Page 179 of Nine-Tenths

"Your poor dad."

"Don't start imagining my mother snatched him away in her claws and ravished him against his will. But they met at a time when… if a dragon showed interest, you said yes. Because it would never occur to you that you were allowed to say no. Do you understand?"

I lay my ear against his waltzing heartbeat. "Yeah."

"And he's happy," Dav rushes to add. "They're each other's best friend. Mother's instinct was bang on. But I never knew that when they met, he would much rather have inherited his father's smithy than become a dragon's consort. I neverknew."

"So after your mum was upset, then what?"

"She understood. She… wanted to know what we were thinking. What we were planning. And then she… she wanted to help. You'll have noticed she wasn't at breakfast."

"Yeah?"

"Mother has gone to Whitehall to petition the Queen for an audience on our behalf."

"Oh. No. Totally. Petitioning the queen in person." I choke on my tongue. "Of course."

Dav grins at me. "I have no doubts that we will be given an audience, you saucy thing."

"Saucy, am I? Gonna do something about it?"

Dav leans in, but instead of kissing me, he bites the tip of my nose and says, in a grumbling purr: "Not in front of the baby."

Chapter Forty-Six

"No," Paulette says, when she gathers us all in the drawing room three days later.

"No?" Dav repeats, bolting upright in his chair, teacup hanging halfway to his mouth. "But we’re family! She really won't see me?"

Paulette's mouth twists sourly, the way Dav’s does when he's got to say something he'd rather not. "Her advisers have been, hmmn, 'made aware' of the difficulties you've created with the coffee shop, and declined the request."

"Isn’t it up to the queen herself to deny the request?" I protest. "Not her hangers-on?"

"Not if she never hears it," Paulette says, resigned, and flops back in her own chair. "I spent two damn days in that wretchedpalace and I'm convinced that not a single word I said to anyone made it any further than the ear it was spoken into."

"Simcoe," I spit.

"Simcoe," Paulette agrees. "I cannot say I'm best pleased with his audacity. Whitehall is far beyond his borders and the sphere of his Governorship."

"I spent so much time there as a child," Dav says, small and wounded. "We played in her apartments! She taught me the cotillion! And now she won't evenseeme?"

Dav never told me he'd grown up clinging to the queen's skirts. Christ. This is one secret I don't resent him for, though. I would have beenwaytoo intimidated to stick my tongue in his mouth if I'd known.

"Darling," Paulette says, sympathy and motherly concern radiating off her. "Please don't take this personally. This is political maneuvering. It’s not at all about your relationship with Cousin Lizzie."

Owain takes his wife's hand.

Dav iscrushed. His teacup, when he puts it back on the saucer in his other hand, rattles so badly that I take it away and set it on the table. Dav reaches for my hands as soon as they're free, a mirror of his parents, and I twine our fingers tightly. He breathes deep though his nose, eyes closed, collecting his calm, and I stay still to let him ground himself in my presence, like a good Favorite.

"All political maneuvering, may I remind you," Paulette says softly, when we’ve all had a good wallow. "Can be out-maneuvered."

Everything is a frustrating misery for the next few days. Prickly and unhappy, Dav and Paulette spend hours locked up together, calling, and emailing, and doing whatever else it is dragons do when they're trying to winkle favors out of one another. While I, completely useless and resenting it, do my best to stay distracted. But no number of garden walks, or castle explorations, or long calls with Gem and Stuart, or heading up to the nursery to have a good rambling conversation with the egg help.

"Alright, fetch your coat, lad," Owain finally says on day three. He grabs my elbow and drags me out of the library, where I've been trying and failing to choose a book for hours.

"I am not in the mood for another walk," I protest.

"No walks," Owain agrees, and hustles me into a waiting car before I have time to wonder why my de facto father-in-law is abducting me in the middle of the afternoon. "We're off for a cheeky one."