Chapter 5: The Man Downstairs

"Tell him I'm not seeing anyone."

It's out before I've thought it through. Garrison's still catching his breath in the doorway, tie crooked, and he looks past me to Caius instead of answering, like he needs someone else to sign off on it first.

"He wouldn't give it to anyone but you, my lord. Says his name is Dominic Ashworth." Garrison pauses, glances at me. "Claims he's known Rowan for years."

Caius goes still. I watch something behind his eyes shut like a door in bad weather.

"Ashworth."

"You know him." Not a question.

"His family runs half the shipping trade east of here." Caius stops. Starts again, slower. "His mother's on the council. Two seats down from mine." He looks at the photograph again, still face up on the blanket, and his jaw works like he's biting down on something he'd rather say out loud. "Send him away."

"My lord, he was quite insistent."

"I don't care how insistent."

"He said." Garrison hesitates. "He said if Rowan won't come down, he'll come up. He's already past the front gate."

Iris makes a small frustrated noise and grabs the cloth off the table, needing something for her hands to do. Caius doesn't move at all. Just stares at the door like he can see straight through the wood, the floor, all the way down to whoever's standing uninvited in his front hall.

"I'll go down," I say.

They both turn.

"No."

"He asked for me. Not you. Not the house." I swing my legs off the bed, slower than I want, this body still not fully trustworthy. "So I go down. I hear what he has to say before somebody decides for me what I'm allowed to hear."

"You don't remember him."

"I know that." I stand, catch the bedpost while the room settles itself. "He remembers me, though. Or he remembers Rowan. Either way it's more than I've got sitting up here."

Caius looks at me a long moment. I can't tell what he's weighing exactly, only that it costs him something to weigh it at all. Iris opens her mouth like she wants to object too, then seems to think better of it, maybe because she can already see how this ends.

"I'm coming with you," he says finally.

"Fine."

"Nothing about the dates. Nothing about this morning."

"I've been married to you less than a day and I already worked that much out myself."

Something almost moves at the corner of his mouth. Gone before it becomes anything. He offers his arm and I take it, mostly because the stairs look longer than they should, and because some part of me is grateful not to have to prove I can do this alone yet.

We don't speak on the way down. His arm is steady under my hand, warmer than I expect, and I catch myself noticing that, noticing him, and hating that I notice at all given everything that's happened in the last hour.

The front hall is enormous, pale stone, tall windows, the kind of ceiling that makes a person feel deliberately small the moment they walk in. The man standing in the middle of it turns the second we appear at the top of the staircase.

Younger than I expected. Sandy hair, a face built for smiling that isn't doing that right now. He looks up and something moves across it I can't quite name. Relief, maybe. Or fear. Possibly both at once, fighting for the same real estate.

"Rowan." Like the word costs him something. "Thank God."

"Mr. Ashworth." Caius, cold, stepping half in front of me at the bottom step. "An unannounced visit."

"I wouldn't have come otherwise." Dominic's eyes stay on me the whole time, not once flicking to Caius, which I notice, and which I think Caius notices too. "I need to speak with him. Alone."

"You won't."

"Caius, please." His voice cracks a little on the name, too familiar, and something twists low in my stomach at the sound of it. "Someone's asking questions. About him. About us. I got a call this morning, warned a photograph might surface, and by the time I tried reaching him it was already too late."

"Warned by who," Caius asks.

Dominic hesitates. That hesitation says more than anything he's said so far. "I can't tell you that. Not here."

"Convenient."

"It isn't convenient, it's dangerous, and if you'd stop looking at me like I'm the enemy for five seconds you might actually hear what I'm trying to say." Dominic's composure cracks, just slightly, just enough to make me believe some of this is real fear and not performance. He looks at me again. "Rowan. Please. Five minutes."

"You can say it in front of my husband," I say, and the word feels strange in my mouth, unfamiliar, but I make myself use it anyway, because right now it's the only leverage I understand how to hold. "Whatever it is."

Something flickers across Dominic's face, disappointment maybe, or resignation. "Fine. Then you need the truth before somebody twists it." He steps closer, and I feel Caius go rigid beside me, a wall rising without a sound. "That photo isn't what it looks like. I can explain everything, but not with half this house listening at the door."

"Explain it now," Caius says.

"I can't." Dominic looks at me again, and there's something pleading in it that makes my pulse jump before I've given it permission. "Rowan. Whatever they told you about that day, about us, it isn't the whole truth, and if you let them convince you it is before I get the chance to explain, you're going to lose more than you understand right now. Please. I'm begging you. Give me one hour alone with you before this goes any further, because once the council gets their hands on it, nobody controls the story anymore, not me, not you, not even him."

The front doors crash open behind him.

Cold air first. Then boots on stone, four men in black and silver moving in formation, hands near their weapons, faces giving away nothing. Iris, who I hadn't realized followed us down, makes a small sound and steps back against the wall.

The one in front unfolds a paper with a wax seal I don't recognize, holds it up like it matters more than anything anyone in this hall has said in the last five minutes.

"By order of the council." His eyes find Dominic. "Dominic Ashworth, you're under arrest."

Dominic doesn't fight it. That's the part that unsettles me most, how still he goes, like he's been expecting this the entire time he's been standing here, like the real surprise would have been if they hadn't come.

"Rowan." He says it fast now, low, as two of the guards close in on either side of him. "Don't trust anything they tell you about that hallway. Don't trust anything they tell you about him either." His eyes flick, just once, toward Caius, and something dark and complicated moves through them. "Ask him what happened to his first husband before you decide who the liar is in this house."

The guard's grip tightens on his arm and he doesn't resist, doesn't raise his voice again, lets himself be turned toward the door.

I look at Caius.

His face has gone the color of the stone around us, and for one unguarded second, before he catches it and buries it back down where he keeps everything else, I see something there that isn't anger at all.

It's fear.

The lead guard's eyes lift past Dominic, straight to me.

"Lord Thorn. The council wants your consort brought in for questioning."

He doesn't say when. He's already walking toward me.