anyone?” Certainly not Marius, the one whom Javier might most intend to hide from. Belinda shook her head fractionally, in dismissal, and waited for the prince’s answer.
“Yes,” Javier said. “Not that you’re here, not that you’re my lover. But in our true purpose in meeting? They cannot suspect it.”
“It cannot be found out.” Belinda shivered, curling her arms over Javier’s. Rather than relax into her closeness he stiffened, lifting his mouth away from her shoulder. Discomfort flared in him, the clarity of words and thought broken before she could read them, his skin taken from hers too quickly. Only uncomfortable familiarity lingered, making Belinda twist in his grasp to peer up at him. “My lord?”
“It cannot be found out.” He echoed the words in a hoarse, low voice, strain suddenly telling tales. “You know what they would do to us, Beatrice.”
“I do.” Another tremble ran over her skin, too appropriate to forbid. “I don’t like to think on it.”
“Nor I, and yet it has haunted me since childhood. You have no idea,” he said, abrupt and startlingly harsh. “Beatrice, to find even one other person like me…you have no idea. I only wish I knew if we were damned together, or granted salvation.” He put his arms around her again, a wordless ache of loneliness answered rising in him and sweeping over her as their skin touched. “It must not be found out,” he repeated. “Only the ignorant and superstitious would begin to believe what you and I know as truth, and they would free us from our curse with fire.”
Belinda turned to smile up at him, deliberately pushing away nightmare thoughts. “Are you accusing me of being ignorant and superstitious, my lord? I believed you instantly.” Her eyebrows rose, mocking horror. “Are you claiming it is not true love that brings us together in so many darkling hours? My lord, my heart breaks. How could you?”
“I make no such claims,” Javier said promptly. “I would never dream of dashing a lady’s hopes.”
“Unless your mother or uncle instructed you to,” Belinda said wryly, turning again so she could watch the snow fall. The balcony floor was too warm to sustain it, flakes melting where they landed. Turmoil coursing through Javier’s emotions, a chagrined distress at odds with his calm exterior.
“I have no choice, Beatrice,” he said eventually. “What would you have me do? I am who I was born to be.”
“As are we all, my lord. I meant no harm. I know the obligations a man of your station has.”
“Do you?” Javier said. “I wonder how the duties of a minor Lanyarchan noble compare to that of royalty.”
Silent as the snow, Belinda let stillness settle into her bones. The act of Beatrice was too open; she let the stillness go too often in favour of thoughtless, appropriate reaction to the gentility whose class she’d joined. The part was easy to play, far more enjoyable than the serving girl role she was accustomed to taking on. Without the need to hide in plain sight or explain herself to her betters, she could taste a little of what she might have become, in a different world. Wealth and comfort were dangerous; they let her feel free. She hadn’t known the cost of freedom was so high.
Fleetingly, she wondered what Javier would say, if she whispered the truth to him. That her blood was as royal as his, if on the wrong side of the bed. That her duties were as significant as his, all the more so because she might someday make a misstep, and when she was found out her royal mother would not reach out a hand to save her. Belinda couldn’t easily name the emotion that lanced through her belly, could barely form words for the blur of wistfulness and might-have-been that she let herself imagine for a moment. There was no room in her life for daydreams or regret, so little room that she hardly recognized them.
“I think our duties lie heavy on us all at times, my lord. Forgive me. I didn’t mean to cause you distress.” Armoured by stillness, she smiled at the prince. His gaze softened and she lowered her eyes. Oh, yes. Freedom was dangerous. Belinda thought of the letter to her father, still half-finished, and let herself shiver as if with cold. “Forget freedom,” she murmured, knowing she spoke aloud. “With duty, we know our places, my lord. Perhaps there is nothing more we can ask.”