Anatol watched Evangeline take a sip of her wine and cast a cold glance at Gregorio when the man wasn’t looking. It was clear that her burst of good feeling toward him had long since faded. Gregorio cast looks at Evangeline when she wasn’t looking, too—though his were not cold, not by anyone’s measure.

Gregorio coveted Evangeline; that would be obvious to anyone, even someone who didn’t have the insight into people that he did. He wondered why Evangeline couldn’t feel it, but maybe she could—maybe that was part of why she seemed to detest him so much.

Although Anatol suspected that abhorrence didn’t go very deep. Every exchange between Gregorio and Evangeline seemed heated with an underlying current that had nothing to do with anger.

“More asparagus?” Gregorio offered the plate to Evangeline.

“No, thank you. I’ve had enough,” she responded in an icy tone without looking up from her food.

“You’ve hardly eaten anything.” Gregorio put the plate back down on the table. “And you seem displeased. I came home tonight for dinner as you asked. Should I have stayed away?”

“Of course not. This is your home. We’re only guests here.”

“Then why the change in your attitude toward me? This afternoon you seemed to want me here and now you don’t.”

Anatol put his fork down and watched Evangeline carefully. She raised her head and looked at Gregorio. “I’m trying to be a good guest, Gregorio. You’re putting a roof over our heads and I’m grateful for that.”

Gregorio blinked slowly. “But?”

Evangeline sighed and put her napkin on the table.

“You can’t get past who I am and what I began.” Gregorio spoke the words that Evangeline didn’t want to voice. “You think I’m responsible for the deaths of your friends.”

“You are responsible for their deaths.”

“He’s not, Evangeline,” Anatol broke in. “He was the tool that set the people free, but it wasn’t his hand who lopped off heads. You know this.”

Evangeline looked down at her plate and shook her head. “When an animal keeper lets loose a pack of ravening hyenas that mindlessly rips the throats from a bevy of swans, do you blame the hyenas or the keeper?”

“That’s not a fair analogy, Evangeline. You can’t compare—” Anatol stopped speaking when Gregorio raised his hand.

After a tense moment, Gregorio laid his napkin to the side of his plate, rose, and went down on his knee next to Evangeline’s chair. “Please believe me. I never intended the bloodshed, though I should have known it would happen.” He paused, bowing his head. “I should have known.”

She remained still, staring at her plate.

“But, Evangeline,” Gregorio continued, “you must see that even though I was the tool that broke the floodgates, the floodgates would eventually have broken without me. The Edaeii family could never have held power when their people were so dissatisfied, starving, dying the way they were. When that happens, the people rise up, they throw off their oppressors.” He paused. “It was inevitable.”

Finally, she shifted in her chair to look at him. “You destroyed our way of life, Gregorio. How do you expect me to feel about that?”

“Yes, I did, and I’m glad!” Gregorio made a frustrated sound and stood. “Don’t you see that your way of life impinged on the rights of most everyone around you, Evangeline? How can you defend setting your table with feasts every night while the rest of the people in the country starved? How can you think it was right to clothe yourself in finery stolen from the backs of children who went cold in the winter?” He shook his head. “I know you’re not cruel, so you can’t possibly think the former way of running this country was the right way. You don’t have that in you.”

She fidgeted and then stood. “I don’t like being told what I should think and feel.”

“Admit you think your former life was unfair to everyone but you.”

“Gregorio—”

“Admit it.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, and her jaw locked. “I will admit that equality is not a bad thing and that perhaps there might be a better way.” Her eyes flashed. “But how it was done was brutal and merciless and came from the depths of hell. There was a better way to do that, as well.”

Inclining his head, he slid back into his chair. “Maybe.”

“These people need to be told what to do, Gregorio. You’ll see. You’ll have chaos on your hands with the will of the commoners leading the way.”

Gregorio raised his head, his eyes glittering with challenge. “Do you really think so?”

“Yes. People are sheep. They need a strong shepherd and you, you want to let them vote! It’s insanity!”

Gregorio’s lips curled in a mirthless smile. “I guess we’ll see just how insane it is together, Evangeline.”

“You’re infuriating!”

“I’ve been told.”

She made a frustrated sound, and then nodded at Gregorio. “Thank you so much for the dinner. Thank you so much for . . . well, everything.”

“Don’t thank me. I like having you both here.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

He swirled the drink in his glass and leaned back in his chair. “I’m lonely, if you must know the truth.”

“Thousands of people look up to you.” She walked to the doorway.

“Thousands of people make me feel alone.”

She studied him for a long moment, her face softening a little. “You’re not alone now.” Then she disappeared into the hallway.

Anatol had spent the conversation watching Gregorio watch her. It had been easy since suddenly neither of them had seemed to remember he was in the room. Gregorio’s eyes had been focused, sharp, and deep, soaking in every little movement she made. Once she’d left the room, the light had left his eyes. Now he was gazing down at his wreck of a dinner plate.

Anatol spoke. “You want her, don’t you?”

“What?” Gregorio’s gaze snapped to his.

“It’s in the way you watch Evangeline. You covet her.”

Gregorio looked away, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “I’m a man and she’s a beautiful woman, of course I want her. Don’t worry, I know she’s yours.” The words came out with a trace of bitterness.

But that was just it, Evangeline wasn’t his. Not completely. Anatol was no fool. Evangeline had only recently begun to feel emotion again. She wasn’t ready to lock herself into a relationship with only one man, no matter how much Anatol might wish it. If she did, he would lose her.

