Guy charges forward, hands lifted like he’s considering throttling me. He wouldn’t be the first to try. “I taught you everything you know.”
Instead of answering, I tilt my head in acknowledgment.
My silence fails to mitigate my brother’s fury. He’s taller by three centimeters—though leaner—and when he steps in close, his breath ghosting over my face, I know he’s seconds away from wheeling back and trying to knock sense into me.
With his fist.
“Holyrood is mine,” he seethes, his blue eyes glittering, “do you hear me? Mine. If I say that we aren’t sending any more men to babysit the bloody queen, then you fall in line and do as I tell you.”
I’ve never been all that good with following orders.
Guy Godwin may be the head of Holyrood, but he’s no god. And his word certainly isn’t the law. Ironic, perhaps, that Damien said the same thing to me just the other day when I reprimanded him about leaving the Palace.
“We took an oath,” I say, roughly.
“We inherited an oath,” Guy returns, each word clipped out from between clenched teeth, “and I’m fully aware of the difference. We have a queen who can’t even wipe her own ass without someone trying to murder her, a parliament that’s tearing itself apart from the inside out, and at least a thousand people outside the gates of Buckingham Palace every goddamn night. She doesn’t need more men; she needs to leave.”
“She needs us to do our job,” I growl.
Guy slants me a harsh look before turning away. “She needs to find her spine before it, too, ends up strangling her in her sleep.”
Breathing deeply through my nose, I run my hand over the side of my face. I don’t remember the last time Guy and I argued. Maybe when Damien was outed by the Met’s police commissioner as having hacked parliament’s internal software. Accidentally outed, if you’re to believe his piss-poor excuses. The only reason Marcus Guthram is still breathing is because we have use for him yet.
Ethical or not, I’d wanted Damien to place the blame on someone else’s shoulders.
He could have done it. He had the technical skills to rewrite history, if not the lack of conscience.
Guy had ordered our younger brother to remain unseen, an informal house arrest that limited him to Holyrood’s main compound an hour outside of the City.
If they can’t find him, Guy had said, his expression stony, they can’t have him.
No, they couldn’t, but at the risk of Damien’s own sanity.
Beyond that, Guy and I have always been on the same page. He taught me to shoot a pistol—how to defend myself. He held me up when Mum died, his then-bony arms wrapped around my shoulders like an anchor keeping me close to shore.
But this . . .
I shake my head. “We’re working with borrowed time. There’s no point in arguing when I’m willing to—”
“No.”
Bloody fucking hell.
Turning on my heels, before I say something that I’ll regret, I pinch the bridge of my nose and seek out the calm. The numbness that’s been a constant companion for years now, always there, always prepared to ice over my vulnerabilities.
I don’t have the chance.
A knock sounds on the door and then it’s cracking open, revealing Jack and . . . and—
“She came looking for you, boss,” Jack sneers, none too gently shoving her forward into my brother’s flat.
Her.
Isla Quinn.
I’m so caught off guard by her presence that I don’t have time to strip the frustration still coating my skin. It bleeds into my icy crevices, blending into heat, into a startled awareness that drags my chest in for a sharp breath. My gaze finds hers—annoyance and unease swirling in those blue depths—and I feel myself step forward, toward her.
Guy cuts me off.
“And who do we have here?” he asks, his voice low, pleasantly curious. But I recognize that tone for what it is, and the startling heat that coiled within me at the sight of Isla dies instantly.
Jack, still standing in the doorway, clicks his tongue in disapproval. “Saxon’s newest hire.”
“For the pub?” Guy gives me his back, his entire focus centered on Isla. I step to the right, needing to keep her in my line of sight.
“She ain’t workin’ with me,” Jack mutters. “So, no. She’s Saxon’s little, special pet.”
I grit my teeth. Over the years, I’ve saved Jack more than once from being sacked. He mouths off to customers. On occasion, he’s been known to mouth off to me. But the day I hired him, I exacted only one promise: his loyalty. To me, not to Guy or Damien or The Bell & Hand. Petty jealousy isn’t a good look on him, but neither is the anger that’ll no doubt steal over him tomorrow when he realizes that I’m letting him go.
Maybe you’re not so unlike King John, after all.
The thought churns my stomach. Sacking someone is not the same thing as murdering them, which is what I suspect happened to Pa after he failed to find Princess Evangeline’s killer.
My stare cuts to the barman. “Leave us.”
Mouth curling, Jack offers a short, mocking bow that has me wanting to grasp his thick neck and drive his head into the closest wall. “You got it, boss,” he says, straightening to his full height, “not a problem, boss.”
The door slams shut behind him, the second time it’s closed so loudly in the last hour, and then it’s only the three of us.
Me.
Guy.
And Isla.
Who, after a moment of halted silence, murmurs, “Well, this is cozy.”
I feel my lips twitch at her sarcasm. My heart doesn’t squeeze, and my lungs don’t ache with laughter, but that twitch . . . It’s more than I’ve felt in years, and I move. Again. Toward her. Again. My feet walk of their own volition, and I blame the inexplicable pull on our strange relationship. In less than a week’s time, I’ve saved her and she’s saved me in return. Her willingness to mediate between Father Bootham and me is nothing less than the only bout of luck I’ve received in life. And, so I move, my lips once again firm and my heart beating at its normal pace and my skin cool, but that pull drives me forward, nonetheless.
Her blue eyes cling to my frame and, for the first time since we’ve met, I don’t sense fear.
Guy, the bastard, steps in front of me. He shoves a hand toward Isla. “We haven’t met.”
I can’t see her face, but I hear the familiar iron steel of her voice when she responds, “Isla Quinn.” A small pause that gives me the impression that she’s looking him over, sizing him up. Does she like what she sees? I demolish the thought with the crushing of a mental boot, ignoring the strange, fist-like vice that lingers in my chest. “You must be Guy.”
My brother tilts his head, just as I step in beside him. “Figured me out, have you?” he says, the earlier curiosity returning swiftly as he drops his untaken hand. It drifts into the front pocket of his joggers like he never offered it in the first place.
Isla only stares at him, her expression clear. “I’m the eldest of three, too.” She says it like they’re in some secret club together, as if with that alone they understand each other in a way that I never will. The fist-like vice eases, the icy fingers of ambivalence settling in once more. “And I’m not Saxon’s little pet,” Isla adds, casting me a quick look before shuttling her gaze back to my brother, “for the record.”