Chapter 3: The Man in the Photograph

Iris asks the question and looks like she regrets it before it's even out of her mouth.

I don't answer right away. Truth is I don't have one. I woke up in this body six hours ago. Whatever Rowan Vance did with his life before that, whoever he slept with, none of it belongs to me, except now apparently it does.

"I don't know," I say finally.

"You don't know." She says it back flat, like she's weighing the words in her hand.

"I know how that sounds."

"It sounds like the kind of thing that gets people killed in this house." She says it gently, which somehow makes it land harder. She wipes the gel off my stomach with a cloth, helps straighten the nightshirt, doesn't quite look at me while she does it. "Lord Thorn has enemies who would love proof this marriage was never real. A child conceived before the wedding hands them exactly that."

"So don't tell him the dates are off."

"He already saw the chart. Whatever else he is, he's not stupid." She sits on the edge of the bed. Up close I can see how tired she actually is under the professional calm, the kind of tired that comes from years, not one bad morning. "I can slow the paperwork. I can't erase math."

Someone knocks once, sharp, and doesn't wait for an answer.

It's not Caius.

The man filling the doorway looks maybe late twenties, an easy smile that never quite reaches his eyes, a suit worth more than anything I owned in either life. He looks between me and Iris the way a cat looks at something small and already hurt.

"Well," he says. "Rumors are halfway across the west wing already. Something about a fainting spell and a very urgent house call."

"Marcus." Iris stands and puts herself half in front of me without seeming to plan it. "This isn't a good time."

"It's never a good time with you people." He steps in anyway, unbothered, eyes landing on me. "Rowan. You look terrible. Married life not agreeing with you?"

"Who are you," I say before I can stop myself.

That gets a real reaction. His smile slips for half a second, then comes back wider. "Cute. Playing dumb with your own brother in law now. New strategy?"

Brother in law. So this is Marcus.

I know the name only from the shape of a warning Caius left half finished this morning, and every instinct I have says to go careful with this one.

"I'm tired," I say instead. "It's been a long morning."

"I bet." He wanders closer, eyes on the ultrasound machine, the folded cloth, the way neither of us wants him standing here. "So it's true then. The famous marriage of convenience is about to get a lot less convenient."

"That's not your business," Iris says.

"Everything in this house is my business, doctor. I'm the spare heir. It's basically the job description." He looks at me again and the smile drops, replaced by something colder, something far more interested. "How far along."

Neither of us answers.

"Come on." Softer now. Almost kind. Somehow that's worse than the smile. "I'll know within the hour anyway. Everyone will. Only question is whether you tell me as a favor or I have to work for it."

"Eleven weeks," I say.

I don't know why I say it. Maybe I'm tired of being handled like furniture. Maybe some reckless piece of Julian never learned when to shut his mouth, and dying didn't teach him either.

Marcus goes very still.

Then he laughs, short, delighted, like a man who's just been handed something he already knows the price of.

"Eleven weeks." He says it slow, tasting it. "That's interesting, Rowan. Because as I recall, you and my brother weren't married eleven weeks ago."

"Marcus." Iris's voice cracks like a whip. "Out."

"I'm going, I'm going." He backs toward the door, hands up, still smiling, still watching me the whole way like something he's already worked out how to use. "Congratulations, by the way. Truly. This family could use a little excitement."

The door clicks shut behind him. Somehow the click is louder than a slam would have been.

Iris rounds on me the second he's gone.

"Why would you tell him that."

"I wasn't thinking."

"No. You weren't." She drags a hand down her face. For the first time she looks less like a doctor and more like someone standing near something that's about to catch fire. "Marcus has waited six years for a reason to move against this House. You just handed him one with a bow on it."

"What does that even mean. Move against the House."

She doesn't answer at first. She's still looking at the door, at the empty space where Marcus stood, already recalculating something in her head.

"It means," she says finally, "that whoever fathered that child, real or not, just became the most dangerous secret in the Meridian Dominion. And you told the one person in this house who benefits most from digging it out of you."

She's still talking when the door opens again. No knock this time. Caius steps in holding a folder, and the look on his face isn't the cold contempt from this morning.

It's fear wearing anger like a coat two sizes too small.

"Explain this," he says, and drops the folder open on the bed.

A photograph. Grainy, shot from a distance, clearly meant to be discreet. Me, this body, this face, standing close to a man I've never seen before in either life, his hand resting on my waist in a hallway I don't recognize.

The date printed in the corner falls square in the middle of those eleven missing weeks.