Of Marriage and Murder ✔️ | Of Crimes and Crowns Book 1

sixteen : of charity and companionship

Connor had not known what to expect out of this visit. But his expectations certainly had not involved visits to orphanages and the queen beside him in a gauzy lilac dress, looking like some angel descended from the heavens, rather than the woman who had ruined his life at the cost of her crown.

Although, he had to admit that the loathing he held for her was somewhat tempered by the enjoyment of seeing her open up to him, to see the emotion spill out of the cracks on that well-crafted mask. Even if the only emotions he managed to elicit from her were anger and something that just might be lust. Connor couldn't be sure, but last night, when he'd touched her, when he'd kissed her...

It had been too easy to believe, that she had wanted him as much as he had her. That the sensation of his skin against hers, his fingers grasping her wrist, his mouth on her neck, had felt as incredible, had been as much of an all-consuming pleasure, as it had been for him.

Connor did his best not to stare as the queen picked up one of the small children with a gracious smile and let him play with her hair. The movement revealed the curve of her neck, the column of her throat, her skin exposed and vulnerable in ways Natasha herself never was. She was laughing as the boy toyed with her necklace, and a look of happiness that he had never seen before came over her. Just then, the queen removed the amethyst pendant from the infant's grasp, just as he was about to place it in his mouth. He couldn't help himself; he stared, his hatred replaced by intrigue at this softer side of her he'd never seen.

The dress she wore was pale violet, almost grey, matching the stone in her necklace. Her gown draped artfully over her form, billowing out at her hips and dipped low in the front, showing a tasteful amount of décolletage. But it was less her physical beauty - he'd seen plenty of beautiful women, Victoria included - and more of the slice of her heart that he could currently see on display. During all the time he'd known her, he had thought of her as a pillar of marble or ice, unwilling to bend or display any vulnerability. Yet this - this moment, with her holding that boy, smiling down at him, pure joy in her expression - was not the same cold, frigid woman he had been married to this past few weeks. This was someone else. Someone I might—

In a show of spousal affection, she gently put down the child and beckoned him over with a smile. He went to her, knowing that it would keep up their pretence of a happily married couple.

And maybe it was more truth than pretence, but he would never admit that.

• • •

They were quiet during the carriage ride back to the Summer Palace, only hoofbeats and strangers' conversations breaking the silence. The air hung dense and humid with unshed rain, and perhaps unspoken words as well. Outside, the sun set over a sea blazing with riotous light and colour.

Beyond the barouche's silk curtains was a familiar world, one Connor had become accustomed to over the past two years before being ripped away from his post by tragedy and machinations. Vendors and hawkers peddled their wares with loud shouts, market goers bargained in equally raised voices, rickshaws pulled by wizened men carried passengers through the streets teeming with life and sound. Women in the satin dress known as cheongsam* - native to Xiangjin and Xianggang both, but only fashionable in the former nation - beckoned customers into liquor stores and pub-like establishments. A gaggle of Arlean men in fine suits (Xianggang had been an Arlean colony up until very recently) marched past with looks of disdain, some leering at the cheongsam-clad women. It was all too familiar, so close to home, the life that he would never retrieve. Like a key he'd dropped into the ocean and still caught glimpses of, even as it washed farther away from him. Loneliness clenched at his heart: a vise, a fist, a dark shroud.