Page 41 of The Captive's Curse
Another flashing grin, and he snagged one, stuffed it in the side of his coat, and scampered off.
There. I’d made one friend in this place, anyway. When I’d been that age, I’d have fought to the death for anyone who gave me a jam tart, particularly one I’d been forbidden to eat.
No point in denying it. I still would. If someone threatened Beatrice I’d be ready to commit murder. Those tarts smelled like heaven.
And Enzo had sent them to me. He’d gone downstairs, after telling me he’d been wasting his time in bed with me, and he’d strode into the kitchen, admitted to them all that I was in his bed, and given them a list of the ways he wished to indulge me.
I tossed the blankets back and went to fetch my breakfast. The floor didn’t feel nearly as cold as I expected, and outside the window, I almost thought I saw a hint of blue sky.
Perhaps being an unransomed prisoner didn’t need to be so very dreadful after all.
Chapter Fifteen
Greatly refreshed by two pots of tea and some of the best tarts I’d ever eaten, I cleaned up as best I could and got dressed, with my two objectives for the remainder of the day clear in my mind: I’d make another attempt at solving the mysteries that hung over the castle, and I’d find Enzo and…
That part wasn’t so clear. But I knew I meant to be freshly washed, perfumed, and debonair when I tracked him down, rather than flushed, flustered, and half hard.
Every time I glanced at the rumpled bed while I had my breakfast, I flashed back to his weight atop me, the discomfort of my face scrunched into the pillow, the sharp, singing, ecstatic ache of his thick cock driving inside me.
The sooner I left his bedroom the better, obviously—but I’d been far too exhausted last night to look around, and I might never have an opportunity like this again. With a wary glance toward the door and the guard presumably still lurking outside it, I ever-so-carefully eased open the top drawer of the dressing table.
Nothing there but a comb—ha, as if Enzo ever usedthat—and a couple of linen handkerchiefs.
The next drawer down held, in addition to my mounting sense of guilt and shame at going through Enzo’s private effects, another comb (really?) and all the detritus that tended to collect in drawers: a bent copper penny, another handkerchief with a hole in it, a note from Leander that told Enzo he’d gone huntingand asked him to remember to tell the blacksmith to make three shovels.
Truly fascinating. My face burned with embarrassment as I pushed the drawer back in. Gods, I was such an idiot—and a rude, nosy idiot, at that.
The drawer didn’t quite shut all the way.
I rattled it. No, it still didn’t want to slide fully into its housing. Sweat began to bead along my hairline. Another futile shove, horribly conscious of the guard’s no-doubt suspicious presence and the need to be quiet. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Enzo would know I’d been rummaging through his things, and not only would he lock me up to keep me out of trouble, he’d know what a fool I’d been.
But it simply…wouldn’t…dammit. Something must be stuck back there.
Carefully, because if I broke the fucking thing I’d never be able to explain it, I lifted the front of the drawer and eased it up and out. It stuck again, but another wiggle and—it popped almost all the way out, hanging precariously at the edge of the bar beneath it.
I stared open-mouthed, heart hammering.
There had been something at the back of the drawer, but it wasn’t yet another lost comb. It was a hidden compartment. I bent down and peered in, squinting, and wiggled the drawer again. There. The compartment’s front panel had loosened, probably when I shoved the drawer too hard in the first place, and gotten stuck against a slightly protruding nail.
Picking a lock and adjusting a nail were very similar, I told myself several times—and yes. There. A touch of magic, and the nail shimmied and shrank, twisting itself down into the wood.
Holding my breath, I gave the drawer one more gentle tug—and it slid all the way out, allowing me to grasp it and set it on top of the table.
The compartment in the back of the drawer wasn’t very big, only about two inches deep.
It held a small velvet pouch, originally dark green, perhaps, but worn to a shade closer to that of dust, and when I lifted it, it weighed very little. Something clinked inside. With another guilty glance around, I loosened the strings and emptied the contents into my hand.
Two rings lay glinting dully in my palm. One was sized for a woman, a plain and pitted silver band. The other, this one gold, looked like a man’s signet ring, although the square ruby cabochon had been so worn that I could only make out the faintest grooves in its surface.
Had these belonged to Enzo and Leander’s parents? Their mother’s wedding ring, and their father’s signet? If so…then quite possibly “Ser Enzo” really was Ser Enzo, and his current station as a highwayman was below, rather than above, the societal level to which he’d been born. Not that it mattered to me, despite Enzo probably thinking me a terrible snob. It was simply another way for me to get my own back when he raised his eyebrows and manhandled me and treated me like a nuisance.
He’s as Calatrian as I am. Which is to say, formerly and bearing a grudge.
Something had happened to his family, maybe. A misfortune, a feud with another family, or perhaps falling afoul of the late Calatrian Duke Treviso’s cruel and capricious whims, his constant hunts for traitors and rebels among his nobles and soldiers—a self-fulfilling prophecy, as he alienated more and more of them with his paranoia and volatility. Were Enzo’s parents dead? Murdered or executed?
Gods, so much pain and grief and rage could be hidden away in this small velvet pouch in this battered dressing table drawer along with these two rings.
And I’d searched them out, handled them and gawked at them, items that might be all that Enzo had of his family.
