Page 10 of A King’s Trust (Heart-Mage Trilogy #1)

10

A WEIGHT OF INDECISION LIFTED

B oats. Everyone was loading into stupid little two-person boats, and Beau couldn’t get drunk enough fast enough.

Beside him in a small, lantern-lit gazebo. his mother sat wearing a flat expression, nothing belying her nerves but the silk handkerchief she strangled in her lap.

Near the dock from which boats launched, noblemen spoke with heads together and hands stroking mustache stubble—hiding their mouths as they watched Beau with hard, hooded eyes.

In knots like posies of flowers in their white and cream, narrow-skirted dresses, the noblewomen fanned themselves and whispered and let loose bell-peals of laughter, and watched Beau. Their glances were cutting, eyes narrowed, hidden in flutters of eyelashes.

The servants, passing nimbly through the crowd, watched Beau, but they also watched everyone else, feeling out the tide in case it might shift, preparing to lurch for shore.

Everyone watched, but no one had spoken a word to him since he arrived except the servant who brought him a steady supply of champagne flutes. They all knew Beau was supposed to choose someone, clamber into one of those boats, and propose.

Beau’s hands were cold, his fingers stiff, but his neck and face were stiflingly hot. He stared out over the water, tried not to fidget. All was fine. He wasn’t panicking. His scar wasn’t tingling all along his back and arm, reminding him what it felt like to be sliced by a blade intent on killing him. He wasn’t treading water in the ocean, watching for any sign of a rescue ship while sharks circled.

The serving woman brought an entire tray of champagne, and Beau grabbed one in each hand, downing them back to back and dropping the empty flutes with muted tinks onto the silver. Bending her knees in a suggestion of a curtsy, carefully balancing the tray, the servant waited to see if he’d take another—and he did—before sweeping away.

“I know why I’m not in a boat: I’ve never liked them. But you’re a sailor.” Lady Penamour strode into the gazebo, the cream of her dress with its gold embroidery making her glow in the lamplight. She cast a scathing look at Beau, then turned to the queen. “Good evening, Your Majesty. I see the king is resting tonight?”

“Good evening, Your Grace. He’ll be right as rain tomorrow,” Queen Acier said with a small smile. “You look lovely.”

“Thank you.” As she turned from the queen back to Beau, Penamour’s smile slipped off. “Well? Haven’t we all gathered to witness your marriage proposal? Where’s the lucky lady?”

Beau met her brown eyes, little lamp flames glittering in their depths, and swayed, the champagne fizzing his brain into a gentle fog. “You win.” It came out low and quiet. “You’re a talented politician, Pellabell. I never stood a chance.”

She was the first to break eye contact, blinking out at the water with a strangely dissatisfied expression overtaking her face. After a long few heartbeats of silence, she said, “If you’ll excuse us, Your Majesty, His Highness and I need to speak.”

His mother nodded, and Lady Penamour drifted a few steps away, glancing back once at Beau to see that he was following. Slightly unsteady on his feet, Beau stood and paced after her into the darkness between the gazebo and the torches near the water. He expected the duchess to stop there in the shadows, since it seemed she wanted to speak privately, but she strode past the pale bouquets of gowns to the dark water, its surface scattered with gold flame flickers and the steady white of moonlight.

Lady Roben and her fresh fiancé, Lord Blanchet, stepped back from the boat they’d been about to enter. “By all means, Your Grace, Your Highness, please take this one,” Blanchet said, gesturing magnanimously toward the elegant little rowboat.

“Are we getting in that boat?” Beau asked, surprised.

Penamour arched a brow at him. “I believe we’re obliged to.” When she spoke quietly like that, her voice had a deep huskiness that settled in his belly and made him regret to his marrow the misunderstanding driving her hate. The rings burned in his pocket.

