Read Online The Veils of the Budapest Palace (Darke of Night Book 3) by Marie Treanor - Free Book Online Page B

a classics teacher. He’s decided to take this other position in England he was offered, so I thought I’d have a go.”
    I searched his face. “I didn’t know you wanted to be a teacher.”
    “Neither did I, but it might have been amusing. And a man must do something.”
    My heart went out to him. He’d been brought up to look after land, not teach for his living, and he’d been trained as a soldier. Neither occupation was open to him here. But I knew he felt his financial dependence on me. He wanted to be the one taking care of me.
    A rueful smile flickered across his face and vanished, leaving only unreadable, unspecific turbulence. “My reputation follows me, doesn’t it? You were right about consequences. No one would put impressionable children in my charge.”
    “Well, someone’s put them in Béla’s!”
    He waved that away, Béla’s vices being, apparently, trivial compared to his. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, wrapping his fingers around the stem of his wineglass. “And it seems these are my choices. Our choices. I could go to England with you and hope your influence or that of your friends could secure me some kind of position. Or I could be a gentleman of leisure.”
    This was the way I had vaguely imagined our life would go, but as he said the words, I could see the inherent dangers I hadn’t actually considered. He had.
    He met my gaze. “I’d go to the devil, wouldn’t I? Boredom and I don’t mix. Even with you to come home to, I’d give myself a year before I embarrassed you with ill behaviour.”
    “We could spend that year finding a better solution,” I said lightly.
    “We could. And it would be a good year. But there might not be any solution in England.”
    “Where, then?”
    “I was a good soldier,” he said. “A good officer. I could sell my services to some foreign army and earn reasonable money.”
    My stomach twisted. “Is that what you would prefer?”
    “I wouldn’t go to the devil so fast,” he said, taking a mouthful of wine and lowering the glass again. “The trouble is, I think I’ve seen enough blood in the last two years. I’m not sure I could stomach much more.”
    I let myself relax. “Well, it’s another possible temporary solution,” I said calmly.
    “There’s a third.”
    “There is?” I prompted when he said no more. He was staring into his glass, seeing something else entirely.
    He raised his gaze to mine. “I could write to my grandfather to obtain my amnesty. I’ve married a beautiful, respectable woman—if that doesn’t count as proof of settling down, I don’t know what does. In time, we can go home to Orosháza.”
    That was what he wanted. It stood out in his eyes, in the very tension of his posture as he waited for me to pronounce my view of the scheme. He wanted, needed to go home. To look after his land and his people. My heart went out to him, soared with pride in him. And if its edges quivered with unease about uprooting my entire life to live instead in a foreign country just recovering from a massive revolution and war, I ignored that. He was prepared to live in a foreign country with me. He already did.
    “Write to your grandfather,” I said. “You need to tell him you’re married in any case.”
    He smiled, covering my hand with his. “You don’t dislike the idea of living in Hungary?”
    “Of course not. Not with this Hungarian.”
    He wrote to his grandfather that very night. But being Zsigmund, he couldn’t wait for a reply. Within four days, we were packed up and travelling east to Hungary.
    ****
    A t my request, we made a brief detour in Germany to visit my stepsister, the new Duchess of Silberwald, who did indeed live in a fairy-tale castle. At least from a distance. Close-up, it was more of a building site, with one side of the castle, the oldest part, being completely renovated. The noise was horrendous. Inside, at first sight, was also chaotic, but I realised quickly it was organised chaos, and that Guin