“Are you unhappy with these options?” he asked. “Do you want more from me? More help? I owe it to you. I arranged this disastrous betrothal and I should be the one to fix it. I was being selfish, thinking only of myself, but I can find another way to—”
He stopped. He hadn’t meant to say that last part, hadn’t meant to expose that Gilbert’s marriage served a purpose for him.
But he should have known she would catch his mistake. Her brow arched subtly. “Another way to what, Your Grace? Marry off your unmarriable nephew?”
He debated lying, then decided against it. It was beneath them both. “Yes, but that wasn’t necessarily its own end. Once Gilbert was married, I’d planned to abdicate my title and move away. He would become the Duke of Jarrell, and I would be free.”
Her mouth parted; he’d genuinely shocked her. There was no serenity in those features now, no level neutrality. She could not have looked more stunned than if he’d stood up in front of her and started doing backflips.
“Abdicate?” she asked, then blinked. “Move away? You can’t do that! And who wishes to be free of a dukedom in any event?”
“Me,” he replied simply. “And yes, it was very difficult to arrange, but my need to leave outweighed every other consideration, and so I persevered.”
She blinked again. “I don’t understand.”
He got to his feet, leaving her there on the floor in her blanket. He wandered over to the window where a steady rain fell outside. Heavy, but no longer desolate and howling. Lightning still flashed occasionally, illuminating the grasping branches of the trees and the glinting wind of the river.
He desperately wanted a drink before he filled this airy, modern room with the sad tales of his past, but he didn’t move to the desk where he kept his whiskey. He could still taste Eleanor on his lips, and it would be the only time he could savor it. He wouldn’t wash it away. Not for any price in the world.
“Far Hope is an old place,” he started. An instinctive resistance nearly stilled his tongue—secrecy was one of the highest laws at Far Hope, and only the initiated were permitted to know its mysteries—but it was strangely thrilling to speak of it too. To finally confess. To unburden himself of the things that he’d run away from in his grief. Things he currently craved with a deep and animal hunger.
“The manor house was built sometime in the thirteenth century,” he continued, “but there was certainly a structure there at the time of the Domesday Book, and there are recordings of a Saxon abbey there even before that. And like all old places, Far Hope has its secrets—very old ones. Some of the oldest in England.”
“But what do those secrets have to do with you? If they are so old, surely they cannot hurt you now, in this day and age?”
He rested his head against the glass, not looking at her. “They only hurt as they serve to remind me.”
He couldn’t see Far Hope from here. It was much too far away, but it didn’t matter. It was vivid in his mind’s eye as always. He could see Helena’s pale gray eyes reflecting the stars in the star-ceilinged chamber back to him; he could hear her laugh as she danced at their wedding. He could feel the cool, dry weight of her fingers in his as she drew in her last, shaky breaths.
Eleanor shifted behind him in a rustle of blankets and skin. “They remind you of your—your wife?”
Thunder hummed against the glass, and he finally turned around to face the girl he’d rescued from the moors. “Yes. My wife.”
Eleanor was perched up on her knees, the blanket wrapped securely around her, although it didn’t cover those creamy shoulders or disguise the pert curves he’d just been licking and sucking. Her eyes were wide and clear, and her lips parted.
“What happened?” she asked.
“It’s coming in the story, I promise. And Eleanor, I must ask that you do not repeat anything you learn tonight. While my friends haven’t gathered at Far Hope for many years, they still meet, and they still risk exposure. Many of them are powerful, but many are not. Even the powerful ones might not escape punishment, if it came down to that.”
“Punishment?” Eleanor repeated.
He nodded once. It was a grave reality. The Second Kingdom—so called because it existed like a shadow realm inside the actual monarchy—conferred some safety and liberty for its people to love and fuck whoever and however they wished, and to live how they needed to. But that safety was sorely limited outside the confines of the Kingdom, and the danger of being discovered was all too real.
“Do I have your word that you will keep the things you learn tonight confidential? At least where the revelation would risk someone other than myself?”
“You have my word, Your Grace,” she said solemnly, and it was surprising how much he already missed her calling him by his Christian name.
“Thank you,” he said, and then continued. “As far back as anyone knows, Far Hope was a place for, well, baser needs, one might say. Some think it began at the Abbey, which was a place of pilgrimage for women wishing to conceive. Some think it started before that, with the Romans, or maybe even the Druids. But what is known for certain is that my valley became a place where people could indulge themselves. Carnally.” He studied her then, before he continued. She didn’t look frightened or disgusted. She wasn’t scrambling away from him, begging to leave.
When will you stop underestimating her?
He continued. “It’s an entire world—servants and peers alike—and membership is handed down both by birthright and by sponsorship. I learned of the Kingdom on my eighteenth birthday and was allowed to join on my twenty-first. I was elated.”
Every family had different customs around how to handle their adult children joining. But like many other parents, Dartham parents retired from public Kingdom events—at least the more salacious ones—once their children were inducted, although they continued their private affairs as they had before. Which meant that Jarrell’s initiation had also been a coronation of sorts, since he’d been assuming his father’s former role as the Kingdom’s figurehead.
Jarrell had been so thoroughly coronated that he’d barely been able to walk the next day.
“The Kingdom has very few rules,” he continued, “and it follows no law but pleasure. Other than a partner’s acquiescence and a dedication to secrecy, there is very little members do not permit themselves. As the master of Far Hope, there was very, very little I did not permit myself.”
She tilted her head. “Even after your marriage?”
“Helena…she wanted to. There are many married couples who indulge in our world either in tandem or separately. But she took ill with her cough in the days right after our wedding, and I devoted myself completely to caring for her. There were no more Kingdom events at Far Hope after that.”
“You said Helena wanted to. Did you want to as well?”
“Pardon?”
“I mean, would you have acquiesced because you also wanted the Kingdom’s offerings or only because you loved her?”
“Both, I suppose. Perhaps I fell in love with Helena because she wanted the same things I did.”
“Did? Past tense?” She looked down at the blanket pooled around her knees. “Do you no longer want those indulgences?”