Page 54

I finish my wine, and just look at him. “That’s absolutely insane,” I tell him. “Rick was selling me to the Russians, and you thought oh, better not mention the time he tried to kill me?”

“It’s not been long,” Henry says. “I was waiting for the right time to tell you.”

* * *

Henry

She looks offended, and I suppose that makes sense. The truth is I didn’t tell her about Rick’s attempt on my life because I don’t like the way it made me feel to think about it, let alone say it. Trust my father to bring up the worst possible subject at the worst possible time.

She turns her gaze on my father. “Why did you tell me?”

“Because you should know what sort of man your brother is,” he says.

“I know exactly what sort of man he is, but it wasn’t your business to tell,” she says reprovingly. “It was up to Henry to keep his ridiculous little secret.”

She’s defending me.

I feel a welling of warmth, tempered slightly by the fact that I can see the expression on her face, and there is no small amount of rebellion and a quality I can’t quite name there. She’s looking for a fight, I think. Or she wants to assert her dominance.

My father glances over at me. He looks pleased, though I doubt she can tell that his expression is an inherently positive one. The old man can be hard to read.

“She’s loyal,” he says.

“She’s right here,” Fiona adds. “It’s rude to speak about someone who is in the room as if they are not there.”

I hide my smirk behind my drink and let my father take that one.

“You’re right,” he says. “My apologies.”

“Quite alright,” she says, with the pointed edge of someone who is informing someone else that not only is it not alright, but it has been noted on their personal ledger of failings.

Dinner happens relatively uneventfully. It’s hard to mess up a roast, so it’s edible by everyone’s standards, and Fiona does a wonderful job of acting like a civilized lady. She smiles at my father and asks polite questions, and then follow-up questions. She asks questions about me, too. How I grew up, why he decided to bring me to the city, etcetera. She’s good at this, I realize. Once she is through this wild phase, she is going to be quite the social asset.

* * *

“You did so well tonight, darling,” I say, taking her in my arms once we are in the privacy of our bedroom.

“I did,” she says, agreeing immediately. “Not that your father was making it any easier by trying to start drama.”

“Oh, yes?”

“He thought telling me Rick thought you killed my father would undermine you, maybe. Whatever the reason was, it’s not okay to tell other people’s business,” she says. She seems very annoyed about it, which is quite sweet and cute. She’s acting in my defense.

But I wonder if there’s more to it. I noticed the way she bristled sometimes when he spoke, how sharp her glances were before they softened into polite smiles. Marcus is under her skin.

“Nothing to do with the fact he threatened to spank you yesterday?”

She blushes furiously. “You know about that?”

“I heard,” I say.

“I don’t enjoy continuously being treated like a silly brat,” she says. “I do what I do because I think it is best. I keep being treated like a girl.”

She is a girl, but telling her that would not be news, and besides, I know what she means. She is a woman currently experiencing very little autonomy. She is of a lineage of power. She wants to be taken seriously, but every effort she makes to assert herself ends in being taken even further down the hierarchy.

What she doesn’t understand is that she needs this experience. Her independence has always been hers. But her behavior has been atrocious, dangerous and at times, outright criminal. If the rule of law were to apply properly to her, she would be in jail.

“These last few days, you’ve been fighting for a freedom nobody will give you,” I say. “And I wish I could tell you I will be different, but you already know that’s not true. You are my mate. And you are a wild, rebellious little thing. I love that about you, but it does not mean you can do as you please.”