“My clutches?” he asked, slowing his steps and turning toward her slightly. “How will she be in my clutches?”
“Well, you are the institution, are you not, Your Majesty?” She smiled at him innocently enough. “You are Athawick, she is you.”
She expected a huff of irritation at her point, but instead, there was a flutter that crossed his face. Something so desperate that she tightened her fingers against the inside of his elbow out of reflex. Like she could pull him back from an edge that she realized he was balanced on.
But he turned away, not responding, and their next few steps were taken in uncomfortable silence. At last she cleared her throat. “I hear that Priscilla and Remi are going to be holing up in that tower where they were secretly meeting in recent weeks.”
Now he did stop and faced her. “What?”
She drew back. Here she thought she had hit upon an easier topic, but it seemed not. “Did you not know?”
“No,” he said. “God’s teeth, Remi. There are dozens of places where they could have some privacy in these early days of their marriage. There’s a wonderful cottage not three miles into the wooded area near the lake on the palace grounds. There is his own blasted room. And yet he insists on going back, over and over, to a place that was closed up for a reason.”
She blinked. “What reason is that?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face and the pain reflected there, even briefly, cut her. She forgot about games and all the ways she played to irritate him. Now she edged closer and touched his hand lightly. “Not having anyone to discuss things with, personal things, is not healthy, Grantham.”
He pressed his lips together, fighting. And she thought, failing in that fight. When he let his breath out in a ragged sigh, she knew he would confess to her. And it would change things. Change them.
“My father was a reasonable king, but not a good man,” he said softly. “Cruel, unyielding. I suppose you would say I have inherited those traits from him.”
Her lips parted. “I would never say that. Ever.”
His nostrils flared slightly. “He used to…lock me in that tower as punishment when I was a child.”
She caught her breath at the unexpected revelation. “My God.”
“It was not nearly so fine a place as Remi has created it to be for Priscilla, I can tell you that. And when I did not behave as my role, my future, should be according to my father…he would march me up the tower steps and lock me in.”
“For how long?” she whispered.
“A day, sometimes two. I was allowed water and a bucket and nothing else.” He turned his face. “No one knew. Not my mother, not my brother.”
“I would hope not,” she said softly. “Or using that place for a romantic assignation would seem especially cruel. How old were you?”
He hesitated. “Ten the first time. Fifteen the last.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “So young.”
“Old enough to know better, he used to say,” Grantham said, just as softly as she had spoken, but his tone was raw. Rough. He shook his head. “I should not have said anything to you. Forgive me for my imprudence. I must catch up with the others and speak to Remi.”
He pivoted away, stalking off as she stared. He had revealed something of himself and now she knew the truth. There was a man in there, buried beneath propriety and hard edges and cold civility. The man who had kissed her, who still stung from the abusive treatment of a father. A man with weight on his shoulders and no outlet to release it.
Except to grunt and demand and march across rooms to confront. As he apparently intended to do with Remi at that moment. She raced forward, rushing after him. He would not feel better by berating his brother. Priscilla would be upset. And if no one knew what he had endured, it would only serve to create a further wedge between Grantham and his family.
One she felt driven to keep from happening. Even though it was most certainly not her place.
Grantham’s hands were shaking and his ears were ringing as he started around the perimeter of the palace toward the garden in the back. Even from the distance he could hear the laughter of those gathered in celebration and it made him slow his steps. Should he approach Remi after all? Confront him about the tower?
Usually he wouldn’t question himself, but at this moment Ophelia was in his head. Bouncing around where she certainly didn’t belong, making him question…everything. She made him question everything.
How could one slender slip of a woman upend an entire life? That was the question. He spent five minutes with her and he was flipped onto his head. Kiss her? He would never be the same. And he couldn’t afford those changes, those cracks to a façade that he had built up so carefully over the years.
More to the point, he didn’t want them. He didn’t want to give any other person in the world such vulnerability. That was exactly how a person ended up in a tower…one in a palace or in one’s own head.
“Your Majesty!”
He slowed in his steps a little. Ophelia was following him.
“Sir!”
He ignored her.
“Grantham!” she called out at last.
That stopped him, with all its impertinence and familiarity. He pivoted to glare at her. They were alongside the palace now, just out of view of the gardens.
“What do you want, Ophelia?” he barked, and then fisted his hands at his sides. “For God’s sake, woman. What do you want?”
The second question came out softer, almost in defeat and that wasn’t wrong. He felt a little defeated as she moved to him, blue eyes bright with warmth and a hint of what he feared was pity.
“Please reconsider speaking to Remi and Priscilla about the tower,” she said.
He blinked. “Why do you bloody care? Or is it just that you want to continue your current pastime of tweaking me, despite my position, that drives you to intrude where you do not belong?”
Her lips parted slightly, but she didn’t flinch away. She never did that, did she? She always stood toe to toe with him, never breaking first, always a challenge. Bait he kept rising to even though he should be better. But he liked to match with her. He liked to stand next to her.
He liked to touch her. He wanted to touch her even now.
“I belong no less than you do in this situation,” she insisted, firmly but not unkindly. “I understand that the tower has a deeply painful association for you. And I am sorry that someone was so cruel to you when you were helpless to escape. That was wrong and I don’t care if your father was king of a country or head fishmonger. Cruelty is cruelty, even if it wears a crown.”
He blinked. He had not expected that understanding. “But?” he pressed.
“But you said that Remi does not know about what happened to you there,” she said gently. “To him and Priscilla, that place is an oasis, a place where they discovered their love. It is a beautiful escape. Do you want to take that from them? Or couldn’t you see that as a way that the tower has been…cleansed a little from your pain?”
He pursed his lips. When he realized Remi was using the tower, the tower Grantham had ordered locked, never to be open again, he had burned with rage. Only the drama that had followed with Priscilla’s horrible parents had tempered it. But he could see now, through Ophelia’s eyes, how unfair that reaction was. He was angry at his father, not his brother.