“Jerin!” Ren dashed out into the cold pounding rain and caught his arm. “What are you doing out here?”
“If he was alive, I would hunt him down and cut out his heart!” Jerin trembled with the desire to do violence. Never before had he wanted to hold on to someone- preferably by the throat-and squeeze the very life out of him. Nothing would be slow and painful enough to ease the pain inside himself. “Why did he do this? He had everything!”
“Jerin, we’re clean!” Ren shouted over the roll of thunder. “If Keifer had anything, he didn’t pass it to me or the others!”
He blinked the cold rain and the hot tears out his eyes. “Clean?”
Ren smiled at him, oblivious to the rain. “There’s not a single trace of anything! Keifer’s noble lovers must have been clean. Nobles don’t visit cribs!”
It sounded so sane and reasonable. Of course, nobles were never pushed to desperation-they had money to buy the pretty son of a poor farmer if they had to bend that low. Surely if the women slept with Keifer, it was part and parcel of using him to commit treason. Had sex and the lure of doing something forbidden been simply an easy leash to control Keifer with?
The darkest and bleakest of Jerin’s emotions drained away, leaving him feeling bruised.
“Come on.” Ren tugged him back toward the suite. “Come out of the rain, and take off those wet things before you catch a cold.”
Numbly he followed. She pulled his nightshirt up over his head. She was soaked to the skin and shivering herself.
“You need to get dry too.” He reached for the buttons of her shirt.
Ren toweled his hair as he undid her clothes, dropping them into damp piles at their feet. All at once, it seemed, they were naked, pressed close together, kissing. All the fear and anger and hurt twisted into a desperate, consuming need to be together.
Two steps, and they were on the bed. Ren reached between them, took hold of him, and guided him into her. One smooth warm stroke, and they were joined as one.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” Jerin murmured much later. “Not yet.”
“We’re wife and husband minus a large circus act called a royal wedding. It’s only a show for the common folk. The betrothal contracts are the true binding word, and those are all signed and legal.”
“We’re married,” he whispered, barely believing it. A few weeks ago he was a simple landed gentry’s son, without a title, in an obscure part of the realm. “I’m Prince Consort.”
“Yes, my love, you are.”
“You love me?”
“With all my heart.”
“I wanted to tell you, before you left the Whistler home, that I loved you, but there didn’t seem to be a way. I never dreamed you would want me for a husband.”
“A hundred years ago, and I would have carried you off that first night, Odelia and your sisters be damned.”
She brought a basin and a towel to the nightstand. Dampening the towel, she washed him clean, the warm nubby fabric rubbing gently against him.
“That’s nice,” he said sleepily.
“Go to sleep,” she murmured, drying him. “You’ll need the rest.”
He fell sound asleep, wondering what she meant by her remark, and woke to find Odelia joining him in the bed. Under the loose wrap, Odelia wore nothing. She was fuller in the chest than Ren, broader of hip, and wanted to try positions she had read about. Like Ren, she washed him before tucking him in.
“I wore you out,” she laughed as he yawned.
“I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“They should make it a tradition. No one ever waits for the wedding night.”
“Someone must.”
Trini woke him with a tray of food and a session that was mostly eating, talking, and tentative cuddling.
He thought that they wouldn’t consummate their marriage until later, but then Trini, in sudden silent resolve, held him down and mounted him from the top. Afterward, she lay on top of him, listening to his heartbeat until they both fell asleep.
Lylia woke them, impatiently scooted her older sister out, and allowed him to clean himself for her. She was nervous, awkward, curious, and eager. He felt like a mountain range, being explored, climbed, and conquered. Yet when she fell asleep tangled in his arms and sheets, he watched her breath, her so-kissable lips parted slightly, and felt deep, moving love for her. He loved them all. Ren’s strength.
Odelia’s whimsy. Trini’s passion despite her shyness. Lylia’s determined struggle for justice.
He kissed Lylia’s lips, and cuddled her close, and fell asleep happy.
Chapter 13
Jerin’s father liked to say, “Over. Done. Gone.” It settled many fights between his siblings, with no lasting hard feelings. They all struggled to meet their father’s high expectations. With maturity Jerin realized that you needed that release from anger, to put it behind you. in order to work ahead. As children, his parents forced them to put the hurt aside. As an adult, he had to find the power to decide he had raged long enough, that his anger had served its purpose, and move on.
The news that Keifer’s infidelity had left no lasting harm helped. And the serial prenuptial sex worked wonders. So the next morning, at a cheerful breakfast with his wives on the balcony, he decided it was time.
The novelty of the husband quarters was wearing off, and he noticed now how shabby they were. The carpets were threadbare. The divans were battered from the princesses’ roughhousing on them. Sun rot and moths tattered the drapes. The ceiling needed paint where damage from roof leaks had been repaired. Some of the ivory had been picked off the keys on the grand piano. Even the wallpaper was worse for wear, grubby from tiny hands as high as a child might reach, and peeling at the very top at every point the water damage had reached. What surprised him most was that Keifer hadn’t made any changes.
Odelia shrugged it aside when he mentioned it. “He was lazy.”
“He liked to make himself pretty,” Trini said. “He didn’t care about how the room looked.”
Lylia pointed out, “Father didn’t want the fuss of redecorating, and Keifer died only a few months after Father.”
“Keifer came up with some plans before he died,” Ren said. “It would have bankrupted the country. He wanted to gold leaf the ceiling.” She took a bite from her toast, thinking for a moment before continuing.
“And to tear out the floor and put new marble in- and mirrors over the beds. He and Eldest would have screaming fights over it, and he’d lock her out of the quarters.”
“So he could be with his lovers” echoed between them without being said.
“If you make a list of what needs to be done,” Ren said, “and give it to Barnes, she’ll line up the workers.”
“It would be expensive,” Jerin said.
“Don’t plan on gilding the ceiling, leave the floors be, and I’m sure it will be a reasonable amount. It needs to be done, love.”
Jerin gazed through the windows to the massive set of rooms. “Are we going to do all the work ourselves?”
“Good gods, no!” Ren laughed. “The workers will be closely supervised, though, and you’ll have to stay someplace else. It would take forever if we tried to do it on top of our other work.”
“I can paint-” he started to offer, but Ren put fingers over his lips.
“I don’t want you up on the tall ladders it would take to paint the ceiling or hang the wallpaper. Besides, with a crew of ten or twenty women, the work would be done shortly. Think like a commander, love, not a private.”
He kissed her fingers. “I’ll try.”
Barnes knocked on the door an hour later. He looked out the spy hole, saw her and the guards that bracketed
