Page 85 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection
Chapter 84
“Now, you will need time to go and have your bath and get ready,” Kay told me. She’d been like a tiny hurricane, blowing through each room and assessing what needed to be done, and enlisting me and a phalanx of maids to help her get everything completed. Finally, she brushed her hands together with an air of accomplishment, before untying her apron and passing it to one of the maids.
Kay smoothed her hands over her hair, then turned to me. “And, my dear, if you need a dress, I can provide you with one.” Her tone was slightly hopeful, although she seemed to anticipate my rejection of the idea.
“I’ll probably just stay in uniform, like the others,” I said, then looked down at the state of my current leathers. “Well, a cleaner, better presented one than this. Soren will have all of us polished and parade ready.”
Kay accepted my answer with a gentle smile. “And we’ll be proud to have the whole wing at our table,” she said, grabbing my arm and giving it a squeeze, before sending me on my way.
However, as I climbed the stairs to go back to our room, I found my feet moved slowly. Ada’s words felt like a millstone around my neck, and it was as though I required added effort that I didn’t have to get my legs to go where I needed them to. That sensation just got worse when I stepped into the room.
All of my men were in various states of undress, as Soren strode around in just his pants inspecting the shine of the insignias on dress uniforms, the polish of each man’s boots.
“There you are,” he said to me. “You’ll need to wash with the commander, but I’ve got a dress uniform that should fit you.”
“When did you find time to get that?” Ged asked.
“Always prepared; haven’t I told you that more than once?” Soren looked back at me with a smile. “I had something in my saddlebag, just in case Pippin needed to strip off that beautiful silver dress the night of the ball.”
“Thank you—” I started to say, but he interrupted me with a growl.
“Thank me by washing the salt and the sand off yourself, cadet. You represent His Majesty’s Royal Riders tonight, so no slacking.”
When I walked into the adjoining bathing room, I saw that Brom had beaten me to it, and was standing under the old brass shower rose, water streaming down his body as he soaped himself up.
Had Draven been where I was, watching the majesty of Brom’s body move as he performed such an everyday routine? Like me, had he hungrily soaked in every detail? Had he pulled his leathers off just as I did, needing to be stripped bare before the wing commander? And had Brom’s eyes cracked open, the finely honed instincts of a soldier alerting him to the presence of another? Had Draven seen that hazel gaze heat up as Brom watched him strip down, just as I did now, with all the fascination of a dragon on the hunt?
I wanted to ask Brom those questions, gods, how I wanted to, but as I stepped closer, naked now and under the water, Brom pulled me in against his body. His mouth brushed against mine, teasing my lips open, ready for a deeper kiss when Soren barked, “Hurry it up in there!”
“Was my mother insufferable?” Brom asked me, ignoring his drill sergeant. “Did Ada behave? She can be a right little gossip when she gets started.”
“About that.”
When Brom had pulled me in against him my hands had gone up instinctively, coming to rest on his hard chest and I moved my fingertips, stealing a caress from my husband, my own, while not being sure how true that statement was. Brom’s smile faded and he frowned as he gazed down at me.
“What did she say? That little minx?—”
I cut off his words, lifting my hand from his chest to put my fingers against his lips. The soft prickle of his beard brought memories of it against other parts of my body, and with a pang I wondered again if he was mine. I took a deep breath to clear my mind before I dared answer his question with my own.
I wasn’t going to hold this in. I had no idea why on earth Ada had felt she needed to share that information with me, but I wasn’t going to wonder and worry in silence. I sucked in another breath, ready to ask him, when Soren’s bark had me jumping. Brom pulled my hand away and yelled back, “Go on down to dinner. We’ll be out shortly.” Then he directed his focus entirely back to me, unnervingly so. “Now, Pippin.”
