The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1) (12 page)

He, for his part, seemed content to share the silence and made no effort of any sort at conversation.

Finally, she spoke. She hated him, didn’t care what he thought of her, and figured they might as well understand each other. He should know that, contract or no contract, she was no fool and wouldn’t allow herself to be treated like one. If he’d wanted a fool, he should have stuck with Rowena. She suppressed the thought, hating herself for it. She’d done this
for
Rowena. Rowena who, even now, was probably gazing out her window and dreaming of Rudolph.

“I have no wish to be friendlier,” she said.

“How come?” he asked, more because her comment amused him than because he cared about the answer.

“Because there’s no point,” she replied truthfully.

“Would you prefer it if I locked you in a dungeon until I decided to do away with you?” He spoke in that same half-amused tone. “Perhaps chained you to a delightfully frigid stone wall and tormented you?”

“Yes,” she said, again truthfully, “because that would be more honest. This”—she waved, indicating him and her and their surroundings, the once-beautiful garden with its drooping vines and sad-looking statues—“is subterfuge. I can barely stand to be in the same room with you, Your Grace, and I know you feel the same.”

“That’s not a very nice way to talk to your husband,” he murmured, not seeming to mind.

They were moving deeper into the garden, into an area that had once been a maze in which residents and guests could amuse themselves. Isla supposed they ran around like silly geese, as the pre-war nobility seemed to do, or secreted themselves together in the quiet corners that dotted the enclosure. Placed with a convenient bench or two, they gave the illusion of privacy without actually creating any. A lady could retreat in safety, knowing that if she cried out someone would hear her—at least in theory. If the man of the hour, say, touched her ankle.

Isla frowned to herself. Those had been more innocent times, when House Terrowin still ruled and years of infighting hadn’t laid waste to most of their once-lush country. Isla didn’t remember those times, had been born long after they ended, but she’d read about them and had a good imagination.

Almost the whole of the maze lay open to view now, the narrow hedges long ago collapsed into a single sprawling mass. Their path curved around, deeper into the woods behind the maze—what had once been a sort of fairy garden—along a track that the duke seemed to know quite well.

Isla stopped, startled by a familiar landmark and surprised to realize how far they’d come. To her right, a rectangular tomb rose out of the mulch and drifting leaves that covered the forest floor. A sad angel in an old-fashioned tunic rose from the lid, her arm raised in benediction. Lichen covered her in patches, growing thick in the folds of her tunic. Part of her nose had been chipped off. Her eyes looked entirely too knowing, and she radiated an aura of silent disapproval that had made Isla uneasy since she was a child. Her less imaginative siblings made fun of her, daring her to climb up onto the statue when she refused, trembling, to even enter the glade for fear of coming under that gaze.

“There’s…something wrong with this tomb,” Isla said, forgetting for the minute to whom she was speaking.

“Yes,” the duke agreed matter of factly. “There’s a curse. Whoever’s buried here didn’t want to be disturbed.” Isla, who didn’t believe in curses, found this revelation odd in the extreme. He turned to her. Somewhere, an owl screeched. “How do you know?” he asked.

“Know what?”

“That I have no desire for this.”

His question struck Isla as absurd. If she hadn’t been so terrified of her so-called
betrothed
, she’d have hit him. “Because I’m not beautiful like Rowena, or charming, and even if I were I’m sure there was no great deficiency in either of your last two wives. Or am I wrong?” She shook her head slightly, furious at herself for revealing even this much of her thoughts to the monster before her. She wanted to spend as little time as possible with him between now and—whatever happened. “Furthermore,” she added, “I have no desire to be lied to.”

He considered her statement. “Have you never seen yourself?” he asked.

She frowned slightly, unsure of what he meant.

“You’re a beautiful woman,” he said. It was a statement of fact, devoid of either interest or admiration. He might as well have been complimenting the build of a horse, or a particular vintage of port. “Of course,” he mused, “you appear to have no mirrors in this backwater, so mine is a reasonable question. I find it entirely possible to believe that you haven’t seen yourself. You’re far more attractive than your sister,” he continued, “who has all the simplistic, bovine charm of a milkmaid.”

Isla bristled at this insult to Rowena. “Why?” she demanded, “why are you doing this to me?”

“Because I find you intriguing,” he replied, turning to examine the statue. He traced his fingertips lightly over the curve of one calf and then nodded, an almost imperceptible movement of the head, as if confirming something to himself. When he spoke again to Isla, he sounded distracted. Like the words were an afterthought.

“Our…union,” he said, “is going to occur regardless of how much you loathe me. Therefore, it seems to me that while there’s undoubtedly a certain quaint charm to
lie back and think of the kingdom….
”

He turned, his eyes glittering in the moonlight, letting the words hang between them. “If you weren’t so frigid, darling, you might enjoy yourself more.” His words were pointed, his tone laden with meaning as he let his gaze wander over her.

She’d never felt more—more
used
in her life. From another man, the sentiment might’ve held some perverse romantic appeal. But Isla felt like a piece of meat. Utterly and totally dehumanized.

There had been a playful quality, almost, in his suggestion that she learn to enjoy the experience; and an acknowledgment there, at the same time, that he’d do whatever he felt like doing regardless of her wishes. The duke understood her, and very well. Too well. He knew exactly what upset Isla the most, and why—although how he’d accomplished such a feat, she couldn’t even begin to understand. They barely knew each other. The problem was that he knew, and simply didn’t care; except to the extent that her pain gratified his own amusement.

Disgusted—with him and with herself—Isla turned and ran.