“Who am I to turn down an obligation,” he said as lightly as he could manage. His chest was too tight to speak casually. Taking her hand, he helped her into the boat and then lowered himself in with surprising grace for how inebriated he’d become. As she settled against her seat, spreading her skirts neatly around her, and looked out over the water, Beau paddled them smoothly away from the dock toward a fairly empty spot on the lake.

She waited until no one else was in earshot before speaking. “What under the Twelve were you thinking when you made that announcement this afternoon?”

Beau hadn’t expected that. He let go of the oars in their oarlocks and let their boat drift as he rubbed his hands together. “If you wish to file an official complaint about protecting our borders, Pellmell, I’m sure there’ll be a line at the next court session. You’re welcome to join it. Or you can quietly subvert and sabotage my efforts from the shadows, since that’s perhaps more your style.”

She made a sharp, annoyed sound. “I have no complaints about sending defenders. It’s not enough to resolve the problem, but it’s a start. I want to know why the Penamours weren’t on your list of nobles charged with defense.”

“You want to go to the border?” He really hadn’t expected that.

“Not particularly, but if you’re only going to send the most indolent and self-absorbed dregs, you should send someone who actually cares what happens,” she snapped, her crisp diction ensuring he understood every word, though her voice was pitched not to carry. She thinks they’re bad nobles, too?

“You know I have an interest in Suteneir, and they’ll bear the brunt of this. Not to mention, you and I shared similar opinions at the ambassadors’ dinner—you know I would’ve supported this. Why did you announce it without discussing it with any nobles first?”

“Discussing it?” Beau scoffed. “You and I have such a successful history of discussing things. I’m sure that would’ve gone delightfully well.” He took a deep breath. He supposed he could add her to the list, since she was asking for it. But if she did believe more needed to be done, he wouldn’t put it past her to send people over the border, and that would cause headaches. He was counting on the chosen parties’ disinterest in doing anything to keep them from doing things he didn’t want. “As I said, if you want to complain about my changes, get in line.”

Penamour reached for one of the oars and drew it with some difficulty until the boat drifted slowly around so Beau’s face would be visible in the light from shore. A crescent of her face was warmly, flickeringly lit, the rest cast in deep shadow. “I don’t want to complain. You’ve proven you have no issue with being unpopular, so what would one more complaint do? And also…” She sighed. “They’re not bad changes, the things you’ve done.”

Beau studied the way she crossed her feet on the burden boards, listening hard.

Penamour shifted. “Will you please look at me when I’m speaking? I know you don’t like to, but it’s challenging having a conversation with the top of your head or the side of your face.”

Beau looked up, met the dark glimmer of her eyes. “I’ve been told that when I look at people, I’m very intense.”

“You are,” Penamour agreed, but she didn’t look away. “Tell me what’s going through your head. I want to understand why you’ve changed what you have. Did you think Charmant wouldn’t? That his approach would be so different? Is that why you killed him?”

Beau growled, dropping his chin to his chest and shaking his head. “And we’re back to you throwing out the most hateful questions you can imagine.”

“You severely underestimate my imagination,” she said flatly.

The wine from the library and the champagne from the gazebo and the complete lack of any other food in his stomach combined to make his tongue alarmingly loose. “If you’re so certain I’m a murderer, why would you want to be out in the middle of a lake with me? It’s dark. You can’t possibly swim in that. Neither of our guards are anywhere close. Aren’t you scared?”

Her chin rose, her beautiful, full lips shining faintly from whatever gloss she’d painted on. “Are you threatening me?”

“No!” Beau said incredulously, too tipsy to control volume. “For fuck’s sake, I wouldn’t hurt you for anything, and I don’t want you to believe I would. How do I fix this? How do I explain I could never have done what you think when you won’t even tell me why ?”

Penamour tutted. “You want to fix things so you never have to face consequences?”

