The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1) (6 page)

Isla had balked at such—to her—ridiculous advice.
Then they’re brittle
, had been her caustic reply. No one with such an ill-formed ego had the power to attract her in the first place. Isla wanted a man strong enough in his sense of self, and confident enough in his own knowledge and experience, to thrive on the challenge of, well, being challenged.

She caught the duke’s eye for a second, and felt like he looked right through her. And then the moment was over and Hart was talking animatedly about some horse he’d seen at a fair.

Isla spent a lot of time alone with her thoughts. Hart was smart enough, but not of what could charitably be termed
a philosophical bent
. Rowena, bless her childish heart, was dumb as a post. Isla certainly couldn’t talk to their father, and that left the servants. Their manor was isolated, and she saw very few people her own age. Rudolph’s sister was intelligent enough, and Isla liked her—considered her a friend, even—but much as they’d like to see more of each other both had responsibilities that prevented them from traveling.

Which was, Isla supposed, partly why she imagined herself to be a match for this duke. She had, after all, been lord of this manor in all but name for nigh on three winters and not bungled the task too badly. Indeed, she’d done a fair job of things. A fairer job than her father. Her self-assurance was the only thing preventing her from going crazy with fear. And disgust. That, and the fact that nothing seemed quite real. Since the duke had first ridden up on his enormous black destrier, eighteen hands if it was a foot, she’d felt like she’d been living in a dream. He’d swung himself down from the saddle, landing in the mud without seeming to notice, and tossed the reins arrogantly to a stable hand.

She thought about poor Rowena, curled up in a ball on her bedspread. Unusually for her, she’d been wearing the same gown when Isla returned that she had when Isla had left. That, more than anything, had served as confirmation of Rowena’s despair. Isla had dressed herself for dinner; keeping no maidservants, the girls helped each other. Rowena had refused to budge, wailing into her pillow about how her life was over and where was Rudolph.

Isla had stripped down to her plain linen chemise, shivering in the cold, and then switched the simple pair of sleeves she’d worn for work with a longer, more elaborate pair that extended below her fingertips. This pair, too, was made of white linen but she’d added a line of embroidery using some thread that had been dyed a sun-kissed yellow with goldenrod. If she squinted, it looked almost like thread of gold. Well, not really, but a girl could dream.

Her dress was something she’d also made herself, a slim-fitting tunic with gussets at the hips to allow freedom of movement. The neckline was square and, if not low, then not precisely modest. The bodice had short cap sleeves, from which the sleeves proper extended. The color was another of Isla’s special creations, a maroon that did something pleasant for her coloring. Finally, she tied a low belt around her waist. The cord, which sat on her almost nonexistent hips, was more decorative than anything else. Her plaited hair was wrapped around her head in a simple but artful style. She possessed no jewelry or other ornament. Her mother had possessed a large jewel chest, the contents of which her father had long ago pawned to cover his debts.

And then, with a final word to Rowena, she’d gone downstairs.

The nearby fire smelled of peat and dung and hickory. In the finer manors, she’d heard that the fires were sometimes scented with sweet-smelling woods and essential oils to add ambiance. Even were the earl interested in such—what he considered to be—utter frivolities, they weren’t affordable.

Isla was sure that the duke’s home boasted every comfort, decent wine and decent food and scented fires and eiderdown quilts and lamps that didn’t smoke and who knew what else, but she’d cheerfully go the rest of her life without seeing such things if doing so meant finding a man who cared for her and being happy. And if doing so meant that Rowena could be happy. Isla wasn’t so disingenuous as to pretend that she didn’t like nice things, or that the thought of wealth somehow offended her; the degenerating effects of wealth was a middle class pretension. She wasn’t, however, laboring under the belief that wealth alone brought happiness. From the little she’d seen, quite the opposite.

H
er heart pounded in her chest as she approached him. Her hands shook, and her throat felt as dry as straw. She didn’t think she’d ever been so scared, or felt so unsure of herself. Even now, the question repeated itself in a never-ending loop in her mind: what was she doing?

He stood with his back to her, staring out at the night. The moon was almost half full, and weak silver light outlined the sweep of his cloak. Only the curve of his shoulder was visible; his head, and the rest of him, was all lost beneath the black wool. And it
was
black, she thought, although the darkness made it difficult to tell. Her world had been reduced to monochrome: gradations of shadow, of which Tristan Mountbatten was by far the darkest.

She hadn’t had a chance to speak with him before now. The women had been dismissed en masse almost immediately after a lackluster cheese plate was served. Popping a last withered grape into her mouth, Isla had fought back both her anxiety and her disappointment. She wanted to get this nightmare
over with
. Instead, she’d retreated to the gallery and almost sewed two of her fingers together while she’d poked her needle listlessly into the linen in her hoop and listened with half an ear to an endless stream of gossip that meant nothing.

And then finally,
finally
, the hour had grown late enough for her to excuse herself without suspicion. Or, at least, not much. Some teasing; Isla was well known for being a bit dull. She never participated in any of the flirtations, or even outright assignations that the other girls did; either with their guests of the moment, or the sons of higher ranking retainers like their steward. Not because ice ran in her veins, but because there was no one available. At least, no one Isla cared to kiss—let alone bed. She wondered briefly if she’d die a virgin. Or, indeed, if she’d come to wish she had.

Enzie Hall was underpopulated at the best of times and no one crossed her path as she walked the darkened corridors, searching for the duke. Her slippers sounded loud on the glazed tile, the only sound save for the occasional laugh or shout from somewhere down below. Red and blue, they’d been installed during better times and represented the height of a now bygone fashion.

