Broken Dove (Fantasyland #4)(13)
His eyes roamed me top to toe swiftly then they locked on mine and he announced, “I’ve left the children at the house in Benies. Since they’re prepared to travel and you must wait for your garments to be completed, and”—he threw out a hand— “anything else you need to acquire, they will be away by ship tomorrow and I’ll be with them. I’ve men in Benies. They’re trained, talented, loyal and trustworthy. They will arrive in the morning and when you’re ready, they’ll take you through Fleuridia and the Vale, you’ll board a ship there and sail the rest of the way to Lunwyn under their guard.”
I would?
Alas, I thought this question. I did not ask it out loud nor did I say anything fast enough to get it in before he went on.
“Now, do you have any questions?” he asked.
Did I have any questions?
Was he insane?
“Well…yes,” I answered then all the questions I had crashed into my brain. There were a lot of them and I couldn’t get a lock on a single one so I quit talking.
The impatience hit his handsome face.
“Ilsa, I have little time. I wish to be back to Benies before the children go to bed and it’s an hour’s ride.”
I caught a thought and shared, “I…well, I have a slight problem. No one here understands me. I don’t speak the language.”
His head cocked sharply to the side. “You don’t speak Fleuridian?”
“Uh…no.”
He righted his head and declared, “Valentine speaks Fleuridian.”
She did?
It must be full on French then. Or she spent a lot of time here.
“Well, I don’t,” I replied.
His eyes flashed before he continued. “Ilsa’s father was from Fleuridia. She was fluent in both Fleuridian and the language of the Vale.”
I had no idea what he was talking about but I thought it important to cautiously and thoughtfully point something out.
So, gently, I said, “I’m not her.”
His eyes swept me again before locking on mine, whereupon he stated roughly, “This, I know,” in a way that felt not-so-vaguely like an insult.
It was so not-so-vaguely that in delivering that line, it felt like he’d delivered a blow.
A blow that made my head twitch but he either didn’t catch it or decided to ignore it and he kept talking.
“This matters not. My men speak the language of the Vale which is spoken throughout the Northlands, except in Fleuridia.”
“Oh…well, okay,” I murmured.
“You have other questions?” he prompted, raising a dark, thick eyebrow, every line of his body indicating he wanted to be anywhere but there.
“About a million of them,” I told him and he pulled in a sharp, annoyed breath through his nostrils.
“I don’t have time for a million questions, Ilsa,” he stated.
I took a step toward him and stopped, but lifted a hand. “Apollo, I’m kind of at a loss here. Your world is not like my world, like, in any way. Sure, we have tuna and you have tuna—”
Another sharp c**k of the head accompanied by his brows snapping together and he cut me off to ask, “Tuna?”
Right, they didn’t call it tuna.
Moving on.
I lifted my hand higher and circled it, “It doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is, things are very different here and I’ve been thrown in the deep end—”
Another brow draw but this one was ominous.
“You’d have me send my children on a journey such as this without me accompanying them?”
“No,” I replied quickly. “But just pointing out, I don’t know what kind of journey that is seeing as I don’t know anything.”
He jerked up his chin and said, “I will talk with my men. They’ll explain things to you.”
“But—”
“You’ll be safe with them.”
“Okay, but—”
“And I’ll have time to explain things to the children, prepare them for your arrival.”
“And that would be—”
“Now, if there’s nothing more,” he stated, his body moving as if he was preparing to leave.
Yes.
He was barely letting me get a word in edgewise and preparing to leave!
So much for Valentine saying he wouldn’t want to be separated from me.
I took two more quick steps toward him, calling swiftly, “Wait!”
He settled but he didn’t look happy about it.
“Ilsa—”
“You can’t just bring me here and then leave me here.”
“You’d rather be with a man who kicks you?” he asked curtly.
“No, of course not. That’s not what I’m—”
“You’re safe from him here. You’ll be safe from what’s happening here with my men. Then you’ll be home with the children and you can settle.”
Oh shit.
“Maybe we can talk about that,” I hurried to say.
“We shall. I’ll meet your sleigh in the village outside my estate and we’ll have a discussion before you meet the children.”
My sleigh?
“Now, I’m away,” he murmured, turning to leave, his cape swinging out behind him and it was cool, that cape and how it moved with him, and weirdly hot at the same time.