“That is not what I want to fix.” The boat rocked as he leaned forward and took one of her bare hands in his, her skin buttery soft under his fingers. “I was wrong to say I wouldn’t have you, that it wasn’t possible to trust you because of your political bent. And I want to fix that. But you are more wrong. Wronger. More wrong.” He frowned, uncertain, drunk. “Whichever. You don’t know me, and you’re wrong about me. I want to fix that. I want…to marry you.”

He could feel her pulse fluttering in her wrist, but she didn’t pull away from him, and her eyes were steady on his face. “Oh, you must be desperate,” she said, low and simmering with some emotion he couldn’t name. “Is this an attempt to keep your enemies closer, or were you planning to propose to anyone who’d get in a boat with you this evening?”

“Neither.” He tightened his grip on her hand and pulled her more into the light so he could try to read her face. “I want to marry you . I looked for someone who was interesting and I found you. I looked for someone who was kind to their servants and I found you. I looked for someone who would understand what the fuck I’m trying to do in court and I found you. By any possible measure, you’re the only right choice.

“You are beautiful and bright and powerful and well-studied and if the way you’ve decimated my every plan is any indication, you’re unstoppable politically in ways I can’t imagine. You already wanted to be queen—you’d already made the arrangements. And I know I’m not Char, but…I feel like the only thing standing in the way is your misconception of who I am .”

Something flickered in her face. He couldn’t read it, even desperate as he was to understand, but for a brief, brief moment, her fingers tightened on his hand. Then she squeezed her eyes shut, drew an iron mask of hardness over her features, and yanked her hand back. “Do other people find you charming, Your Highness?”

“No, they don’t. You know they don’t. My brother was the charming one. His name meant ‘charming,’ after all.”

“And yours means ‘beautiful,’” she muttered, sitting back and crossing her arms.

He wasn’t sure he was meant to hear that. It shouldn’t have cut so deep, but it did. He wasn’t as striking as his brother had been—golden curls versus unruly brown waves; bright green eyes versus muddled hazel somewhere between brown and green and grey; towering, broad-shouldered height versus lean, wiry agility—but people had found him handsome before.

Not Penamour, though. Not the person who mattered in this moment. “Did I miss your appointment to the official task of humbling me, Panman?”

She trailed a hand in the water and rolled her eyes. “I’m sure such a position would be a full-time commitment, and I have much more important duties than slicing away at your ego.”

Beau studied her for an uncomfortably long time. “You don’t understand me very well.”

“And you don’t understand me at all if you think I’ll be thrown off the scent by flattery and broad dismissals. I will see the truth uncovered.”

They were going in circles. Beau grabbed the oars and began pulling them back to shore again, too frustrated to sit here in the lapping darkness any longer. As they neared the dock, he said, “Tell me what you’re looking for and I’ll give you any truth you want.”

“I can get what I need without enduring your lies, thank you.”

“By, what, following me? Studying my every move? Listening to every word I speak? I have nothing to hide from you and nothing to lie about, Pinafore. You’ll find, if you watch long enough, that you would’ve wasted less time by simply listening when I answer you.”

Others at the dock helped hold the boat steady and hand Lady Penamour out. When their hands reached for Beau, too, he waved them away.

“Thank you, as always,” he said to Penamour, “for the delightful company and painful conversation.” He kicked the dock to send his boat splashing out into the water again and lay back miserably, staring up at the stars. He could hear the couples floating around him, snippets of laughter and murmurs of flirtation bouncing off the water as rippled and fractured as the reflections of lamplight.

What the hell had possessed him to say all those things to her, when it was obvious she despised him to his bones? He’d set himself up for a brutal rejection he knew perfectly well would happen. And the knowing didn’t make it sting one bit less. He’d thought for a moment she was warming to him, that something he said got through, and that glimmer of hope had made the shutdown even worse.

When he tired of his own circular thoughts, Beau rowed back to the dock and let someone take his forearm and help him up, giving Lord and Lady Cellier a chance to float. Elias was at his side before he’d taken two steps, a hand on his back.

