said, “People die from caning,” and the pain in his voice was so bare that Nate’s pleasure evaporated. His fists hurt, he realized. He’d been clenching them ever since he left the courtier’s room. This man, this stupid man, who’d meddled with things so far above him, who’d risked everything Nate had ever held important—and for what? For a few moments spent rutting in the stable.
But that was unfair, and Nate knew it. It was unfair because she was guilty, too, and because this man had run with her to the House when she collapsed, knowing that it meant his death. He forced his fists to relax. “She won’t die. The Seneschal doesn’t want her dead, and neither do I.”
A spark of hope lit the stableman’s face. “Can you keep her alive?”
“I can. She’ll be all right in the end.” And she would be, if Nate had to burn out his own mind as fuel to make it so. “Where will you go?”
The stableman shook his head, as lost as he had been inside the House. “I haven’t been outside since I was ten years old. Brakeside, I guess. Find a barge to take me out of the city.” He looked at Nate. “Can I give you a letter for my sister?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“No. I guess not.” He sighed. “I’m so stupid to have got us in this mess.”
With an attempt at levity, Nate said, “You’re not the first man brought low by a beautiful woman.”
The stableman shook his head fondly. “Beautiful, she’s not. But she is...” His voice trailed off.
“Yes,” Nate said. “She is that.”
* * *
When Nate emerged back into Limley Square, satchel over his shoulder, the phaeton driver was waiting. He greeted Nate with a bow so low that his forehead nearly touched his knees. “What’s that for?” Nate said, surprised, but the driver didn’t answer.
Back in the House, he was taken to the parlor, where the Seneschal waited with the Tiernan and the younger boy. The Tiernan didn’t look at Nate and so he avoided looking at her. “They’re stirring,” the Seneschal said. “Do you have what you need?”
Nate nodded. “I still advise against this.”
“Will it kill her?” the Seneschal asked seriously.
The Tiernan made a strangled noise.
“You’re piling two serious injuries on top of each other,” Nate said.
The Seneschal dismissed that. “The caning won’t be that serious. It will be unpleasant and humiliating, and it will leave her with a few scars and a renewed sense of obedience.”
“Ordinarily, maybe. But with the head injury—”
“Perhaps you didn’t understand me earlier.” The Seneschal’s gaze was as hard and cold as the stone floor they stood upon. “If she dies, Lord Gavin dies.”
“Then don’t cane her. Let her heal.”
“For how long?”
On the sofa, the Tiernan stared up at Nate as if he were the hero in a campfire story, desperate and fragile with hope. “A few weeks,” he said.
The Seneschal shook his head. “Lord Elban might return within a few weeks. So she will be caned now, with whatever mercy she can have, and she will not die. The first is my responsibility, Nathaniel Magus. The second is yours. Now, you and I must tend to Lord Gavin.”
Elban’s son was barely conscious. With a clever knot the Seneschal knew, Nate and the Seneschal looped the ropes loosely around the bedposts and then his wrists and ankles, leaving one end long. Then, one on either side of the bed, they each took up the two long ends nearest them and pulled all the knots tight at once. The moment the ropes touched his skin, the boy burst to life, and fought savagely, spitting curses as coarse as Nate had heard in any Barrier tavern. But the knots were very clever indeed, and the young lord’s struggles only tightened them. When he finally gave up, and lay panting and heaving with rage, the Seneschal said, “She risked your life, Lord Gavin. I am sorry for the pain you must suffer, but it’s on her shoulders.” He turned to Nate. “Gag him before it begins.”
In the other room, Judah was awake, but only just. Gavin’s struggles had agitated her and the guards had to pin her so that Nate could examine her again. Then, sick to his stomach, he stood back and let the guards hoist her to standing, pained to see the limp way she dangled between them. They tied one of each of her arms to the tall bedposts of the Tiernan’s bed, holding her upright.