Page 115 of To Pleasure a Prince
She let out a breath. “I need to speak to my husband. Do you know if he’s here?”
“Yes, my lady. He asked not to be disturbed, but…well…he went down to the dungeon about two hours ago, carrying a bottle of Irish whisky and a painting, and frankly, I’m a bit worried.”
He wasn’t the only one worried. The dungeon couldn’t be good for anyone, but especially not a man who’d once spent three days in it.
Then the butler’s other words sank in. “He went down there with a painting?”
“I’m afraid so, my lady. That horrible one of a dragon by Mr. Blake.” He leaned close. “We all hate it. It’s very ugly. But his lordship insists on keeping it in his bedchamber—except when he takes it to the dungeon. Whenever he’s in a foul mood.”
“Right.” He’d once mentioned going to the dungeon to vent his temper. If he’d been closeted down there for two hours, it must be some temper. She swallowed. “All the same, I believe I should go down there.”
The butler led her to the servants’ quarters beneath the main floor, then showed her to a small door set at the end of a gloomy stone hall. “This is the entrance to the stairs. It’s not too far down from there.”
Apprehension skittered along her spine. Joking about a dungeon with Marcus had been one thing; joining him in one after he’d been drinking whisky for two hours and keeping company with some ghastly painting was quite another.
But she’d come this far—“Thank you,” she told the butler, and opened the door.
She had only descended a few steps down the dimly lit stone staircase when a disembodied voice came up from below.
“Leave me be, Louisa. I’ll be fine for your confounded meeting tomorrow, I assure you, but for tonight I want some time to myself, to think over my sins.” His voice dropped. “God knows I have plenty of them to keep me occupied.”
Her heart lurched in her chest. He didn’t sound like a man who’d been drinking. But the despair in his voice was more frightening than any drunkenness.
She quickened her steps until suddenly she burst into a very odd room, about twenty-feet-by-twenty-feet, barely high enough to permit a man to stand erect. Close and cold, it was hewn entirely from stone. A threadbare old chaise longue sat against one wall, looking incongruous amidst the moldy stone and rusting chains.
Waning daylight trickled in from one slit window near the ceiling, but most of the light came from candles. Lots of them. They were perched on stone ledges, inserted in ancient sconces, and lined up in candelabras along the wall. In the middle of them stood Marcus, with his back to her.
This was no place for anyone, not a grown manora child of thirteen. Now that she saw it, she understood much about him that she’d never understood before.
A sudden hatred for his mother—and the prince—flared in her chest. How dared they try to break a mere boy all those years ago by thrusting him down here? They had convinced him he deserved nothing better, and drat him if he didn’t still believe it.
No wonder he tried to gain everything by force. He didn’t think he could gain things any other way. Well, it was time he learned otherwise.
A sudden scrabbling on the floor near her reminded her of what he’d said about rats, and she squealed before she could stop herself.
“Damn it, Louisa,” he snapped as he whirled around, “I told you—”
He stopped short when he caught sight of her. “Regina?” he said hoarsely. Disbelievingly. “What are you doing here?”
Her heart twisted in her chest. He looked haggard, as if he’d slept even less than she had. His beautiful eyes were shadowed by pain. And his whiskers were growing back.
“You forgot to tell your butler to bar the door.”
He flinched. “I didn’t forget.”
It took all her strength not to fly into his arms and tell him everything was fine. But she wasn’t about to act as if nothing had happened. She meant to save his dragonly soul, to make sure he never did anything like this again. To force him out of his cave once and for all.
“Why did you not come to town yourself?” She allowed all her own pain to pour out of her. “Why did you not bring the keys in person instead of sending me some scurrilous letter, drat you?”
He stood there stoically, as if enduring a series of blows. “Because I was afraid you would not forgive me. I said the most horrible things to you—”
“Yes, you did. So you should have at least come in person to apologize.”
Guilt etched his gloomy features. “Quite frankly, I wasn’t sure you’d even see me.” With a weary sigh, he dropped his large frame heavily onto the chaise longue. “And I wouldn’t have blamed you.”
Drat it, Marcus, fight for me.“Is that what you’ve been doing all this time, when you should have been apologizing? Drinking down here in this dungeon, working yourself into a fine brooding?” She walked toward the chaise longue, then spotted the painting he’d been gazing at.
Good Lord. The candlelight cast an unholy light over the ghastly thing. It was not what she’d expected—the usual picture of a scaly dragon with a long, reptilian tail. The dragon was actually a man to whom had been added some reptilian features, reminiscent of Satan himself. Marcus had certainly picked an excellent subject for his brooding.
