The Black Prince: Part II Read Free Page A

jibe was quick, cutting.
    They separated.
    The couples split, pairing and repairing, as they made their way around the square. Isla accepted the next man’s hand, favoring him with her most dazzling smile. He, in turn, blushed a dazzling shade of red. To be so favored by the duchess was a thing indeed. Isla didn’t even know who he was. Someone from the merchant council, she thought. He was on the younger side of middle age, with a slight paunch. They exchanged no words.
    And then she was on to a new partner. She and Tristan were now facing each other from across the square. He was a consummate dancer, bringing refinement and elegance to even the smallest movements. As though each were the product of his own mind, spontaneous rather than choreographed.
    He danced with one woman after another, pleasing them all, showing none particular favor. She sensed nothing through the bond. Indeed he was completely closed off to her, as though the bond didn’t exist. Had she truly angered him that much?
    She didn’t want to hear that he owned her; she wanted to hear that she owned him. That he needed her. That she mattered. As more than simply an object, like a horse or a bow. What was she to him? Truly? She needed to know. But, as she moved through her paces and he through his, she knew nothing. Only that he was nodding slightly, and exchanging what appeared to be pleasantries with some other councilman’s wife. Isla couldn’t hear their words from so far off and over all the noise—the music, the chattering of plates, and of course the laughter—but only make guesses from their body language. Why not that woman, instead of her?
    What, to Tristan, was truly the difference?
    They came together again. His eyes, as he studied her, were hard. She didn’t think of it often, how much taller than she he was. How, even as a man, he would have been able to crush her without a second thought. He’d spent his life training with both longbow and broadsword, as was evident from the barest glance. A child under this tutelage developed differently, his growing body responding to the strains placed upon it. No man, picking up weapons in adulthood, could hope to gain such strength. Or even a fraction of it.
    Tristan had been almost…created for war.
    She shivered.
    “My touch repulses you?”
    “What makes me different?”
    They reversed direction.
    “If you must ask yourself that,” he replied coolly, “then I have failed.”
    The dance ended.
    They returned to their seats.
    Tristan helped Isla to sit. He called for more wine for their shared cup. More food was also presented. He cut it for her. Roast boar and a dozen little pastries, making use of the cellar’s last root vegetables. Early spring was always the leanest time, with winter stores depleted and the ground still cold. But a feast was in the laughter, Hart had told her once, not the eating. And this was still more food than she’d ever seen at home in Enzie.
    Tristan was still studying her, his expression still inscrutable.
    “You should eat.” The words, when they came, were surprisingly soft.
    She nodded. She should. “As should you.”
    “I plan to.”
    Leek pasties had appeared on her plate. One of her favorites. She took a bite.
    Asher had moved to the far end of the table where he sat, engrossed, between his tutor and his father’s personal physician. Who were taking turns regaling him with truly disgusting tidbits of life in the army. Slogging through trenches half filled with mud and shit, toes rotting off, men’s cocks rotting off from the exotic diseases brought in by camp followers. Rats, frogs, and lice.
    Asher positively glowed with happiness.
    “And then,” Quentin continued, “let me tell you about the itching.”
    Isla wondered where Apple was. Probably, she supposed, in her rooms; she’d rarely left them since the earl’s passing. Which Isla didn’t understand. Her stepmother had hardly been a devoted wife, during the course of her marriage. She