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10
Inglewood
The candle flames danced tall and vicious, the candles themselves burned down to stumps, each stick ringed with long wax drips like icicles. Wax flecked the tabletop, and the edges of maps, and the schematics they’d been drawing and tweaking for the past…who knew how many hours. Reginald had stopped paying attention some time ago, and rested now with an elbow on the table, his head propped on his fist. His back and his ass hurt from sitting. His gaze had grown unfocused, fixed on Amelia seated across from him, her braid unwinding over her shoulder and her lower lip blush pink from being chewed on so much. The candlelight gleamed on her smooth cheeks and brow, softened the sleepless shadows beneath her eyes.
She truly was lovely. To look at. He’d always thought so. With her hair curled and pinned, in a flouncy dress that fitted her slender silhouette; pink-cheeked from the heat of a party, snapping her fan back and forth angrily. But that was the key thing: angrily. She’d always cloaked her loveliness with a snappish temper and a ready dismissal of all compliments and complimentary glances. He’d thought her a cold fish, or perhaps only a pretend one, one that might prove a hellcat in bed. The idea of wedding her hadn’t been…abominable. If she booted him out of bed, he'd always have footmen and stable lads at his disposal.
But ever since the unpleasant dinner at Drake Hall, when the marriage had been suggested to her, when he’d sat with his throat scarred, and his head full of nightmares, and then learned of her secret, forbidden lover, he’d begun to see her in a new light. A light made brighter the more time he spent with her on this (probably doomed) campaign. Her coldness wasn’t an act – nor was it even really coldness. She was pragmatic, tireless, and a little bit ruthless. She hadn’t disliked Reggie because he was a man, but, rather, because he was a man dripping in frippery. She’d rejected the fop, but he thought that, soldier to soldier, they might be something like friends at this point.
“Reginald.”
Oh. She’d been saying his name.
He sat up straight, spine protesting, and blinked his vision clear to find her regarding him with a frown.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine.”
She didn’t look convinced, her concerned gaze far too much like Connor’s had been last night for his liking. What was so bloody special about him that he warranted all this worry?
“I’m fine,” he repeated, pushed his chair back and stood to prove the point. He couldn’t keep from wincing, though, as the backs of his legs grabbed and twinged. Two days in the saddle and a day sitting in this awful chair had left him one big knot. “In fact, we’re doing one captain per watch, yes? I’ll take first shift.”
“Are you sure?” Connor asked. He still sat at the head of the table and Reggie didn’t – couldn’t – glance at him. Instead, he knuckled at the kinks in his lower back and paced the length of the room, peering out its rows of open windows.
It was full dark, now, and cook and watch fires glowed in the garden and across the lawn, all the way out toward the trees. Sentries – Aquitainian and Stranger both – would keep watch through the night, and of course there were the drakes, bedded down in the waves of dead grass, alert to everything that moved or breathed, and certainly able to meet any threat. But the four of them had decided that one lord, or lady, should be awake on each shift, should an emergency arise or if a sentry came pelting up to the manor to sound the alarm. Whoever it was could start tossing out orders while the other three woke and scrambled for their boots and swords.
“I’ll be happy to take it,” Edward said. “I don’t require much sleep.”
“No. I have it.” Reggie tossed them all a wave as he strode from the room and down the dark hallway toward the door. His steps rang hollow in the high-ceilinged space, and the candlelight from the open dining room stretched his shadow long before him across the dusty parquet. He’d been in and out of fabulous houses all his life, but never one that was so empty, so…lifeless.
He suppressed a shudder, shrugged into his coat in the grand entryway, and went out into the cold night.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t expected anyone to follow him, only that he’d thought it would be Connor, with more lascivious looks and deceptively kind arms around his shoulders. The thought sent another shudder through him, when he heard boot soles gritting over the stone of the stairs, but then Amelia called out, “Reggie, wait.”
He halted, and turned back around slowly. In the dancing light of the two braziers on either side of the doors, he saw the shock on her face, and knew the cause of it.
He braced a hand on his hip, and smiled. “You’ve never called me that.”
She recovered quickly, shock melting into a sterner expression. “Yes, well, you march to war with a man, it stands to reason pretense falls away, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Still.”
“Oh.” She glared. “That’s not why I came out here.”
“Then why did you?”
She studied him a moment, her gaze unreadable. His palms and the back of his neck began to prickle with unease. He had loved being stared at, once upon a time, but now, every time someone did, he wanted to turn away and pull his collar up higher over his throat, even if the press of fabric did make him feel like he was choking. He held his ground, now, as Amelia came down the stairs until she stood on the one just above him, which put them on eye level.
The breeze dragged a lock of hair across her face and she tucked it back, her expression softer than anything she’d ever directed at him. He found he hated it.
“Are you sure you’re well?” she asked. “And that’s not just courtesy. I’m asking: are you all right?”
“I already told you yes.”
“Connor said–”
Reggie felt as if he’d been shoved. He staggered back a step, and pressed his lips tight, biting at the insides of his cheeks to keep from releasing the sound that built in his ruined throat.
