“Because the bad man pays her,” Pet answered.
“What bad man?” Peter frowned.
“The one with the big sniffer.”
Edward rubbed his hands over his eyes. Lord Dudley. Which meant the doctor was probably in on it, too. It was all falling into place. The it they’d been talking about. Assassinating him. So Jane would be crowned queen and then Dudley could rule the kingdom.
He sighed. It was a bit cliché, really. A familiar story, even for back then. The evil, power-hungry duke, grasping at the crown. The villain.
Which made Edward the na?ve, unsuspecting fool.
And he’d married Jane off to the villain’s son.
They were both pawns in a political game.
He wanted to stand up. He wanted to pace and scream and break things. He wanted to send somebody to the dungeon. Torture. The executioner’s block. He wanted to become a lion and roar down the stairs and find the duke’s throat. But even the thoughts tired him, and instead, as if to remind him of his body’s current frailty, he was wracked by a violent coughing fit, which held on to him so long that his vision dimmed and he was afraid he was going to pass out.
“Your Majesty is still breathing?” Pet-the-girl said softly, when he could hear anything outside of his own noise again. He felt her head upon his shoulder, her body against his, offering comfort the way she would in her other form. She still smelled like dog: her breath, a woodsy musk emanating from her skin, mixed with a scent he recognized as his own cologne.
He tried to sit up. “I’m fine.”
She pulled away and smiled at him. “Fine. Yes. You are a fine person. My favorite.”
Peter cleared his throat. “You must excuse my daughter, Your Majesty. As I said, she’s been out of human form for a very long while.” He took Pet-the-girl by the hand and tugged her off the bed.
Her brow furrowed. “Have I displeased Your Majesty?”
“No, Pet.” Edward turned toward Peter. “She’s your daughter?”
Peter nodded.
“Are all the dogs in my kennels E?ians?” Edward wanted to know.
“No, Sire. I have three sons and two daughters in the kennel, is all.”
“Oh, is that all?” Edward said wryly, but he couldn’t seem to find his smirk.
“My family has served your family in this way for generations,” Peter said. “We have guarded your palaces and your lands. Sat at your feet. Protected you on the hunt and in the home.”
Pet-the-girl’s chest swelled with pride at her father’s words (not that Edward was noticing anything about her chest), as if the man was reciting an ancient oath.
“I didn’t know,” Edward said. “Why did no one tell me?”
It seemed that he’d been in the dark about so many things.
Peter shook his head. “No one knew, Your Majesty. Not even your father.”
Pet-the-girl was smiling at Edward again. “Your Majesty chose me, out of all the others, to come inside the palace. Your Majesty likes me best.”
“Indeed,” he agreed faintly. This was becoming too much for him. He felt dizzy. The cloudiness was obscuring his thoughts again. He fell back against his pillows and took several deep breaths. His stomach gurgled loudly. He was still hungry, but how could he trust anything anyone offered him? Mistress Penne. Dudley. Boubou. The people he had counted on most were trying to kill him.
He was angry, of course, but more importantly, this just really hurt his feelings.
His eyes burned. “What am I going to do?” he murmured.
He felt Pet-the-girl’s hand come down on his shoulder. “I will keep Your Majesty safe,” she said.
He felt something like a warm breeze on his face, and when he looked up he saw Pet was a dog again. She jumped up on the foot of the bed and lay across his feet.
Edward didn’t know whether or not he should object.
EIGHT
Jane
So. Her husband was a horse.
And no one had told her.
Not her mother, not Edward, and certainly not Gifford. She’d had to find out as it happened and get the details from a servant. Outrageous.
Jane paced the hallway outside Gifford’s bedchambers, listening to the horse clomp around inside. She squeezed the broken stems of her poor, mauled bouquet. It wasn’t that she was opposed to marrying an E?ian. On the contrary, she found that rather exciting. But there was the small matter of Gifford seeming to despise her, and the larger matter of no one telling her.
Well, she couldn’t be sure her mother had known about the equestrian aspects of her husband, and Gifford was a drunken debaucher so of course he couldn’t be expected to tell her the truth. But Edward! Edward had known. He’d said he thought she would find Gifford’s condition intriguing, but where she’d assumed he meant Gifford’s nighttime women habits, now she knew he’d actually meant Gifford’s history of daily horsehood.