The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1) (58 page)

“Hart!”

Hart, who hadn’t meant anything by the remark other than the obvious statement that Isla and Tristan were already betrothed, stopped. Slowly, he turned. “Oh,” he said, a knowing grin spreading over his face. “It’s like that, is it. Are you with child?” he asked interestedly.

“Certainly not!” Isla struggled to form her thoughts. How could she explain what she felt? What she’d gone through? And how much? “I…ah…last night….”

Hart laughed. “Ah, the old fuck and run. Good for him!”

It was all Isla could do not to launch herself at him.

The hateful boor leered back, pleased with himself for having made a deduction. The first of his life, probably. He was right; he wasn’t bright. He was the stupidest, worst man on the face of the earth and he was her
brother
. That they shared the same blood, right now, seemed impossible. But as she attempted to execute him with her glare, slowly Isla’s anger gave way to something else: the germinating kernel of an idea. Hart thought, obviously, that Tristan had taken her maidenhead and then departed without so much as a by-your-leave. Which, in one sense, he had. He’d certainly taken her innocence.

The one method of innocence-taking was rather more plausible than the other, it occurred to her now.
He cajoled me into his bed and then left
sounded a great deal less fantastical—or simply crazed—than
I’m having a hard time with the fact that he feasts on human flesh
. If she let Hart believe what he wanted to believe, then at least she’d have
some
outlet. The circumstances might require a slightly different presentation, but the resultant confusion and shame—she guessed—probably more or less the same. And she needed to share those feelings with
someone
or she’d explode. Moreover, after so much time, ah,
alone
with Tristan Isla was embarrassed to admit that she was still a virgin.

“Think what you want,” she told Hart, perfectly honestly.

They resumed their walk.

“Every girl,” Hart said, a trace of humor still in his voice, “acts like her first time is such a grand event. Apparently even my sister.”

“Hah! It wouldn’t be such a
grand event
,” Isla replied tartly, “if men weren’t all convinced that a woman’s worth rested between her legs. And, moreover, weren’t all just as convinced that each woman is a one shot deal. Once she’s been touched, her value is about as high as a fruitcake that’s been shat on by a horse.”

Hart held up his hands in a gesture of mock defense. “Mercy!” he said.

“Each man wants to be the first to dip his wick, and the last!” Isla felt brave for using Rose’s coarse phrase. Like a real adult, for once. “Probably,” she added, “because he’s under the mistaken impression that if she’s got nothing to compare it to she won’t know it’s bad.”

“You
have
grown up.” Hart sounded approving.

“And you haven’t!”

Hart conceded the point with a nod. “So you’re worried that you’re about to face a lifetime of terrible sex, is that it?” He made a pinching gesture, indicating the projected size of the member. Isla laughed, half amused and half scandalized. She shook her head. “Then what is it then?” Hart sounded genuinely curious. He would.

“Last night….” Isla trailed off. Hart, sensing the change in mood, waited. “Last night was frightening,” she said. Even if she could have told Hart everything, for once in her life she didn’t have the words.
Frightening
was both too much and too little, by way of description.

“Well he can’t have
that
fearsome of a weapon.”

“You have no idea.”

Hart laughed. “Well, good for him!”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to”—see—“do it again.” And she never wanted to.

“Undoubtedly. I mean, you do realize that married people—”

“He’s…different.”

“All men are different, down there. Or didn’t you realize?”

“He’s different everywhere.”

“Well you weren’t hoping to marry a woman, were you? Although,” Hart added, “I do realize that some women prefer women. I’m not a total rube.”

“No, but—he might have expectations. Expectations I’m not prepared to fulfill.”

Hart produced another apple from somewhere. They were nearing the orchard, or the bramble-tangled lines of trees that passed for one. Daylight had robbed the path of its mystique. Hammers rang out, and voices called. It hardly seemed possible that this was the same place where Isla had first touched Tristan, but there in the distance was the apple cart. Right where it had sat, unmoving, since before her birth. It seemed strangely out of place, like a visitor from another dimension. A pair of children sat, laughing and playing some game with knotted string, right where Tristan had overpowered her.

Turning, Hart looked at her curiously. “You mean like buggery?”

“Hart!”

“What?” A new thought occurred to him. “Or didn’t you realize that—”

“I realize everything I need to realize,” she said firmly. As close as she and Hart were, she didn’t need the mental image that he was presenting. She and Hart had always talked about things, and she had no particular objection to the idea of discussing intimate details with her brother. But imagining him
doing
them was quite another thing entirely. She knew that Hart was no virgin, but she preferred her knowledge to be of the vaguest sort possible. Hart, however, like most men, saw nothing embarrassing at all in revealing even the most revolting details. If he’d had sex with his pet pig, he’d probably have told her about that, too.

“Well then, there’s no delicate way to say this, Isla….” He paused. “I mean, like you said yourself, most men aren’t looking for their wives to be experienced. Whatever he expects of you, I’m sure he also expects to teach you. Too much, er, knowledge is a bit suggestive of, you know, knowledge.” What Hart had just said made no sense, but Isla understood him all the same. Inside the bedroom and out, Tristan wasn’t expecting a fellow expert.

“I mean, if he’d wanted to marry someone just like him he could’ve.”

Hart didn’t realize it, but he’d just made an excellent point. Tristan could, indeed, have married one of the women at court. He could have, for that matter, married another demon. Isla hadn’t heard him mention others, really, except in general terms, but she was sure that there must be some. He could hardly be the only member of his species alive in the world.

“Well,” she allowed, feeling slightly more hopeful, “that’s true.”

