Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
“Is he communicating to her now?”
He smoothed his hands over my back. “No, love. She’s with us, but not quite with us.”
“Oh.” I pouted.
“But this is progress. Today, Dr. Fearsome is sending a nurse to administer your—”
Even held in his arms, in his bed, after having sex, at his words, my body chilled over.
“No,” I whispered fiercely.
He pressed me closer to him. “Laura, you can trust her. She’s Fearsome’s sister.”
“I’d rather go to his clinic. I’d rather see them take the IV bag directly from supply.”
“I can have a machine delivered to test the contents before it’s administered if you like.”
“You can?”
“Absolutely.”
“I don’t want to offend her, but I’d like you to do that.”
“I think if you tell her what happened to you, she’d understand your hesitance around healthcare workers.”
Hesitant was understating it, and I blamed Buildmore and Fitzgerald for leaving me with that damage, because if you needed to trust anyone, you needed to trust doctors and nurses.
“It’ll probably go away,” I muttered.
“You endured something traumatic, bissi. Your reaction is understandable.”
I took in a big breath and let it go.
He tucked me close to him. “I’ll comm Allain. Get him to source a unit to test the solution.”
“Thanks, drahko,” I whispered.
“As you know, I have meetings today, and you’re going to your studio and to Madam Garwah’s this evening, but you need to carve some time in the next couple of days to interview aides. Allain is sorting through resumes. He’ll have a shortlist for you by the end of today. And he’ll sit on the interviews with you, for another ear and an informed opinion.”
I scrunched my face. “Do I actually need an aide?”
“So far, you’ve had one hundred and eighty-nine invitations to everything from coffee mornings, dinner parties, and the opening of plays to visits to pediatric units, with an abundance of schools across the realm wanting you to come to their art and theater departments to give speeches.”
I blinked.
One hundred and eight-nine invitations?
Aleksei kept going.
“You have your own detail now, and someone will have to have intimate knowledge of your schedule, so they can share it with your team in order that they can scout locations, send agents ahead of time to assess safety, decide personnel numbers, arrange travel and coordinate arrival and departure. And they’ll need to know these things with as much notice as possible. I’d like to say you could go to the local patisserie to buy a treat on a whim, and if you did, they would scramble to arrange for you to do that. But it’s a hassle for them, adds stress to their jobs, and hobbles them in being able to do it well.”
“In other words, I need an aide.”
“Yes, darling,” he murmured, pulling us both up and arranging the pillow so he was resting his back on them, and arranging me so I was resting on him.
He slid his fingers through my hair tenderly, and I should have taken that for the warning it was, when he asked, “I sense you’ll wish to remain working after we become officially engaged.”
Oh gods.
I was supposed to start royal duties upon our engagement?
That was less than two weeks away!
And I was in the middle of a job.
“Yes,” I said. “Is that a problem?”
“If you ask my mother, yes. If you ask me, we’ll make it work.”
“Aleksei—”
“The only raised-voice row I ever got into with my mother, and my father was right at her side when it was happening, was after years of hoarding chunks of my allowance, and I bought my first company.”
I tried to imagine Queen Calisa yelling.
I couldn’t do it.
“Raised voices? You mean shouting?” I queried.
“Yes, them to me and me to them. They were incensed that I not only wished, but fully intended to have a life and my own pursuits away from the Palace. My brothers and sister still live there. That was another row, without shouting, when I moved here.”
“Will they expect us to move back there when we get married?”
“No. They’ll expect us to move into Spikeback Castle in Crimson Park in midtown. That’s where the heir apparent lives when he marries and starts his family.”
Occasionally, I’d take a walk in Crimson Park. Or the gals and I would go there and have a picnic and beings watch. I’d been born and raised in Nocturn, and when I was younger, we’d sometimes have school trips to the park.
I’d seen Spikeback Castle probably hundreds of times in person.
It was a gothic fantasy in purple-tinged stone with a cerulean tile roof. It was compact, but tall (four stories), sporting an abundance of narrow, arched windows, dormers between turrets, and chimneys. Its famous features were the three turrets that adorned the front, one in the middle, the other two on the sides, and the eerily, always calm reflecting pool (not a fountain) in front of it.