She found no one, though, except the occasional serving girl and her beau. Rose, who sometimes helped out in the kitchens, giggled from the depths of a shadowed corner as she told one of the stable hands—with no great conviction—to keep his hands to himself.

Listening at the iron-banded door to her father’s study had proved that her quarry wasn’t there. Not because she didn’t hear him talking but because of the subject matter: Hart and her father were talking about the king, and not in the manner that one would do in front of a complete stranger and the king’s brother to boot. Mountbatten hadn’t been in either of the libraries or in the small hall and, when she’d steeled herself to visit his room, he hadn’t been there either. The pair of retainers who’d been left to guard his door, a couple of slab-featured thugs from the North, hadn’t been surprised to see a woman presenting herself and had, indeed, seemed highly amused. Grasping the nature of their assumption, Isla had been both offended and repelled. The notion that she—oh! It was too much.

She’d found him at last on the broad gallery that overlooked the incoming road and the world beyond.

Unlike the women’s gallery, which overlooked the great hall, this intimidating space was entirely out of doors and quite cold. A series of thick, ungainly columns separated by curving arches gave the illusion of a protected space. Mountbatten stood framed in one of these arches. She wondered, briefly, what he was doing up here. If pressed, Isla couldn’t have said what impulse had brought her to investigate a part of the manor that was so seldom visited. And certainly not used for anything. They were at the edge of Enzie Hall’s current functional orbit; beyond this point, mice ran in the walls and the floors were beginning to cave in.

And yet…she’d known where he’d be. When she’d stopped looking in all the so-called
obvious
places and, putting logic aside, consulted her own gut, she’d known. And here she was. And here he was. She also knew, somehow, that Mountbatten was aware of her presence behind him and had been since she’d quitted the narrow landing at the top of the stairs and stepped out onto the flagstones. She wished she’d thought to bring her cloak; the wind cut her cruelly, and the fact that she couldn’t stop shivering made her feel vulnerable.

She stopped, and waited for him to say something.

He didn’t.

Minutes passed. She realized that if she wanted to have this conversation, she’d have to be the one to start it. He wasn’t going to give her an opening, waiting instead to see what she said. She resented having to come to him like this, wholly on his terms—as was, undoubtedly, his intention. Whatever she did now, however proudly she presented herself, she couldn’t help feeling like a supplicant. That Isla Cavendish was quite used to being invisible, and undesired, was the only thing that gave her strength to go forward. That, and her determination to save her sister from a lifetime of torment, however brief, with the creature in front of her.

“Your Grace,” she began, hating that her voice shook.

He didn’t respond. He radiated the same aura of terrible, corpse-like stillness that he had at dinner. The edges of his cloak brushed back and forth across the flagstones, the only movement to him. He’d heard her, of course, but he was drawing her out. Did he have a woman in his life? A man, perhaps? Anyone about whom he felt tenderness or, indeed, the least regard? That the duke was contemplating a marriage with her sister in no wise meant that he was single in the conventional sense; a great many men,
and
women, viewed marriage and love as completely separate entities. Which, given the status of marriage in their culture as a business transaction—at least for people of their general class—made sense.

“I would speak with you,” she continued stiffly.

“Then speak.”

He offered this piece of wisdom without turning, or moving at all. An errant gust of wind ruffled the hem of his cloak, sliding it across the flagstones with a faint rasping sound. His voice, too, had a strangely rasping quality to it: low, unpleasant, and not entirely human. Isla realized now that she’d never really heard him speak. At dinner, his voice had been pitched for Hart alone. Only when they’d first met had he addressed her directly, and she’d been too overwhelmed to notice much other than how loathsome she found him. The details that had escaped her then—his hands, his voice, the strange fire flickering in the depths of his pupils—started coming after she began to understand the purpose of his visit and its meaning for her family.

She’d never spoken to him before, either. She’d only seen him in formal settings and then she’d made no attempt to speak at all. Isla wasn’t quiet by nature, only reserved, and her desire to grasp the full import of her situation made her content to watch. Particularly in the past few days; there had been so much going on beneath the surface that she didn’t understand. For all her reading, where politics were concerned Isla had lived her life in a state of near isolation. No one discussed the broader affairs of the world with a woman, least of all her father. And her servants—the only people who did talk to her unreservedly—didn’t know anything to tell.

She drew a breath and steeled herself, mentally girding her loins for the challenge to come.

“I want you to marry me instead of my sister,” she said.

His laugh was like the rustling of dry leaves, and devoid of humor. Of any feeling at all.

“What a sister you are.”

His implication was clear, and she felt offended. Did he really think he was such a prize to be fighting over? Especially given the fate of his last wife? Or wives?

She resisted the urge to tell him that he was the last man in the world she’d ever find attractive. That she was, she was fairly certain, incapable of finding him even a little bit attractive. That he was a hateful, hateful man. Doing so would, no doubt, given his obvious ego, defeat her purpose. Instead she found herself telling him, “I’m neither so stupid as my sister nor so willfully ignorant as my father.”

As she spoke, rage replaced caution. How dare he put her, put
all
of them in this situation. Their lives meant nothing to him; he was like a child toying with a bug. “I know what you want, and don’t want, with her. And I know that I’ve not a tenth of her beauty and certainly none of her charm. But I know just as well that Rowena’s beauty and charm mean little to you—if anything at all. By marrying me, you’ll still get what you want.”

He turned, then, the movement slow and somehow ominous. His face was lost in shadow beneath his hood, but she felt the heat of his gaze all the same. “And what,” he asked, a trace of amusement still tingeing his voice, “is in this for you, little starling?”