said, and impish expression taking over her face. “If it happens now, I’m going to blame the change of venue.”
“The death of your rodents will weigh heavily upon my conscience.”
And he realized that perhaps it was a poor choice of words, considering there were two deaths that did weigh upon his conscience. Deaths that the passage of time would never ease the wounds of. Deaths that had caused deep and abiding division in his country. Between the people who supported him still, and the people who thought him a murderer.
Division that he was having to work now to ease.
“End of the week,” he said. “There will be a ball. You will behave. You will comply.”
“What if I didn’t?”
The question was asked so simply, the expression on her face not angry or inflammatory in any way. Rather it simply was. A sort of innocent wonderment that he had only ever witnessed in Tinley.
“I would throw you in the dungeon.”
“You could just marry me and save us the trouble.”
“In the end,” he said, his stomach going tight. “Dungeon or marriage to me. Is there a difference?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. There isn’t.”
After that, there was no more conversation.
And by the time she left the dinner table, a knot had begun to form in his chest that only expanded with each passing moment. And when she left the room, it did not ease.
The sooner he had Tinley Markham married off the better.
He got up from his seat and went over to the bar that was at the far end of the massive dining room. He took out a bottle of scotch and poured himself a measure of it. He downed it in one gulp.
The sooner she was dealt with, the sooner he could get on with the business of ruling Liri.
And the sooner he would have fat cats and hedgehogs removed from his castle.
That would be a blessing indeed.
CHAPTER FOUR
COMPORTMENT LESSONS BEGAN the next day. Tinley was horrified. Why was he so hell-bent on changing her? Yes, there had been a presumption that if she was going to be Princess she would have to conform in some way. But she had assumed that her basic raw material was decent, considering she had been chosen to be the Princess of Liri at a very early age.
And anyway, that future was gone. She wasn’t supposed to be a princess. She was simply looking for a...for a husband.
She looked around the ballroom, empty except for the older woman that Alex had assigned to be her mentor.
She had been walking with a book on her head for half an hour.
But for some reason, every time she got midway through the room she would imagine Alex’s dark, disapproving gaze boring a hole through her, and she would stumble.
She really didn’t like him.
Their conversation last night had been strange. It had affected her in unexpected ways.
It had been easy to cast him as the villain in Dionysus’s death. Though the ferocity of her anger had waned over the years.
She had gotten older, and as she had borne witness to rowdy, drunken behavior in college, she had been forced to ask herself many times who needed to bear responsibility for that behavior.
And every time, she could only ever bestow the responsibility to the people engaging in the behavior.
Which meant Dionysus bore the weight of his own rash act.
He had been twenty-two years old when he’d died. He had seemed such a man to her. Now that she was the same age as he’d been when he passed it seemed...strange. Because they were on equal footing now.
And she... Well, she would not have done the things he did. She wouldn’t have drunk to excess and put herself in danger like that.
She would never have cheated.
The thought of that was like a knife twisting her chest. Not because she loved him so much. Not now. It was just...she’d excused it. A great many times, because it hadn’t suited the vision she’d had of him, of her feelings for him, to be angry about the other women.
But it had been wrong.
She couldn’t imagine Alex behaving in such a way. Never.
Alex had been in his own stratosphere to her when Dionysus had died. In his thirties already and so remote and responsible. She’d been certain then it was all age, and now she knew better.
She didn’t know why she was comparing the two of them. Dionysus had been fun. Dynamic. He’d had plans for the country in his role as Prince, and when