The Queen's Bastard (17 page)

Nina, caught between scandalized at the cut of the gown’s neck—far from off the shoulders, but a more open square, with angled sides that left a little more collarbone bare than current fashion dictated—and envious of the chance to wear it, reflected in the mirror as well, finishing the last touches to Belinda’s hair. It was worn up, exposing the delicate length of her neck, scraps of leaves and pale green flowers woven against the brunette waves.

Belinda heard carriages outside, and the thunk of the knocker that thudded through the entire house. “Will I do?” she asked Nina, amused. The girl rolled her eyes.

“I suppose, madam. I won’t be completely embarrassed to let you out of the house.” They smiled at each other in the mirror as the bedroom door popped open, another breathless servant—Marie; Belinda wanted to remember their names, just as she deliberately failed to remember men like Viktor—Marie forgetting to knock in her excitement.

“My lady, he’s here.”

Belinda stood, smiling. “He’s just a man, my dear. They’re not worth quite all that much fuss.” Her eyebrows lifted slightly, though the smile remained in place. “They’re certainly not worth forgetting manners over.”

Pink-cheeked guilt overcame the girl and she ducked her head, hands clasped together at her hips. “I’m sorry, my lady, please forgive me, it’s only that—”

“You’re forgiven,” Belinda said, still amused. Ten years of playing the lesser parts, filling household roles such as the one that was this girl’s livelihood, had done nothing to prepare Belinda for the constant source of delight that playing an upstairs role brought. She had let the stillness fade away far too often the last several days, allowing herself to be caught up in good cheer and the pleasantries of wealth. She could play lady disdain, but for Marius there seemed no point; he was caught already, and charmed by the openhearted and good Beatrice. Until she had to meet with his friends again—a time when reserve would more suit her anyway—Belinda could allow herself the revelry of simple joy. Capturing a light cloak from her bed where it lay, she followed Marie downstairs, fully aware the girl trailed after to watch Marius’s reaction to the gown.

But it was Javier who stood alone in the lobby, his hands folded neatly behind his back as he studied a painting—a particularly awful portrait of Beatrice’s late father—that hung in a place of pride near the door. The prince wore grey, both incredibly subdued and unexpectedly flattering to his complexion and hair. As he turned from the portrait, a smile of appreciation already settling on his face, the maid gave Belinda a desperate glance over her shoulder, as if to say,
You see, my lady? He
was
worth forgetting to knock!

And Belinda, astonished, gave the girl absolution in the form of a faint nod. “Your Highness.” She had no need to hide her surprise, nor did she think Javier would find insult in her gaze searching the corners of the room and landing in confusion on the door before finally returning to him. Beneath the heavy brocaded vest he wore white, startling against skin to which torchlight and fading sunlight gave a golden cast.

“Please,” he said, “Javier. If my friends court you, then we must be friends, too.”

“Javier,” Belinda said faintly, then smiled. “Not James?”

“Good Lord, no,” Javier said with a smile of his own. He was more attractive in evening light than he had been in the club. “James is a construct, meant to hide behind, and evidently a poor one. No, my lady, please, call me Javier.”

“Then you must call me Beatrice.” Belinda spoke reflexively, stepping forward to take the arm that Javier offered with another smile. “But my lord…I had thought Marius would be here tonight…?”

His eyebrows drew down over eyes that ate up the color of the lights with the same faint gold sheen that his clothes and skin did. “Marius’s mother has taken ill. He will not be joining us tonight after all.”

Surprise splashed through Belinda with such alacrity that for the first time in days she deliberately curtained it with the stillness, letting her heartbeat slow in the few moments before she spoke again. “He hadn’t sent a message. I hope she’ll be all right? It was kind of you to come for me instead, then.” Suspicion flowered at the back of her neck, a hot feeling of certainty that had no root. “Lord Asselin and Lady Eliza wait for us in the carriage?”

Javier’s frown deepened a little. “They’ve both sent their regrets, each of them vying for who is more disappointed to not see you in your new gown, which is,” he took a perfunctory breath, “lovely. I’m afraid it’s my company and mine alone tonight, Lady Beatrice. Forgive us all for the change in plans.” The words and the tone were perfectly matched: polite regret, a vague aura of discomfort, mild humour at the situation. It was a flawless performance.

