Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns #1) - Kendare Blake Page 0,63

face, it was not his idea. He has been thrown into the wolves’ den. But there are worse houses for a mainlander to stumble into. Many of the Arrons have had close contact with the last king-consort. Of all the families on the island, they have the most knowledge of the mainland and its customs.

Aside from a stiff bow and an introduction, he and Katharine have not spoken. He has spent most of the evening talking with Cousin Lucian, but now and again, Katharine raises her head and finds him studying her.

The meal is served: seared pink medallions of meat with a sliver of golden baked potato tart. Untainted, of course. The Arrons do their best to look impressed, though only those who are terribly hungry will do more than pick at it.

Genevieve takes Katharine by the arm and digs her fingers in deep. “Do not make a pig of yourself,” she says, “just because there is no poison in it.”

To further make the point, she twists the skin inside Katharine’s elbow. It hurts so badly that Katharine nearly cries out. Tomorrow there will be a dark black bruise to be covered by sleeves and gloves.

Across the table, Pietyr watches with a tightened jaw. He looks ready to leap across their dinner plates and wrap his hands around Genevieve’s neck. Katharine catches his eye, and he seems to relax. He was right, after all. It is only until the Chatworth boy leaves. Then Genevieve will be banished again.

After the dinner is over, with the food pushed back and forth to appear as though eaten, Natalia moves the party into the drawing room. Edmund serves the digestif, which must be poisoned, for the Arrons flock to it like birds to a crust of bread. A maid carries a silver tray with a green bottle and two glasses: something special for the queen and her suitor.

“Let me,” Katharine says. She takes the bottle by the neck and the glasses by the stems. Across the room, Cousin Lucian sees her coming and bows away from the Chatworth boy’s side.

“Will you take a drink, William Junior?” she asks.

“Of course, Queen Katharine.”

She pours for them both, and the champagne sparkles and fizzes.

“You may call me Katharine, if you’d like,” she says. “Or even only Kat. I know that the full title can be a mouthful.”

“I’m not used to saying it,” he says. “I should have practiced.”

“There will be plenty of time for that.”

“And please, call me Billy. Or William. Some folk here have taken to calling me Junior, but I would rather it didn’t spread.”

“It is a strange custom, naming the child the same as the parent. Almost as if the parent hopes to one day inherit the body.”

They chuckle together.

“According to my father, a fine enough name can be used again,” he says.

Katharine laughs. She looks around the room. “Everyone is watching us and pretending that they are not. I would not have chosen to meet you this way.”

“Oh?” he says. “What way would you have preferred?”

“On a trail somewhere, on a fine spring day. On horses so that you would have to prove your mettle by catching me.”

“You don’t think that my coming here on my own proves my mettle?”

“That is true,” she says. “It most certainly does.”

He is nervous, and drinking fast. Katharine refills his glass.

“The Arrons have lived here a long time,” he says, and Katharine nods.

The Arrons are entrenched at Greavesdrake. And it is more than their poisons and their morbid artwork on the walls—still lifes of butchered meat and flowers, and black snakes curled around nudes. They have seeped into the manor itself. Now every inch of wood and shadow is also a part of them.

“Of course, the Arrons’ ancestral estate lies in Prynn,” Katharine says. “Greavesdrake Manor is the rightful home of the stewards of the queen, and it goes as the queen goes.”

“You mean that if Arsinoe becomes queen, the Milones would live here?” Billy closes his mouth quickly over the question, as if he has been instructed not to mention her sisters’ names.

“Yes,” Katharine replies. “Do you think they would like it? Do you think it would suit them?”

“No,” he answers, and raises his eyes to the high ceilings, the tall windows obscured with velvet drape. “I think they’d be more likely to live in tents in the yard.”

Katharine blurts laughter. Real laughter, and her eyes find Pietyr’s, out of guilt. He has drawn away into the far corner, pretending to listen to the council concerns