Page 5 of A King’s Trust (Heart-Mage Trilogy #1)

5

INK TO THE ELBOWS

“T his can’t possibly be the dress code for a picnic.” Beau plucked at the thick fabric draping him from shoulder to waist, leaving at least half his chest bare before cinching under a belt and trailing loosely to his knees. Though his breeches beneath kept it from being completely indecent, the drapery exposed the tattoos on his chest and back, which were not for the court’s eyes.

Elias stared for several long seconds, face entirely blank, before saying, “Uriel said Lady Macabrie was very clear. The whole thing’s themed after ancient senatorial traditions.”

“Call him back in,” the prince said. “He has to redrape it or something. I can’t go out like this.” He moved a self-conscious hand over the black-inked swirls on his chest.

“You’ll be late if he has to redress you,” Elias reminded him.

“I’m the crown prince. They’ll wait.”

With some convincing, Uriel created a new outfit from the provided fabric, similar in spirit to the original, but fully covering his torso. He insisted on banding Beau’s biceps with gold bangles shaped like laurel wreaths, and though the process of dressing up annoyed him, Beau had to admit the effect was nice, all together.

He arrived at the picnic on the lawn only a half hour late. Some nobles murmured at his deviance from the dress code, but most accepted it as part and parcel of the rebellious-younger-son persona the court had built up around him.

“Your Highness!” The high, trilling voice of Lady Macabrie drifted over the lawn as she descended upon him, clutching his arm with both hands as her own senatorial robe threatened to reveal the fullness of her endowments. “I’m so glad you could join us. We have room here on our spread for you, if you’ll follow me?”

“Of course, Your Grace,” he said, bending his head politely.

The duchess settled the prince at one end of a large spread of blankets on which lounged the entire Macabrie family, as well as a few other noble guests, including Lady Penamour at the far end. The themed garb complimented her tawny skin beautifully. He willed her to look up and say hello, but she was deep in conversation with the man next to her.

Beau was seated next to the eldest daughter of the Macabrie family, a slender young woman who spoke interestingly enough about her entertainments and pursuits but whose words always carried an edge of cruelty when talk turned to other people.

“It’s good to see you again,” he said politely as he took the plate offered to him by one of the servants. The servants, he noticed bitterly, had been permitted to wear their normal attire. “And what a pleasant day for dining on the ground.”

The young Lady Macabrie smiled at him with narrowed eyes, catching the thin layer of sarcasm. “You mustn’t mock, Your Highness. We dine as our noble ancestors did.”

“Before they had the common sense to use chairs?” he muttered. But at a conversational volume, he said, “You’re right, my lady, I apologize. It is indeed a time-honored tradition.”

As they ate, he allowed Lady Macabrie—Haydée, she insisted, too familiar by half—to draw him into orbit around her monologue, making the right sounds to keep her rolling onward so he wouldn’t have to respond. She wasn’t uninteresting; it was only that every time he started to feel even the slightest bit sympathetic toward her, she’d casually throw in a story that made him grit his teeth: firing a maid for stealing, only to find the missing earrings in a drawer, or inviting a young lady arriving in the capital from a country estate to an event that evening knowing full well she’d have to attend in out-of-fashion clothing and be embarrassed in front of the court.

At one point, feeling desperate, Beau picked up an empty wine glass, running his hands back and forth along the stem to spin it, and smiled when one of the servants caught the movement and bent to offer him wine. One glass wouldn’t hurt, and it would make this conversation go a lot more smoothly.

When the servant handed the full glass back, Elias plucked it from his fingers before Beau could take it. El raised an eyebrow at the prince, who scowled good-naturedly back. Lady Macabrie watched the interaction with a wicked sparkle of interest in her eye.

“He’s pretty,” she said, watching Elias step back into his watchful stance. “And willful, looks like. Did you tell him to keep you from drinking? Right after your brother died, the talk of the court was how surprised we were to find you sober for every event. Rumor put you deep in your cups; does your pretty guard keep you from losing control?”

“Their future king died, and the court was talking about what I drank ?” Beau asked, voice too sharp for the circumstances, for how much he needed this conversation to go well. He remembered Elias calling out his contempt for the nobles and tried to control his face and tone, but he was incensed. “I was mourning my brother.”