Hot flares wrapped around Belinda’s throat and crept over her scalp, making her shiver even in the warmth of the room. The stillness within her gave her room for certainty, even without being able to make sense of it: beneath the prince’s words lay no surprise, no dismay, and an unmistakable air of triumph. The emotions were strong enough to be her own, as if they came from within her own skin, rather than from the prince whose arm she was on. She gazed up at him, balanced between fascination and fear. He quirked his eyebrows, waiting for her answer, and she found it in herself to smile back at him, easily.

“I think I can forgive you, my lord. I look forward to the evening’s performance. We must remember it well, so we can share it with the others, and especially relate it to poor Madame Poulin. Thank you for thinking of me even as your friends were unable to attend. I’m honoured.”

Thoughts awhirl, she didn’t hear his reply as he escorted her to his carriage.

The opera held nothing of interest, compared to the man at her elbow. Belinda watched without seeing, aware of its majesty and the skill of the players, and recorded the pageantry into memory for discussion later while remaining herself unmoved. Javier put on a show as excellent as the one below them: leaning forward, eyes intent on the stage, a smile playing over his mouth from time to time, as benefited the production.

It was all a lie. Now attuned to it and focused, not overwhelmed by an onslaught of emotion as she had been at the Maglian pub, she could feel the prince’s true intentions, hidden beneath the veneer of grace and nobility. Not that he lacked those things in any fashion, but now they were distraction, a surface performance for the benefit of others. Below, triumph had faded into burgeoning interest, smugness into curiosity. At the edges of emotion Belinda thought she could almost pull individual thoughts free, but they slipped between her fingers and disappeared. She glanced at her hands and allowed herself a faint smile through the stillness. Metaphorical fingers, at least; she doubted she could slide her very hand into Javier’s head and capture those thoughts in their entirety.

His curiosity was tempered by something more: apprehension. Fear was too strong a word, his own confidence too great to truly fear the woman at his side. But she was a new thing in his experience—from the conflict of interest and caution within him, Belinda could read that.

It hardly surprised her. The stillness she knew as a part of herself was alien to anyone else she had ever met. Especially—
especially!
—the moments in her childhood when the shadows had held her safe within their arms. Her father had meant her to forget, but the memory came on strong now, sitting in the darkened hall. It was unlike any theatre she had ever known, roofed over to keep in heat and to bring the full force of the singers’ voices reverberating around the walls. Even the floor had seats, rather than the crowded, standing-room only areas she knew from Aulun’s open-air playhouses. This was not a place the poor came into for an afternoon’s entertainment, paying their ha’penny to a drunk who kept the gate. The darkness of it protected her, letting her drift in memory even as she tried to puzzle out a way to broach an unspoken brotherhood with Javier. The will of
not being there
which she’d drawn so tightly around herself all those years ago, she could remember that. The triumph of knowing she was hidden from all eyes, and the shock of Robert discovering her. She could remember all of those things. How, then, could the moment of hiding be so fully erased from her memory?

Had she faded? Belinda rolled her shoulders forward, making her chest concave as she closed her eyes. Was it memory or imagination that encouraged her down that path, telling her that
fading
was right, something important about
fading
…

“It ends badly,” Javier murmured by her ear. Belinda caught her breath and lifted her chin, called back to the theatre and the music with a pulse of irritation.

“My lord?”

“The story ends badly, in death and despair for all the principal actors. Perhaps we should retire early, so you might be spared the anguish?”

Belinda arched an eyebrow as she tilted her head toward his. “I am all but certain,” she breathed, “that the actors will rise up anew from their death throes and live to perform another night. I think I am bold enough to sit through another half hour of make-believe. They will notice if you leave, my lord. Your exit could end this show tonight, even as it opens.”

Javier quirked a smile, his head angled with interest. “You’re a gentle soul, aren’t you? You think of things that I never would. Nobility suits you, lady. The world might be a better place if all gentry were as well-heeled as you.”

