Chalia and Striker veered off to visit other friends and Kett continued up the hill. Her uncle’s Winter Palace stood tall and beautiful at the summit, illuminated by flickering torches. A few streets away stood her stepmother’s massive house, every light blazing.
Kett hesitated outside the gates of her parents’ mansion, where a young garda waited patiently to admit her. On the one hand, Yule with her parents, who would almost certainly try to get her to attend their high-toned, fancy shindig, for which she’d have to wear a dress and be polite to people. On the other, going back to the mountains and facing Bael, on whom she’d so suddenly run out.
Well, it was about time he learned what that felt like.
And her parents were never stingy with the alcohol.
Kett sighed and nudged the horse onward, hooves crunching over the snow. She let herself in through the kitchen door, snagged a hot meat pie from the counter and juggled it as she wove past the servants.
“Your ladyship!” the butler cried as she was halfway up the stairs from the kitchen to the public part of the house, and Kett winced. She turned to face him. What was his name? Willis? Wilson? Willikins?
“Hey, Wills. Didn’t I ask you not to call me that?”
He made a courteous bow. “My apologies…miss.”
“Miss”…well, better than “your ladyship”. She waved a hand, taking a bite of the meat pie and shucking the blanket from her shoulders. “Whatever,” she said through a mouthful. “Can someone make my room up?”
“As always, it is ready for you, miss.”
“Great,” Kett said indistinctly, and swallowed. “This is a great pie. I’m so bloody hungry.”
“I shall pass your compliments on to Cook,” the butler said politely, despite Cook standing a dozen feet away. “Dinner shall be served in five minutes in the Gold Salon.”
Gold Salon? “Which one’s that?”
The butler gave an almost imperceptible sigh. “Formerly the Rose Room, my…miss.”
“Gotcha,” Kett said, and continued up the stairs, the butler following. Shoving open the heavy door at the top of the steps, she took another bite. “Cheers, Wills.”
“Wilden, miss.”
She waved her hand at him as the door swung shut. Then she shoved it back open again and handed her bag to him. Through a mouthful of pie she said, “Can you chuck this in my room?”
“Certainly, miss,” Wilden replied, not missing a beat.
“Ta,” Kett said, and went to try to find the Gold Salon.
“How interesting, Lady Kett,” said the duke of…oh hell, wherever. “And how exactly does one train a dragon?”
Across the table, Nuala mouthed, “Sorry!” Kett grimaced. Her stepmother was so unfailingly charming toward everyone that she’d been unable to turn away the very boring duke and his unbearably pompous wife when they’d “dropped by” that afternoon and invited themselves for dinner.
In the thirty seconds before it became impolite not to introduce them, Nuala had whispered to Kett that she’d tried every trick in her not-inconsiderable arsenal to get them to leave, but being Nuala, she was unable to be outright rude.
However, once her stepdaughter had walked in, that hadn’t been a problem. Unfortunately, by then the first course had been served and the duke and duchess were well entrenched.
“You feed it some villagers then chain it up when it’s sleepy,” Kett said, and her father let out a shout of laughter. From the corner of her eye, Kett caught her brother sniggering, but when she looked around he was politely enquiring of the duchess whether she was enjoying her dodo breast.
“Villagers?” the duchess honked. “Surely you must be joking!”
“Nope,” Kett said, picking up a roast potato with her fingers and taking a bite. “They like the fat ones best.”
The duke gave a nervous laugh. Kett ignored him and licked her fingers.
“And is this dragon-taming garb?” asked the duchess, looking Kett over as if she was daubed in pig shit.
“Nope, actually this is giving-a-lift-to-a-man-so-evil-he’s-invented-new-crimes garb,” Kett said, aware her shirt was thin, dirty and nearly transparent with dampness. “Is yours?”
The duchess looked outraged. Nuala was managing to keep a straight face. Kett’s brother was shaking silently.
Kett lit up a cigar and wafted the pungent smoke toward the duchess. “Which reminds me, Dad, Striker says hi.”
Her father, the infamous Tyrnan of Emreland, laughed out loud and reached past her for the gravy. “Damn, Kett,” he said, “you need to come home more often.”
Kett wasn’t so sure about that. Sure, it was entertaining, but she wished to hell the duke and duchess would get the hint and leave. How much more obnoxious did she have to be?
How much more obnoxious could she be?
“I say, my dear, isn’t it awfully cold up in the Northern Province this time of year?” the duke brayed.
“Freezes your tits off,” Kett told him cheerfully. “Well, not yours. Maybe your ladyship’s, over there. Amount on display, she’d get frostbite to the nipples in no time.” She picked up the dodo breast and ripped a piece off with her teeth.
The duchess went purple.
Happily, before she could say anything, Wilden entered the room and said something quietly to Nuala. Her eyes grew wide and she stared at Kett.
“Boyfriend?” she cried. “Kett, you never told us you had a boyfriend!”
Kett was fairly sure she looked like a deer caught in the beam of a coach lamp.
“Er, I haven’t,” she said, and attempted a smile. “Wills, stop flirting with me. I can’t be your girlfriend. I ain’t posh enough.”
Wilden bowed and said, “A Mr. Bael Var is here to see you, miss. He says he is your boyfriend.”
Kett’s stomach performed a somersault. She actually felt the smile fall from her face.
“Here?” she asked stupidly. “Now?”
“Yes, miss,” Wilden said. His eyes sparkled a little. “Both here and now.”
Everyone was staring at Kett. Nuala looked amazed; her father, brother and sisters disbelieving. The duke and duchess looked annoyed.
And the thought occurred to Kett that if anyone was obnoxious enough to get rid of these two uninvited guests, it was Bael.
“Sure,” she said to Wilden. “Send him in.”
Wilden looked a little surprised but bowed and went off to do just that.
Kett found herself wishing she’d changed out of the dirty, scorched shirt and washed her face. Which was stupid, she thought immediately, because a) Bael had seen her looking a hell of a lot worse; and b) she wasn’t trying to impress him. Not at all.
“You have a boyfriend?” her half-sister Eithne breathed.
“How is it possible I did not know this?” Eithne’s twin, Beyla, shook her head.
“Which asylum did he come from?” their brother Tane asked.
“What’s he like?” Nuala begged, and Kett, mildly shocked at her own behavior, answered without thinking.
“Big,” she said. “And mad. And loud. And…” She frowned, formed a mental picture of Bael and described what she saw. “He shouts at kelfs, ’cos he’s scared of them, I think. And he picks fights with them when he’s angry. And he gets thrown in jail sometimes. And he doesn’t think in straight lines. But he can be sort of kind when he wants to. And he’s very persistent. No, stubborn. He’s sort of…” She scrunched up her face, trying to describe him. “About eleven, really, inside. Well, maybe sixteen,” she amended, thinking of his unstoppable interest in sex.
A small silence followed.
“Well, he sounds…charming,” Nuala said.
“He sounds like a lunatic,” Tyrnan replied.
“He sounds perfect for you, Kett,” Tane offered.
The duke and duchess, for once, were silent.
“Would anyone like more wine?” Nuala asked to fill the silence.
“Yes,” Kett said. She had a definite feeling she was going to need it. Glugging a large amount, she wiped her mouth and said, “Listen. He doesn’t know about the whole shapeshifting thing, so don’t tell him, all right?”