Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns #1) - Kendare Blake Page 0,76

to honor the alliance and the interests of the king-consort.

She reaches for the jar, and Katharine tenses, as if Natalia needs to worry.

“Do not spill it on the wood,” Katharine explains, blushing. “It is caustic.”

“Caustic?” Natalia asks. “Who would require such a poison?”

“Not Arsinoe, certainly,” says Katharine. “She may yet have mercy.”

“Mercy,” Genevieve mumbles, listening from her fireside chair.

“Mirabella, then?” Natalia asks.

“They are always saying that she is so beautiful,” Katharine says. “But that is only skin deep.”

She looks up at Natalia so shyly that Natalia laughs and kisses the top of her head.

“Natalia.”

It is her butler, Edmund, standing straight-backed beside the door.

“There is someone here to see you.”

“Now?” she asks.

“Yes.”

Katharine looks from her poison to Genevieve. She has not finished, but does not like to stay when Genevieve is there and Natalia is not.

“That is enough for today,” Natalia says. She pours the poison deftly into a glass vial and plugs it. Then she tosses it into the air and catches it. When she opens her palms to Katharine, the poison is gone, disappeared up her sleeve. An easy trick, and always good for a poisoner to learn. She wishes that Katharine were better at it.

“I will keep it for you to finish later.”

Natalia’s visitor waits for her in her study. It is not an unfamiliar face, but it is unexpected. It is William Chatworth, the father of the first suitor, already seated in one of her wingback chairs. Her favorite one.

“May I offer you a drink?” she asks.

“I brought my own,” he says. He reaches into his jacket and shows her a silver flask. His eyes pass over her bar with contempt. They linger on her brandy, infused with hemlock and with a handsome black scorpion suspended near the bottom.

“That was not necessary,” she says. “We always keep stores of untainted goods for guests.”

“And how many have you accidentally poisoned?”

“None of any consequence,” she says, and smiles. “We have partnered with mainlanders for three generations and never poisoned one who did not already have it coming. Do not be so paranoid.”

In the chair, Chatworth has a familiar, drapey air, as if he owns it. He is just as handsome and arrogant as he was when they first met all those years ago. She leans down and slides her hand over his shoulder and onto his chest.

“Don’t,” he says. “Not today.”

“All business, then. I suppose I am disappointed.” She sinks into the chair opposite. William is a very good lover. But every time she beds him, he seems to think less of her. As if she gives something during the bedding that she does not take back afterward.

“I do love the way you talk,” he says.

She sips her drink. He may love the way she talks. He also loves the way she looks. His eyes never stop moving over her body, even now, as he discusses business. For mainland men, all roads with women lead somehow right back between their legs.

“How did you find my son?” he asks.

“He is a fine young man,” Natalia says. “Charming, like his father. He seemed very fond of Wolf Spring.”

“Don’t worry,” Chatworth says. “He will do as he’s told. Our agreement is still in place.”

Their agreement. Struck so long ago, when Natalia required somewhere for Joseph Sandrin to be banished to. Her friend and lover had been an easy choice. She was not able to kill the Sandrin boy as she would have liked, but she would not be denied everything. There is always something to be gained if one looks hard enough.

“Good,” she says, “It will be well worth it for him to obey. The trade agreements alone will elevate your family beyond reckoning.”

“Yes,” he says. “And the rest?”

Natalia finishes her brandy and rises to pour another.

“You are so squeamish,” she says, and chuckles. “Say the words. ‘Assassinations.’ ‘Murders.’ ‘Poisonings.’”

“Don’t be vulgar.”

It is not vulgar. But she sighs.

“Yes,” she says. “And the rest.” She will kill whoever needs killing, discreetly and from great untraceable distance, as long as their alliance holds. Just as she has, and the Arrons have, for every king-consort’s family.

“But why have you come?” she asks. “So urgent and unexpectedly? It cannot have been just to rehash old bargains.”

“No,” he says. “I’m here because I’ve learned a secret that I don’t like. One that could end all of our well-laid plans.”

“And what is that?”

“I’ve just come from Rolanth, brokering a meeting between my son and Queen Mirabella. And Sara Westwood told me a secret that I don’t think you