Belinda returned her gaze to the stage, unwilling to meet the amused admiration in the prince’s eyes. “I am perhaps closer to the land than you, is all, my lord. My station is not so high. Perhaps it is easier to see those who make their livelihoods on a prince’s whim from where I stand.”

“Then perhaps a prince requires your wisdom.” Javier’s tone changed, more weight given to the words than the conversation had warranted. Impatience grew in him, pushing aside apprehension and replacing it with avarice. Belinda glanced at him again, unable to read what goal greed sought. There was always one safe gamble, though, particularly with a handsome man of power. She lowered her eyes.

“I would be proud to serve you, my lord. My wisdom is at your disposal, as are all my faculties.”

He glanced at her, sharp, then allowed himself a chuckle that altered the emotions she read in him more than it broke through into sound. It was marked by desire, thick and interested, and a trace of complacency. Belinda was not the first, nor would she be the last, woman to make such a blatant, if coded, offer to the prince. The uplift of his amusement was heady, sweeping up Belinda’s spine and curving around her body as needle-sharp tingles of want in her breasts and groin. For a few seconds she rode the delicious pain of it, letting it rob her of breath, knowing Javier would note that breathlessness on a subtle level. She shivered. He put his hand over hers, and for a shocking moment, his thoughts were hers to savor.

…ckable if nothing else—but there’s more. Witchbreed.
The word hung in his thoughts, pulsing deep red with anguish: it was a word he would never speak aloud, one he feared, one that never strayed far from his mind. It accused and it denied all in one, forcing internal confrontations that led to an outpouring of power. The alternative was to subsume it, to swallow it up and deny its existence, but what then if the vessel, his weak body, should crack? What if the unspoken ability he held, one that no one, not even Mother, seemed to share, could burst forth if bottled too long? No, better to focus it, wield it like a sword, make use of it to influence and encourage the men around him. It could be done subtly,
must
be done subtly, else certainly Hell itself would rise up and take him back to its depths as one of its spawn…

Belinda jerked her hand back, every modicum of stillness, every ounce of control she’d ever known lost to her. A blush flooded her cheeks as her heartbeat crashed so loudly, so hard, that she thought it would tear her apart, and she couldn’t say if it was terror or joy that drove it so fiercely. Fire danced through her, burning her face and demanding her breath to fuel it, and the heat it made spilled through her until nameless emotion was subsumed beneath raging desire.

Javier turned to her with surprise so enormous it forgot offense. There was nothing of his thoughts in his gaze, no hint at all of the flood of words that had swept her, and yet she was certain, achingly certain, that she had not imagined what they’d shared. What she’d stolen.
Witchbreed.

The word tasted of fire, gold and bright at the back of her throat. It was new to her, not a term she would allow herself even in the most fanciful of moments, and it fluttered in her mouth, wanting to break free and be spoken. She wondered, if she kissed him, whether Javier would taste of the same enflamed power that his word burned with. The thought caught her breath, boiling away everything else, until she remembered herself and jerked again, harder than before. Choice, that time, she told herself fiercely. Choice, and not control deserting her.

“Forgive me, my lord.” She let the breathlessness of discovery turn her expression wide and open, and then embarrassed at its freedom, eyes dropped as she adjusted the stays of her corset. “I hardly meant to be so rude. But it’s nothing,” she said quickly, softly, to the concern that overrode his surprise. “Nothing, save my corset seems to have taken a dislike to the soprano.” The woman below lifted her voice to an astonishing note as Belinda wrinkled her face, twisting once more to adjust the lines of the maligned garment. Javier grinned and returned his attention to the stage.

Witchbreed
. The idea hung in her thoughts now, not with the apprehension she’d felt in Javier’s, but with heart-pounding curiosity. It defined him as surely as the words that had haunted her since birth seemed to define her:
it must not be found out.
So, too, felt Javier about this
witchbreed
; it was what he had named himself. Belinda had turned her need inward, making it internal and silent. Javier had extended outward with his; perhaps it was the difference between a man and a woman.

