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“I’ll have some red, if you have it.”
He, of course, has red, white, and anything in between. The Valmont cellar is very well stocked. He returns far too soon with a delicate crystal glass and a bottle of smooth, spicy, deep red wine I should savor.
Today’s not a day for savoring. My sister is still god knows where doing god knows what with a guy who’s not her fiancé, and I’m stuck with a man whose sole presence suffices to steal my sanity, my self-esteem, my will.
I want to go home.
A tear falls down my cheek unbidden, and I don’t move to wipe it, refusing to acknowledge it.
I’m suddenly distracted by the most beautiful and unexpected sound; deep, dark, sensual. I glance toward it, and find Hawk seated with his back to us, at a grand piano. He plays a song I’ve never heard, though it’s somehow familiar, like a classic I might have forgotten.
“He’s amazing,” I find myself saying.
“That’s literally his job,” Caden grumbles, as though that invalidates the fact that his playing is transcendent.
I didn’t know Hawk was a musician. Really, I don’t know a thing about any of them.
“Ah!” Declan Huxley exclaims enthusiastically. “At last.”
I lift my head, expecting Bella, but it’s a couple of servants wearing the Valmont livery, all in green and black. Their colors are strikingly similar to the royal garments—the main difference is the accents are silver rather than gold, not so subtly reminding the world that this is one of the most powerful families in the kingdom.
They're pushing a trolley with nine covered plates. When they start to set them around the table, I notice four places are vacant, rather than three.
One for Bels, Sebastian, Hawk. Who am I missing?
“Someone should call Francesco,” Hux says, eagerly removing the cloche over his plate.
“By someone, you clearly don’t mean you,” Less snorts, getting to his feet.
Hux shrugs unapologetically. “He’s not my knight.”
Ah, that makes sense. I forgot, but of course Less never goes anywhere without a guard. They keep their distance, making their presence as unobtrusive as possible, but they’re always somewhere.
“Don’t the rest of you have knights in the wings?”
Caden smirks. “Oh, I don’t need one.”
That makes little sense: he’s higher on the peerage, and exactly the type of person a terrorist would target if given a chance.
“That show-off passed the knights’ training just to prove he could protect himself. And when he’s around, Sebastian’s also off the hook,” Basil says. “I’m too far down the hierarchy for it to be required now that I’m older. And Hawk…”
“Has been disowned,” the man himself announces cheerfully from the piano.
His tune morphs into a loud and cheerful march, before he ends it on a high note.
“Really?” I say, fascinated.
What could he have done for the Abercrombies to have disowned their only son? I know he has a big sister, but as a general rule, highborn families tend to be sexist as fuck.
“I wouldn’t marry the idiot they picked for me,” he explains, returning to the table.
Instead of sitting on the other side, where he was when I arrived, he takes Sebastian’s seat to my left, and lifts the cover of the delicate starters.
Steam flies to my nostrils. It looks and smells divine, though I’d be hard-pressed to say what’s in there.
“Aren’t we waiting for the others?”
“It’s not a formal dinner, darlin’,” he says, digging in.