“Were you… in love with Ada?” I asked, hesitantly, but that was really only half the question. I swallowed hard. “ And with Draven?” He sucked in a sharp breath at that, which felt like an admission, but I continued while I could get the words out. “She told me about the three of you rambling around the moors as children, that she was your queen—” He snorted rudely at that. “And then she said she wasn’t enough for Draven. That he was… possessive of the two of you.”
“She indicated we were engaged in a ménage à trois,” Brom finished for me much more succinctly. “And that Draven was at the centre of it, not Ada.”
“Yes.”
I said the word with my heart full of hope, though for what, I wasn’t certain. It wasn’t for him to confirm any of what she’d said, that was for sure.
“Damn her…” he muttered, slamming his hand down on the stone wall above my head and frowning. “This was a conversation I knew I needed to have with you, Pippin, but not yet, not now.” He scraped his wet hair back from his face with an irritated huff, shaking his head. “But of course she had to come blundering…”
Brom dropped his gaze back to mine. As I looked up at him, I could see his focus sharpen as he turned from focusing on the situation to really seeing me.
“And how are you feeling in all of this, Pippin? What a bloody disaster of a visit this has been! An accident yesterday, Glimmer half drowned today.” I winced. “My parents’ relationship issues laid bare and now bloody Ada sticking her nose in where it's not needed, digging up old relics from the past.”
“Is it… in the past?” I asked, holding my breath, not wanting to hear the answer but knowing I needed to ask.
“Gods, lass, do you think I’d have made any overtures towards you if my heart was still held by someone else? Especially after having watched my father destroy my mother without meaning to, every day they are together.”
He stared at me earnestly and all of the same impulses that had allowed me to trust him before came rushing back and I let my breath out in a shuddering release
“We need to talk about this, at length. I want to answer any question you have and then more.” His hand smoothed up my spine and cupped the back of my head. “You’re my wife and I…” He stopped himself, shaking his head and then stared down at the stone tiles beneath our feet. “I need some time to talk this out with you, when you’re ready.”
“But not now.”
I smiled wryly, even though I wasn’t feeling ready at all. I didn’t know what I wanted to be honest. I’d been brought up to expect any husband I took would have a romantic and sexual history. Gods, there had even been conversations in drawing rooms presided over by Cicely (before I was demoted to swineherd) about what to do if your husband took a mistress, or married you with one in tow. But, unfortunately, none of the strategies had discussed how to manage the situation if the other woman was a man and the Crown Prince.
“Yes, now, if you wish it. We’ll jump on Obsidian’s back and take off for a few hours and I can tell you everything I should’ve.”
“But your mother?—”
“Damn my mother. Damn all of them. I don’t come home often and this is why. The past is raked over for little reason other than malice, from what I can tell, as if to remind me of what I was, not who I am now. The party will go on without us.”
“The guests of honour?!”
He answered me in a much more physical way, holding me close and burying his face in my neck, pressing hard, desperate kisses to my skin until it came alight, just as his body did. I could feel him pressing hard into my hip before finally he pulled away.
“Perhaps not, but… Will you be alright tonight? If you don’t think you will be, we can excuse ourselves; claim Glimmer needs watching if needs be.”
But she didn’t. She’d caught all of my thoughts and emotions, as she always did, but she did not seem at all perturbed by any of these revelations.
He is a good mate , was all she had to say about the issue.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Pippin…”
He lifted my chin to stare into my eyes, raising one eyebrow as if to challenge my response.
“Well, I will be. Promise me we’ll talk afterwards.”
“Of course, love.” And there was my Brom, earnest, warm, trustworthy, no matter who he’d been in the past. “Whenever you’re ready.”
After we got out of the shower and dried off, Brom helped me put on my dress uniform, flicking minute spots of lint off my shoulders before stepping back and nodding with a smile.
“I’m glad I married you when I did. You’re the most beautiful woman in the whole keep. Someone else would have swept in and taken you away from me if I hadn’t.”
But as we walked together down the stairs, arm in arm, I couldn’t help the little voice of doubt that made me wonder how much of our bond was formed from real affection and how much was pure duty.