“Exactly,” Haydée said, taking a sip of her own wine, her auburn hair catching the light as she tossed her head. “That’s why we all thought you’d be drunker than a sailor on shore leave. I mean”—she giggled—“you are a sailor.”

The note of disdain in that comment made Beau want to start a fight. Let her think of him more as a drunken sailor than a prince; maybe she’d lose interest and he could move on to less politically advantageous but kinder potential partners.

With lazy scorn in his voice, he drawled, “Oh, I get up to all sorts of things besides sailing and drinking. Blacksmithing, needlework, table dancing, barbery. And every now and again, preparing to be the most powerful man in Granvallée.”

Her brows rose at his tone, but she leaned in, too close to him, as if intrigued by the crack in his usual placid, practiced small talk. “I’m glad you’re over it finally. You were impossible to talk to for the first couple of months. So raw all the time. You needed a drink.”

Over it? Beau’s lip curled as he fought the urge to simply walk away, get in his carriage, and ride back to the palace. Out of his control, his mouth spoke. “By the fucking Twelve, you could sour ripe grapes just talking near them, couldn’t you?”

Lady Macabrie’s ash-darkened lashes left small smudges on her upper lid as she opened her eyes wide. “Excuse me?”

“Are you intentionally venomous, or do you not understand how unkind you are? You’re glad I’m over it? My brother’s death?”

Her mouth opened and closed for a moment, fish-like, before she found her voice again. “Your Highness, I…” Her pale, freckled face began to grow red as she fought down whatever words instinct had brought up, swallowing them with a queasy expression.

After a moment, she said in a saccharine voice, “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, Your Highness. It wasn’t my intention. I only meant I’m glad you’ve found some peace about it. Your grief was clearly painful.”

So she was capable of speaking like a decent human being. She just wasn’t in the practice of it. Beau took a deep breath and mastered himself, too. This visit has to go flawlessly, Beau , he could hear in his mother’s voice. “I also spoke too harshly. I apologize. As you said, my grief is…raw. Talk of my brother is still hard for me.”

“Then let’s change the subject,” she said, taking a too-large swig of wine and holding the glass out for a servant. Above the lilting ebb and flow of conversation from the blankets all around them, Beau heard Lady Penamour’s voice, heated in argument, though she was smiling at Lord Arshakuni as he argued back with her.

Beau tried to hear what they were talking about that made Penamour’s eyes light up like that, her cheeks warmly pink as she spoke too fast, hands moving to strengthen her points, gold rings flashing. He caught the word “Maurilel,” and then fragments: “poorly understood even in their own…have one to study but…and you thought that was the end of the…”

“There they go again,” Macabrie said with a roll of her eyes and a smirk.

“Again?”

“Lady Penamour and Lord Arshakuni get into spirited arguments every time they’re in range of each other,” she said, laughing unkindly. “They all but come to blows.”

“What are they arguing about?”

“Oh, who knows.” She took a dainty bite and swallowed, then said, “Some Maurilel nonsense. It’s all nothing more than dry stories in dusty books. Gods know what Lady Penamour finds so fascinating about it. A lady worth her salt would be finding another engagement instead of getting ink to her elbows.” She looked at him as though she expected him to share a joke, but he wasn’t sure what she was laughing at. Lady Penamour not being engaged? Her fiancé died. Where was the humor in that, even with as cruel a sense of humor as Lady Macabrie’s?

Or perhaps, given the context, she was laughing because Beau hadn’t picked up the engagement. Had it been expected that he’d marry her without question? Had he shamed Lady Penamour by refusing her, exposed her to the derision of women like Haydée? He hadn’t considered the fallout when he said he wouldn’t have her.

He…regretted it. He wasn’t sure, now, why he’d been so against it. He’d certainly rather be arguing Maurilel history with her than mucking through this miserable conversation with Haydée. “She’s already a duchess,” he said. “Perhaps she prefers to spend her time exploring things that interest her, rather than expanding her power? It’d be nice to be able to spend your days wearing ink to your elbows and studying magic if that’s what you enjoyed.”

“Yes, I suppose she’s technically a duchess,” Haydée said sourly.

“What do you mean, ‘technically’?” Beau laughed. “You’re either a duchess or you aren’t. Your mother is. You aren’t. Lady Penamour is.”

