CHAPTER THREE
SHEDIDN’TKNOWwhy she was nervous. It was a very strange thing. To feel nervous. He was not a prisoner anymore. Sometime during the flight they had made the transition from prisoner and jail keeper into allies. And she was much more comfortable with that. She had no wish to become a jailer. Not simply because she’d had one her entire life. It was far too much work. She needed help. She did not need another project. If he had continued to resist her...
It would have been a problem.
Of course, his denial that he wanted her body had wounded her slightly, but she would not dwell on that. There was no reason for her to feel out of sorts over that exchange.
They walked into the palace, and she found she wanted him to like it. Which was quite strange. But she had changed the palace quite a bit since the other regime had fallen, and she was proud of the changes she’d made. The modernizations.
“It is a bit different since you were here last,” she said, feeling proud.
He flicked a glance around the space. “I suppose it is.”
“You do not remember.”
“I have one job when I am sent on these missions. It is to get in and out without being detected until it is too late. That’s it.”
“You’re cold, aren’t you?”
“I have to be.”
“To have a secret life? Or just to live?”
“Either. Both. Don’t you think?”
“I wish I could be cold,” she said, feeling a bit flat. “But I’m not. I never have been.”
“Only a while ago you claimed to be ruthless,” he pointed out.
It was quite annoying.
“I think they are different things. I am willing to do whatever I must for Aillette. For my people. They have suffered enough. I have suffered enough. We all have lived a collective hell. And yes, I have been willing to do what needed to be done in order to pull us from it. But there is no... There is no coldness in me. I burned with it. Like I said.”
“I burn when I’m angry.”
She stared at him, and suddenly, she felt warm. There was something about the look on his face, about the keenness in his blue eyes, that made her feel unsettled. That made her feel...strangely hungry. She did not like it. Did not understand it.
She squinted. “But you’re cold mostly?”
Amusement tipped his mouth upward. “Mostly.”
One of the women who worked on her staff, Elise, rushed up to them. “You’ve returned,” she said, speaking in their native language, which was a dialect of French that the Parisians insisted was not French at all.
“Oui,”Annick confirmed. “With Maximus King. He is my new...guard. Adviser.”
“Good?” she said, phrasing it as a question.
“For the whole country,” Annick said, switching to English. “He will be a great asset to Aillette. He is a businessman. And he will know how to help with the finances. He will also be exactly what we need to be taken seriously.”
He chuckled. “I can’t say that the world takes me seriously.”
He had slipped into some sort of character. She had noticed it on the plane. Their interactions at his house and the initial interactions when he woke up were markedly different to the interactions they had after she’d given him his whiskey. She didn’t know why. Except...
She knew that he had a double life. She knew that the man that he pretended to be was not the man he actually was. She knew that he was lethal. Dangerous. And that the majority of the world had no idea.
Perhaps he was playing that up, even now. And she could see why. He played an interesting and dangerous game. Being as visible as he was, conducting missions that required the utmost in discretion.
“Ready him a room,” she said, and all of the women that were present in the antechamber nodded and scurried about their business. She looked to him, to see if he was impressed with the organization of the palace.