Griffin was glad she couldn’t see the bitter twist to his lips. “Unto my soul.”
Melody inclined her head. “That sounds unpleasant. You must know that there are solutions to that problem.”
“Are there indeed?” He could think of several things that would feel like solutions. To him, anyway. “And what would you know of stains—or society, for that matter?”
“Only that it is the women who bear the brunt of both,” she corrected him softly. “Men are allowed to be stained, aren’t they? It gives them a certain appeal. Women, by contrast, must make certain they are spotless and beyond reproach. Or appear so.”
She sounded as if she was parroting a hymnal. “We are not so medieval in Idylla these days, Melody.”
“Perhaps you are not, Your Royal Highness,” she retorted. And once again, he was sure there was more to her than manners and innocence. It was that flash of something like temper. It was the hint of more—but no. He merely wanted her, that was all. He needed to get used to that novelty. “You can act as you please. And do. Had I been in any doubt on that score, a number of your admirers came here today for the express purpose of letting me know exactly how many stains your soul bears. But naturally I cannot behave in a similar manner.”
“Because you are a married woman, Melody.” He told himself that wasn’t temper that worked its way over him. Through him. Griffin did not lose his temper—ever, and certainly not around women. “My wife, in case you forgot.”
“I didn’t forget.” Her expression was polite. Mild, even. And if he wasn’t mistaken, faintly amused. He had no idea what to do with that. Or with her. “I was only making a point.”
She turned her head away from him then, and he had the odd sensation that he was watching her...change. Especially when she seemed to cower where she sat.
“I only hoped to...not embarrass you,” she said in a wispy voice. “I’m sorry if I failed. My father could have told you that was inevitable.”
Griffin told himself he should feel nothing but the urge to protect her. From the world. From her odious father. From himself.
But instead, what he wanted most was to touch her. To feel her beneath his hands. To see the truth of her the way she’d seen him—because he couldn’t quite believe what he saw before him. He couldn’t make sense of it. Of her.
If she was as frail and beset as she looked just now, how could she possibly have fended off the fangs of so many society women?
You only wish she was secretly strong and capable, a voice in him chided. So you could stop pretending to be good.
He cleared his throat. “I regret that you were put through that. I apologize if you found it an ordeal.”
“You have a past. I understand that.” She turned her face back toward him. “Should we pretend that you do not?”
He had been about to say something similar. And found he didn’t like it much when it came out of her mouth.
“I would prefer that you not be confronted with anything you find unpleasant,” he managed to say.
“Goodness. I didn’t realize that was on offer.” Again, she smiled, and he began to understand how she’d held her own today. “I rather thought that this was a life we were going to have to lead, together. For who among us lives a life devoid of unpleasantness? Even in a palace?”
She should have been soft. Yielding. In tears.
That she was not seemed to lick its way beneath his skin. It...bothered him.
“I cannot tell if this is all a mask for your rage or if you truly are as unbothered as you seem,” he said instead of addressing all those half-notions he was sure would sound like so much wishful thinking if he said them out loud.
His wife—his Princess, chosen for her fragility—smiled. And did not look in any way fragile. “I’m an open book.”
“Perhaps. But not in any language I speak.”
Her head tilted to one side. “Do you speak many languages, then?”
Was he relieved that she was changing the subject? Shouldn’t he have been?
“I speak a great number of languages.” Griffin shrugged that off even as he said it, because it was second nature to live down to any and all expectations. “I spend half my time conversing with dignitaries from various countries. It’s easy to pick up a few things.”
“And here I thought that conversing was not exactly your most notable people skill.”
He thought he ought to apologize. But he’d already done that.
Her smile changed yet again. He found he was becoming obsessed with it. Soft and innocent when everything in him was wicked.
Or, like now, as if he entertained her.
“I don’t begrudge you your past,” Melody said. “Surely we can indulge each other in that.”
“Do you have a great many lovers in your past, then?” he asked before he thought better of it.
Because the truth was, he was surprised to discover, that he did not feel indulgent on that topic.
At all.
Her smile seemed edgier, though he could have sworn nothing about it had changed. “It would be a sad life indeed without a few great loves scattered about.”
Griffin opened his mouth to reply to that, but then stopped. He reminded himself that he was meant to be charming, for god’s sake. “A great love could be a book. I think, somehow, that you would be less...whatever you are had you been faced with my library today.”
“Is your library digitized? Because if not, I’m afraid, Your Royal Highness, that it’s only a room to me.”
“It is not digitized, no.” Griffin was ashamed to realize he hadn’t even thought about that. He pulled out his mobile and fired off a message to his chief aide. “But it will be.”
“Wonderful,” Melody said.
When he looked up from his mobile, she was lifting the teapot and pouring out tea for both of them, then replacing it, all with an ease of
