When Rupert heard Winter’s supposed secret, he was stunned. In the history of secrets that one had to be the most fantastical, amazing, and almost unbelievable secret anyone could ever share.
Of course, it wasn’t “supposed” – it was very definitely a secret – and Winter had done a darn good job of keeping what he did private, as had the entirety of the Martingale royal family, it would seem.
Rupert didn’t care about the ethics or otherwise behind Winter keeping something so important from him before they got married. It wasn’t as though he’d given Winter any chance to discuss anything with him before they exchanged their vows.
But none of that was important now. Somehow, even though it had absolutely never happened to Rupert before, he had hit the lottery. He had gained his heart’s desire and purpose in the form of the gorgeous man sitting across from him.
There were so many questions going through his mind, but all he could think to do was stare at Winter in case he suddenly vanished, and Rupert would realize he was dreaming. “It’s so hard to believe,” he said slowly. “I can’t believe it, and yet I can if that makes sense. It’s as if I found out one thing about you, and suddenly there are another dozen layers all sitting underneath. That conversation we had, about images and how you make your image work for you… It made sense at the time, but now doubly so.”
“I can see where you would think that, yes.” Winter nodded.
“All this time you’ve been portraying yourself as...as...” Rupert remembered some of the rude comments that his own friendshad made about his husband. “As someone who comes across a little frivolous,” he added quickly, refusing to slur his husband. “I’m stunned there is so much behind the persona you show to the world.”
Winter’s perpetual grin widened. He was still cradling his drink, but he had relaxed back in his chair. “You can understand why something like this needed to be a secret,” he said. “There are many aspects of life that a lot of people would not understand. Maintaining my persona the way I have allows others to make assumptions about me that have never bothered me. Those assumptions give people a feeling of safety and security – as if they have assigned me to a particular box and are happy with me there. It makes them comfortable to be around me. Does that make sense?”
Nodding, Rupert twisted the side of his lip. “My friends did something similar to me, as we’ve previously discussed.”
“Exactly, I knew you’d understand, Rupert dear. Those assumptions from your friends allowed you to keep people at a distance. For me, the perceptions people had of me gave me the opportunity to get close to them without ever being taken seriously. It allowed me to continue the work my family and I value. And that is the way it has to be. You do see that, don’t you, my dear? None of what I shared this evening, or anything we might do together going forward, can ever be discussed with anyone.”
“Who do you think I would tell?” Rupert shook his head. “At the risk of being inappropriate, if I mentioned any of this to the people you had the misfortune to meet the other day, they would write you off as a raving nutcase, and they wouldn’t believe me.”
“That’s actually an advantage – knowing people wouldn’t believe us if we told them. But you did believe, and for that I am trulygrateful – and relieved. Exceptionally relieved, if that makes you feel any better.” Winter chuckled. “But yes, that was it, this is me. Incidentally, in case you were wondering if my siblings are in the habit of forming marriage bonds without telling the secret to their intended, we usually disclose the nature of our work before the vows are exchanged.”
Winter glanced at the door. “Unfortunately, there wasn’t an opportunity to do that with you. Sigmund and Pippin are probably lurking in the hallways even as we speak, waiting for you to exit my room with a roar about the injustice you’ve suffered from tying yourself to someone who clearly doesn’t have full command of their faculties, putting us in a position where we would probably have to pack up and leave.”
“I don’t want you to leave,” Rupert said quickly. “I don’t want that ever. Nope, I definitely don’t want that. Winter, I feel I need to declare myself here, although I’m not very good at expressing this sort of thing specifically. I find myself having...having…” He choked as a lump hit his throat. He swallowed, trying to keep it down and still get his words out.
“I find myself having intense feelings about you, thinking about you when we’re not together, wondering what you’re doing, hoping that you are well. I’m not explaining this very eloquently, but recently my feelings toward you have changed, and I feel very strongly about you and our marriage.”
Rupert watched anxiously as Winter reached up and stroked his brooch.Will he reject me? Think I’m ridiculous?
