“Wouldn’t that put you in conflict with Hreban?”
“He sought to harm you. He is already my enemy.”
What?
He reached over and covered my hand with his.
“Won’t you stay, my lady? I would be truly delighted.”
If Everard knew that a handsome Defender knight had rescued me, brought me to his castle, fed me snacks, and was now trying to persuade me to temporarily move in, he would lose his mind.
So far Bellen had been perfectly courteous, but he’d basically kidnapped me. He didn’t seem in a hurry to let me go either. Quite the opposite. I needed to lay some boundaries and fast.
“It wouldn’t be proper, my lord. Besides, the Lord Commander will likely take a dim view of some random woman staying in his Citadel.”
“I’m sure I can smooth things over,” he said.
“I can’t. My family would not approve.”
“Then perhaps you’ll give me a chance to change their mind.”
“If I didn’t know better, my lord, I’d think you’re trying sweep me off my feet.”
“I am,” he said. “Is it working?”
Good question. If Hreban and Silveren weren’t an imminent threat and if I were free of the tangled ball of feelings Everard evoked, it would absolutely work. Bellen was stunning, and funny, and he treated me with flawless courtesy, but I sensed a core of steel underneath all of that. There was more to Lord Bellen than he was willing to show. I was on thin ice, and I had to tread carefully.
“I’m flattered, my lord. Any woman in my place would be overjoyed.”
“But you’re not just any woman.” He said it as if he meant something deeper by it.
“I’m not. Also, we barely know each other.”
He smiled at me. “Well, that’s something we will have to remedy, isn’t it?”
CHAPTER36
REDBERRY6
The light of the early morning played on my desk and the pages of a genealogy book. Escaping the Citadel yesterday had taken some doing. Clover had returned with Gort and the brothers, and nobody had told me. Who knew how long Bellen would’ve kept them waiting, except that he got a message via another squire. Something had happened that required his attention, so he regretfully released me.
Bellen’s interest in me was a new development. He wasn’t in the books, so I was flying in the dark. If this had been the first week of me being here, that fact would’ve sent me into a spiral of anxiety, but I had adjusted now. This world was so much bigger, and I’d already seen too much of it.
I had other ways of getting information now. He had to be fairly high in the Defender Order. I needed to figure out which noble family he was affiliated with. Trouble was, Derog’s genealogy books were way out-of-date.
Someone rapped their knuckles on the doorframe. I looked up. Will leaned in the doorway of the office. His color was off, his face looked like he had slept on it, and a spectacular shiner clutched at his left eye. Blue and purple, it had swollen to a glossy puffiness like some sort of awful jewel.
“Rough night?” I asked.
“You might say that.”
I pointed at one of the chairs. Usually he dropped into them, but this time he sat kind of carefully, like he was sore.
“What happened to you?” I waved my finger around my left eye, indicating his shiner.
He grinned. “I picked a fight with some mercs from the South. We threw some punches and then got drunk together.”
“Did you get anything good?” He wouldn’t have done that unless he had an agenda.
