Return of the Guardian-King by Karen Hancock Read Free Book Online Page B

be lunching with Darnley and Hamilton later?”
    “I thought to, yes. I also have to drop by the auction house and see if I can pick up the money they still owe me. And then there’s the problem of those lost bales.”
    She smiled at him. “And you wonder if there’s something more you could have done to save them. Something more you could do now to make up for it.”
    His eyes twinkled as he looked up at her. “You know me well, my wife. . . .”
    My wife . . . Did he have any idea how those words made her heart melt? She shook her head and smiled again. “You are not so different from my brother.”
    Which was, she saw at once, the wrong thing to say. The grief rolled across his face like a cloud. Stark and raw. He looked down at the cup in his hand, shielding his face from her as he wrestled his emotions back under control.
    She kicked herself for her stupidity and tried to think of something else to say as the silence stretched out between them.
    Then, “I miss him,” he said. “Sometimes more than others, but today . . .” His voice choked as he blinked several times and turned his face to the window. She saw his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. “Even after all this time it’s hard to believe he’s really gone.”
    Her own throat tightened.
    “And the boys,” he went on. “I had so hoped Channon would come through for us. . . . Now I fear he’s been taken, too. Or perhaps there was simply nothing to be found. That more likely, I suppose. We both know what they did to—” His voice cut off then, and he swallowed hard and exhaled a short, hard breath and stood there, thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of his nose as the nightmarish images of baby Ian being hurled against the cliff wall flashed through Carissa’s mind. A moment of silence ensued; then he puffed out another short breath and turned back to her.
    “I don’t suppose you’ve heard how Maddie’s meeting with Ronesca went?” he asked.
    Carissa shook her head. “It would only just be ending now, I’d think.” She sipped her cocoa. “I can’t imagine it went well.”
    “No.”
    Rumors had run wild through the court of late, both of Maddie’s unexpected pregnancy and of Ronesca’s outrage that her sister-in-law could be six months along and the crown princess not know of it till now. Other uglier rumors speculated on who the father was, and none cited Abramm as a likely candidate. “She never should have tried to hide it,” Carissa said. “If she’d announced it immediately, she’d have nipped all the jailer nonsense in the bud.”
    “Maybe,” Trap said. “Or maybe not. I think the Chesedhan court would rather it be a jailer’s bastard, actually. I know Ronesca would—easier to get out of the way so they can get Maddie married off to the highest bidder.”
    Carissa frowned at him, uncomfortably aware that what he said was likely true. “You’re aware she’s planning to retire early again this evening?” Carissa asked.
    “Aye.” He paused and she felt a sudden deepening of the tension. Then, in a voice tight and forced, he said, “I was wondering if you might like to take advantage of your night of freedom and have supper with me at that inn on the river I was telling you about.”
    She looked up sharply, frowning at him. The only inn he’d ever told her about was the one where Maddie had secretly taken employment as a serving girl in a wool-brained scheme to gather information on the war. Both Carissa and Trap had sought to talk her out of it, but there’d been no stopping her. It was by Eidon’s grace alone Ronesca had not learned of that yet.
    In any case, since Maddie refused to take an escort when she went to “work,” Trap had taken it upon himself to follow her, just in case.
    “It would do you good to get away from the palace,” Trap said, his words coming rushed, as if he had to force himself to get them out. “A change of scene, a change of cooking style . . . no servants sneaking about