Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

Lady Corliss Knows All

Loren

“She has great tits, an exceptional ass, and I curry your wrath at not only sharing that, but also that I’ve dreamed of it frequently since I first saw it. I have been moved repeatedly to write sonnets to the glory of her hair, but fortunately for the world of verse, I’ve not had the time to start one. The instant she sees you she races into your arms and sticks her tongue down your throat. She is sheer perfection. And she’s yours now, but in less than two months’ time, she will officially be that until the day one or the other of you croak. So allow me to express the depth of my confusion that you’re sitting here, looking like you wish to murder somebody.”

Loren tossed back the whisky he was rounding in his glass and did not speak after Marlow stopped.

Lamentably, this meant Marlow started again.

“And my further confusion as to why the fuck you’re not with her with your hand up her skirts.”

He shifted only his eyes to his friend.

“I’ll thank you to stop speaking about my future wife in that manner.”

“And I’ll thank you to stop acting like a brooding arsehole and tell me what’s the matter with you,” Marlow fired back. “You’ve been in Newton for five days. Racing to her townhome the moment you arrived in the city like Minerva herself was resurrected and chasing your heels. You spent what I hope was a pleasurable half an hour with her in a study. We lunched with her, her fetching mother, and her charming sister after that. Then you begged off an intimate dinner with her that evening to join Huxtable and Soucott in challenging some dishonorable gamesman whose magnets were making the dice jump in his favor, and the notes to jump out of Huxtable’s wallet.”

Loren scowled at his empty glass.

Marlow kept bleating.

“The next day, you had a picnic in the park, again in the company of her mother and sister, when the engagement has been officially announced. It’s reached every paper, likely in three countries. The king is coming to the wedding, for fuck’s sake. You are free to court her at liberty. You no longer need a chaperone. In fact, you can carry her to your townhome, take her to your bed, and not surface until your wedding, which, frankly, if I was in your shoes, is what I would be doing. But since that, I’m sure, highly enjoyable picnic, you’ve turned down her every invitation and haven’t seen her once. However, you have time to sit in this magical establishment with me when I know you. You’ve no intent to take a whore. Though you might very well wish word to reach your betrothed’s ears that you’re sitting here, so she’ll have reason to beg off of you.”

A woman in knickers, a bust-less corset, which meant her breasts were exposed, garters, stockings and heeled mules strolled by, her eyebrows lifting.

In return, Loren tipped his head to his empty glass.

She nodded and looked to Marlow.

He shook his head.

She moved to the bar.

“I’ve sent gifts,” Loren murmured.

“To the second wealthiest woman in the kingdom, behind Cora, the Gracious, our fucking queen?” Marlow scoffed.

Loren turned his attention again to his friend.

“Please do me the favor of fucking off.”

“I was on the cliffs’ edge, ready to jump, and you pulled me back.”

Loren clenched his teeth and again regarded his whisky glass.

“Do you think I’m not going to return the favor when it’s clear you’re going about the business of fucking up your life?” Marlow pushed.

“She’s too good for me.”

“You are currently eighth in line to the bloody throne.”

The woman came and set the whisky in front of him.

He didn’t even glance at her when he handed her his empty glass.

“That doesn’t matter to Satrine,” he said, then raised the liquor to his lips and threw back a healthy dose.

“No. But you do.”

Loren said nothing.

“We were in the bloody forest for two and a half bloody years without leave. We’d lost five men, half our number, and our scout, who was just a boy. No one knew of our activities, and if we were discovered, we’d vowed never to divulge. We were assassins being assassinated, one by one. I thought I’d never make it home on so many occasions, it almost became a mantra. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t think the same. Not once did I consider I’d walk into a home and have a woman race into my arms. Or better, stand and watch that same thing happen to you.”

Loren threw back more whisky.

