Jeweled (22 page)

Up until now Anatol had been seemingly ignoring the exchange, calmly chewing his food and sipping his wine. “I don’t think that making you a whore is what Gregorio intends.” He looked over at Gregorio. “It might be time we reveal our surprise.”

Gregorio watched her with wary eyes. “She might take it the wrong way.”

She glanced between the two men. “What . . . surprise?”

Gregorio set his napkin alongside his plate and pushed away from the table. “First, I want to make it clear that I didn’t do this to buy your affections. I have other reasons for spending my money on you, chief of which are feelings of guilt. I owe you a new livelihood.” He paused. “Anatol, do you want to tell her?”

“Gregorio and I want to help set you up in your own shop. Gregorio organized the instruction you need and I was busy locating and renting the shop. We didn’t tell you because—” He broke off, pushing a hand through his hair. “It was meant to be a
happy
surprise.”

“A shop of my own?”

“Yes.”

She swallowed hard, looking down at the table. “I’m very touched that you two would go to such great lengths for me.” Now she felt foolish for overreacting to Gregorio’s comment. Managing this onslaught of emotion was still not her strongest ability.

“Does that mean you want it?” Gregorio asked.

She considered the issue for a moment and then met his gaze, then Anatol’s. “What you have done is truly wonderful, but I want to build this business on my own. I want it to be
mine
. I need the lessons to get me started, but the rest of it—finding and renting the shop—
I
want to do that part. I need something outside of myself to focus on. Most of all, I need a challenge like the one I had at Belai, a goal. Otherwise I’m going to shrivel up.”

When she’d finished speaking, both the men were watching her intently. Anatol appeared confused, but Gregorio’s eyes shone with respect.

Gregorio nodded. “You’re strong, intelligent, and determined. I think you
can
do it on your own.”

“Thank you. What you two did . . . it’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.” Emotion clogged her throat and she swallowed hard, cursing it. How did people cope with so many feelings bombarding them at once? Thankful sorrow on the heels of angry indignation. It was like being caught in a storm.

“I should have seen that you’d want to build the business on your own,” said Anatol. “You’re a different woman than the one who lived at Belai.” He meant that a scant couple of months ago she would have expected everything be handed to her. Now she understood the look of confusion on his face. “I’ll make the arrangements to halt the rental of the shop tomorrow morning.”

“I’m glad you understand.”

“I’m only sorry the possibility didn’t occur to me sooner.”

“Once I learn the stitching machine better and come up with a few solid designs I think I can sell, I’ll look into building a business. I’ll start out slow because I’ll want to use my own money. That means locating clients without a storefront at first.”

“It sounds like you’ve already thought about this.” Gregorio rose and began clearing the table. After preparing the meal, the cook had left for the evening.

She and Anatol rose and began to help him. “It may be the only thing I’m capable of doing in this new magick-free world.”

“I hope it’s not magick-free forever,” Gregorio growled. “The magicked are Rylisk’s most valuable resource.”

“I thought elusian crystal was our most important resource,” Evangeline quipped lightly.

Gregorio halted in the doorway with plates in his hands. “Are you still planning to leave, Evangeline?”

She paused, glancing between the two men. She and Anatol
should
leave. Danger still lurked in Milzyr for the magicked, but they couldn’t hide in Gregorio’s town house forever. They needed to stand on their own.

And then there was Gregorio, himself. The man left a confused tangle in her stomach that she couldn’t parse. Part of her wanted to run away from him and the other part wanted to dash straight into his arms.

Fidgeting, she looked at Anatol. “The time is nearing, don’t you think?”

“Nearing, yes, but it hasn’t arrived.” Anatol’s eyes held hers. “I want to keep you as safe as I can and
safe
is here.”

“Good,” answered Gregorio with a happy smile, “then it’s settled. You stay where it’s safe and I can keep the loneliness at bay a little longer. The arrangement works for all of us.”

They finished clearing the table and Anatol headed up to bed. “Are you coming?” he asked Evangeline as he stood at the bottom of the stairs.

She walked to him. “Not yet. I want to apologize to Gregorio for overreacting earlier.”

He cupped her cheek in his hand. “He’s a good man.”

“I know he is.”

He searched her eyes. “I love you, Evangeline.”

She studied his face, wanting to tell him she loved him back, but the words just wouldn’t come. Her feelings for him ran so deep, but she wasn’t totally sure what it was she felt. Was it love? And if it was love, to admit it . . . A shadow of grief stole her body heat for a moment. To admit she loved him would be opening herself to unimaginable pain if—
when
—he rejected her.

Surely at some point Anatol would see she was still more trouble than she was worth, changes in her since Belai or not.

He leaned in and kissed her lips softly. “It’s all right. You don’t have to say it back.” Then he turned and went up the stairs.

 

 

When she returned to the dining room, Gregorio had just walked back in holding a dish towel, a look of mild surprise on his face.

Hugging herself and wanting to run up the stairs after Anatol, she said, “I wanted to apologize for earlier. It was wrong of me to assume the worst about you.”

“It’s all right.” He threw the towel onto the table. “Game of strategia before bed?”

She opened her mouth to say no, but it was time she stopped punishing Gregorio. Still, the prospect of spending time with him alone always curled something in her gut—a mix of anticipation and reluctance. She tried to smile, but failed. “Sounds like fun.”

“You don’t sound all that excited about it.”

“No, I want to play. Really.” She managed a halfhearted smile.

They headed into the study and Gregorio set up the board while she wandered over to the fire. “So, aside from the chaos, has the shiny new political system of Rylisk been taking shape?”

