“Then do not ask it of me,” she said, moving away from him to go fuss over the outfit on the wooden mannequin.
“I shall,” he said defiantly. “You must hear it and then decline. You’re free to say no, but I will ask you because it is the only way…” He trailed off. She refused to look at him at first, but at his continued silence she stilled her hands and met his gaze.
“The only way to what?” she caved.
“To keep what we have,” he said, making the tightness in her chest release for the second time in less than ten minutes. He wasn’t going to pronounce some sort of divide between them. And still, she didn’t know what to say. “We’ll get to see each other every day and I can more easily… There will be a precedent for me to have you… That is to say that there would be a reason for me to see you in private, which… wouldn’t…”
“Get to your point, Mal, please,” she interrupted, tensing with every failed attempt he presented her with.
“I wish you on my council,” he stated.
She stared at him, then began to shake her head, even as he raised his hands and approached her. His face was calm, his stance one of persuasion, but her headshaking merely intensified until she put her hands up to wield him off and skirted around the wooden mannequin to get away from him.
“No!” she exclaimed. “Have you lost your mind? Absolutely not. It would be a scandal.”
“How?” he asked. “No, really, I want to know how it would be, when you have been by my side always.”
“Yes, but that is just it,” she said. “Can’t you see that they…? The gossip would not be that you have elevated me far beyond my allotted station in life, but that I have… schemed and…”
She felt her cheeks begin to burn at the fact that she was going to have to say it.
“And?” he asked, a mildly amused expression in his eyes that made her want to hit him, albeit not terribly violently. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to bruise.
“That I haveseducedyou,” she finished. A smile split his face then, and it was too self-satisfied for her liking. “Or that you have seduced me,” she added defiantly.
“I am expected to seduce my maids,” he retorted casually. “Thatis not a source for scandal.”
At that she did punch him in the arm. He made a pained face, grasping the spot, but she doubted sincerely if it would leave a bruise, especially since she didn’t feel nearly as angry as she should. If she was honest, a part of her found the whole idea a farse.
“You are not supposed to make the maid one of your closest advisors!” she barked, even though a giggle followed. “Stop it, it’s not funny,” she said feebly.
“I’m not laughing,” he said, but the smile remained, and his hands found hers. “You are the person I trust most in this world to keep me in check and to always,alwaystell me the truth. Iona. Please. Say that you will accept this request from your future king.”
Goosebumps spread up her arms again, this time due to how he had titled himself in a manner he never did. He never called himself king. This had to mean that he felt ready. His father’s seal of approval had pushed him across a line he had never dared look at before and now he stood before her soon to be a ruling monarch. And he was asking her to join him by his side, through thick and thin. It was not merely a favor between friends. It was an honor he was bestowing on her.
And it told her exactly what she meant to him.
Her hearts were beating hard in her chest, but she returned his smile.
It did what she’d hoped it would as his arms went around her again, pulling her to him and leaning back to lift her off the floor. His scent was in her nostrils and her head was dizzy with the prospect of what the future now might hold for her.
“This is crazy,” she laughed as they pulled apart again, her hands back on his shoulders, his at her waist.
She had almost forgotten that they still had not discussed the mating bond he was expected to enter into in order to secure the crown.
Almost.
“It is as far from crazy as you can get,” he said. “I cannot do this without you.”
“You can,” she disagreed. “I have every faith that you can do anything you set your mind to. With or without me.”
“But everything is a little better and a little easier with you there,” he smiled, reaching up and brushing at a lock that had come loose from her braid. He fastened it tenderly behind her ear and, when his eyes met hers again her stomach swooped. Her gaze drifted to his mouth, but she caught herself and followed through by letting it drift past his lips to his shoulder and then away from him as she turned and stepped out of his arms.
“And your father?” she asked. “Have you asked him?”
“Not yet,” he admitted, but she knew why he felt secure in his father approving this turn of events. His father was a kind man and a good king who had never frowned at their friendship. In fact, he had encouraged it at every turn. He would support her in the role of advisor to the king as much as he had supported her in the role of personal maid to the prince.
“There is the first state dinner this evening,” Malcolm stated unnecessarily.
