Total pages in book: 208
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
“But—” Vanka started, no color in her face, none at all.
However, as far as he was concerned, for the moment, this matter was concluded.
“You may now leave, and if you don’t, I’ll have my men remove you.”
With that, he took hold of his wife and moved her into the drawing room.
Once there, he shut the door.
It took a moment before Silence spoke, and when she did, it was in a careful tone.
“Perhaps you could have allowed her to have her say?”
“And what do you think she would say, piccolina?” he demanded, crossing his arms on his chest.
Silence, her head tipped far back to keep hold on his eyes, pressed her lips tight.
She knew what her mother would have to say and that was nothing good, for it might be a surprise the maids were spying on them and reporting back to her father, but it was not a surprise why they’d been chosen and what they’d preliminarily been asked to achieve.
In fact, those three were such bloody awful maids, it would further not surprise Mars to learn they were not maids at all, and maybe they were even prostitutes, before they came to Cord Cottage.
“I wish you to be done with them and never see them again,” Mars shared his thoughts on the matter of her parents. “However, they are not my mother and father, so I will now listen to your feelings on the subject.”
She tipped her head to the side. “Is now a good time for us to discuss this?”
“It isn’t, for I am livid, and it is, for I am livid, and as such, I feel quite strongly about arguing to get my way.”
They had not stopped far from each other.
But she came closer, pressing the front of her body to his, and she lifted a hand to take Piccola from his shoulder.
Her eyes were dancing through these movements, and although he enjoyed that dance, he found nothing amusing about this situation in the slightest.
And in order to communicate this to his wife, although he very much wished to wrap his arms around her, he kept them crossed.
Piccola dashed under his hair and around the back of Mars’s neck to perch on his other shoulder, stating quite clearly she did not want to be taken from her papa.
Silence let their pet have her way and rested both hands on his chest above his arms in a way, Mars did not fail to miss, she seemed not to care he was set on communicating his irritation.
He much liked that his queen showed no fear when he was angry.
And it was tremendously annoying.
“I would like, at least, my mother to have a say,” she told him quietly.
“I will grant that.”
Her face softened.
“The maids were doing as instructed,” he went on. “They are not overly skilled, but we will only remain in these lodgings for a short time. Finding, hiring and training new to be in our employ would be a waste of time for the two days we will stay in this cottage. Further, it would take from other pursuits and you having this boon to be in your element and enjoy it. You won’t be back here for a very long time. I will have a word with them. I will pay them from my own purse, something I should have done from the bloody beginning. And their loyalties should then revert to us. But in the end, this is your decision. If you don’t feel safe around them, they will be dismissed.”
“I was thinking of possibly giving Tril the run of them,” she told him. “She’ll keep them in line and watch them like a hawk.”
“This is your decision, so it will be.”
She studied him closely before asking, “How angry are you still?”
“Insanely.”
“My darling king,” she murmured, her eyes warm on him, her words treasured, even if her lips were quirking.
And suddenly, he was angry no more.
He uncrossed his arms, slid them around her and pulled her nearer.
Only then did Piccola dash down his chest to disappear in Silence’s hair.
“What did she say to you that set this off?” she asked.
“She told me we were not to be intimate around the maids. That it was not done in this realm, for servants to see us abed.”
Silence appeared baffled. “She came to tell you that?”
“Well, as you know, she didn’t tell you, bellezza.”
“He sent her to tell me that,” she whispered.
“Sorry?”
“If she told me that, I would hesitate to call upon the maids when we were in that state. My father knows that. And as we have to eat and need wood and the like, we have need of the servants. Father also knows if I refused freer relations with you, it would hinder said relations on a variety of levels.” She lifted one shoulder and murmured, “I hate to think this way, but I think the maids told him we were happy and enjoying each other’s, erm…company, and for whatever reason, Father sent my mother to do something about it.”