This Time, I Accept Your Brother's Claim novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: The Climber

Auden's hands came up and closed on her wrists.

He pulled her arms off his neck and shoved her back, hard, one step, two.

She bumped into a canoe on its rack and caught herself.

"What the hell, Lucinda?" he said.

He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth.

Then he saw me in the door.

His face went through about six things at once.

"Elspeth. She came in for the oars, she said she..."

"I saw," I said.

"I didn't..."

"I saw you push her off, Auden. I've got eyes."

He shook his head, disgusted.

Lucinda smoothed her hair.

She wasn't embarrassed. She wasn't anything.

She looked at me the way she'd looked at me through the bars of the east wing, with her head on one side.

"He's sweet when he's shocked," she said.

"Get out," Auden said.

"I'm going."

She walked toward the door, toward me, and stopped close enough that I could smell the rosewater and the dry herbs under it.

"You can't have both of them, you know," she said softly. "It's greedy."

"I don't want both of them. You can have the one you've got."

She smiled.

"I don't want a prince. Princes are everywhere."

She leaned in.

"I want the King. Whoever he is."

"Even if he's nineteen and doesn't want you?"

"They never want me at first," she said. "Ask Piers."

She brushed past my shoulder and went out into the dark.

I heard her heels on the dock, unhurried.

Auden was standing between the canoes with his hands hanging.

"I swear to you..."

"I know."

"She just grabbed me. I was getting the..."

"Auden. I know."

I picked up the towels from the shelf by the door.

I was very calm.

My wolf was not calm. She was pacing so hard I could feel her claws in my chest.

"She'll try again," I said. "Not with you, maybe. With something."

"Then we tell Piers."

"Yes," I said. "We do."

The royal family breakfasted together on Sundays in the small dining room off the terrace.

Eggs, ham, coffee, the newspaper split five ways.

I'd eaten in that room every Sunday for fifty years, in silence, at the far end of the table.

This time I walked in with Auden and didn't sit down.

The twins looked up from a fight over the sports page.

The second prince lowered his coffee.

Piers sat by the window with the business section and didn't lift his eyes.

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