that anyone else has noticed. I know you too well, my lord. You get this look in your eye, like Cecilia when she sees a plate of Cook’s lemon tarts.”

Clever, observant Chloe. She was the one Caine should have cultivated if he wanted a spy, though her loyalty would have made such a task difficult. “I’m not entirely certain what my interest holds in regard to the duchess, or whether any more shall come of this.”

“I think you know. You would not do this if you weren’t certain in some part of you.”

Truth.
He wanted Mina. Wanted to pursue her, to mark her as his, to claim her. Anything else would be a hard-won battle, but he didn’t instantly deny the words. If she was his wife, then she would never belong to anyone else. That pleased the darker, hungrier side of his craving and stroked the darkness within that he’d fought so hard to contain over the years.

He’d been born a gentleman, but the hunger inside him was most definitely not.

“Besides, I think your doubt is misplaced.”

“Is it?” he asked. “She’s not the sort of woman to meekly submit to a consort contract.” Besides that, the number of obstacles in his way—Caine included—was hardly insignificant.

“You’re going to pursue her and you’re going to win her.”

“You should write propaganda pamphlets for the humanists,” he said dryly. “Or enlistment posters.” He stood, grateful that she had not railed against his barely formed decision. “Thank you,” he said as he made his way toward the door.

“You should know,” Chloe called, drawing his attention, “you’re not the only one looking, my lord. Especially when you’re not aware of her gaze. Though I should warn you… She doesn’t look at you like Cecilia looks at her lemon tarts.”

“Oh?” The words pleased him a little.

“She looks at you like a puzzle to be solved. Like a lion that has been staked near her and is threatening to tear its tether free. You are as much a threat to her as you are a fascination.”

“Why do I think you’re enjoying this?”

“I am. You’ve always been too certain of yourself.” Her eyes twinkled. “And it wouldn’t be worthwhile if it wasn’t a difficult pursuit, now would it?”

* * *

Gow was waiting for her as she descended the stairs that night. Mina peered at him from beneath the depths of the frothy black feathers that cascaded over her hair in a flirtatious little confection. She felt sick to her stomach, having spent most of the afternoon resting for the night ahead. She didn’t look it, though. The finest applications of tinted powders made her radiant, hiding the dark circles beneath her eyes.

No sleep for her this afternoon, though she’d tried, lying there with Boadicea snuggled to her chest, a warm contented purr rumbling through her. All she could see were the strategic marks she’d left on the queen’s arms, bruises in the shape of her hands. The thought almost brought up her gorge again.