“Imagine my surprise when I heard abountyhad been set for my return,” Maria continued loudly, as she closed the space between them. “Upon hearing it, I realized I had best come home at once. Before my devoted husband mistakenly starts an entirewarto search for me.”
She drew to a halt before him, squaring her shoulders, inwardly bracing for the familiar rush of panic, the uncontrollable rage. But as she lifted her eyes to his shocked, smooth, handsome face, there was something sharp and new, curling into her belly. Something much like… contempt.
And as she looked her husband up and down, her gaze lingering on his tailored clothes, his slim shoulders, his impeccably coiffed hair — the contempt only sparked higher, darker.Thiswas the man who’d ruined her life for the past six years?Thiswas the man who’d been terrorizing the orcs all this time? This little man, with his bulging eyes, and his little pouting mouth, and his slightly knocking knees?
“A private meeting, if you would, husband,” Maria said smoothly. “Or would you rather discuss this here?”
She smiled again, not quite so nicely this time, and Warmisham noticeably twitched as he turned his back to her, and strode down the main hallway. Clearly intending Maria to follow, and she willingly did so, glancing around as she went. Perhaps seeing the house with new eyes, too, with all its unnecessary grandeur, all its attempts to overpower and intimidate.
But after spending weeks in Orc Mountain, Maria wasn’t intimidated. Not even as her husband drew her into the very last room down the hall — well out of noise range of the rest of the house — and then locked the heavy oak door behind them.
Maria looked around with interest — it was his study, warm and cozy, and likely also soundproof. And there was even a lovely fire burning in the grate, and she settled herself comfortably on the nearest opulent chair, while her husband strode to sit behind the desk, fixing her with an absurd little glare.
“You have some nerve, wife,” he said, in a voice that was surely meant to be menacing. “You up and vanish for almost amonth, and then you walk in here and behave likethis?!”
Maria folded her hands in her lap, and felt her eyebrows rising. “Like what? Like a woman wholiveshere? A woman who’smarriedto you?”
Warmisham shot another menacing little glower across the desk, his chest puffing out. “I am not,” he huffed, “about to play any more of your foolish, hystericalgames, wife!”
Something prickled unpleasantly in Maria’s gut, but she felt her mouth smiling, her hands reaching to open the reticule she’d been carrying. “Excellent,” she replied, “as I have no interest in playing games with you, either. So here” — she snapped down a handful of papers on the desk between them — “is what I want.”
Warmisham blinked down at the papers, clearly nonplussed, so Maria reached across the desk, and spread them out before him. “Three contracts, in triplicate,” she said, voice crisp. “You will sign them all. The first is the official public dissolution of our marriage, and the full reimbursement of my inheritance. And the second” — she tapped her gloved finger against the little pile — “is your immediate removal of the bounty upon my head, and the payment of the bounty to me.”
Warmisham was staring at her, his eyes increasingly incredulous, but Maria ignored him, and tapped the third set of papers. “And this one maintains your public commitment to the peace-treaty you ratified. It calls for an immediate and permanent end to your war against the orcs. Oh, and the end of your horrid new money-stealing law, as well.”
There was an instant’s startled silence between them, Warmisham’s eyes gone very wide — and then he threw back his head, andlaughed. The movement easy, familiar, contemptuous, designed to daunt, to disconcert, to make people cower before him.
But Maria only watched, and listened, and waited until he was done. “And once you sign them,” she continued, as if he hadn’t interrupted, “you’ll earn my reward. For as long as you keep your word.”
Warmisham laughed again, though there was something darker in it, something malicious, malevolent. “You’ve truly lost it now, wife,” he said, between chuckles. “Pleasedotell, what kind of reward you thinkyoucould possibly offerme?”
His grey eyes had flicked purposefully up and down Maria’s seated form, as if to say how ugly she was, how undesirable — but suddenly, it seemed utterly preposterous that Maria hadeverwanted this man, and she felt herself coldly gazing back, her eyes flinty on his mocking face.
“For your reward, I offer you your reputation,” she replied, voice clipped. “You must have noticed, just now, how your household reacted to me? It was quite a shock, surely, to see a woman who was supposedly kidnapped and brutalized by orcs, walking around perfectly healthy and safe?”
Warmisham blinked, once, and Maria gave him a chilly, placid smile. “It was almost as though,” she said, “you made a grave mistake,husband. Almost as though you didn’t even know what happened to your ownwife. Almost as though you’re losing your edge.”
The mirth had fully faded from her husband’s face now, but Maria kept smiling. “I also hear some of your fellow nobles aren’t overly pleased about your new wealth-stealing law. Surely they’ll beveryeager to know that you’ve been trying to appropriate their money under false pretenses? That your intelligence, and your judgement, was wrong? That your entire newwarwas wrong?”
And clearly Warmisham recognized the weight of that threat, because a visible trace of unease flashed through his eyes before he laughed again. Sounding perhaps more forced this time, his fingers clutching against the desk.
“That’s your hysteria speaking again, wife,” he said, with damnable coolness. “I am one of the most powerful men in the realm, and your own reputation is alreadyverydeeply compromised. No one is going to believe your baseless blackmail over the word of a duke.No one.”
Maria felt the first snap of impatience, flicking through her belly, and she sat up straighter, looked him in the eyes. “Wrong again,husband,” she replied. “You see, I don’t need to say anything at all. All I need to do is spend a few days swanning about town, visiting and shopping, and telling everyone I know about my family emergency in Sakkin. I know all too well how gossip travels in our circles, and I know” — she jabbed her finger at the desk between them — “that it’syouwho will suffer from this. It’s you who will forever be the man who launched awar, because he couldn’t figure out where his own damnedwifewent.”
Warmisham’s mouth betrayed a brief grimace, his eyes narrowing. “Then I tell them I rescued you from the orcs, in a successful secret operation,” he said flatly. “And you were just too overwrought to remember. Too hysterical. As usual.”
Maria rearranged her skirts, and gave him a brittle smile. “Then I start sharing tales of myveryinteresting time with the orcs,” she said coldly. “I’m sure all your friends and colleagues and minions would bemostintrigued by all the sordid details, don’t you?”
And there it was. The faint, unmistakable flare offear, crossing her unfeeling husband’s face. A sure confirmation, perhaps, that as misguided as Maria’s original plan with the letters had been, that she hadn’t been wrong about it, either. That its threat still held real, lasting power over this petty, pathetic, pridefultoadof a man.
A lord, in the prime of his life, cuckolded by an orc.
“You’redelusional,” Duke Warmisham finally hissed at her. “Do you really think I’m going to let you walk out of this house, after making all these unwarranted threats toward me? Do you really think” — his lips curled into a satisfied sneer — “my staff will defy my orders, once I command them to keep safe my hysterical, runaway wife? Once we lock you up where you belong, and throw away the damned key,forever?!”
Good gods, this again, and suddenly Maria was done with him, with this utterly tiresomeabsurdity. “I willneverbe confined again,ever,” she replied, curt. “And if you eventry, in addition to your destroyed reputation, you will have an enraged band of orcs overrunning this house bysunrise.”
Warmisham gaped at her, his eyes bugged wide, his mouth hanging open with gratifying astonishment. “You’remad,” he spat at her. “You can’t possibly do such a thing. You wouldn’t. Youcouldn’t.”