He knew, then. Without reflecting on it, he recognized, as she did, that they had something akin to each other.
Witchbreed
. Belinda watched the remainder of the opera in thoughtful silence, no more seeing it than she might see the wind. As the curtain fell and applause echoed through the theatre, she leaned toward the prince, her decision made.

“I’m curious, my lord.”

“Mm?” Javier glanced at her, smiling, then back at the stage with arched eyebrows, clearly expecting her question to regard the performance.

“You would not have sent them away deliberately. It would have caused too much hurt among old friends. So I wonder, did each thing that arose to keep them away surprise you, or did you fashion their excuses with your own need and desire, and lay them like yokes on their shoulders?”

“
What?
” Javier’s smile fell away and darkness clouded his eyes, a mixture of anger and fear. Belinda wet her lips, chin tilted up to give the prince a slight show of throat, one tiny acknowledgment of the power structure here.

“There is too much coincidence here tonight, and you know it as well as I. And, again, I wonder. Does the world order itself to your desire with or without your conscious will, Prince Javier? I have felt it in you, my lord.”

“Felt what?” His voice snapped with fury, though Belinda noted he was careful to keep it quiet. She leaned in, close enough to brush his ear with her lips, and breathed the words.

“The
witchbreed
magic.”

“You felt it, my lord.” Belinda might have shouted the words out loud, for all the chances of being heard among applause and people leaving the theatre. She didn’t; she kept them pitched for the prince’s ears alone, a murmur edged with intensity. “You felt it in me, just as I felt it in you. Don’t belittle us both and deny it.”

There was nothing of horror or fear, no anger or deliberation in Javier’s eyes. He bowed a brief gesture of approval to the opera cast, a smile playing his mouth. But standing beside him, Belinda could feel the bursts and sparkles of temper and fear, like fireworks of silver hue, snapping off him. Bending toward her, trying to shape her to his will, to shape her toward silence or caution or obedience.

Anyone so close as she would feel the energy of the man; anyone else would admire his vitality and never question that it sharpened the desire to serve him. In her, it birthed fascination at the utter opposites that choice allowed. Javier’s strength poured into her, failing in his intent to dominate. Belinda folded it into herself, letting it increase the core of stillness within her. Frustration splintered the edges of Javier’s power, turning it dark and blue, as if ice caught it and encroached inward. He was unaccustomed to defiance. More than unaccustomed: entirely unfamiliar with. That Belinda stood beside him without quailing or making apology was enough to put his doubts, if not his fears, to rest.

“Perhaps you would enjoy a tour of my gardens,” he offered pleasantly, no hint of strife in his voice. Could she not feel uncertainty and a need to understand rolling off his skin like air over heated stones, Belinda might have believed his offer to be nothing more than seductive politeness. “The hour is late, I know, but the night should still be warm, and I can offer a cloak if yours is insufficient.”

As bound by curiosity and desire to know as was the prince, for all that hers was tightly contained, Belinda bobbed a curtsey of agreement. “I would be delighted, my lord. Eliza tells me that you grow pears.”

“Yes, and they’re just at the end of the season.” Javier escorted her from the theatre, meaningless pleasantries exchanged for the carriage ride to the palace grounds. He himself offered her a hand in leaving the carriage, and without asking slipped her fingers into the crook of his arm. No woman would pull away from a prince; the gesture was instinctive, but also intended to confer honour. “Are you warm enough?” he asked solicitously. Belinda dropped her gaze and reveled in allowing herself a tiny smile in place of laughter.

“Yes, my lord. Thank you.” Bland and polite, they left the carriage behind as Javier guided her through a series of gates and into a midnight garden. They walked in silence, the charged topic between them set aside as Belinda loosened her fingers from Javier’s arm and took a few steps ahead of him into the warm, scented grounds.

Fruit-bearing trees clustered together thickly enough around pathways to cut evening moonlight into dapples and strips of white-blue light, shifting with the slight breeze. The air that stirred between them was warm and light with sweetness, the rich scents of ripening fruit. The paths were well-tended but not pristine; smaller bushes overflowed and tangled their thin branches into the walkways, easily torn if a wanderer did not watch his feet.