As Romanus returned to his own seat, he gestured to the table, and the two young men sitting to the left and right of his abandoned chair. “Oliver, these are my sons. My heir, Crown Prince Marcellus, and his younger brother, Prince Lucius.”
They both resembled their father, but were slimmer and finer-featured. Marcellus was tall and cruel-faced. Lucius was slight, and wide-eyed.
They were his uncles, weren’t they?
Oliver didn’t care. His head was full of bees, and there was still snow lodged deep in his chest, beating back all feeling along with the fever.
But then the doors swung inward, and there stood his cousins, and he found that hecouldcare, for the right thing.
He blinked, uncertain at first, that it was them, so elaborate and unusual were their dresses, their hair. They didn’t look like themselves. But when he looked at their faces, he found Amelia and Tessa, their blue eyes the same color as his own, full of fear, and of determination.
Tessa’s brows jumped when she saw him, and she swayed forward before she caught herself, and stood straight again. She wanted to come to him.
Amelia didn’t move save the hard leap of her throat as she swallowed.
Oliver gripped the table edge until his knuckles cracked, as the princes rose to escort them to their seats.
Lucius, he noted, pulled out Tessa’s chair and gestured her into it with a deferential lowering of his head.
Marcellus laid an ungentle hand on Amelia’s shoulder and shoved her down into hers.
I’ll kill him, Oliver thought, calmly, rationally.I’ll kill him for that. But then he thought that Amelia might like to do the killing herself.
“Lady Amelia,” Romanus said, as the doors parted again to admit footmen bearing large golden trays. “Lady Tessa. You look well-rested.”
Amelia closed her hand around her fork, gaze fixed on the candelabra in front of her.
When Oliver glanced toward Tessa, he saw that she was studying him, brow furrowed in concern. He must look sick, then. He attempted a smile for her benefit, but his face was stiff, the muscles there tired.
A footman reached over his shoulder to place a small, golden bowl of salad on his charger, and then poured wine intothe waiting cut-crystal goblet to his right. Pale wine, the color of pears.
Oliver was already dizzy, but he reached for the goblet the moment the footman withdrew and drained it all down in one go. Without comment, the footman refilled it.
“I don’t see why this is necessary,” Marcellus said, and his voice matched the harsh angles of his face. “Playing at some sort of family dinner in front of these heathens.”
Oliver reached for his wine again.
Amelia’s hand tightened on the fork, knuckles white pearls under the skin.
Tessa slid her hand across the table, trying to capture her attention, to no avail.
In a low and pleasant voice, attention fixed on his salad, Romanus said, “If we are to host dinners here and in Seles, then it’s important to practice behaving as a family.”
Marcellus scoffed. “Just because I throw a leg over this whore, it doesn’t make us family.”
Don’t do it, Amelia, Oliver thought, and wished for the first time that his powers enabled him to communicate telepathically. Her thumb slid up and down, up and down on the fork handle, and it would spell disaster for her if she gave into her clear impulse to stab the prince beside her.
“How can I be sure,” Marcellus continued, “that she isn’t already ripening with some Aquitainian bastard? Do you think a woman marches with an army and doesn’t get passed from bedroll to bedroll?”
“It’s as I told you,” Romanus said. “The physicians and midwives will examine her. If she’s already with child, it will be dealt with.”
Oliver needed to intervene. If this conversation went any further, Amelia would wind up in leg irons and installed in the dungeon before the first course was served.
Tessa beat him to it. She cleared her throat delicately, and though her face was white with stress, she gazed down the table toward Romanus and said, “Your imminence?”
Romanus finally lifted his head, fork held suspended, dripping citrus juice from a piece of spinach, and regarded her with slightly raised brows.
Candlelight flickered wildly on the side of Tessa’s throat, where her pulse raced. But she held eye contact bravely, and though her voice was thin, she didn’t stutter. “When I spoke with Lucius earlier, I explained to him that I am, in fact, already married.” She left it there, with all that marriage implied.
