Page 19 of Wedlock

“I don’t want to take any chances,” she shrugs. “And I promised Falcon you’d remain in your room. He insisted we can’t even walk through the castle until all the staff are cleared from this wing and the North Wing. Not a living soul can see you.”

“Great. Solitary confinement.”

She shakes her head.

“You will have diversions. Your new room has a television, and the new season of The Games has just started. Surely that will keep you occupied?”

“Eleanor,” I sigh, walking to where she stands near the door. “I just want to get some exercise; I need to lose the baby weight and build up my strength again. The fresh evening air will be good for us both. And no, I can’t watch The Games; the new rules are far too cruel and bloodthirsty. Let me outside.”

“I just told you, if anyone sees you they’ll be silenced. I don’t want to lose any more staff. As for the baby, the nanny can take him out. Can’t she, my little darling?” She smiles down at him.

‘And what of the nanny and wetnurse? Are they going to be silenced when you’re done with them? I’ll just bet they are — hypocrite.’

“What if,” I take a deep breath and try to look as casual as possible, “Asumpta was to accompany me? I mean, there’s no way I’d get away from her. Even if Wonder Woman dropped in and tried to whisk me away, I’m fairly certain Asumpta would fuck her up.”

Eleanor nods, a smile playing around the edge of her lips as she looks up.

“Not much gets past my step-daughters.”

“Exactly,” I nod. “So how about I get out for just an hour, no more, just one hour, for a walk in the fresh air with the baby, and Asumpta guards me the whole time.”

She looks back down at the baby and steps out into the hallway.

“I’ll consider it.”

I stare in triumph at her back as I follow her out and try not to smirk.

In Eleanor-speak, that means, ‘yes.’

‘Plan B initiated.’

16

“Has he now?” I drawl as my butler informs me that a certain Viscount Jaguar Speardon of Versailles Province has called the castle every hour on the hour for the past three days.

“Yes, Your Lordship. He says he must speak with you as a matter of some urgency, ‘life and death,’ I believe, were his words.”

‘Fucking Jag. No doubt he just wants to ensure I’ll keep his bastard alive. He needn’t fear on that account; I haven’t so thoroughly become my father yet that I’d kill an infant. Still, let him squirm and think so. No one has seen or heard from Angieor the baby since he’d delivered her here. Let him think them both dead, the cunt.’

Just hearing his name brings my blood to the boil, images of him with my wife swimming unbidden before my eyes, of her calling his name as she’d once called out mine, her hair a wild, molten mess, eyes purple, body quivering in ecstasy.

“And didn’t I tell you,” I turn in the corridor to glower down at the portly little man, red-faced and puffing from keeping up with me as I’ve walked, “that it would beyourdeath if you mentioned his name to me ever again?”

“Indeed, My Lord,” he stammers, “it’s just that I felt, given the nature of his insistence, that I simply must pass on his request.”

“And?” I quirk an eyebrow.

Knowing Jag he’d beenverypersuasive if this scared little human would risk my ire to pass on a message.

The man turns puce.

“He said he’d kill every person I’d ever known, My Lord. From the doctor who’d helped deliver me, to the postman who drops off my mail, and everyone in between. And he handed me this…”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wad of bloodied tissue paper, unwrapping it to reveal a finger bearing a plain gold band and a small diamond circlet.

“Someone you know?” I drawl.

“My wife, Your Lordship.”