“Sure, because she blackmailed her cousins who ought to have inherited it when her parents died and then got special dispensation from the king. It’s not exactly the proper way to go about things.”

Ah, right. That was why he’d been so against the marriage. Because Penamour was a cold political player. As much as it made him nervous to consider being tied to someone capable of so much strategic deception and power play, he had to admit there was something intriguing about a woman who could claim and hold her title through sheer force of will.

He hadn’t realized his eyes had wandered back to Penamour again until Lady Macabrie touched him, bringing him sharply back to the present. “Lord Abadie and Lord Lamont promised to show us some swordplay after lunch. Are you a fencer, Your Highness? You have a swordsman’s hands.” She ran a finger along the back of his thumb, tracing the scar, and Beau jerked at the unexpected contact. Lady Macabrie was undeterred. “I’d love to see you go toe to toe with some of the lords.”

“I’ve had enough of the real thing to lose my taste for playing at fighting.”

“Oh, you need a little danger to spice it up?” she said, eyes sparkling. “Well, perhaps we can find a way to raise the stakes and make it exciting enough to entice you.”

He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t like swords much anymore.”

Macabrie pouted for a moment, clearly looking for her next way in, some way to turn that into flirtation. “Pity,” was all she managed. She launched into more stories about herself—now tailored to include danger to ‘entice’ him or syrupy and probably fake acts of her own altruism. At least she learned and adapted.

Beau’s eyes drifted across the blanket and found Lady Penamour, still arguing some contentious point of magical history by the looks of it. She was interesting. Obviously not to be trusted, given her political bent, but interesting.

But then, wouldn’t a savvy politician have been pursuing Beauregard from the day of the funeral? Penamour hadn’t flirted with him or even really spoken to him. She’d ranged from quietly suspicious to openly hostile. And unlike most of the court, she never seemed to have prepared for him specifically. She was simply beautiful and graceful and impeccably dressed all the time. Even now, engrossed in her exchange with Lord Arshakuni, there was an unconscious grace in the way she held her head and how she used her hands when she spoke.

“Don’t you think, Your Highness?” Lady Macabrie’s fingers on his arm made him jolt again, more visibly this time.

He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, I missed that last. What were you saying?”

Though her face stayed smooth, her throat tightened and then loosened again as she took a deep, calming breath. “I said, I’ve had quite enough to eat, and I’m more than ready to have a walk in the gardens. Don’t you agree?”

Beau stared into the sharp, beautiful eyes of the woman most of the nobles expected to be their next queen. If he married her, he’d never know a moment’s peace. She’d watch him exactly like this, constantly manipulating. He’d be on his guard every moment of every day, trying to undo the unkindness she spread so naturally. He wondered if it would infect him as well, making him harsher, crueler.

He’d prefer to stay gentle. Maybe he’d corrupt her instead.

“I haven’t quite had my fill yet,” he said, chewing and swallowing a mouthful of small, herby finger sandwich. “I told you some of my hobbies. What are yours?”

Her brows frowned but her mouth smiled, a confused expression. She had a very expressive face, made more so by the way she’d highlighted her features with makeup.

“Reading, singing, playing the piano. I like to play cards. I like to go riding. I like to dance.”

“What’s your favorite dance?”

She laughed like she was uncomfortable, though he couldn’t think why. “I like them all.”

He quirked an eyebrow up at her. The longer he looked, the more expressions he began to see in her face, the more emotion in her eyes. It was not all manipulation and mask, perhaps. “All of them? You must be a good dancer if the steps don’t matter at all. Who taught you?”

Lady Macabrie turned her face away, and a pink flush began to rise up her neck like dawn. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said with another laugh, her eyes flitting back to his and away again like dragonflies. “It’s just—when you’re actually looking at me, you’re very intense.”

“Oh.” He studied the weave of the blanket on which they sat. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s…” Haydée sounded uncertain for the first time. “Not bad. Just a surprise. I had a tutor who taught me to dance. Two tutors, actually—one taught the steps and the other taught me to follow. I was fond of my steps tutor, Francois. And yes, I’m very good at it.”

Beau asked questions, desperately steering the conversation toward harmless things that might make him like her even a little. It wasn’t working, but he continued to try through the rest of lunch, through the small garden party that followed, through the formal dinner at which he was seated next to her again that night.

He fought not to pay attention to Lady Penamour.

And failed.