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Archie could understand that. Tabitha loved her cats and should have no problem taking care of Leo or anything with four legs, but Ainsley was human and a stranger.
She was royalty—even if she didn’t always mean to be.
So, Archie made their excuses. He told Tabitha he had to bring the princess home to the castle and report the attack to anyone who would hear him, but he would be back to check on her and Leo in the morning. Tabitha was so quick to agree that it was clear he had read the situation correctly, and Archie tried to focus on his next task.
Once they reached the castle, Ainsley maneuvered the pair of them around all the guarded doors and gates. Soon Archie stood in front of the king, the princess and her guard standing at his side. And Archie told them everything. He was too tired to do anything else. He still couldn’t bring himself to call Leo a “magic cat,” but he didn’t hide it either—explaining everything he had seen the cat do over the years, even the parts that made Archie sound foolish.
A foolish miller’s son who had fallen desperately in love with a princess.
The king was quiet for a moment, wearing a dressing gown that seemed as stately as a royal robe and sitting in a chair in his study that could have been a throne. “I don’t like being lied to,” he finally said.
“Yes, sire,” Archie said, but he still tried to meet the king’s eyes. He wasn’t hiding anything now, and he didn’t want to look weak or ashamed. He was tired of being ashamed of his own birth—something he could not control. And he would no longer shame himself with lies.
The king sighed, and his words became thoughtful. “And you say the plague rats left by the castle gates were mostly killed by your cat?”
“Yes, sire.” Archie had never seen Leo injured before; he always seemed healthier than most feral cats. Could he have caught the dreaded illness? Was he broken beyond repair? But if the plague hound could heal himself, Archie wanted to believe that Leo could too.
Leo was a magic cat.
“But you don’t believe me?” Archie asked. His father never believed him either.
“I don’t want to believe you—but not for the reason you might think. My son was a talented hunter. When he disappeared, when those dead rats started to appear the same week—I suppose there was a part of me that still wanted to believe he could be alive and on the hunt, even if he couldn’t or wouldn’t come home.”
Archie instantly softened. That made sense, and perhaps it should no longer surprise him that King Randolph did not respond to everything in the same way Archie’s father had. “I’m sorry, sire. I wish I could have given you another answer.”
“The whole kingdom has suffered,” the king said, standing up from his chair and moving to a window high enough to look down on some of the streets of Castletown. “I think we’ve taken the first few steps to recover from all that in the last few years, but I don’t know if I really settled on what my plans for my succession should be. Ainsley is smart, and she would make for a good queen, but I worry our neighbors would see that as another weakness to exploit. I certainly don’t want her marrying a foreign prince, but I’d like her to marry soon, someone that can carry himself like my son did.”
Archie frowned. “You want her to marry a huntsman?” Could it really be that simple?
But then again, now that he knew Ainsley, Archie couldn’t help but agree with the king’s assessment. The princess was smart. She could lead the kingdom as its queen when the time came. She really didn’t need another lord to compete with her in that way, but if Archie could carry a bow or even wave the proverbial and literal stick, using his muscles to stand at her back and enforce her will, then perhaps his suit would be more attractive and better received than he had ever imagined it would be.
Much better than a mouse, he would gladly play the loyal hound to her cat. It was the role he might have been training for his whole life, learning to defend his own eccentricities.
“Perhaps,” the king said. “I certainly can’t have her marrying a miller’s son. But you’re young and might be adaptable enough to grow into another role.”
His eyes remained distant, studying the city for another moment before he turned.
“You said that cursed hound was headed back toward Carabus. If they are the source of all the recent plague beasts, then the situation there has become far too serious to ignore. I want to put a bounty on that beast’s head, but I can’t trust their Marquis to follow any command I give them. I can’t trust Keagan. So, I will give you a chance to go there first and settle the bounty as a true and noble huntsman. If you handle yourself well enough to solve this matter for me, then I will displace Keagan, name you the new Marquis, and approve your suit of my daughter’s hand.”
* * *
Ainsley had promised Archie that she would remain quiet while he spoke to her father. She kept her word, though it seemed to be a profound struggle for her. And as soon as they were back in the grand hall, her words came out in a rush. “I want to come with you.”
To fight a cursed hound? To investigate a man everyone called an ogre?
Oh. No. That couldn’t be good.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, focusing her ire on her guard for one blessed moment. “You know it isn’t fair. Father can’t ask Archie to fight a monster like that just because he doesn’t have a title.”
Of course the king could ask Archie to fight a monster! He was the king. And it fit quite well with what the man had said about who he wished for his daughter to marry, someone with the ability to cow her enemies with a reputation of his own. A noble huntsman. A monster hunter. Something Archie would be glad to be, if given the chance.
He would do anything to honorably claim the hand of the girl beside him.
But how could he ever convince that same girl to stay behind? Would she ever listen?
He had to try. “Ainsley, I know you want to come, and after this, I hope we will have all our adventures together, but if I can’t meet your father’s conditions without also putting you in danger, I won’t feel I earned the right to stand beside you. You were the one to help me with the bow. Can that be enough?”
Ainsley shook her head, and he could see the pain in her expression. She looked back and forth between him and Sir Callum before her eyes finally rested on a portrait behind him. It was a portrait of her family—the king, the late queen, herself, and someone else with hazel eyes that looked far too familiar. “It feels too much like the day Leo left. What if you never come back?”
