I Accidentally Slept With My Future Brother In Law novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Ink and Rings

Elinor signs her betrothal to the cold Prime Minister with Alistair watching, then they have it out in a window bay, until he shows her the empty chest the King's tea came in, stamped with the Pellow seal.

He looked at me for one breath.

Then he looked up at the painted ceiling, adding up exactly how much trouble he was in.

I could have told him. All of it.

"Miss Elinor Pellow," the Duke read, "to His Highness Prince Bertrand."

A clerk carried a writing desk to the foot of the dais.

The contract lay open on it, three pages thick, ribbons and red wax already waiting.

Bertrand signed first.

He wrote his name in small square letters, blotted it, and checked the blot.

Then he held the pen out to me.

"Take your glove off," he said. "You'll smudge it."

I peeled the glove down to my fingertips and pulled it free.

The whole throne room got a look at my brown nails.

Father made a sound.

I signed Elinor Pellow under the Prime Minister's name, and my hand didn't shake.

Across the desk, Alistair hadn't moved.

He stood beside Blanche with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the pen in my fingers.

When I set it down, a muscle jumped in his jaw.

Then it was his turn.

He signed fast, one slash and a flourish.

Blanche signed after him, slow and neat, and didn't look at him once.

The Duke of Ellesmere clapped his thin hands together.

"A toast," he said. "To the house of Pellow, and to the King's own imperial green, supplied by our new kinsman, Sir Oswin."

Footmen came down the line with silver trays of tiny porcelain cups.

I knew the color before the tray reached me.

Green like a new front door.

Father drank his in one swallow.

Everyone drank.

Blanche raised hers to her lips.

I stepped hard on her foot.

She looked at me, then at my face, and lowered the cup an inch.

A potted orange tree stood beside us in a blue tub.

I tipped my tea into its soil and held up the empty cup to the Duke with my best smile.

When I turned back, the Crown Prince was emptying his into a vase of lilies.

Our eyes met over the rims.

He looked away first.

The court broke up into knots of silk and gossip.

Father went to stand beside the Duke, laughing too loudly at something nobody else found funny.

I waited a few moments, told Blanche I needed air, and walked out into the long gallery.

A hand closed on my elbow.

It pulled me sideways through a velvet curtain into a window bay, and the curtain swung shut behind us.

Leaded glass. An oak window seat. A Crown Prince.

He let go of my arm.

"You let me think you were the apothecary," I said.

"You let me think you were a maid."

"I never said I was a maid."

"You came down the servants' stairs in a wrapper with your sleeves rolled and told me how to boil water."

"You told me you saw to what he drinks."

"I do." He dragged a hand back through his hair and ruined all the combing. "Nobody else will."

"You told me my sister was sensible."

"That's what they told me. Is she?"

"She's the most sensible woman in the kingdom. She'd have known exactly who you were."

"And you told me my brother had never smiled in his life."

"Has he?"

He opened his mouth, then shut it.

"Not that I've seen," he admitted.

For one second the corner of his mouth went up, and so did mine, and it was the worst thing that could have happened.

I looked at the glass instead.

"You signed very nicely," he said quietly.

"So did you."

"I didn't. I nearly put the pen through the paper."

The curtain stirred in a draft from the gallery.

We both went still until it settled.

"Three months," he said, lower. "I've been brewing his leaf at midnight and writing down every cup."

He stared at the leaded glass.

"He's been sick for a year. He's worse after breakfast, every time. I couldn't name it."

Then he looked back at me.

"You named it in one mouthful."

"Then why did your whole court just drink it?"

"Because I can't prove a thing, and the man who buys it read out your name this morning."

"The Duke."

"My cousin Mortimer. Lord Chamberlain. Royal Purveyor. Every bill for my father's table crosses his desk."

"You said you'd stop the King drinking it today."

"I tipped the caddy into the river at dawn."

His mouth went flat.

"By eight it was full again, sealed, sent up from the Purveyor's office."

I thought about the paper twist in my pocket, the pinch I'd stolen on my way out.

"Go to the King," I said.

"I've been to the King. He thinks I'm in a hurry for his chair."

Then he looked at me for a long moment.

"I have to show you something," he said. "And then I have to ask you a question, and you'll answer it."

He crouched and lifted the lid of the window seat.

Inside, under a folded rug, lay a small wooden tea chest, lead-lined and empty.

"This is what the King's green came in this month," he said. "I took it out of the Purveyor's storeroom myself."

He turned the end of the chest toward the light.

Burned into the wood was a single tea leaf inside a letter P.

I had pressed that brand into a thousand chests since I was twelve years old.

It was ours.

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