The count looked away. “I don’t usually give a damn what they think, Kylar, because they think it for all the wrong reasons. This time, I’m afraid they’ll be right.”
Kylar couldn’t say anything.
“I’ve prayed for years that my daughters would find the right men to be their husbands. And I’ve prayed that Logan would marry the right woman. Why doesn’t this feel like the answer?” He shook his head again and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Forgive me, I’ve asked you a dozen questions you can’t possibly answer, and haven’t asked the one you can.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Do you love Serah?”
“No, sir.”
“And that girl? The one you’ve been sending money to for almost a decade?”
Kylar flushed. “I’ve sworn not to love, sir.”
“But do you?”
Kylar walked out the door.
As Kylar stepped into the hall, the count said, “You know, I pray for you, too, Kylar.”
33
T he whorehouse had closed hours ago. Upstairs, the girls slept on fouled sheets amid the brothel smells of stale alcohol, stale sweat, old sex, wood smoke, and cheap perfume. The doors were locked. All but two of the plain copper lamps downstairs had been extinguished. Momma K didn’t allow her brothels to waste money.
There were only two people downstairs, both of them at the bar. Around the man’s seat were the remains of a dozen smashed glasses.
He finished the thirteenth beer, lifted the glass, and threw it onto the floor. It shattered.
Momma K poured Durzo another beer from the tap, not even blinking. She didn’t say a word. Durzo would speak when he was ready. Still, she wondered why he’d chosen this brothel. It was a hole. She sent her attractive girls elsewhere. Other brothels she’d bought had been worth fixing, but this one huddled deep in the Warrens, far from main roads in the maze of shacks and hovels. This was where she’d lost her maidenhead. She’d been paid ten silvers, and had counted herself lucky.
It wasn’t high on her list of places to visit.
“I should kill you,” Durzo said finally. They were the first words he’d spoken in six hours. He finished his beer and shoved it along the bar. It slid several feet, fell over, rolled off the bar, and cracked.
“Oh, so you do have the power of speech?” Momma K said. She grabbed another glass and opened the tap.
“Do I have a daughter too?”
Momma K froze. She closed the tap too late and beer spilled all over.
“Vonda made me swear not to tell you. She was too scared to tell you and then when she died. . . . You can hate Vonda for what she did, Durzo, but she did it because she loved you.”
Durzo gave her a look of such disbelief and disgust that Gwinvere wanted to hit his ugly face.
“What do you know about love, you whore?”
She had thought that no one could hurt her with words. She’d heard every whore comment in the book, and had added a few besides. But something in how Durzo said it, something about that comment—coming from him!—struck her to the core. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even breathe.
Finally, she said, “I know if I’d had the chance for love that you had, I would have quit whoring. I would have done anything to hold onto that. I was born into this chamber pot of a life; you’re the one who chose it.”
“What’s my daughter’s name?”
“So that’s it? You bring me here to remind me how many times I got fucked in this stinking hole? I remember. I remember! I whored so my baby sister wouldn’t have to. And then you came along. You fucked me five times a week and told Vonda you loved her. Got her pregnant. Left. I could have told her that much was a given. That part of the story’s so predictable it’s not even worth repeating, is it? But you weren’t just any john. No, you got her kidnapped too. And then what? Did you go after her? No, you showed exactly how much you loved her. Called their bluff, didn’t you? You always were willing to gamble with other people’s lives, weren’t you, Durzo? You coward.”
Durzo’s glass exploded against the keg behind her. He was trembling violently. He pointed a finger in her face. “You! You don’t have any right. You would have given it all up for love? Horseshit. Where’s the man in your life now, Gwin? You don’t whore anymore, so there’s nothing for a man to be jealous of, right? But there’s still