Promised to His Shadow

Chapter Nine

A Crown of Candlelight



Gabriel’s POV

The ball had been his father’s idea, the same logic as the dinner before it, dressed up in considerably more silk and considerably more candlelight. Elianne would be presented formally to the full court as Valmonde’s future queen, the betrothal made undeniable to every lord and lady who had spent the last month whispering about its haste. Gabriel had argued against it, quietly, in the privacy of his father’s study, on the grounds that a search for Pierre and a search for his own uncle’s complicity in murder left very little appetite for dancing. His father had not been moved.

"A kingdom that looks settled survives scrutiny," the king had said, the same argument as before, worn smooth now from repetition. "A kingdom that looks like it’s hiding something invites considerably more of it. Dance with your wife, Gabriel. Let the court see exactly what they’re meant to see."

What the court was meant to see, and what Gabriel actually felt watching Elianne descend the grand staircase that evening in deep wine-red silk, her hair arranged with a careful elegance that did nothing to soften the sharp intelligence in her eyes, turned out to be considerably harder to separate than he’d expected.

"You’re staring," she said, once she’d reached him at the bottom of the stairs, her voice pitched for him alone.

"I’m performing for an audience that expects me to stare at my own betrothed. I thought you’d approve of the diligence."

"I approve of very little about tonight, but I’ll allow you that one." The corner of her mouth curved, the closest thing to genuine amusement he’d seen from her in days, and something in his chest tightened at having put it there.

* * *

They danced twice, as protocol required, and Gabriel found that the careful distance he’d maintained between them for weeks — a hand at her waist that never lingered, a closeness calibrated precisely to what the occasion demanded and not one inch further — had become considerably harder to maintain with her this close, candlelight catching gold in her hair, her hand warm in his.

It was during the second dance that Lord Beaumont approached, a minor noble from the southern provinces who had clearly had rather more wine than the evening called for, and who made the mistake of cutting in with considerably more familiarity than his rank entitled him to.

"Might I steal the future queen for a turn, Your Highness? It seems unfair that you should monopolize the loveliest woman at court all evening."

Gabriel felt something in his chest go very cold and very still, a feeling he recognized, distantly, as something closer to possessiveness than diplomacy ought to allow. He kept his voice perfectly even anyway, the discipline of six years on the border holding even as something less disciplined stirred beneath it.

"I find I’m not inclined to share this particular dance, Lord Beaumont. Perhaps the next one."

It was, by the standards of court courtesy, barely a refusal at all. But something in his tone must have carried more weight than the words themselves, because Beaumont’s smile faltered, and he withdrew with a hasty bow and considerably less confidence than he’d approached with.

Elianne raised an eyebrow at him once the man had retreated. "That was almost embarrassingly possessive, Gabriel."

"Was it?" He drew her fractionally closer than protocol strictly required, close enough that he could see the flush rise in her cheeks, close enough that he no longer particularly cared whether the surrounding court noticed. "I find I don’t have much patience left for sharing what’s mine. Even for a single dance."

"I’m not yours, Gabriel. I’m a treaty you happen to be married to."

"You stopped being only that weeks ago," he said, low enough that only she could hear it, "and we both know it, even if neither of us has had the courage to say it plainly until now."

* * *

She didn’t answer immediately. He watched her absorb the words, watched something complicated move behind her eyes — not denial, which would have been easier to bear, but something closer to recognition, the look of a woman hearing her own half-formed thoughts spoken aloud by someone else before she’d finished deciding what to do with them.

"This is a very public place for that particular conversation," she said finally.

"You’re right. It is." He didn’t release her hand. "I find I don’t especially care, tonight."

The music ended before either of them could say anything further, the moment dissolving into the ordinary business of applause and the next dance forming around them, but he felt the weight of what he’d said settle into the space between them anyway, undeniable now in a way it hadn’t quite been before. He had meant to keep his guilt and his wanting carefully separated for as long as the investigation demanded, had told himself there would be time later, once Adrien’s murderer was found, to examine what he actually felt for the woman he’d married out of necessity.

Watching her walk away to greet a cluster of waiting ladies, candlelight catching the curve of her shoulder, the careful composure she wore like armor not quite hiding the same unsettled look he felt in his own chest, he understood, with a kind of grim, helpless clarity, that later had already arrived, whether either of them was ready for it or not.

* * *

He retreated to the edge of the hall after that, needing distance more than he wanted to admit, and found his uncle there instead, a glass of wine in each hand, one of which he offered to Gabriel with the same easy warmth he offered everything.

"She’s a striking woman," Renaud said, watching Elianne across the room with an expression Gabriel couldn’t quite read. "The court is already saying the marriage suits you better than anyone expected. I confess I agree with them."

"Is that meant as a compliment, Uncle?"

"It’s meant as an observation. I find I make fewer compliments than people assume, at my age. Mostly I simply notice things." Renaud’s gaze shifted to Gabriel, mild and unhurried, and Gabriel found himself studying his uncle’s face with a wariness he wouldn’t have allowed himself a month ago, looking for something he couldn’t have named even if pressed. "You looked rather more invested in that dance than diplomacy strictly requires."

"Is there a version of investment that diplomacy would prefer I display instead?"

Renaud laughed, a warm, easy sound that carried no obvious malice in it at all, and clapped Gabriel once on the shoulder before drifting back toward the crowd. "None that I’d recommend, nephew. Enjoy your evening. Grief makes poor company for long time, and you’ve had enough of it lately to last several lifetimes."

Gabriel watched him go, turning the brief exchange over and over, searching it for the same patient calculation Elianne had described finding in Pierre’s account, and finding nothing he could point to with any certainty at all — only the same unsettled instinct that had been gnawing at him for weeks, with nothing solid yet to justify it.

He told himself, walking back toward the dance floor and the woman who had stopped, somewhere in the last hour, being merely a treaty in his own mind as well as hers, that suspicion without proof was its own kind of poison, and that he would do neither his uncle nor his own conscience any favors by letting it spread further than the evidence currently warranted.

He almost believed himself. He was getting considerably better at almost believing himself, lately, about a great many things he hadn’t yet found the courage to examine in full daylight.

Across the room, Elianne caught his eye over the shoulder of one of the ladies she was speaking with, and held it for a moment longer than courtesy required before turning back to her conversation, and Gabriel found that single, unguarded glance did considerably more to settle his unease than anything his uncle had said.

He stayed at the edge of the hall a while longer, nursing the wine Renaud had handed him without quite tasting it, watching his wife navigate a room full of people who had spent a month deciding what to think of her and were, he suspected, slowly running out of unkind things to say. She moved through it with a composure that looked effortless and almost certainly wasn’t, the same quiet discipline he recognized in himself, the kind that came from years of learning to survive rooms exactly like this one. He thought, watching her, that he had married a woman considerably better suited to this particular war than he’d allowed himself to credit, back in that cold garden full of dead roses, when all either of them had known how to feel was grief. Tonight, at least, grief had finally made room for something else to stand beside it.

* * *

End of Chapter Nine