Page 104 of House of Blood and Roses: Vol. 1

"The servants will have used the back passageways," Bella says as she follows me inside.

"I wish they'd told me."

"And have the whole castle gossiping about you and Prince Lincoln by sunrise? I think not. Now, sit." She gestures to the seat in front of my dressing table.

I give Pip one last head scratch and get to my feet.

My dog trots off and jumps up onto my bed, flopping down onto her paws with a dramatic sigh.

I make my way over to the dressing table and sit down, noticing as I do that Bella really isn't wrong about the state of my hair. I'm not precisely sure what we did, but it's certainly not good enough for heading back to the wedding banquet.

Bella starts fussing at my hair. "You two have made quite a mess of this."

I reach up to touch my hair. "I wasn't thinking."

"I should hope not," she jokes. "I'm sorry for interrupting."

"So am I."

She snorts. "So you're not still pretending that you and the Prince are just friends?"

"I guess not." I touch the spot where he bit me. The marks are already fading, which is probably a good thing considering that we're going to be in front of a lot of people who will know exactly what they mean. "I was nervous about the biting part of the wedding, he said we could practice," I say by way of explanation.

Bella snorts. "Sure, that's what you were doing."

"We got carried away."

"I know," she responds. "The same thing happened with my first husband."

I go completely still. Everything she's said about him in the past has more or less been saying that she didn't want to talk about him, so the fact she's changing her mind now is a difference.

"We knew each other before we came to Castle Sanulieon," she says. "At one point. I'd hoped we might be married in the human world, but I was the daughter of the mayor, and he was the son of a labourer. Or we thought we were their children, you know what I mean, you've been there."

"Mmm, it was a shock."

"It was," she agrees. "Anyway, the Mayor would have never allowed it."

"Much like Lord Fallmartin," I mutter.

"Oh, much worse," she responds. "But you know what it's like, if you tell someone not to do something, they do it anyway. We'd sneak down to the stream and spend our evenings together. And then we were brought here. I was just the second daughter of a second son, but House Rothorne is important enough that a good match was still possible, and that's what my first husband was."

"I'm glad for you."

"Me too," she responds sadly. "At least while it lasted."

For a moment, I don't think she's going to continue, and I pick at the fabric of my dress while I try to figure out what to say.

Bella takes a deep breath as she pins some more of my hair back into place. "I got nervous about the wedding ceremony too. It's bad enough biting a near stranger, but drinking from someone for the first time when you actually like them? I imagine you have the same thoughts I did."

"I'm worried everyone will know what I'm thinking," I admit.

"I was too. But trust me, you'll be fine. There'll be so many people there that you won't be able to think about anything more than the ceremony. It's certainly not a particularly romantic set of circumstances."

"But you still tried it beforehand?"

"Of course. I suspect a lot of people do. I'm not just trying to rile Bastian up when I say that chastity isn't something that bothers vampires."

"Right." I look down at the table in front of me. Vampires might not care about it, but that doesn't change my lack of experience when it comes to physical matters. Living with Bastian didn't exactly give me many chances to try courting anyway, never mind going further than that.