“I know that we didn’t have the best first meeting, Rupert dear, and I admit I believed your original treatment of me was callous. But by the time we exchanged our vows, I knew that abrupt way of dealing with people was how you interacted with everyone, so I knew not to take it personally. Honestly, it suited us to have amember of the family in this part of the country, so your offer to marry me was a happy coincidence at the time.
“Should you have kept up with the way you had behaved immediately after we got married - going out and attending your social events and what have you… Well, I think you can understand now why that wouldn’t have bothered me overly much. I have enough to keep me busy. Our marriage would’ve lasted anyway if that situation had stayed the same. However, you seem to be making an effort for me, which I genuinely appreciate, and it is only fair and right to do the same for you. If you feel betrayed by my keeping secrets in any way…”
“No,” Rupert interrupted quickly. “No, I don’t feel betrayed at all. I definitely understand why you didn’t feel the need, or felt you were unable to confide in me before now. I feel stupid, definitely stupid for dismissing you based on the appearance of a person who caught my eye at the Monce coronation. That was unfair, uncalled for, and definitely a case of my making a snap judgment and going with my more reckless instincts.” He grinned and clicked his fingers, pointing one at Winter. “This is one time that it worked for me, can you believe it? It actually worked for me, and I’m overjoyed.”
Winter shared his laugh. “I’m really thankful you approve,” he said. “But I can’t stress enough just how serious the secret keeping business is. What we do, how we do it, the way we do it, and why. It is so vitally important that our mission is never shared outside of the Martingale family. You can understand that, I’m sure.”
His husband was right. “I can see now why there was a delay in telling me anything as well. Trust. I realized that you trusted me when you shared your secret. I don’t think anybody’s given me a gift like that before.” Even as Rupert said the words, he knew that they were true.
“There have always been people who chatter around me. But in matters of the heart, important concerns, or anything like that, I was never considered somebody that could be confided in. I understand that it’s because of my aloof nature and how I kept myself from getting too close to others. I haven’t felt the need to share myself, who I truly am, because… Well, you know why.”
“I do,” Winter said. “I know you don’t believe it about yourself, Rupert dear, but you have shown me, just in these past few days, what a deeply complex and interesting person you are. You might have kept that side of yourself from others, but you shared that with me, and it’s truly encouraged me to see you in a far more interesting light.”
He thinks I’m interesting.Rupert knew that for his husband, that was very important, and it gave him the confidence to say, “I have spent my whole life faking a confidence in the hope people wouldn’t realize that half the time I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Ah, and when it comes to chasing gryphons, for example, you won’t know what you’re doing,” Winter countered. “But that’s fine. We will train, you and I, together. I know you don’t realize it, but we will train hard, and most of that training will be when we’re working on jobs. It is vitally important, in the type of work the Martingale family does, that all of us know what we’re doing as best we can. I trust that if you come out with me on my next job, which will probably be tomorrow…”
“Tomorrow?” Rupert was keen, but he would’ve liked a few more details before he followed his husband into what was likely to be a dangerous situation.
Winter shrugged. “I wish it were something I could put off, but when a missive from the World Council arrives, then in most cases I have to act fairly quickly. The gryphon I captured and sent to the council was very young. He would’ve had parents inthis area. I need to capture that pair and send them onto the World Council as well.”
“What will happen to them, after they get to the World Council, I mean?” Rupert had been wondering about that, remembering how Winter had asked about what happened to the carcasses of the animals that he and his friends used to hunt. Now Rupert was wondering what happened to the creatures Winter captured, especially as Winter had been adamant they weren’t killed.
“As I said, they get relocated,” Winter explained. “This particular branch of the World Council set policies in place decades ago, decreeing that the different hidden creatures in the world were to remain in their established territories in the majority of cases – territories they inhabited well before humans came along.
“Wherever possible, those areas are respected, and stragglers or those who leave the area for whatever reason are returned there. In the odd cases where there might be valid reasons for a move in territories, they are relocated to an area that is most suitable for the way those creatures live. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but there are vast areas of the known world, in every country, that remain uninhabited.”