“We had to keep going. If we didn’t find them all, Tor could send no more after us. If Queen Aurora knew he’d sent a kill squad, relations with our greatest ally would have gone to shite. And regardless of the fact that Frey would likely have backed Tor’s play, he wasn’t their ruler. And they’ve got dragons. Tor made the tough choice. We had to succeed. Our people, and theirs, depended on it. We succeeded, Lore, and we came home. Be home. And be happy.”

“I do believe, my brother, that you were at my side challenging that gamesman with his dancing dice,” he noted.

“I don’t have a beautiful woman selecting her wedding garland either.”

He again turned to his friend.

“What happens when the darkness comes?”

Marlow’s eyebrows shot up. “It’s my understanding she was torn from her family for six years of her life, then lived doing without a single luxury, not to mention several necessities, for the next twenty. Is this a woman who cannot absorb the dark?”

“I cannot be an ambassador or sit amongst a council with members who have never in their lives picked up blade or bow in loyalty to this realm.”

“Then tell Tor it’s not for you. He won’t mind.”

“He needs me.”

“Tor could rule the entire Northlands on his stubborn arrogance alone. Fortunately for we underlings, he has Cora to even him out.” Marlow shifted closer and his voice lowered. “Tor doesn’t need you, brother. He knows what you did. He knows what you gave. He wouldn’t blink to release you from duty and continue to give you his love and esteem for who you are and what you’ve done.”

Loren started twirling his whisky in his glass again.

Until Marlow suggested, “Take up the mantle your father dropped.”

“Quiet,” Loren whispered his warning.

“Tor wishes to continue those operations from Ludlum’s reign, it was his idea to begin with. And I’m certain he’d be happy to recruit you. It’s likely he hasn’t suggested it because he knows he’s already asked too much of you.”

Loren narrowed his eyes on his brother. “I said, quiet.”

“You’re already doing it, for the gods’ sakes. You’d have a lot less hassle from the local constabularies if the king was at your back.”

“Can you—?”

He felt it.

Stopped speaking.

Turned his head.

And saw them approaching.

“Delightful. And I thought tonight would be boring,” Marlow drawled.

Loren’s fingers closed securely around the glass.

They kept coming.

And in the mood he was in, he was more than ready for it.

* * * *

Satrine

I took a healthy sip of wine, and said to Mom, “So this is where we’re at.”

I set the wineglass down on the dining room table very close to the bowl of tuna Mr. Popplewell was hunkered over, snarfing down, and lifted my hands to grab fingers as I counted it down.

“No doubt, being no call, no show for over a month, my job is toast.”

Mom lifted her glass and said, “Mine too.”

“All my friends, your friends, our family, Keith, Aunt Mary, various acquaintances, perhaps the news media, definitely the police, have been alerted to our disappearances. They’ve freaked, spent countless resources trying to figure out what became of us, are terrified of what might have befallen us, and if we should get back, healthy and happy, we can’t just say, ‘Had a wild and wacky vacation in a parallel universe. Oh my God! You should try it some time.’ In fact, we have no excuse as to why we disappeared at all.”

“Word, my girl,” Mom agreed and sucked back a sip.

“Dad has likely cashed in those emeralds, used all that money on wine, women and poker, and is probably trying to figure out how to get us back so he can attempt to fleece us or sell us again.”

“Asshole,” Mom muttered, reaching to the bottle to pour us both more wine.

“Witches here have pretty much gone underground, so we can’t find one. But even if we could, we couldn’t tell her, or him…no gender discrimination here, folks, what we need them to do.”

“Yup,” Mom concurred.

“I’m engaged to be married to the most gorgeous man ever created, in two universes, though I barely know him. And now, for some reason, he’s avoiding me.”

“Gotta admit,” Mom slurred. “Thas weird.”

“We’re gonna meet the king and queen. I’m going to have dinner with them, with my fiancé, who, it’s worth a repeat, I barely know, and can’t know him better if I never see his fucking gorgeous fucking annoying face. And they’re coming to my wedding to said gorgeous, barely-known, insanely annoying man.”

“I’m kinna excited about that, baby,” Mom said.

I looked her in the eyes. “We’re not going home, are we?”

