My Lady Jane(28)

He tried to sit up. “I’m fine.”

She pulled away and smiled at him. “Fine. Yes. You are a fine person. My favorite.”

Peter cleared his throat. “You must excuse my daughter, Your Majesty. As I said, she’s been out of human form for a very long while.” He took Pet-the-girl by the hand and tugged her off the bed.

Her brow furrowed. “Have I displeased Your Majesty?”

“No, Pet.” Edward turned toward Peter. “She’s your daughter?”

Peter nodded.

“Are all the dogs in my kennels E?ians?” Edward wanted to know.

“No, Sire. I have three sons and two daughters in the kennel, is all.”

“Oh, is that all?” Edward said wryly, but he couldn’t seem to find his smirk.

“My family has served your family in this way for generations,” Peter said. “We have guarded your palaces and your lands. Sat at your feet. Protected you on the hunt and in the home.”

Pet-the-girl’s chest swelled with pride at her father’s words (not that Edward was noticing anything about her chest), as if the man was reciting an ancient oath.

“I didn’t know,” Edward said. “Why did no one tell me?”

It seemed that he’d been in the dark about so many things.

Peter shook his head. “No one knew, Your Majesty. Not even your father.”

Pet-the-girl was smiling at Edward again. “Your Majesty chose me, out of all the others, to come inside the palace. Your Majesty likes me best.”

“Indeed,” he agreed faintly. This was becoming too much for him. He felt dizzy. The cloudiness was obscuring his thoughts again. He fell back against his pillows and took several deep breaths. His stomach gurgled loudly. He was still hungry, but how could he trust anything anyone offered him? Mistress Penne. Dudley. Boubou. The people he had counted on most were trying to kill him.

He was angry, of course, but more importantly, this just really hurt his feelings.

His eyes burned. “What am I going to do?” he murmured.

He felt Pet-the-girl’s hand come down on his shoulder. “I will keep Your Majesty safe,” she said.

He felt something like a warm breeze on his face, and when he looked up he saw Pet was a dog again. She jumped up on the foot of the bed and lay across his feet.

Edward didn’t know whether or not he should object.





EIGHT


Jane

So. Her husband was a horse.

And no one had told her.

Not her mother, not Edward, and certainly not Gifford. She’d had to find out as it happened and get the details from a servant. Outrageous.

Jane paced the hallway outside Gifford’s bedchambers, listening to the horse clomp around inside. She squeezed the broken stems of her poor, mauled bouquet. It wasn’t that she was opposed to marrying an E?ian. On the contrary, she found that rather exciting. But there was the small matter of Gifford seeming to despise her, and the larger matter of no one telling her.

Well, she couldn’t be sure her mother had known about the equestrian aspects of her husband, and Gifford was a drunken debaucher so of course he couldn’t be expected to tell her the truth. But Edward! Edward had known. He’d said he thought she would find Gifford’s condition intriguing, but where she’d assumed he meant Gifford’s nighttime women habits, now she knew he’d actually meant Gifford’s history of daily horsehood.

From others, that omission would have been forgivable, because others sought only to use her in their schemes and politics. But Edward was her best friend. She had never kept any secrets from her cousin, and his silence on this matter was unpardonable.

And he deserved to know that.

Inside Gifford’s bedchamber, the clomping paused and something decidedly wet sounding plopped on the floor. A rank odor came from the room.

Unacceptable.

Jane hurled her bouquet stems at the door, marched out of Durham House, and ordered a carriage to take her to the palace.

The whole ride there, Jane practiced what she would say to Edward. She would lay out the points for him: the breach in trust, the disappointment, the hurt, and the reminder that she had married this horse boy because he had asked.

Only as she stomped up the palace steps, receiving raised eyebrows from members of the esteemed noble class, did she realize she was still wearing The Gown and all her wedding attire. The Gown rested askew on her chest and hips, and the headdress listed to one side. The plaits in her hair had come undone in her sleep.

Well, it had been very late at night by the time the wedding was over, and there’d been no spare clothes for her in that wretched room, not even a nightgown. Certainly she wasn’t going to sleep naked in the presence of that—that—horse boy.

“My lady.” A nose appeared, Lord Dudley following close behind. “I’m surprised to see you.”

She smoothed back her hair as the duke approached her. “As I’m sure you’ve guessed, my new husband is indisposed right now.”

Lord Dudley grimaced. “Ah, yes. Of course you know about my son’s . . . condition.” Embarrassment flashed across his face, and Jane had the sense he wasn’t used to discussing the equestrian affliction with anyone, and therefore wasn’t used to disguising his feelings on the subject.

She smiled and threw back her shoulders, anxious to take out her frustrations on someone. “Of course I do. He’s quite a magnificent creature, don’t you think? Very strong. Regal. I can see you only purchase the finest quality hay for him. What sort of diet does one feed a beast like that? Horses are herbivores, if I’m not mistaken. But human men can be quite carnivorous. I assume you considered the logistics of a meat diet on a horse stomach years ago, though. I’d be interested to see your research, my lord.”