He looked up from the board. “It has. We’ve been making progress, though it’s messy at times. Democracy is a cacophony of conflicting voices.”

“I have to say that I’m impressed you haven’t asked me to come in and help to calm and influence their emotions.”

He finished setting up the last pieces and then motioned to the chair opposite him. She sat. “Well, if I did that I would be infringing on their free will and basic rights. The new government has a goal of honoring those.” He shook his head. “I’ll never ask you to use your magick in that way, Evangeline. Not you and not Anatol.”

She pressed her lips together and looked down at the board, impressed by his answer. “Would you like to move first? I’m prepared to give you a head start.” She lifted an eyebrow and smiled saucily.

He laughed. “Do you think you can beat me tonight, Evangeline?”

“There’s a first time for everything. I beat Anatol nearly every time I play him.”

“Ah, well, we will see.” He made his first move.

“You and Anatol grew up together at Belai?” he commented after a few minutes spent in silent strategy.

“We did.” She placed her tongue at the corner of her mouth and frowned at the board. Then she made her move, taking his ebony archer. “Aha!” She clapped.

“Nicely done.”

“Thank you.” She inclined her head and waited for him to make his next move. “We lived together at Belai and we knew each other, but we were never close. It wasn’t until the siege and its aftermath that we became friends.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I wasn’t close to anyone at Belai, not really. Well, there was one person whom I called a good friend.”

“Tell me.”

She related the story about Annetka. This time when she talked about her, she felt light instead of heavy, remembering the good times they’d had together. “But she was the only one who really knew me there.”

“Why?”

She frowned at the board. “I don’t remember when or why, but at some point the backlash of my gift presented itself. I suspect I triggered it myself after I was taken from my family. I remember feeling grief like nothing I’ve endured since I was first brought to Belai. Annetka was the only one who made it through the barriers, probably because she was such a special little girl. In any case, I ceased to feel most of my own emotions in order to shield myself from feeling everyone else’s. That made me incapable of forming any meaningful relationships.”

“That must have been hard for you.”

“Not really. I didn’t know any different.”

“And now?”

“Now ...” She considered her answer while he finally made his move. “Now there are times I miss those walls that protected me so very well, but there are other times—the good times—that make me regret they ever went up at all. As I grew up, I missed a lot by not interacting with my peers. In a way, it feels as though I were never a child. I grieve for that woman I was.”

“Do you ever wonder what your childhood would have been like if you’d stayed with your family?”

She made her move on the board and then sat back in her chair. “Sometimes I wish I’d been left with them. The housemother at Belai told me my father fought the royals when they took me. She told me his leg was badly injured as a result.”

Gregorio fell silent, studying the board fiercely. “Don’t you want to find them?”

She didn’t reply, concentrating on the game for a long time before replying. “I don’t know. There is a dark fear deep inside me that makes me afraid to seek them out.”

“You have time to think about it.”

She nodded.

They fell into a companionable silence, once in a while discussing books that Evangeline had read from Gregorio’s library. By the end of the game she’d forgotten she was supposed to feel animosity toward the man and instead purely enjoyed his company.

Gregorio and Anatol were different in that Anatol touched her heart and Gregorio touched her mind. She was attracted to both of them, but in many ways they were the flip side of the same coin. Anatol was emotional fire and not always logical. He was sensitive and understood people. Gregorio, while also passionate, was as rational and intelligent as a man could be. She could see what each of them could offer her.

But she wondered what it was that
she
offered these men. Why, exactly, they were both so attracted to
her
? In this new world of constant emotion, she had bouts of severe self-confidence. The old Evangeline would never have asked such a question.

Finally they were down to their last few moves. Evangeline made her final move and captured Gregorio’s green goddess, winning her the game. She threw her arms up and laughed with the piece in her hand.

Gregorio leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. “You’re getting way too good at this game, Evangeline.”

She lowered her arms and looked at him suspiciously. “You didn’t let me win, did you?”

He leaned forward. “I’m very serious about strategia. I would never let any opponent win, not even one as beautiful as you. You’re just an excellent player.”

Her smile broadened even as she flushed from the compliment—both of them. “Good.”

She set the piece back onto the ravaged game board and looked at the tall clock ticking away in the room. They’d spent a long time on the game and it was now into the early morning. “That was fun, but I need to go to bed. Emily is coming in the morning to give me more lessons.”

She stood and he did as well. Smiling a little, she inclined her head. “Good night, Gregorio.” Then she moved toward the door.

“Evangeline?”

She turned back to him.

“Do you like me even a little?”

Her smile faded. The problem was that she liked him a lot. She wasn’t sure, exactly, why that was a problem for her, since Anatol didn’t seem to think it was one. “I do like you, Gregorio.”

“Do you still blame me for the deaths of your friends?”

She studied him for a long moment. “No. You were easy to blame in the beginning, but the matter is far more complicated. I see that now.”

“I’m glad.”

She turned to leave again, but he caught her gently by the arm and turned her toward him again. He had a hard, hungry expression on his face and it made her stomach do a warm flip. She knew that expression.

Reaching out with her magick, she tasted his emotions and found undeniable desire. Her body responded to it like a flame to kindling. “Gregorio?” His name came out almost devoid of breath. Suddenly she saw where this was going. She wasn’t sure she could stop him from initiating it—she wasn’t sure she wanted to stop him.

He pushed her backward step by step, until he was pressing her up against the wall behind them, the strategia game board long forgotten. This was not a game.