She looked into mine, and she was drunk, but not drunk enough not to really mean what she said next.

“Your sister can’t make the trip. She’d lose it in our world. And we can’t leave her.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

Mr. Popplewell got done snarfing, did some rolly-poly thing which meant he kicked his bowl down the table, before he landed on his side, his fat belly globbing out on the shining wood in front of him.

Mom watched this indulgently.

“Mmmrrrrm, thank you, Mmmmmmuuuummy,” Mr. Popplewell purred, then started licking his paw.

Mom turned back to me.

“You know me. I think things happens for a reason, honey. And it wasn’t fun, and I hate the idea of what’s happening at home, people we care about not knowing where we went, never knowing. I hate that. And I hate your father exponentially more than I already did because he’s the cause of it. But I think we were meant to be here. I think we were meant to be here for Maxie, who until we got here, had no one. And I think you were meant to be here for Loren.”

I blew breath between my lips and said, “Hardly.”

She shook her head, took a sip, and with her other hand, reached out to scratch Mr. Popplewell behind his ears, making his loud purring go even louder.

She then replied, “I don’t know. There’s something about that guy.”

“How can you tell? You never see him.”

She focused soberly on me again and said, “I can tell because I’m your mother. I think you’re the most wonderful being ever created. But you can still screw up. All of us can. We’re human. But to him, you can’t. He looks at you like you’re going to say to him, ‘Hang on a second. I gotta run and make sure the world is still spinning ’round. Be right back.’”

And there was that leaping heart again.

“He doesn’t look at me like that.”

“You came out of me. I fed you from my body. I cleaned your scraped knees. We cannot go here. So I’ll say it fast. Hewantsinmylittlegirl’spants. Bad.”

“Mom!”

“But that’s not it.”

“If this was true, why is he not here?”

She shrugged. “You’re asking me how a man’s mind works?” She threw out her wineglass, nearly sloshing wine on the table and definitely putting Mr. Popplewell on alert. “My choice in men got us in this situation in the first place.”

“You aren’t responsible for us being here.”

She avoided my eyes.

Mr. Popplewell settled back down.

“Mom, look at me.”

She looked at me and stated, “We’re gonna be okay. We’ve got money. We’ve got each other. And now we have Maxie. I like Satrine. She kicks ass and rocks a hat. And you gave yourself that name because I told you I was going to give it to you, but your dad wanted to call you Maxine, and that name far from sucked, so I went with it. But there are many people who are suffering because of your father’s actions, and that suffering will never leave them. The question of us vanishing will never be answered for them. And I chose him. So I know I made a bad choice at age twenty-four of the wrong guy. I’m not the first, far from it. I won’t be the last. Still, it’s heavy, baby.”

Yeah, totally heavy.

“I get that, Momma,” I said gently.

“So I focus on you. And I focus on the fact that Maxine has had enough taken in her life, it’s not a great tradeoff, those people who care about us never knowing what happened to us. But she gets us. And she’s happy. Like I said, I think we were meant to be here. But the bottom line is, we’re here. And as usual, we’re doing what we do. Making the most of it. And I’m proud of us for that.”

I was too.

“I love you, Mom.”

“And I you, my girl.”

“But you forgot to mention how much you’re getting off on being Lady Corliss,” I teased.

“Oh yeah, guuuuuuuurrrrl, I’m lovin’ me some of that.”

I started laughing.

When I stopped, even if she was smiling, her eyes were serious.

“He’s scared. He’ll come around.”

“He doesn’t strike me as a guy who gets scared.”

“For some folks, the most terrifying thing of all is the possibility of finding love and happiness.”

“I’m not sure he’s that either.”

“His mother died, honey, and his sister. Ansley told me they were both lost to him by the time he was eleven years old. You will be the next great, important woman in his life. If it was me, I’d find you terrifying.”

Holy shit.

I hadn’t thought of that.

“You are wise, my glorious momma.”

“Lady Corliss knows all.”

I started laughing again.

This time, Mom did it with me.