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“Let’s get you out of?—”
“Are you already in his bed?” The woman—the same one who had grabbed Clare earlier—said it loud enough to draw the attention of everyone nearby. She didn’t sound judgmental, she sounded envious. At least, as envious as one could sound beneath that much magically induced jubilance. She continued, talking to Clare like Numair wasn’t present. Like he was a thing instead of a person. “I have been trying for months. I thought it was my age, but he’s been with women twice as old.”
Numair went tense against Clare’s back.
“I actually even heard he?—”
“Shut up,” Clare snapped.
The woman smiled uncertainly, her unease alarmingly discordant with her happiness. “I’m sorry, what?”
Clare didn’t bother to repeat herself, and since she and Numair were already touching she turned and wrapped her arm around his waist, dragging him with her as she plunged into the crowd. She didn’t care if she was supposed to stay for the duration of dinner, she wanted out. She wanted Numair out.
She wanted them both away from the hands that grabbed indiscriminately at them, that seemed not to view either of them as people. But moving through them was a slog, and no matter how fiercely she scowled or how vehemently she batted away hands, no one gave them space.
“Calm down,” a deep voice said, stilling the crowd. “It wouldn’t do to suffocate Miss Brighton, now would it?”
The Jackal King, it seemed, could do what nothing else could—temporarily blunt the happiness she’d infected them all with. They parted just enough to open a path from her to the king, and though she knew she should, she didn’t let her arm fall away from Numair. She had the distinct impression that if she let go of him, the barely contained crowd would swallow him.
All Alaric did was say, mildly, “Your dinner is getting cold.”
“Walk in front of me,” she told Numair softly, grateful when he didn’t argue, because it got him out. Even if out meant both of them seated at Alaric’s table across from each other.
“Well,” the king said, “this is so much more than I could have hoped for. You’ve set the bar quite high for yourself, little songbird. I hope you don’t disappoint me in the future.” He leaned against his chair, arm resting across its back as he surveyed the room, far more pleased than any king should be at having their court thrown into utter chaos.
He looked that way the entire evening, while people once again swarmed around them. Sitting next to Alaric proved enough of a buffer against random touching, but nothing could buffer against the things that were said. The things they all heard. Things that made the first woman who’d spoken to Clare sound positively proper, that made it so Numair wouldn’t even meet her eyes anymore.
And that—she had a feeling Alaric enjoyed that, too.
Chapter Sixty-One
I Still Don’t Think I Like You
Clare was getting tired of waking to the sound of pounding at her door. She sat up, a headache throbbing behind her eyes. After the disaster of a dinner had ended, she’d ridden into town to sing with the Fools precisely because she hadn’t wanted to. Then she’d stumbled back to the palace suite where no level of exhaustion could convince her body to sleep.
She’d pulled the still-unwilted hibiscus flower from the drawer of the nightstand, placed it on the tabletop and stared at it, absently mapping the curves of the petals, reaching out every now and then to feel the thrum of Numair’s magic coursing through it like water.
Predictably, her body had finally decided to sleep once the sun came up.
The knocking rattled through the suite again and she stalked out to greet it, opening the door to find Alys, Lina—and Fitz. He hung behind the two of them and Alys said, “He’ll go if you want him to.”
“It’s fine.”
“You look terrible,” Alys noted as Clare stepped back, allowing them all to enter. Her scar was on full display, without a trace of glamour to cover it. “But then, I imagine I would look terrible too if I’d caused the end of no less than six marriages last night.” Honesty and carelessness had a price, it would seem. “What did you do?”
Clare couldn’t summon even a false smile. “What I was ordered to. I don’t want to talk about last night, so if that’s why you’re here, you can leave.”
“My my, someone’s prickly.” Alys settled onto one of the couches and Lina came with her. When Fitz remained standing, Clare took the other couch.
“Don’t you have duchess things to do?” Clare suggested. “Holdings to oversee, other nobles to flatter? That sort of thing.”
“I dedicated yesterday to looking into how much of a mess Geoffrey made of my duchy and delegating a start on the changes. I am here today to flatter other nobles. Are you satisfied?”
“It’s still unclear what any of that has to do with you interrupting my”—she glanced at the clock—“four hours of sleep.”
“It’s hardly my fault if you failed to retire at a reasonable hour.”
“Didn’t I do you a rather large favor a mere two days ago? Gratitude might be more in order than a critique of my sleep schedule.”
