Read Online WinterofThorns by Charlotte Boyett-Compo - Free Book Online Page B

pressed lips.
    “What did he do?” his mother asked, her own
eyes filling with tears as she dreaded his answer.
    “He went to her room.” He sucked in a great
gasp of breath and crumbled under her gaze. “He took what was mine.”
    Millicent slowly closed her eyes then
dropped to her knees beside her child. She put her arms around him and he
twisted sideways, collapsed against her, the terrible, racking sobs exploding
from his chest like molten lava. She ran one hand to the back of his head to
hold it tight to her shoulder. Buffeting his forceful weeping, the low keening
that punctuated each breath, she kissed the side of his face.
    “Let it out, son,” she told him. “Let it
all out.”
    She would never know how long his pitiful
crying lasted but by the time he pulled back from her—his handsome face ravaged
by unspeakable grief—the shoulder of her gown was soaked from his tears. She
smiled as he put his fists up to rotate them against his eyes, for the gesture
vividly reminded her of when he was a small boy.
    “I’m sorry, Mama,” he whispered.
    “There is nothing for you to be to be sorry
about. The blame lies with Vindan Brell, not you,” she stated. It took some
doing but she pushed up from the floor to sit once more in her chair. She laid
her hand on his knee. “Have you spoken to her since that night?”
    He shook his head. “He wouldn’t let me. He
took her to Wicklow with him and sent me here.”
    “I see,” she said, and when he lifted his
face to lock eyes with her, she squeezed his thigh. “You fear he has taken her
from you. That he will annul the Joining.”
    “He says he won’t.”
    She patted his knee then removed her hand.
“Jealousy,” she said, sitting back in the chair. “He is jealous of her.”
    Seyzon flinched. A muscle clenched in his
cheek. Clenched again.
    “You know I am right,” she said. “If he
were bent in another direction and so were you, you know where that would have
led long ago.”
    “That is a wicked thought, milady,” he told
her.
    “Though a true one,” she replied. “If it is
any conciliation, I am sure he used protection.”
    Seyzon winced. “By the gods, I pray so.”
    “Best you know so. Vindan does not need a
bastard child running about Wicklow and certainly not one he got on his best
friend’s wife.”
    “He calls me the brother he never had,”
Seyzon said, running his arm under his nose, his next words muffled by the
cloth. “Some way to treat a brother, eh?”
    “Stop that,” she said. “That is nasty.” She
pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and fluttered it at him until he took it.
“Well you know what they say.”
    He blew his nose, looking up at her over
the handkerchief. “What do they say, Mama?”
    “That incest is best when it’s kept in the
family,” she said with a grin that made him laugh.
    And laughter was one step closer to healing
the heartache stamped on her son’s face.
    * * * * *
    A week later, Frederick walked over to
where Lady Millicent was seated in the solarium. She was gazing out the window
as her son strolled aimlessly in the glassed-in greenhouse attached to the
solarium.
    “He is hurting,” Frederick said, putting
his hands on her shoulders and kneading gently.
    “Aye, and there is nothing I can do to
help,” she replied then slowly smiled. “Unless…”
    Frederick cocked an eyebrow. He leaned down
so he could see her face. “Millie?” he questioned suspiciously and when her
smile turned nasty, he sighed. “I’ll hitch up the buggy.”
    * * * * * *
    She saw him striding toward her and thought
back to the night he’d been born. Even then the young prince made his presence
known far and wide. He’d bellowed so loudly the moment he was thrust into the
world the women gathered at his mother’s bed had cringed.
    “A pair of lungs on this one,” the midwife had proclaimed as she’d handed him to his mother.
    “He’ll have no trouble getting the
attention he seeks,” one of the