“So it’s not true?” she asked unsure how to actually phrase the question.
“That I bring home a different girl every other night?” He leaned back and crossed his hands behind his head. “Absolutely.” He gave her a wicked grin, and she wanted to stick out her tongue at him. But before she could embarrass herself, he added. “But not for my entertainment the way my father thinks—the way I let the entire castle believe.”
Gandrett braced herself for the revelation while he measured her from across the room, probably weighing whether he could trust her enough to share his secret.
Apparently, he did, for he said, “My sole entertainment is to torment my father with the embarrassment of bringing home one floozy after the other.” He chuckled to himself.
Gandrett’s jaw dropped.
“He hates you. I could tell from the look on his face.” He seemed to be enjoying the memory. “I’m not going to let you go that easily.”
Gandrett exhaled a breath of relief and worry. She had achieved a milestone for her mission—not being kicked out, earning Armand’s trust. But the fact that he had decided to keep her at the palace only put her from one sort of prison into the next. Yet, that was what her entire life was going to be like—wasn’t it?
“Who says I’d like to stay?” she asked, keeping all emotion from her voice.
In response, Armand’s gaze fell on her bare arms, on the thin scars she never wasted a thought on. “My father might be a different type of cruel, but your scars tell me you could do with some time away from that.”
He didn’t need to point his finger for her to know what he was referring to. So she played along. Not really played, considering the Meister was the only father figure she’d had in the past ten years.
“We can send word to your family if you’d like,” he offered, “tell them that you were injured during your hunt and we are keeping you here until the wounds heal.”
He didn’t need to say that he wasn’t referring to the blow to the head in the forest.
Intimate. This conversation had turned so intimate so fast, touching layers of herself Gandrett had never dared question.
She laced her fingers together the way they did at the priory for meditation hours, just to have something familiar to hold on to. “I don’t think anyone will miss me.” She made it sound like a sad truth. And it wasn’t as far from the truth as she wanted to make herself believe.
Armand just smiled. A warm and open gesture. As if he had shed his masks and only now she was seeing him. “All the better. Then I won’t have a guilty conscience keeping you to myself.”
As she returned his smile, he laughed the way he had with Deelah.
Addie’s footsteps echoed off the rough stone as she carried the filled bucket up for the third time that day. Even though it was late at night—more early morning—Lady Linniue had demanded another one. So she had made the arduous way down to the well once more, her mind still on Gandrett. How she had practically fallen into the corridor through the stone wall. How the door had sealed behind her. The icy cold of her skin…
She was the young lord’s guest, and yet she seemed to have been on the run from something. From him? That would surprise her. For even when he pulled off that heartless, cocky, womanizer noble to perfection, she could see right beyond that facade where the pain over the loss of his mother still stung deeply.
With a gaze out the window, she could tell that dawn would be breaking soon. The music in the castle had ebbed away, and the last guests were leaving in their carriages, singing and swaying, probably drunk with sparkling wine and the music.
When Addie knocked on Lady Linniue’s door, a young man opened it, a dismissive look in his emerald eyes as from the room, the lady’s voice demanded, “Leave the bucket, and make yourself scarce.”
So Addie did.
Chapter Thirty
Lim greeted Gandrett with a whinny as she entered the stables the next day, his head bobbing up and down in something that could be interpreted as enthusiasm.
Her head hurt again, whatever potion Deelah had rubbed onto her wound obviously having worn off. Gandrett didn’t spend a moment thinking what that liquid might have been, for there were other, more pressing things keeping her mind busy.
“Are they feeding you well?” she asked, half-expecting the horse to answer. Nehelon’s horse.
She wondered what he would make of the news she bore. That Armand Denderlain wasn’t half the villain the Brenherans imagined. At least, not when it came to how he treated the women he brought home.
She and Armand had talked until the sun had risen, and she couldn’t tell if it was the wine he had retrieved from his room once they had gotten into a flow, but he had poured out his heart about his mother’s death and that he thought his father was responsible for it. Responsible in what way exactly, he still intended to find out.
Whether or not he knew about the icy tunnels under the castle, Gandrett couldn’t tell. With no word he’d spoken had he given away even the hint of it. Still, Gandrett knew better than to trust a noble who had a moment of trust. His trust had been part of her mission. And now, it was time to get to the core of it.
Lim nudged his nose to her arm and nibbled at the loose gray sleeve of the dress Deelah had brought for her this morning. She patted his nose, thinking about whether or not it was a good idea to ask Armand to go on a ride with her. Just to see how well guarded the castle was, to get a better impression of the immediate terrain around the massive stone fortress. She hadn’t had a chance on her way in, given she’d fallen victim to the aftermath of her encounter with the tree trunk.
But Armand was probably still between his sheets, sleeping off the excitement of the night.
That left her with some spare time to explore the inconspicuous parts of the castle. The main corridors on her level and the level below. The hallway leading to the great hall where the remainders of last night’s event had been scrubbed away by busy hands and the courtyard that had led her to the stables.
“Feel free to look around,” Armand had invited her before he’d tumbled through the hidden door behind the painting of the castle, “but by all means, let me sleep in.”
She had done exactly that and taken off by herself, smiling at every guard, pretending not to notice the whispers behind her back, curtseying at a yawning Lord Hamyn Denderlain whose eyes were shadowed with dark bruises as if he hadn’t slept at all, and not cringed at the bark he’d given her as he’d noticed her by the stairwell.
Much to her satisfaction, the dress she wore today accommodated both weapons Nehelon had given her. It was also warmer than last night’s gown. A blessing Deelah thought practical rather than pretty even if Armand might have probably preferred the latter.
Lim whinnied again as Gandrett remained in her thoughts for a while.
“What’s wrong, buddy?” She ran her hand over the soft fur on his neck and was about to take a step back from the wood that separated her from the horse’s stomping hooves when she noticed a crow on the windowsill to the courtyard.
At her glare, it cocked its head, reminding her surprisingly of the fat bird that had followed her around at the priory.