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When I can get a word in edge-wise, I ask her, “How long have you been the housekeeper here?”
“I started working for His Majesty, King Archibald, in nineteen-fourteen,” she states with some pride. “No gap in employment since.”
“Pardon me if I’m committing a faux pas by asking,” I begin cautiously, then remember I’m the fucking queen and I can ask anything I want. “But why are you a housekeeper, and not a thrall?”
Nathan surprises me by answering for her. “The Greater London pack has a different relationship with thralls than Toronto does. My uncle didn’t trust them to run the royal household.”
“All of the below-stairs service work is done by thralls,” Harriet explains.
“And your uncle was King Archibald?” I clarify.
Nathan just nods tersely and changes the subject with a bored, “Harriet would you mind having coffee sent up to my parlor at eight?”
“Of course, Your Majesty,” she answers. We arrive at a set of double doors that seem naked without guards standing outside of them. I kept my eyes peeled for security thralls while we walked, but they must be very good at hiding.
“Here we are,” Harriet says, taking her huge keyring from her belt and slipping an ancient key into the lock. Nathan makes a “hmm” under his breath and she assures him, “There’s a more modern deadbolt on the other side. And, on the bedroom itself.”
“And you’re the only one with keys?” he asks.
“Me, and the head of security, of course.”
He “hmm”s again and goes into the room ahead of me. He sniffs the air, the mustiness of which I assume is unavoidable in a house this old. “Thank you, Harriet,” he tells her, scanning the parlor. “That will be all for this evening.”
“Yes, Your Majesties.” She doesn’t turn her back on us to get to the doors, but I note that Nathan doesn’t turn his back, either.
That sends a chill up my spine. So does the way he moves to the windows, checking each one.
“I can’t help but notice that you’re a little jumpy,” I say quietly, not sure how far away Harriet is and if she’ll be able to hear us. That’s one of the good things about having thralls for servants; they have human hearing.
“I need to be,” he answers, turning away from the window and heading through one of the doors across the room. He opens it, checks behind it, then closes it again. “People have been trying to kill us lately.”
“But nobody from the Greater London pack.” I refrain from adding, “right?” on the end. It’s implied.
“That we know of,” he confirms.
I’m not going to get drawn into the paranoia. I can’t spend every moment that we’re here scared that I’m going to get killed. “This is a nice house.”
“It is,” he says from another room. There’s echo like tile is present, so I assume it’s the bathroom.
I sit on an antique chaise and look up at the molded plaster seal on the ceiling. When I unfocus my eyes, the chandelier becomes a glittering mass of rainbows. The walls are covered in pale blue satin with a painted pattern of ivory vines. If the place wasn’t so fancy, it might actually be calming.
With a groan, I push myself up. Between the plane and the car, I’ve spent way too long sitting. “So, your uncle was the king here for like, over a hundred years.”
“He was,” Nathan confirms, distracted.
“And you’ve never been here?”
“I have not.” He steps out of the bathroom and turns the light off.
“You weren’t the favorite nephew, huh?” Considering Nathan didn’t even mention that his uncle had died, I assume there isn’t a lot of love lost there.
I follow Nathan into the bedroom. It’s also blue, but in two-tone striped wallpaper. The bed is blessedly modern; I was expecting something with a canopy or a crown with long curtains. It’s just a regular bed, sleigh-style, in mahogany.
“That’s what held up my coronation, actually,” he says, finally relaxing enough to sit down in a wing chair and take off his shoes. “He didn’t want me to succeed him.”
“So, you’re the king of two packs who don’t want you?” That doesn’t sound great. “What the hell did I let you drag me into?”
He chuckles. “I’m the king of one pack that doesn’t trust me. Greater London does want me. I’m more welcome here than in Toronto.”
“But you’re worried that people will kill us here?”
He rises and comes to me, hooking his arms around my waist. “Considering what happened to you, I will always be worried that someone is trying to kill you.”
“Just me,” I say with a laugh. “You, you think you’ll be okay.”
“No, I think that you being attacked again is my greatest fear.” He runs one hand down my body, to my stomach. “I’m your mate. I’m supposed to protect you. I’m supposed to protect this child. And I wasn’t able to.”
