And he bit back what he’d been about to say—which was that Melody was perfect to him as she was. Maddening, yes. Shockingly uninterested in his notable good works on her behalf and not at all what he’d expected. But there was not one thing wrong with her.
Not a single, solitary deficiency.
He tasted copper and made himself smile instead. “I think she’s doing beautifully.”
“I am pleased to hear it. Calista will also be pleased.”
“I live to serve.”
As this was, in fact, true, Griffin could see no reason why it all seemed liked a collar around his neck just then. He told himself it was the constraints of duty, that was all. He would happily kill for his brother. But that was a different thing entirely than day in, day out, dutiful appearances.
Or marriages.
“I will see you later tonight,” he said stiffly to Orion, unwinding himself from his chair and standing as if he meant to leave.
The stranger who now inhabited his brother’s body, relaxed and at his ease, only lifted a brow. “You cannot be serious. Why on earth would you attend the New Year’s ball?”
Griffin stopped on his way to the door, surprised. “Do I not always attend the New Year’s ball?”
“Because you could have nothing better to do than dance attendance on your family when you were single. You are no longer single.” His smile shifted and his gaze sharpened. “Perhaps you and your new wife can continue to...not have your honeymoon.”
And Griffin did not precisely bare his teeth at his brother, his liege and King. But he wouldn’t call it a smile, either.
He took his time heading back across the wet, cold courtyard to his house, where his staff was no doubt fluttering about, forever in the process of attempting to corral him into attending some or other dull function he wished to avoid.
The thought of it, in fact, made him move a little quicker, because he couldn’t think of anything he would like better just then. A bit of corralling. Duties he was forced against his will to perform—it all sounded like bliss because it wasn’t mooning about over his wife like a lovesick calf.
God help him, he’d become the very thing he hated. Soft and sentimental.
Too much like his mother.
When Griffin knew better than to allow such weakness in him. The former Queen had been no match for horrid King Max. He had been neither faithful to her nor particularly solicitous where she was concerned, and she had wilted in such conditions. Griffin’s earliest memories were of her tears.
And then of the sad, lonely way she’d escaped her fate—taking her own life.
Whatever Griffin had become, he had chosen it. He had embraced it. Unlike his mother, so incapable of rising to the challenge of her tumultuous marriage, Griffin had met his role and made it his own. He was not and never had been a victim of circumstance.
Until now.
He had been so sure he knew what he was getting into. He had met Calista’s sister once before, and she’d seemed so small and slight to him. She had cowered in her chair, half-feral with her hair like a curtain, and he’d thought—very distinctly—that she needed someone to take care of her.
Not himself, mind.
But when his brother had suggested—in that way of his that was not, in fact, a suggestion—that Griffin make good on his promise, and quickly, and with Melody, he had warmed to the idea.
He could prove, at last, that he could care for something so tender, so delicate. That he was better than the role he’d played all these years. That he was as in control of leaving his disreputable past behind as he’d been in creating his reputation in the first place.
What he hadn’t counted on was Melody.
The rain had soaked him through on his walk back across the courtyard. He took his time changing, then made his way to his offices. But when he arrived, it was to discover that his staff had dispersed into the wet afternoon.
“You always dismiss the staff on New Year’s Eve,” his personal aide said, sounding baffled. And looking at him as if he’d come in with a selection of extra heads.
“Things have changed,” Griffin said, attempting to sound dignified.
Or he had, which was far more disconcerting.
His aide gazed back at him. “Would you like me to call them all back, Your Royal Highness?”
This time, there was no doubt about it. Griffin was not smiling. He was grimacing and trying to put a spin on it. “Of course not. You might as well take off yourself.”
And then, for the first time in as long as he could remember, Griffin found himself...at loose ends.
It was humbling, really, to consider what a huge amount of time and energy it had taken to conduct his life and affairs as he had before. Or so he was forced to assume, since the lack of his usually overstuffed and heaving social life seem to echo in him like an abyss this afternoon.
Then again, perhaps he was brooding again. Because all the parties he’d used to attend were still occurring, in their usual forms. He had made stern announcements that he was to be left alone after his marriage, that was all, and he was a royal prince. His announcements held some weight for those who wished to curry his favor,
That didn’t mean he couldn’t dip into his old life as he pleased. If he pleased.
But even as he thought that, Griffin realized it wasn’t what he wanted. The parties. The people. The endless jostling for his attention that, if it suited him, he pretended to believe was genuine feeling. He stood in his ancient house, the rain beating against the windows and gray straight through, and tried to imagine immersing himself in that world again. The world he’d considered his before Christmas.
Now it seemed like someone else’s memory, fading
