“Would you have been interested?”
“I specifically tried to entice you to the cavern for tonight and you didn’t say, ‘Oh, no, that’s the night of the dance,’ which makes me think you wanted to hide it from me.”
“No,” she said quickly, but there was guilt in her voice.
“So, it’s that scheme you spoke of,” he said. “You are after some elf lord to buy your bride price.”
“He’s not a lord. He has a fortune from selling spices andfabrics,” she said. “He adopts orc children.”
His fingers stilled on her buttons. “He what? He has orc sons?”
“He… I suppose he doesn’t really adopt them,” she said.
“Because they are servants in his household.”
“Well, yes, but he and I spoke about how neither of us think that orcs are inferior—”
“Which is why he ‘rescues’ them and uses them as labor, I suppose.” He continued with her buttons.
She was quiet.
He looked at the way he was exposing her corset beneath her dress. He had become quite familiar with all of her undergarments as of late. He knew just how to divest her of all of them. It felt as though she belonged to him. He knew her body quite well now, had explored every inch of it, knew just how to wring pleasure from it, knew just exactly how to make her sigh and cry out. But she did not belong to him.
“I know you said to wait for you to do something to make us equals,” she said. “But you have done nothing at all, and—”
“Nothing at all?” he said. “I am working twice as hard to work off the money the steward says I owe him. What did you think I would be able to do in such a brief amount of time, anyway?” He stepped back. “Your buttons are all undone.”
She moved away from him, going towards her wardrobe. She stepped out of the dress and she hung it in the wardrobe. She began to loosen her own corset, which laced up the front.
He had done things with her in this room, in this bed. It was nicer to be inside when they were doing things together because of the warmth and comfort, but it was difficult because they could not make noise and they had to be quite careful in case they were discovered.
“We don’t have that much time,” she said. “I will be married to Celedin in less than three years now.”
“I know this,” he said.
She eyed him. “But it doesn’t matter to you whether it’s Celedin or someone else, because you don’t truly care about me or my safety or my happiness. You just want me all to yourself.”
He let out a breath, because that was true, to a degree, he supposed. He obviously cared about her, but he did want… he was not sure he could stand the idea of sharing her.
“He wants to meet you,” she said. “He knew about you.”
“Knew about me? Knew about us?”
“Oh, no, just knew that you lived here at Foxglove Peak. He thought you might want to meet his orcs.”
His lips parted as an ache opened up in him that he had not known he would feel. He had rarely pondered it, truly. Maybe when he was a boy, he had asked his mother sometimes about his father, about his father’s people. His mother had only held him and told him he was an elf, that this was his family, that he need not concern himself with that.
His mother had loved him, he knew that. She had protected him as best as she could, but she’d had little ability to do that as a disgraced elf lady with a bastard orc son.
He didn’t know if he’d been put in his mother through violent means, if she had been ravished, or if she had gone to his father willingly. He didn’t know anything at all about where he came from in that way.
“You do want to, don’t you?” she said, coming over to him again. She had shed her corset now and she was in her shift. Her hair was still up, and she looked half softened, still radiant and pretty.
“I’ve never met another orc,” he admitted. He had seen them from afar. Once, in the village, there had been a hanging. It had been an orc, and the orc had been entirely silent the whole time, no noise, no expression on his face. It had taken five elf men to wrestle him onto the gallows.
“It’s because you live in the north. In the Vale, you would see others of your own kind often,” she said. “We are so isolated here. It’s truly a pity. I am going to make certain that Elrion lets you meet his orcs, then.”
He went to her. He touched her face. His voice was hoarse. “I’m not going to let him have you just because he can introduce me to other orcs, you know.”
