“How did it go?” Sophie murmured at her elbow.
“It went well. Now we must lay our trap.”
An hour later, Charlotte paced in her dressing room. Her dress waited on the bed. She wore a long black robe. Her undergarments had been very carefully chosen—she wore the tiniest of black lace panties, a bra that was a collection of translucent lace and black straps, and black stockings held up by thin ribbons simulating leather. She’d had the ensemble custom-made, modeled after some of the sexy garments she had seen advertised in the flyers from the Broken. The outfit wasn’t just seductive, it was erotic, explicit, and raunchy. A woman of her status had no business wearing these kinds of undergarments unless she was aiming to provide very specific entertainment to her lover. Her spike- heeled shoes raised her to dangerous heights. Her hair had been arranged into an elegant wave appropriate to a formal function. Her makeup was perfect, and she was as ready as she could be.
This was a prime opportunity—Brennan still remembered her—and capturing his attention later would be significantly harder. Being unmarried, he would be inundated with women. She had to make an unforgettable impression immediately.
Sophie sat on the bed and watched her pace. “What if he isn’t interested?”
“He will be. Men like Brennan think that every woman is secretly wanton. He loves the juxtaposition of the prim and proper with the dirty and seductive. He loves to corrupt. It makes him feel powerful.”
“How can you walk in those shoes?”
“Practice. Lots of practice.”
“What if he—”
The door swung open, and Jack stuck his head into the crack. “He’s coming!”
Thank you, gods.
The door clicked shut.
“Quick!” Charlotte tossed the robe aside and moved into position in plain view of the door. Sophie grabbed the gown and held it up as if to put it on her.
GEORGE leaned against the column and watched out of the corner of his eye as Brennan walked up the stairs. The Guest Keep resembled the Broken’s hotels in its architecture: a stairway led from the bottom floor to a long landing connecting to a hallway, then another stairway at the opposite end of the landing led to the next higher floor. Each of the visiting bluebloods had been assigned a set of rooms, and the roster of the rooms had been posted at each intersection of stairs and hallways. From his vantage point on the fourth-floor landing, George had an excellent view of the lower stairway and the roster.
Brennan was a third of the way up the stairs.
Kaldar, dressed in the gray-and-blue uniform of the castle staff, walked out of the hallway. He casually stepped to the roster, slid it off the wall, hung a new one in its place, and walked away.
Cutting it close. Kaldar liked to live dangerously.
Brennan conquered the stairs and paused before the roster. The original list put Brennan and the rest of the royal relatives on the fifth floor. This roster placed him on the third.
George pondered Brennan’s back. He was a large man, strong, athletic. Thick, muscular neck. Jack could snap it, but he would have trouble.
This man was responsible for Sophie’s torment. He turned slavers from random raiders to an organized force. His hands were stained with Mémère’s blood. He made it possible for John Drayton to sink so low, he drowned.
A small, furious voice chanted inside George, “Kill him, kill him, kill him . . .” But there would be no killing, not now. No, first there would be public humiliation. Then there would be shame, then anguish, then punishment.
Brennan turned to the right, heading down the hallway toward Charlotte’s room. George concentrated, sending his voice to an undead mouse riding in Jack’s pocket. “He’s coming.”
Brennan disappeared into the hallway. Kaldar strode to the roster, swiped it off the wall, and placed the original in its spot.
THE door swung open.
Charlotte took a deep breath.
Brennan stepped into the suite and stopped. His eyes widened. He gaped at her, his mouth hanging slightly open.
Sophie froze, her face suitably shocked.
Charlotte met Brennan’s gaze. She knew her poise was perfect, but inside she was trembling. She made no attempt to cover up. She simply stood there, as if she were wearing the most conservative of gowns, her expression even.
Brennan’s gaze roamed over her body, pausing on her breasts, her stomach, and finally on the triangle between her legs, barely obscured by translucent black lace. She had his complete attention. A woman of noble name, who was proper in all outward appearances and who had just come out of seclusion, secretly wearing an outfit that would embarrass a professional. He had to take the bait. It was made to order specifically for him.
A long moment passed.
Charlotte raised her eyebrows, and said, her voice perfectly even, “I believe you’re in the wrong room, my lord.”
Brennan blinked as if waking up. A lifetime of experience in etiquette kicked in. “Of course. My apologies, my lady.”
He shut the door.
“Knowing the precisely correct thing to do in every situation, then doing it with unshakable entitlement,” Sophie whispered.
Charlotte’s knees trembled. She collapsed into a chair.