He didn’t follow her. She didn’t think she could have stood it if he had. Back on the terrace, she’d been sure that he was going to force himself on her. Then she’d been sure that he wasn’t. And then, watching him watch her in front of the tomb, she’d been sure once again that he was. He’d made no threatening move; he didn’t have to. He was far, far stronger than she. But even that hadn’t been what had spooked her; no, it was the aura of
ownership
about him. He had no need to capture her, as he considered her to be his already.

A horrible image flashed in her mind of him pulling her into his arms and forcing her down into the dead leaves, of turning her head and feeling them work their way into her mouth as she inhaled their moldering scent. Of his cold hands exploring her flesh. She knew, without knowing, that his touch would be as assured as it had been earlier in the evening. And as cold. She’d never felt such cold, unyielding flesh except once, as a child, when she’d crept forward to the dais where her grandfather lay in state and touched his withered cheek.

She remembered his skin as being soft and papery, but on this day it had been as hard as concrete. Rigor, her nurse had explained, had set in; meaning that the body was beginning its process of returning to the earth and to the Gods. The duke’s—Tristan’s—hand had felt like that. Still. Cold. And yet horribly
alive
.

But what struck Isla as most horrible of all was that the image didn’t fill her with nearly the revulsion that it should have but, instead, occasioned a sort of sick fascination. Isla wracked her brain for some comparison, which would explain her feelings—if only to herself, so she wouldn’t go completely crazy. And the only thing she could come up with was the perverse urge to throw herself over the edge that came over her every time she climbed up onto the battlements. The urge that had formed the basis for her lifelong fear of heights; what a tutor had referred to once, rather obliquely, as
intrusive thoughts
. Things she didn’t want, but couldn’t escape nonetheless. She used to look at the crenellations that lined the edge and worry that she’d hurt herself without intending to; not because she had any secret desire to do so—she didn’t—but because she couldn’t help herself.

She avoided heights, because she hated that feeling of being out of control—and hated even more the nagging sensation that some part of her she didn’t understand lurked deep inside. Some
other
Isla, motivated by thoughts and fears and needs that were alien to her conscious mind.

She’d reached her room before she realized that she still had his cloak. Cursing, she threw it down on the floor only to look up and see Rowena watching her with wide eyes. She’d obviously been waiting for Isla to come back to her room—waiting for some time, if the dark circles under her eyes were any indication.

“Are you alright?”

“No!” Isla stamped on the cloak. She hated how childish she was acting, and she hated how childish she felt. The cloak was, she noted, so simple in design as to be quite severe but nonetheless beautifully made. The wool itself was of fine quality and colored, she saw, a deep indigo. Some perverse part of her felt bad for stamping on it; that its master was evil wasn’t the cloak’s fault. And why was she anthropomorphizing a piece of cloth?

She threw herself down into her chair with a groan. She wanted to light the cloak on fire and its master with it. Now that he was safely out of sight her terror had abated somewhat, leaving only disgust. Everything about him was awful. And—a curse? What had he been on about?

Of course, she hadn’t wanted to
ask him
. There was no such thing as a curse, Isla knew that. He’d just been trying to frighten her…hadn’t he?

But what about those claws?

Was it possible that he—that he actually—
no
. She cut herself off ruthlessly, and stared into the fire. She was focusing on
not
focusing so intently that it took her a solid minute to realize that Rowena was still talking. With an effort, she roused herself and regarded her sister. “What?” she asked stupidly.

“You were gone a long time.”

“I know.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“You seem very upset,” Rowena ventured.

“Leave me alone.”

“Isla—”

“I said, leave me alone!”

A
fter Rowena left, Isla threw herself down onto her bed fully clothed and waited for sleep to grant her oblivion. In the morning, she woke sore and exhausted and grateful that no one had come in the night searching for the cloak. Which was exactly where she’d left it, in a puddle on the floor. Bending down, her arms aching and her lower back as stiff as a board, she picked it up and draped it over the back of her chair before calling for her bath.

She stretched, wincing, as Rose and Alice hauled in the elongated barrel-like tub and began filling it with cold water. The king bathed with warm water, Isla was sure; the rest of the world made do with cold. Even if the water
had
been heated, by the time sufficient buckets had been carried upstairs to fill the tub it’d have
gone
cold. And if that wasn’t wasted effort, Isla didn’t know what was.

Thanking the girls, who were preoccupied with some new bit of gossip—probably involving her brother, Hart—Isla dismissed them and stepped into the water. Shivering, she watched the bar of goat’s tallow soap floating between her legs. It was caustic and even with the addition of lavender it still smelled like tanning detergent. Resolutely, she began to scrub.

Isla used her own hair care products that she’d made herself. She didn’t trust the products available in the village. Especially the pricey ones, which were the most useless and frightening of all. Her father had been sold a potion, ah,
tincture
, to re-grow his hair by his personal physician. The recipe involved boiling together a still-living lizard with the just-shed skin of a snake, preferably a highly venomous snake, until the unfortunate lizard has gasped its last and turned black. Then one added three cut lemons—where one was supposed to get something as exotic as a lemon in Ewesdale, Isla could scarcely fathom—and boiled the whole revolting mess together for another hour. After which one strained the results into a flask and combed it through one’s hair every night before bedtime.

That same physician also recommended massaging the scalp with bacon grease.

Isla washed her hair with a honey-based mixture, to which she’d added a tiny bit of lavender. A tiny bit was all she could afford. Her hair was soft and shiny and if not, as Rowena claimed, as black as a raven’s wing then not terrible either. Using one of her old shifts to towel off, she stepped out of the bath and padded over to her wardrobe.