Viscount Valnu opened it. “Well, come in, sweetheart,” he said, smiling his bright, predatory, skeletally handsome smile. “No one followed you here, I hope?”
“I don’t think so,” Krasta said, before remembering that trusting him was liable to be even more dangerous than trusting Lurcanio. Hastily she added, “If I don’t come back, I’ve left enough behind in writing to make sure you get what you deserve.”
Smiling still, Valnu said, “I don’t believe you.” Alarm blazed through Krasta, for she was bluffing. Before she could say anything, before she could do anything, Valnu went on: “Before the war, though, you never would have had the wit to come up with the lie-so maybe it isn’t a lie. Invasions are so educational, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about,” Krasta snapped.
Valnu laughed. “Well, that sounds more like you. But the question isn’t what you don’t know. The question is what you do know, and what you intend to do about it.”
“I know…” Krasta paused and took a deep breath. “I know you’re part of the underground, because if you weren’t, Count Amatu wouldn’t be dead.”
“And so?” Valnu asked. “What do you propose to do about that? That Algarvian colonel’s been in your bed ever since the redheads marched into Priekule. I don’t care to have my name come up in pillow talk, you know.”
The parcel Krasta was holding crinkled a little. That reminded her of what was inside the paper. Her cheeks heated. Even so, she said, “If you didn’t care to have that happen, you shouldn’t have tried molesting me at one party or another-at one party and another, I should say.”
“Molesting you?” Valnu threw back his head and laughed. “My dear, you didn’t seem molested. And who, if I may ask, was doing just what to whom?”
Krasta needed a moment to sort through that, too. Once she did, she put the parcel down on a table and walked right up to Valnu. “The last time we got caught,” she said, putting her arms around him, “I was doing something like this.” She kissed him.
He didn’t respond for a moment. Then, his mouth still joined to hers, he started to laugh, and he kissed her back.
“That’s better,” she said after a while. “I was starting to wonder if those handsome Algarvian officers were the only ones who mattered to you any more.”
“I already said you have a handsome Algarvian officer in your bed,” Valnu replied. “Why shouldn’t I have some in mine?” He was, as usual, altogether flagrant and altogether unabashed.
“Why?” Krasta said. “I’ll show you why.” She kissed him again, this time so hard that she tasted blood-hers or his she neither knew nor cared. Whatever his interest in Algarvian officers, she knew she’d excited him in the past. By the bulge in his trousers, she was exciting him again, too. Now she laughed in the middle of a kiss, laughed and ground her hips against him.
“I asked you once, who was molesting whom?” Valnu panted. His left hand cupped her right buttock; his right squeezed her left breast.
“Oh, shut up,” she told him, and rubbed him with her hand.
Deft and sure, his right hand undid the wooden toggles that held her tunic closed. He bent to her and teased her nipples with his tongue. Whatever his interest in Algarvian officers, he remembered how to excite her, too.
She fumbled with his belt. Once she got it unbuckled, she yanked his trousers down. She fell to her knees in front of him. But as she began, as one of his hands went to the back of her head to guide her, he said, “The last time you put your mouth there, you threw me out of your carriage when you found out a pretty little shopgirl had done that before you.”
“And so?” Krasta rocked forward and back a couple of times. Valnu’s breath sighed out of him. Krasta paused and said, “She was just a commoner.” She returned to what she’d been doing. His fingers tangled in her hair. His hand urged her forward again, urged her on. In spite of it, she paused again and looked up at him. “I presume all your handsome Algarvians were of noble blood?”
He gaped. Then he laughed. He laughed so hard, he lost the most obvious evidence of his excitement. “There’s no one like you, is there?” he said.
“I should hope not,” Krasta replied indignantly, and set about repairing the damage. It didn’t take long. She hadn’t thought it would.
After a bit, Valnu pulled away. “Shall we go back to the bedchamber?” he asked.
Krasta considered. “No,” she said, and pulled him down onto the floor with her.
She regretted that in short order: thrashing about on the carpet wasn’t so comfortable as it would have been on a soft, resilient mattress. But that regret was only a small thing, especially after Valnu poised himself above her, her thighs clasping his lean flanks. He had stamina and to spare, and also had the courtesy to help her along with a finger so that she gasped and shuddered and stiffened at the same instant he drove himself deepest into her.
Afterwards, he didn’t have the courtesy to keep all his weight on his elbows and knees. That mattered more on a hard floor than it would have in bed, too. “Let me up,” Krasta said, and bit him on the shoulder to make sure she got the point across.
