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There he stood, literally shivering in his boots. Dripping dirty water onto the thick, plush carpet of the Rathbourne’s private sitting room.
He wished he could feel the soft fibers underneath his bare feet. He’d never walked on carpet before. And, he wanted to remove the sodden boots that squished and snorted with every step he took. Like a goblin passing gas.
He tried his best to exude princeliness despite the involuntary chattering of his teeth. Hopefully, the permanent clench he had on his jaw kept it from being audible.
“…how awful,” Lady Rathourne was saying in response to the smooth lies that Brigid effortlessly wove. As if she’d been born a charlatan.
Only the hands that she wrung behind her back showed her distress at having to lie to her loved ones.
She hated lies, he knew. How must telling them herself make her feel?
And yet here she was, telling them forhim.
To convince the Rathbournes to give a complete stranger undeserved hospitality. Especially when he was the one who put her in harm’s way. He was the one who tried to trade her well-being for his own.
He glared at Lord Rathbourne and hoped that the man would come to his senses, grab his hunting rifle from a cabinet, take Sai out to the backyard and finish the job the demons started.
But there was no such luck from that quarter. The elderly gentleman puffed on his pipe and twitched his full gray mustache with what appeared to be approval, if the fond crinkles around his eyes were any indication.
“…those gallivanting youngbloods just tore across the path on their horses and shoved you all in the river?” Lady Rathbourne exclaimed with a hand raised in righteous indignation to her bosom.
“Well, I never!”
The elder daughter nodded fervently.
“If they were any sort of gentlemen, they would have at least stopped to help you out. Make sure you’re unharmed.”
“That they could make such an offense against aprinceon top of it all!” the younger girl added, the pearl strands in her decorative comb trembling with indignation.
“’Tis too much to be borne!”
“And what did you say about those weasly footmen?” Lady Rathbourne harrumphed.
“The nerve of them to rob you blind! They aren’t fit to lick your shoes!”
Brigid had concocted one reason after another why they showed up the way they did, bedraggled and stinking, as if they’d crawled out of the sewers. Then, she explained away his lack of servants, and invented excuses why he didn’t feel safe going back to his bachelor lodgings. After that, she had to explain further why he didn’t simply stay at the palace with Queen Victoria herself.
Because he was traveling incognito, she said sweetly. He didn’t want the fanfare and attention. He wanted simply to be a man without the trappings of his lofty station. (Except, of course, to astound the wholetonat Lady Watham’s ball).
The last was true enough. Sai did simply want to be a man.
More to the point, man or dragon, when he was with Brigid, he longed to behimself. Without lies. Without ulterior motives. Without pretense.
“Please, my dear Prince,” Lady Rathbourne said, gesturing to a well-made settee with silk-clad cushions.
“Do have a seat.”
They were all standing around him, looking expectantly. If he didn’t sit, he understood, none of them would.
But he was foul and wet. In more ways than one. He didn’t want to dirty their fine furniture. He shouldn’t be welcomed into their home in the first place.
“No,” he said succinctly, then clamped his jaw tight again, for uncontrollable shivers still wracked his body.
“Aunt Camilla,” Brigid interceded when the Rathbournes physically leaned back, as if reeling from Sai’s bluntness.
He knew he should be more gracious. He knew how to emulate the manners he observed. But he was too exhausted and in too much pain to make the effort. More than that, he wished they’d just shove him out the door and be done with it.
Except, he wouldn’t go back to the Master for having failed his mission. No. He would go back in pieces or in scattered stardust if he went at all.