GEORGE watched as Brennan emerged onto the landing and marched to the roster. His face wore a look of intense concentration. He stopped before the roster and stared at it for a long moment.
His room number and Charlotte’s differed by exactly one digit. Hers read 322 and his 522. It had taken a great deal of manipulation on Kaldar’s part to arrange this. Any significant difference between the numbers, and Brennan would’ve smelled a rat.
The man shook his head and started up the stairs. George stepped away from the column, back out of Brennan’s view, and walked away quickly, staying close to the wall. He turned the corner just as Brennan stepped onto the fourth-floor landing.
DINNER was served on one of the massive terraces and consisted of light appetizers.
“I’m hungry,” Sophie murmured.
“It’s expected that after the ball we’ll have a late dinner in our rooms,” Charlotte murmured, and adjusted the strap on Sophie’s left shoulder. This dress, a beautiful variation of blue-gray with a metallic sheen, was a collaboration between her and the dressmaker. Two thin shoulder straps held up a modest linear bodice that hugged Sophie’s slender figure. Thin leaves of pale and darker blue overlapped on the bodice, built from the left side and spreading in a fan to the right. Two gathered lengths of fabric draped over Sophie’s hips, tight enough to accentuate the modest flare of her hips but loose enough to still be appropriate. Past the draped fabric, a wide skirt built from layers of chiffon streamed down to the floor.
It was a refreshing dress, youthful and light, and its style matched Charlotte’s own gown. She’d chosen a blue-green chiffon. Two leaves of silvery fabric served as her sleeves. The pattern continued along her sides, the leaves stretching to hug her, underscoring her waist and the curve of her hips. Tiny silvery dots, each slightly less shiny than the leaves, traced a delicate pattern over her chest and stomach, until finally her skirt flared into layers and layers of weightless chiffon.
Sophie looked beautiful. She herself looked elegant and every inch a blueblood, which is exactly what Charlotte was trying to project. The music was getting louder. Soon the dancing would start. She wasn’t expected to dance but once or twice, but Sophie would enjoy it. And likely cause a stir. Charlotte had asked her to demonstrate a couple of dances, and her footwork was exquisite.
She felt the pressure of someone’s gaze, scanned the gathering, and ran into Richard’s face. He stood across the terrace, in the shadow of a column, and he was looking at her with shock and longing, as if he were thunderstruck. It hurt. It hurt so much to stand there across from him and know that she couldn’t walk over there, she couldn’t touch him or go away with him. Charlotte looked away.
No matter what happened around her, deep inside she always remembered that either of them, or both of them, might not survive this. They were in constant danger, and a happy outcome wasn’t guaranteed. That knowledge pressed on her like an ever-present, crushing burden. She awoke with it, and she went to bed with it. It haunted her through the day. Occasionally, she would get distracted and forget, but inevitably she would remember, and when she did, the fear and anxiety hit her like a punch to the stomach. Her throat closed up, her eyes watered, and her chest hurt. For a few moments, she would hover on the verge of tears and have to talk herself off the cliff.
She missed Richard. She worried about him more than she worried about herself.
She wasn’t made for this, she realized. Some might revel in danger and intrigue, but she just wanted everything to be done. She wanted it to be over. The stress and the pressure chipped at her, and she felt herself cracking under their chisel. The harder the pressure ground, the more she wanted to escape. Last night, she’d dreamed about walking up to Brennan, killing him, and throwing herself from the balcony. In the morning she had been horrified—not by the suicidal fantasy, but because for a brief moment before she returned to reality, she felt relief.
She couldn’t shatter. Too many people depended on her, Sophie, Richard, Tulip . . . Speaking of Sophie, where had she gone?
Charlotte turned and saw a group of young people, all on the cusp of adulthood, surrounding a blueblood in a dark green doublet. He was tall, blond, and strikingly beautiful. He was telling some sort of story, and his face wore the comfortable expression of a practiced speaker. His audience hung on his every word.
Charlotte drifted closer, analyzing his gestures. Not just blood, old blood. Not Adrianglian, definitely a Louisianan bend—he’d raised his hand in an elegant gesture, palm up, index finger almost parallel to the floor, three others bent slightly—a clear tell. Louisianan court etiquette dictated that when the Emperor was present, the nobles carried a token, a small silver coin engraved with his likeness, worn on a chain wound around the fingers. The gesture was designed to display the coin and was so ingrained in the manners of the older families, they made it unconsciously when they presented a point during an argument or acknowledged someone’s else’s point.