“So much for romance,” Valnu said, but he did as she asked.
“Romance hasn’t got anything to do with getting squashed.” Krasta spoke with great conviction. She rubbed her backside. She hadn’t noticed the carpet burn while she and Valnu were making love, but she did now.
He started putting on his clothes. As he did up the toggles on his tunic, he asked, “Whose side are you on, anyway?”
“Mine, of course,” Krasta replied at once. Before she got dressed, she used the privy. As she returned, she asked a question of her own: “Did you expect anything else?”
“I never know what to expect with you, darling,” Valnu said, running a comb through his hair. He cocked his head to one side, studying her. “I don’t think anyone knows what to expect from you.”
“Good,” she said, which made him laugh again.
But then he sobered. “Not necessarily,” he told her. “You ought to know, you’ve almost had the same sort of unfortunate accident poor Count Amatu did.”
People in the underground have wanted to kill you, was what that meant. Krasta knew she had to keep up a bold front. “Just remember,” she said, “that kind of accident wouldn’t be unfortunate only for me.” Without giving him a chance to answer, she picked up the paper-wrapped parcel and swept out of the flat.
Her driver hadn’t drunk himself into a stupor. He touched the brim of his cap when she came up. “Home, milady, or on to more shops?” he asked.
“Home,” Krasta said. He nodded and took her there without another word.
Colonel Lurcanio met her in the entrance hall. “I trust you had a successful campaign?” he asked, as if she’d gone to war rather than to the Boulevard of Horsemen.
How much did he know? Was he spying on her? Before, that would only have infuriated her. Now it might be deadly dangerous. As calmly as she could, she answered, “Aye,” and held up the parcel as if it were spoils of war.
“Ah.” Lurcanio’s eyes lit up. “You will have to show me your plunder, then.”
“Tonight,” Krasta promised, doing her best to sound alluring. Lurcanio was a good lover. She’d first let him into her bed more from fear than for any other reason, but she’d come to want him, too. That wouldn’t be so easy tonight, though, not after what had happened in the flat off Priekule’s chief shopping boulevard. She sighed, and hoped he didn’t notice. The more she wished things were simple, the more complicated they got.
After supper, she went up to her bedchamber and put on the negligee. Lurcanio knocked on her door not much later. When she opened it, he looked her up and down. “A successful campaign indeed,” he said, and surprised her by picking her up and carrying her back to the bed.
He surprised her again when his attentions gave her a full share of pleasure, just as Valnu’s had. Lazy in the afterglow, she leaned over and kissed him. If she was on her own side and no one else’s, she’d won twice today.
Ealstan glared at Pybba. “You don’t care,” he said bitterly. “You’ve never cared. She’s a Kaunian. As far as you’re concerned, the powers below are welcome to her.”
The pottery magnate glared back at Ealstan. “Aye, now that you mention it.” Before Ealstan could hurl himself at him, Pybba went on: “But you’re worth enough to me that I’d do something for her if I could. Only thing is, I can’t.”
“You haven’t tried!” Ealstan exclaimed.
“What exactly do you think I can do?” Pybba asked. “If she’s still in Forthweg at all, she’s here in Eoforwic in the Kaunian district, right? Some of the guards there are Algarvians. The rest of the whoresons, the Forthwegians, are the ones who’re just a step away from Plegmund’s Brigade. They don’t want to have anything to do with Kaunians except maybe to blaze ‘em, and they don’t want to have anything to do with me, either. I’m sorry, kid, but what does that leave?”
He didn’t sound particularly sorry, and Ealstan knew he wasn’t particularly sorry. But Ealstan also knew he had a point… or part of a point. “My father says you can always bribe an Algarvian if you go about it the right way.”
“Go ahead and try,” Pybba said. “Most of the time, your old man’d be right. But they’ve tightened up about the blonds. They need ‘em too bad to want to turn any more of’em loose.” He shrugged. “It’s a sign they’re in trouble. If you think that breaks my heart, you’re daft.”
He had a point there, too. Ealstan didn’t want to admit it, not when Pybba was talking about Vanai. “But-” he began.
“Shut up,” Pybba said flatly. “I’ve listened for as long as I’m going to listen. Get your arse back to work. What you try by yourself, you try, that’s all. But if anything goes wrong, you can bet I’ll kill you before the stinking redheads get the chance to squeeze you. You know too bloody much.”