Page 69 of Company of Thieves
“Holy shit,” she said, pausing before they entered the mess, turning to him. “That’s right, you’re a prince, even if you told your dad that you were done being Akbar. Does that mean I’m a princess? A real one? Like, is there a crown? Can I make Jack call me ‘Your Highness’? Please tell me I can do that, because that is going to make up for years of being tormented by an older brother.”
The bubble of laughter rose in him again. “Yes, yes, no, but you may have my share of my mother’s jewels, and I believe there is a tiara in there, and the correct form of address would be ‘Your Imperial Highness.’”
“Holy shit,” she repeated, giggling when he pinched her on the behind. “Jack!” she said loudly when entering the mess. “You’re never going to guess! I’m an Imperial Highness! So you can stick that in your plebeian pipe and smoke it.”
“Oh, god,” Jack said, rolling his eyes before he frowned at Alan. “I told you not to mention that to her! Now she’s never going to stop lording it over me.”
“That’s Imperial Highnessing it over you, brother mine.”
“She asked,” Alan answered Jack, taking a seat next to Hallie at the long table. “You can’t expect me to deny her anything she wants, can you?”
“That’s right, suck it, nontitled brother,” Hallie said, putting her hand on Alan’s thigh in a gesture of possessiveness that delighted him.
“Hallie!” Octavia said in an outraged voice.
“Sorry. Got a little carried away. Are we ready to talk about William, and how he’s setting an obvious trap for Alan?” She looked around the table, accepting the glass of soda water that Mr. Ho placed before her, while looking wistfully at the ale that Mr. Francisco passed around before he left the room.
“What’s this about a trap?” Jack frowned. “I won’t say I have forgiven Alan here for not bothering to mention the fact that he was one of our most hated enemies, but Octavia swears he isn’t pulling some sort of devious Moghul trick on us, and as he and Hallie are now married, I supposed it’s best for him to remain alive.”
“Just so you know, Alan says that Octavia knew all along who he was,” Hallie pointed out, brushing a bit of nothing off her sleeve. “And she didn’t tell you, either.”
“That’s different,” Jack said while Octavia made more outraged noises, glaring at Hallie. “My darling Octavia is an honorable woman who takes seriously a promise to keep a secret, even when it’s obvious that she would clearly rather bare her soul to her much-loved husband.”
Octavia, who had stopped glaring at Hallie, now cast a startled glance at Jack before adopting an expression of noble regret at not being able to tell all the secrets she held.
Hallie snorted, then surprised Alan by giggling and leaning into him to whisper, “Aren’t they adorable together? I love riling Jack up so he gets defensive of Octavia. I think it’s good for her to know just how much he loves her.”
“You truly are not jealous of her?” he asked, not wanting to stir trouble with regard to his own past relationship with Octavia, but more than a little amazed. Hallie, he imagined, would not have the slightest hesitation in being jealous should he cast more than the most innocent glance toward any other woman, and yet after an initial flare-up over Octavia, she seemed to accept it with an equanimity that both surprised and pleased him. “Of the past that we shared? Jack has issues with that.”
“I told you—what we did before we met each other doesn’t matter. So long as you aren’t pining for her, or any other ex-girlfriend, then no, I don’t mind about your past with her any more than you care about all of the men I’ve been with before I met you.”
All of the men... the phrase reverberated around his head in a distinctly unpleasant manner, and although Jack was asking for information about what William had said to them, Alan suddenly had a desire to know just who were all the men to whom Hallie alluded. He wasn’t being unreasonable or jealous, he told himself; it was simply a matter of him having at hand the information needed should he be, sometime in the foreseeable future, called upon to beat those men to a bloody pulp. “Do you happen to have a list of their names and locations?” he asked Hallie, ignoring the fact that everyone at the table was waiting for his response. “And while we are on this subject, how many men are on that list?”
“Oh, are we getting to numbers now? Are you sure you want to go there, you, a man who had a harem that you had to dismiss when we hooked up?” She took a sip of her soda water, looking as beatifically innocent as a Madonna.
“Alan, perhaps you could tell us what William said to you while we wait for Safie and her new husband,” Jack asked again.
“I didn’t have a harem,” he told her.
“You said you did! You said you were going to dismiss them when I told you that I didn’t share,” she protested.
“That’s because you were so insistent that I had one. I don’t. I never have. Unlike my father, I don’t hold with the idea of having a group of women in thrall to me. I would hope by now you would realize that about me.”
“Alan?” Jack frowned at him.
“I do now, of course,” she said with blithe disregard of the fact that she clearly didn’t know for certain. “I wouldn’t have married a man who was liable to have vast hordes of women thundering around his bedroom at any given moment.”
“Hallie,” he said in chastisement.
She smiled. “All right, I may have originally believed you had a small harem, but that was only because Akbar was just the type to have one. It seemed prudent to ask you to make sure you were going to disband yours. You wouldn’t want me if I was still seeing all my previous boyfriends, would you?”
“Of course not. And you will please provide me with a list of their names and where they live.” The words emerged from his lips having been ground through his teeth.
“Alan? Did you not hear Jack’s request?” Octavia asked. “As Safie and Zand appear to be ... er ... delayed ... perhaps we could begin without them, since time is limited?”
“Now who’s jealous?” Hallie asked him, smiling sweetly at the table in general.
“I am not jealous. It is purely for your protection that I wish to locate and puni—er ...meetwith your former lovers so that I might make sure they are of no threat to our future.”
