The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1) (25 page)

“Wow,” Rowena said, seating herself on the hearth bench. A fire blazed merrily behind her. “That must have been some night.”

“It was,” Isla said quietly.

“I knew it!” Rowena sounded disgustingly triumphant.

Isla didn’t bother trying to explain that no, she and the duke hadn’t done anything so prosaic. He’d invaded her mind and forced her to tell him things she’d never told anyone. Had never dreamed that she ever
would
tell anyone. The awful truth was, she’d been under his spell for hours and she didn’t actually remember everything she’d told him. There were so many dark parts of herself, parts she hid because she was terrified of what people would think of her if she revealed the truth about how she thought and what she felt. Isla wasn’t a proper woman and never had been—her only saving grace was that no one knew just how improper she was. She’d always believed herself hideous, inside as well as out. And now, once again, this man was telling her that she was beautiful.

Isla glanced over at her sister, almost not catching the look that flashed across Rowena’s face. There was jealousy there and…something else, something Isla couldn’t name. But, seeing that Isla was looking at her, her expression once again smoothed into a blandly cheerful mask. “You should give him something in return.”

“I have nothing to give.”

“Oh, wait!” Rowena tapped her lower lip, ostentatiously pretending to think. “I forgot! You already have!” She made a face, sticking her tongue out, and she was once again the sister that Isla had always known. The cheerful, feckless girl who admired Isla and loved Rudolph and who wanted nothing more than to move to the manor next door and populate it with children. Isla smiled back.

The fire popped and hissed in the background. Mica mewed softly in her sleep and stretched.

“We can share,” Isla offered tentatively. Rowena was always trying to ply her with cosmetics, but Isla had no desire to rub her skin with toxins. Not even a little bit. And besides, her raven black hair and vellum white skin needed very little in the way of embellishment.

“No,” Rowena said with mock indifference. “I don’t think I want any enchanted potions.” She smiled, showing that she was teasing. “Besides,” she said more truthfully, “I don’t think it would be fair to Rudolph.” And on that score, Rowena spoke wisdom. Any man who felt the need to wear a padded codpiece of such outrageous dimensions couldn’t be all that secure in his masculinity—or his buying power. Rudolph’s family was, especially by local standards, well to do. But few men in the realm commanded the same kind of wealth as the duke. Rudolph shouldn’t feel competitive over the fact that he, for instance, couldn’t buy any such thing as a casket containing three of the costliest perfumes on earth, but he undoubtedly would.

“I understand,” Isla said. And she did.

P
iper moved through the glen, her hooves crunching on the leaves underfoot.

Isla had had a difficult time leaving, finding herself challenged by one of the guards. After an afternoon spent with Rowena—Rudolph, too, was absent on some sort of business—Isla had eaten a small dinner in her room and passed out in an exhausted sleep. The following morning, she’d woken up feeling almost refreshed and had decided to make the most of her remaining freedom by doing several things. First among them was visiting Cariad, while she still had leave to do so. Even if she only had a few days before the duke came back—and the truth was, she wasn’t entirely sure when he
was
coming back or where, indeed, he’d gone—she was damn well going to make them count.

The guard at the gate seemed to be under the impression that Isla might
not
have leave to do so. He looked up at her, squinting into the sun. His rough, seamed face was nut brown from a life spent outdoors and looked like it’d been moisturized with dirt. He was one of the older guardsmen, and seemed a decent enough sort. although Isla didn’t know him very well. As a young, unmarried woman, she hadn’t mixed overmuch with her father’s guardsmen—who were on their best behavior around her anyhow—and knew most of what she knew about them from Hart.

“The duke might not like it,” he said hesitantly.

“I see.” Isla suppressed a rush of annoyance. She’d always been calm by nature, but over the past week or so she’d been uncharacteristically volatile. Things bothered her that shouldn’t have or, at least, that never had before. Where was the even-tempered girl she knew? She shook her head slightly, to clear it. She didn’t know what was wrong with her and honestly preferred not to speculate. Everything had started the day that
man
rode in. That repellent man.

“Has the duke said anything?” she asked innocently.

The guardsman didn’t respond at first. She waited, unwilling to be put off. And, as she did so, she wondered idly where Hart was. She’d seen no sign of him since dinner the night before last, before her…encounter with the duke. That Hart had made himself scarce was in and of itself no cause for alarm; he sometimes left and spent the night with his mistress in the village. But now a new thought occurred to Isla: maybe Hart had gone with the duke!

“No,” the guardsman admitted reluctantly. “He hasn’t said no word.”

“Then,” Isla said, aiming for cheer but with an edge to her tone that she couldn’t quite erase, “I’ll do as I see fit.” When the guardsman still didn’t move, she added, “he’s my lord, not yours. And as far as I know, my father has given you no instruction on my comings and goings either.”

With this logic, the man couldn’t argue. Still grumbling, he let her pass.

Cantering down the—road was a generous term for the pebble-strewn track—Isla pondered her situation. Less than a week ago, she’d regarded the possibility of such an encounter with abject horror. Now, she found herself nothing so much as annoyed at the distraction. What had changed?

She hadn’t, as far as she was aware, been infused with some new species of courage. No, she decided, the unglamorous truth was that after what had happened to her over the past few days nothing would ever be scary again. Because in comparison, nothing
was
scary. She’d agreed to marry a man she hated, who she thought had plans to kill her and perhaps torture her first, she’d discovered the existence of demons and been glamoured by one. She felt like he’d ripped her in two and studied her from the inside out—she
still
felt like that, days later, still felt the residue of his mind in hers and his fingers on the back of her head and….