“And however…strange his proclivities might seem now, I’m sure you’ll get used to them.”

“I suppose.”

“He wouldn’t have, er, initiated you if he hadn’t wanted you to.”

“I didn’t like it, much.”

“Nobody ever does, at first. But they keep doing it, I mean, so that’s something.” Hart threw away his second apple core. “I think,” he added philosophically, “that people get better at it, because they’re motivated. Because they want to be with the person, and they want the experience to not be terrible. You know? So they practice. Not because it’s so wonderful every time, but because they
want
it to be. And eventually, you know, it gets better. People get used to each other. You’ll get used to each other. And you’ll remember why you like him. There are bad parts, but it’s not all the bad parts.” Hart paused. “You
do
like him, right?”

Isla nodded.

T
he rest of the afternoon and evening passed in a fog. Isla didn’t taste her supper and excused herself from the table as soon as she could. Her father, half-drunk and eager to avoid confrontation, let her go without so much as a question. Whether Tristan had left word for her, or had finalized their marriage contract, evidently made no difference to him, either, as he hadn’t said a word about it. He only gestured for more wine, and stared gloomily into the distance while Apple flirted with others.

The new overseer sat where Father Justin had sat the previous fortnight. He was a yeoman and had no rank, and thus technically no right to sit at the high table. But his appointment gave him importance sufficient to the placement. Tristan, with the signing of the marriage contract, had effectively become Enzie Moor’s new lord. Peregrine Cavendish had no legitimate heir, and although he could have done so under the new law he’d refused to legitimize Hart. Therefore, he’d always known that whoever his eldest daughter married would inherit his lands and title. Silas, as Tristan’s representative, acted with his authority. An insult to Silas was an insult to Tristan.

Silas been pleasant enough to Isla during dinner, if not overly friendly. Too much familiarity with his lord’s young bride would be inappropriate. But he’d smiled once or twice, a conspiratorial smile that said he understood. Neither of them really belonged there.

Still, Isla had picked at her food and said little. She’d been too deep in thought to eat much, even if she’d had an appetite. Hart’s explanation, that Tristan hadn’t abandoned her but left, rather, because he had important business to conduct, only made Isla feel worse. She hated the fact that, as a woman, her lot in life was to be left behind. To sit around doing nothing while the men did everything. Women weren’t allowed to make important decisions, even about their own lives. She was sick of pretending that what color of floss to use in a tapestry was an important decision.

And so, with a nod, she’d finally excused herself and escaped into the ill-used and almost empty confines of the west wing. She’d often traversed these halls, peering into the rooms, imagining what the dust and bat-infested space was like back when the manor was new and filled with people. They must have hosted dinners, and danced, and been happy. Until the first of the civil wars had come, and they’d all died. There were still blood stains in some of the woodwork, faded smears from where people had bled to death slumped against the walls. The armies had come, and then more armies, and then the hordes.

Isla ran her fingertips along the wall. She hadn’t felt irrelevant when Tristan was here. She’d felt wanted, needed, important. For the first time in her life.
He’d
wanted her. Listened to her. Protected her. And when he’d been with her, other people had been interested in her, too. Being so visible had made her uncomfortable, but now that she’d gone back to being invisible she realized how much she’d grown used to her new status. For so long, invisibility had been a comfort; an escape.

Now, it was a torment.

With Tristan gone, everything was bleaker than before. Everything was smaller and darker and drabber and her food tasted like ashes. Everything, too, was a reminder of Tristan’s absence. She’d missed Asher at the table, whispering with the other pages, but of course he’d left with Tristan. For all his pretense of disinterest, Tristan never let the boy far out of his sight. The boy he’d referred to as
his
boy. Which made Isla wonder; what
was
Asher’s true parentage? She couldn’t have been the only one to notice that he didn’t look much like his ostensible father with those gray eyes. Tristan’s eyes were black, but had they always been? She’d never seen a portrait of him from—before—but she supposed that one must exist. Most men of his rank sat for their first portrait by the time they were seven years old.

She let the thought go. There was no sense in tormenting herself. She wouldn’t mind if Asher turned out to be Tristan’s illegitimate child; despite what Hart might think she was no babe in the woods and knew full well that most noblemen had a bastard or two. Hart’s own parentage, after all, was hardly a secret.

She’d grown strangely attached to the boy in such a short amount of time; almost as attached, if in a different fashion, as she had to his master.

But at dinner, there had been only Apple’s eunuch. The sour-faced man smelled of lavender and wore too much rouge. He stared at Isla with a mixture of low cunning and disapproval that made her skin crawl. She wondered if
he
, and not Apple, had been the one to push Hart’s mother down the stairs. Jasmine had died horribly, screaming and writhing in pain from a set of injuries that no physician could heal. Her back had been broken, and something on the inside damaged. There had been blood, eventually, from her mouth. When she finally lost consciousness, it had been a mercy. The earl had stared on dumbly, too poleaxed to comfort the woman he loved, and Apple—who’d been a ladies’ maid, at the time—had had no expression at all. Beside her, her pet manservant had been equally as quiet.

No one knew precisely where he’d come from, only that one morning he’d been there. And had stayed. He’d been Apple’s pet from the beginning; no one else talked to him and he talked to no one else. Apple’s father was a merchant of some note, and there was no real explanation given for how a woman of means had ended up as a ladies’ maid although in some respects the position represented a promotion. It put her in contact with people that she would otherwise never have met. And unlike Rose, or Alice, Apple was educated. In that sense, her position was far more genteel. She was more like one of the ladies at court, ladies who were in essence paid companions—both to each other and to the queen. They had as many servants as anyone else, and most had titles in their own right.