Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Highest Bidder

Loren

“You’re absolutely certain the woman you saw in the sanatorium was Lady Maxine Dawes?” Loren asked his father.

They were in Ansley’s study. Drinks to be shared with Dawes and Maxine were to be served in the parlor in fifteen minutes. Thus, they were both in evening attire.

And his father and he were further discussing the bombshell Ansley had landed on him that afternoon, just prior to his brief, wet adventure with the Countess Derryman.

“She was the image of the woman who arrived this very afternoon,” Ansley replied.

“And the doctors told you that the damage done when she was a child was unrecoverable?” Loren pressed.

“Yes, son,” Ansley replied sharply, his deep voice pitching louder.

“Calm down,” Loren said low.

“It feels like you’re questioning my sanity.”

“I’m not, but I believe you are.”

Ansley blew out a breath, tore his hand through his hair and turned to stare out the window into the darkness.

“As we did not have time earlier today, now, can we speak for a moment about the fact you didn’t tell me that my affianced had a debilitating brain injury?” Loren requested.

Ansley turned back to his son. “If you’d known you’d been released from the contract, what would you have done?”

“I’ve no idea. However, I think whatever that is should have been mine to decide.”

Ansley let it sit a moment.

And then he said, “You are all I have left, Loren. It is, indeed, about our line. Mostly, it’s about me wanting to precede at least one member of my immediate family to death.”

Loren flinched.

His father did not let up.

“I am proud of your service to our kingdom, but I fear you’ve become addicted to that chase.”

“What chase?”

“The one to danger.”

Good gods.

Not this again.

“Father—”

Ansley lifted a hand and waved it in his son’s direction. “Let’s not argue. You say she was quick-witted in the stables?”

“Quick-witted” did not cover it.

“I’ve never met a woman with a sharper wit. It’s quite the wonder I don’t have cuts all over me.”

Ansley watched his son closely.

Then he noted quietly, “She pleases you.”

If the woman was half as clever in bed as she was out of it, she was to be the perfect wife.

He did not share that.

He stated, “She’s lovely to look at and she has the spirit of a bull.”

“That’s an odd comparison.”

“Bulls are stubborn. I’d pit her against any bull breathing, I don’t care how sharp their horns. She’d best it by just not giving up.”

His father smiled. “In other words, she pleases you.”

“Her father is a toad.”

Ansley’s chest expanded with the big breath he took, and then he released it. “Even before he lost the stature he built for himself conniving and borderline thieving and making himself richer off the hides of his friends and acquaintances, Edgar Dawes was a man with whom you watched your back.” A pause before he asked, “You heard them have words?”

“The exchange I witnessed was brief. But one thing was made clear during it. She can’t stand him.”

“Hmm,” Ansley hummed.

“What are you thinking?”

“His wife killed herself, you know.”

Loren nodded.

“After he sent Maxine away to boarding school.”

Loren said nothing.

“No one quite understood it. He was respectable enough. His title holds power. He has great wealth. At the time, he was quite good-looking. He’s gone rather to seed of late. But that’s only recently. She had the life many women struggle quite valiantly for.”

Loren remained silent, though he did it wondering what Maxine would think of that remark.

“No one sends their child away to school for twenty years without her coming home at least to visit,” Ansley remarked. “While you were with her in the stables, and I’d rejoined him, Derryman told me she hadn’t been back to Hawkvale since he sent her away. Not once. In two decades.”

“Should I take a seat, or are you going to get to the point?” Loren ribbed.

His father’s mouth quirked.

Then he said, “I think Maxine is a twin.”

Loren had no idea what he expected his father to say.

But it wasn’t that.

“A twin?” he asked.

“Perhaps she actually is Maxine, and the woman I visited with is her sister, who, for whatever reason, is registered at the hospital as Maxine. Perhaps it’s the Maxine with us who is pretending to be her sister. Although your mother wanted you to have the proper schooling, and thus you went to a proper school, you were always home for the holidays. I, personally, would never dream of losing that time with you.”

Loren said nothing, but he felt his face soften at the memories.

Because his father told no lies.

His early life had been marked with mourning, his mother dying when he was five, his sister dying when he was eleven.

But he’d learned to crave adventure because his father dropped everything and gave one to him every school holiday.

Ansley carried on, “I think one of the girls was hurt in a way that couldn’t be fixed, and perhaps the wife was responsible. Edgar sent the other girl away. And the guilt ate at her until she couldn’t take it anymore.”

“And once she took her own life, then why would the daughter not return?” Loren queried.

Ansley shrugged. “Perhaps she’s an unhappy reminder of the wife. I sadly forget the woman’s name, but I do remember what she looked like, and her daughter certainly looks like her.”

“Has word of twins ever been uttered about Edgar’s offspring?”