Beau was ashamed of how much he needed that small gesture of familiarity and comfort. The day had beaten him to a pulp.

He headed for the gazebo, already bracing for his mother’s disappointment in the son with two rings still in his pocket. As he crossed the grass, though, he saw Lady Penamour had taken his seat next to his mother, and they were both listening to a man in the sober black frock coat and red collar of a doctor. Penamour held his mother’s hand. Beau’s heart dropped, and his pace quickened.

“…a great deal of rest, but we may yet—” the man was saying quietly, but he cut himself off at Beau’s approach. “Ah, Your Highness. Good evening to you.”

“You have news about my father?”

The man’s lips pressed tightly together in an uncomfortable smile. “Ah, no. Or, that is, I’ve been instructed by His Majesty, um…” He trailed off, fidgeting uneasily.

Beau was confused, and then he was cold with understanding. “He told you not to tell me.” He sighed out an almost laugh. “Can you at least—is he—” Beau gritted his teeth, shook his head. “Fuck it. Nevermind. If he doesn’t want me to know, I just won’t know.”

Why did it hurt so much? Why did it hurt so much?

Lady Penamour’s eyes were on him, examining him, picking him apart. Does the pain of my father’s hatred of me entertain you? Is it an interesting problem to identify?

Gods, he wanted to fucking leave. He wanted to get on his horse and ride hundreds of miles away and never come back to this godsdamned place.

Lady Penamour cleared her throat politely and said, “Your Majesty, I wonder if you might consider releasing His Highness’s horse tomorrow.”

Beau blinked. Had he said his thoughts out loud?

The queen also blinked as if she’d emerged from a dim hallway into a room blazing with sunlight. “His horse?”

“Yes. I have urgent personal business at the border of Estforet, which will take me right past the isles. I wondered if His Highness might accompany me, since he knows the area well. I’m sure he’s homesick.” Lady Penamour delivered this entire speech without acknowledging once that Beau was standing three feet from her.

Queen Acier frowned. “Do you think it wise for Beauregard to leave the capital now ?” She glanced up at the doctor and then at Beau, her frown deepening, and the prince’s dread about his father’s failing health ratcheted up.

“Just a quick jaunt, I assure you,” Penamour said. “A week there, a week back. And it would give us plenty of time to…talk.” She raised her brows, giving the queen a significant look.

Elias shifted behind Beau, nudging him with his knuckles. When the prince glanced at him, he was shaking his head. “You can’t leave the capital, Highness,” he mouthed.

Beau turned back to the duchess, mind scrabbling for any way to make sense of her request. She thought he was a murderer. She knew his father’s health was failing. She didn’t like him. Why the fuck was she asking his mother’s permission to bring him along on a two-week roundtrip to the isles?

Had he gotten through to her? Was she trying to make time to talk and listen ?

Queen Acier’s eyes were sharp on Penamour’s and some understanding passed between them that Beau couldn’t intercept. “Yes, I’ll send a note this evening. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Wonderful.” Lady Penamour stood, bowing her head to the queen. “We’ll want an early start in the morning, so I’ll take my leave. Good evening, Your Majesty.”

“Wait,” Beau said, confused by how quickly they moved. “You haven’t actually asked me if I’m interested in accompanying you to this ‘urgent business.’ What kind of business requires you to leave first thing in the morning? And Mother, is Father’s health—I mean, is it—is he—” Beau couldn’t form the words, If I leave for two weeks, is my father going to die in the interim?

“You’d miss an opportunity to get away from the palace and see your isles?” Penamour put a hand on her hip and frowned.

His mother strangled the handkerchief, but she straightened her shoulders with a sigh as if she’d made a hard decision and was squaring her resolve. “Two weeks is no problem. You’ve been missing the isles, haven’t you? A brief visit will be good. Help you…refocus.”