And she was confused. She found him both loathsome and intriguing at the same time. He was the only man—only person—who’d ever paid attention to her, who’d told her she was beautiful. She didn’t know what his game was, what he wanted from her. A demon wasn’t a man; he didn’t love, didn’t need, the way a man did. Despite his claims.

A gust of wind blew across the road, ruffling her cloak and pulling strands of hair free from her bun and bringing her the faintest scent of her own perfume. She’d decided that morning, after her bath, that she loved sandalwood. The warm, woodsy scent made her think of being outdoors and being free, and of her specimen-collecting walks and long talks with Cariad. She wondered if Cariad would be surprised to see her.

To the girl who is beautiful, inside and out.
She flushed. To have him…do that to her and then…the gift had been the gift of a lover. Rowena certainly thought so. Hart
already
thought they were lovers! And what else
would
he think, seeing her traipsing around carrying the man’s clothes like some forgotten harlot? Being invaded like that certainly hadn’t felt like any
love
she’d read about. Then again, the women who lived at the manor all said that their first time was awful. Isla smiled to herself, pleased that, even now, she hadn’t lost her sense of humor.

Were the casket and its contents an apology? A token of thanks? One of the ten thousand
tender-hearted gestures
discussed in Rowena’s favorite book? Or was it, as Isla had been wondering since she first opened the box, an acknowledgment of their conversation about bathing? Rowena had called her a prude, but there was something overtly sexual about perfume…an editorial comment on Tristan’s part, perhaps?

She stopped herself. She couldn’t let her mind wander down these channels; apart from everything else, she was afraid of what she might find. That Tristan Mountbatten was trying to manipulate her into
something
was obvious; that he wanted her to think of it as love, or at least interest, was equally obvious. But she hadn’t forgotten their very first conversation, when he’d told her that she’d overstayed her welcome; and she hadn’t forgotten his statement that while he cared nothing for her, if she gave in and let him have his way with her…
if you weren’t so frigid, darling, you might enjoy yourself more
.

She refused to be anyone’s pawn.

Dismounting in the small clearing in front of Cariad’s cottage, she secured Piper to a tree and left the mare to munch contentedly on a tuft of clover that grew by the base. Piper was a good horse; Isla hoped she got to take her north, when she left.

Leaving was very real now, although timeframes hadn’t been discussed—at least not with her. No one discussed the particulars of a woman’s marriage with the
woman
. She was, after all, the least relevant party to the transaction. So long as her plumbing was in decent working order and her hideousness not so insupportable that it couldn’t be overcome with strong drink, she was more or less left in a corner and ignored until such time as her would-be groom chose to claim her. Engagements, if they could be called that, ranged anywhere from a few weeks to—depending on the age of the prospective bride—a few years.

Cariad stood in the open door, waiting, her ageless countenance expressionless. Isla approached her slowly, feeling unaccountably awkward. Their previous parting had felt like goodbye, and yet here she was. Moreover, while Cariad could never be accused of overt enthusiasm, on this morning she struck Isla as even more unpleasant than usual. The feeling of unwelcome, of mistrust, seemed to radiate from the very air around them.

A long moment passed. “You’d better come in,” she said finally.

Isla followed her inside. The cottage was much as she remembered it, and why shouldn’t it be? She’d only just visited a few days ago—even if the span of time felt more like months. Or decades. Isla glanced quickly at what the witch referred to as her scrying mirror and wondered again if Cariad had known she was coming.

The witch waved her hand, and Isla resumed her accustomed spot. Cariad brewed a pot of some herbal concoction and, decanting the strong-smelling mixture into two earthenware mugs, pushed one over to Isla and sat down opposite. “Mint, rose hips, red clover and nettle leaves,” she said by way of explanation. Isla sipped cautiously, making a face. It tasted even worse than it smelled. “To ward against illness,” Cariad said. “The same brew is also good against infection; especially the rose hips. Which, if prepared with equal parts honey, have excellent healing and restorative properties against all manner of bodily complaint.”

“The patients will get better,” Isla managed, “just so they don’t have to drink this. It’s very…motivating.”

“Thank you.” Cariad smiled slightly.

“You knew I’d be back.”

“Yes. I knew that you’d be back, once or twice before you left. But I also knew that, in between then and now, something would happen. More than one something, even if, as I suspect, you’re still ignorant on that score.” She reached out and brushed Isla’s hair back from her face, tucking the escaped tendrils into her bun. Isla’s hair had always been perfectly straight, refusing even the most enthusiastically applied curling iron and, indeed, burning off in Rose’s hand before accepting a curl. “He’s put his mark on you,” she said quietly.

“What?”

But Cariad didn’t explain. “How are things with your sister?”

Isla paused, flustered. “Alright,” she managed finally. “I suppose.” But despite having just categorized their relationship in such magnanimous terms, she found herself telling Cariad all about how strangely Rowena had acted ever since Rudolph’s arrival and how strange Rudolph himself had acted. Rowena seemed fine one minute, and almost—vicious, for lack of a better term—the next. Isla didn’t understand what was happening. Rowena had, according to Rowena, gotten exactly what she wanted in her escape from one marriage and agreement to another. “I don’t understand,” she said again.

“Don’t you,” Cariad replied.

The two women regarded each other in silence.

Cariad sighed. She sounded vaguely disgusted, as though she’d tried and failed to teach a simple lesson to a particularly recalcitrant toddler. She sipped her tea, apparently relishing the taste. Well, Isla thought sourly, she would. It was just as bitter and stinging as Cariad. And then, putting down her mug, she made a point so obvious that Isla was astonished she hadn’t thought of it, herself. “So the most powerful peer in the realm—demon or no demon—rode in and asked for your sister’s hand in marriage. Is that about the sum of things?”