The same irksome jealousy she felt at the brothel flooded through her. She shouldn’t have these feelings—especially not one wishing to dunk kind Emma’s face in the cider bowl for merely telling her the story of how Garin might’ve bedded Rupert’s grandmother.
This was stupid. He’d been with others. Adelaide and the like.
Lilac tried to hide her pout and secured her arms around Rupert again. He settled his arms carefully on her upper back.
Who could blame Rupert’s grandmother, honestly? Garin was unbearably charming and an excellent lover. He was almost too good in bed, like there wasn’t another care in the world but the person in front of him.
She gritted her teeth. That personneededto be her. She wiped at her brow and refocused.
Rupert was speaking again. “And the truth is, I pulled you away for a dance because I had a question regarding my area of study.”
“Oh.” Lilac was barely paying attention anymore. Garin’s stare would burn a fucking hole in her forehead. “Go on, let’s hear it, then.”
“Where I might find your scrivener?”
This snapped her out of her haze. “You mean our scribe?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” She wasn’t comfortable with him roaming the castle while off duty, nor chancing him finding John in the library, where her notes were still off limits. “Do you require something to be notarized?”
“N-no, not at the moment.” His hand went to the back of his neck. “I’m not sure there exists anything to sign. I wanted to ask him for clarification on something.”
Lilac stopped swaying and removed her hands from him. “What do you need?”
He shook his head. “It’s really nothing. It’s more a question for him.”
There was movement over Rupert’s shoulder; Garin had stood. He was leaning over to the right of Lilac’s throne, peering at the bottles of alcohol that had been gifted to them.
“My scribe is busy tonight,” she insisted. “What is it?”
Defeated, Rupert wiped his lip and stuck his hands in his coat pockets. “There was a young family I came across in Le Conquet. They were staying at the local tavern-inn after losing their home in a fire, but would soon run out of the funds to maintain their shelter. Just outside the town, there is an unoccupied property of the husband’s great aunt, who’d recently passed on.”
Lilac looked at him like he was crazy. “And you need this resolved right now?”
Rupert’s cheeks flushed, but he quickly collected himself. “Given the nature of my path of study, I offered to help them. At the university, I was told I’d gain the ability to notarize paperwork after my completed third year.”
“You have no current jurisdiction to do so since you’ve only completed two.” She could tell where this was going and disliked feeling like no one trusted her to make the right decisions—from weighing war with marriage, to a petty inheritance matter. She could handle advising a property transfer. Lilac glanced up at Garin. He was pouring himself a cup of the wine he’d picked: a swan-necked amber glass bottle with a paper label. He brought the mug to his lips, his throat moving with an unusual eagerness as he tipped it back.
“Normally the head of their duchy would handle something like this,” Lilac answered. “Unless there was an issue with the natural process of property inheritance. Don’t they know homes are passed by will through male relatives first?
“That’s the issue, Your Majesty. The husband is his aunt’s last surviving relation, male or female, but he wasn’t named in her papers. Either she wasn’t prepared or didn’t intend to name him at all. It was an untimely demise.”
“That’s a shame. Then they have no immediate right to the property. Vacant properties eventually go to the owner of the fief—its presiding earl or baron.” Lilac couldn’t remember who was in charge in Le Conquet; the coast was littered with smaller towns, making their administrations more difficult to keep track of than those inland. “The home belongs to the head of the duchy until the property is redistributed to them by the magistrate’s contract—or sold to someone else. The family you mention is welcome to bid for the home.”
“That is a shame,” Rupert replied, but his brows floated above his twinking eyes, which shifted to the door, then back. “I’ll see to it that they’re notified.”
This was common knowledge, nothing he’d need John for, and something she shouldn’t have had to explain to a third-year university student. There was something familiar about the shift in Rupert’s eyes, the wiggle in his peppered brown beard. Lilac couldn’t place it, and was about to askwhen she felt a sudden tug in her chest. She looked up at Garin and felt her body react before she even registered the way he looked at her.
Mug in hand, he lounged back in the chair. His shoulders were relaxed, his eyes anything but bored or even amused.
They were hungry.
Her chest prickled with heat. She couldn’t tear her gaze away when Garin ran his tongue against his bottom lip, wiping the dribble of wine away. She couldn’t help but think of placing herself upon the spread before him.
Through the heat and pull of his magic, even she knew it was a bad idea.
Rupert was staring at Garin. Then he turned to her, an expression of slight alarm on his face. “Your Majesty?”