An opening, an escape, a shaft of light piercing down into the well he’d fallen down. He didn’t want to question it; what if they snatched it away again, buried him alive again? Beau had no one to propose to tonight and no one to celebrate when he picked a crown up off his father’s corpse on some tomorrow, but he did have the isles. He loved the isles, and the isles loved him.

“You want to leave early tomorrow?” Beau asked. Elias fully grabbed the back of Beau’s shirt and shook him, too familiar and too aggressive. Beau didn’t look back; he knew Elias wanted him to stay here and face all the problems in the world, but here was this glorious out. And it’d give him time to talk to Lady Penamour, perhaps convince her at last that he wasn’t capable of fratricide. “What time?”

“ No ,” Elias whispered. Lady Penamour glanced unreadably at him, and El stepped up beside Beau, arm brushing the prince’s. He stared Lady Penamour and Queen Acier down. More firmly and more loudly, he said, “His Highness can’t leave the capital when His Majesty’s health is so uncertain. You’re too smart to be that foolish.”

Beau startled. Guards did not talk to nobility— royalty —like that. His mother reacted with the same surprise, but where Beau’s was morphing into concern over what was going on with Elias, Queen Acier’s sharpened into cold fury.

“Leave us please, Dr. Geuris.” When the doctor stepped away, she said frostily, “Master Guardsman, whatever unusual privileges you’ve enjoyed as a result of your inappropriate relationship to my son, they do not include speaking to the peerage that way. You may pack your things and find alternative employ—”

Red fury took Beau over. “You do not have the authority to dismiss my staff,” he growled. Beau had never in his life considered pulling rank on his mother. He deferred to her. But while his father could do whatever he wished with Beau, the Queen of Granvallée had no weight to throw around with a crown prince and duke unless granted it explicitly by the king.

He was drunk; he was angry; he was suddenly aware of how buzzingly good it could feel to have power when one needed it. She thought she could take Elias away from him on a whim?

He glanced at his First and nodded back toward the palace, and El immediately stepped away, standing at attention out of hearing range where he could watch for threats.

Wine made a slippery decline of Beau’s self-control, and words he’d never imagined speaking slid out of his mouth. “I don’t know what fucking ‘inappropriate relationship’ you’re envisioning, but you can keep your imagination to yourself. Elias Batesian keeps me alive . And he’s able to do that because I’m not so godsdamned stupid as to imagine the only good ideas in this world will be birthed from highborn brains. So when he raises genuine concerns, I listen .”

Far from being chastened, the queen grew colder and calmer, as though a weight of indecision had been lifted from her. “Your father can dismiss him.”

“Yes, but my father is not here , which is the crux of Elias’s concern,” Beau snapped. “Would you have pulled this shit on Char?”

“I wouldn’t have needed to. Charmant understood where his priorities lay, and would never have insulted his peers for the sake of a common sellsword,” Acier said coldly. She exchanged another meaningful, uninterpretable glance with Lady Penamour. “I’ll release your horse, as you’ve begged for since you arrived. What you do from there is none of my concern.”

She stood and swept toward the palace without another glance at Beau or Elias. Lady Penamour made no comment, just watched Beau with hooded, suspicious eyes and said, “I’ll be waiting by the north gate at first chime.” Then she followed the queen.

Beau watched them leave with a growing sense that he’d fucked up somehow, though he wasn’t sure what he’d have done differently, had he a sober mind and hindsight’s advantage.

He and Elias argued most of the way back to his rooms, and then continued when Beau told Uriel to have him packed for two weeks by first chime.

“I get it,” Beau snapped eventually, exhausted and swirling from the wine and crushed by the day. “You think my father’s going to die and I’ll somehow miss the window on taking my throne. And I’m telling you there’s not a fucking chance my mother would let me escape that easily. If there were any chance of that, she’d have somebody bar my fucking door from the outside. I want to see home at least once more before I’m trapped under that crown.”

“I thought you listened when I raised a genuine concern?” Elias snapped back, frustrated.

“I’m going. End of discussion.”