“What other possible explanation could there be?” Ansley queried. “When I say she’s the woman I sat with on several occasions, Loren, I do not jest. Except for the fact that Maxine was bright and sweet, what she was not was droll and quick-witted.”

In that moment, considering the possibility of twins, a thought occurred to Loren.

A thought about something he held in strictest confidence at the behest of his friend, a friend who was also his king.

Something that was a state secret of such magnitude, he’d die before he breathed word of it.

However, upon thinking of it, he dismissed it.

It was too fantastical.

And from what he knew, it took grave magic to affect it.

That being producing such a “twin.”

There wasn’t a witch in all the Northlands or Southlands who held this much magic. Not anymore.

But even if there was, no one but a very select few knew of the existence of that other world. A world, it was his understanding, that was markedly different from his own. It would be a profound shock to anyone who made the switch, impossible to recover easily.

In fact, decades had passed, and Loren could still see how living in a different world affected his queen. She navigated it rather well. But he noted when things surprised her, or at other times he caught it when Tor was covering for her.

Lady Maxine was not like any woman he’d ever met.

But she didn’t speak or act like Queen Cora.

She was definitely of his world.

Considering the impracticality of it, Loren set that thought aside and asked, “You made the betrothal arrangement with him at her birth. Obviously, at that time, he didn’t speak of another child. And as far as we know, no one has heard word of this. Why would a father hide one of his daughters…ever?”

Ansley shook his head. “I have no answer to that. But I’m also not Edgar Dawes. He’d sell her to the highest bidder, something he did in terms of status, if it meant he’d get something out of it. Perhaps he saw what he wrought in the deal he struck to make his girl a duchess, and he held his other daughter back to see what she might bring. In the meantime, Maxine, or her sister, was irreparably injured, the woman with us was in Fleuridia, perhaps not desirous of return, and he delayed your wedding because he was machinating to convince her to fulfill her part of the contract or fill her sister’s shoes.”

“You do know that sounds preposterous,” Loren noted, saying this even if he knew of another explanation, which was even more preposterous.

“I also know of no one, even the mightiest of witches, who can mend an injury like the one the woman at the sanitorium had. I’ve dispatched a man to ascertain she’s still there. When she is, which she will be, as she surely isn’t the woman with us, it will at least assuage my concerns that it’s not me who’s being preposterous.”

“There’s an explanation, Father, and might I suggest we simply ask them?”

“Absolutely not,” Ansley replied stiffly. “Perhaps, if you start to build a relationship with her, and trust blooms. But until then, we must proceed understanding a Dawes is a Dawes, and we must treat them with the trust they’ve earned. That being none.”

This was another query to which he wished a response, and he set about getting it.

“If you dislike Derryman so badly, why did you promise me to his daughter?” Loren asked.

His father, as ever, had a ready reply.

“Because it was my responsibility to you and your future to secure the most advantageous alliance I could. Because his wife was stunning, and he’s rich as sin, and his daughter was, as far as I knew, his only child. Her dowry alone, added to our personal wealth, will make you the richest man in Hawkvale, Loren, outside Noctorno. And now, as they produced no other child, again, as far as we know, you’ll inherit it all when Derryman dies. This means, eventually, you might even be wealthier than the king. His tactics to acquire that wealth might revolt me, but it does not negate said wealth.”

One could say this was a good reason, as no one, including Loren, had issue with being rich. Therefore no one, including Loren, had issue with being richer.

However, his father wasn’t finished.

“And you’ll be the most titled noble in the land, as you not only hold mine, you hold your mother’s, and your children will also hold your wife’s. You will need for nothing. You will want for nothing. Nor will your children or your children’s children, for generations. And you will hold power in the realm. You’ve already been asked to sit on Noctorno’s council, but Noctorno doesn’t see titles. The nature and fortitude of a man are what matters to him. But he’s not the only one in his council chambers who will be playing the game. And for many of them, the title, and where it stands, is all that matters.”

“So you thought about it, you didn’t just sell me to the highest bidder,” Loren joked.

Ansley tutted.

Loren smiled at his father.

Ansley grew serious. “I will find a way out of the contract, my boy, if she does not please you.”

Call me crazy, but I’ve enjoyed our tête-à-tête. However, it would mean a great deal to me if you would make an effort to learn when to back me into a corner, and when…not.

Loren greatly relished the idea of being in a situation where she was happy for him to back her into a corner.

Or back her somewhere that had a far more comfortable destination.

“I’m intrigued,” Loren admitted.

“And that pleases me, my son,” Ansley replied. “And I am not referring to wealth or power when I state that.”

Loren felt the softness again, this time around his heart, at his father’s words.

He didn’t share this.

“I think you need a drink,” Loren prescribed.

Ansley moved to him, clapped him on the back and stayed close as they both walked to the door, his father saying, “I believe we both need one.”

And he was, as through his life Loren knew his father often was (though he would rarely admit it), right.