As much as it pained him, he needed to leave her free to explore her emotions as they arose and to give her the ability to act on them. Anything else would drive her away.

“She’s not mine.” The words hurt to say, but they were the truth. “I’m not her keeper. We have sex, that’s all.”

Gregorio gave a decidedly unamused laugh and turned his face away. “You love her. I can see it on your face. We have sex, that’s all. For someone who can purportedly see truth, that’s a pretty big lie.”

“I do love her. I love her more than I’ve ever loved anyone else, and I suspect she loves me though I don’t know for certain. I understand her, too, probably better than anyone in the world, much better than she understands herself. Her magick is a gift, like you say, but it’s also been her curse. My gift is illusion, but it has a flip side. It means I can see into the truth of things and people. Her gift is giving other people emotion, and that gift robbed her of her own for nearly her whole life. She’s only just started to feel again, and she barely knows what love is yet.”

Gregorio rose from the table and crossed the room to the fireplace. He leaned heavily against the mantel, one hand clutching the edge. “That’s all fascinating, but what does it have to do with me wanting to fuck her?”

“It means that Evangeline is free to do as she wishes and she might wish to sleep with you.” Anatol rose from the table. “You might get to fuck her, Gregorio, but never expect her heart. She’s not ready.” He strode from the room.

Her hand strayed to his cock and it went hard against her palm. Groaning, he nuzzled the back of her head and found her breast under her nightgown. Her nipple went hard against his palm and she let out a little sigh that went straight to his blood like the finest liquor.

After seeing that flash of attraction between her and Gregorio, he needed to claim her. He would free her emotional will, but also put his mark on her body. If she strayed to another man, he would always be here waiting for her to come back.

He would never give up on her.

She shimmied the hem of the gown up and thrust her sweet backside against him, wanting his shaft. A ragged breath escaped him. He could never resist when she did that and she knew it, the minx. He freed his cock and gave it to her, slipping the head into her entrance and pushing deep. They both sighed into the cool darkness of the room as they moved together, their bodies straining gently toward climax in the dark.

He cupped her breast, rolling her nipple between his thumb and forefinger as he thrust slowly in and out of her. “I care very much about you, Evangeline,” he whispered near her ear, then dragged the lobe through his teeth. He didn’t use the word love, knowing it might drive her away. “I also know that you are not mine to command.”

Her movements faltered. “What are you saying?”

He slipped his hand between her thighs and found her clit, pressing and rotating until he heard her breath catch. “You are free to do what you wish with whomever you wish.”

“Anatol, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I can see what you can’t yet.” But soon, she would see. She would recognize that her animosity for Gregorio was, in fact, attraction.

She opened her mouth to reply and he thrust his hips forward slowly, impaling her deeply on his cock and making her moan. He moved over her, dragging her beneath his body, parting her thighs and sliding deep inside her so he could look down at her face. He searched her beautiful eyes.

She reached up and pushed his hair behind his ear. “I can see just fine, and I see you, Anatol. Only you.”

He knew those words were true.

For now.

She tried—and was mostly successful—to keep her emotions under control and her tongue civil when in Gregorio’s presence. She’d seen firsthand the misery the beheadings had caused him. The tension sat in his shoulders and deepened the lines of his face. She also was well aware—and grateful—that he’d saved Anatol from the kiss of the executioner’s blade.

So they avoided the subject of the revolution completely. Instead they talked of history, literature, and art. All the things that Evangeline had neglected to learn at the palace because she’d been too busy scheming to get ahead and then sleeping with her tutors so they would give her a passing mark for doing nothing in her studies.

Gregorio had a way of teaching her that made it interesting, too. He did it in a conversational way, through stories, avoiding the high-handed, superior, pompous way of teaching that she was far more familiar with.

“Have you seen the steam transport that is taking passengers from Milzyr to the provinces?” he asked as he capped her empress.

She suppressed a sigh of resignation at the move. He had this round of the game sewn up. “Oh, yes, the nobles were enraptured with it. I took several sightseeing tours out to the station to watch it pull in, though I never rode on it.” She tapped her index finger on her lower lip, contemplating her next move. “I figured it stopped working once the rev—” She looked up at him, realizing she’d almost broken their unspoken law. “Now that everything is different.”

“It was out of commission for a while, for a lack of travelers. They’ve lowered the fares they charge and now many can afford to travel by rail.”

“Have you ridden on it?” She moved her iron soldier, hoping to block his gold horseman.

He nodded idly. “I have. Several times. It’s a much more efficient way to travel than by carriage or even by balloon.”

She looked up at him, game forgotten. “Balloon? You’ve traveled by balloon?”

He smiled. “Many times. It’s incredible. You can see everything from up there. Incredible, but slow.”

“Slow.” She snorted and looked down at the board. “You’re always moving. Don’t you ever slow down and just enjoy the view?”

“Sometimes I do,” he murmured.

She looked up and he was rolling a game piece between his fingers, staring at her with heavy-lidded eyes. Something in her stomach fluttered and rolled. It was not unpleasant. If she tasted his emotions right now she was certain of what she would find. Desire.

Suddenly flustered, she studied the game board for a moment, then stood. “You’ve got this won, I think. There’s no sense in continuing. If you’ll excuse me—”

“Do you bear me even the slightest bit of attraction, Evangeline?”

Her eyes flew to his. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Surely you’ve felt mine for you.”

“I’m with Anatol.” She’d gone for a scandalized tone of voice, but it had come out thick and heavy because a part of her did crave this man.

He nodded. “Yet Anatol tells me you two are not in a committed relationship. He tells me you’re free to live, and love, as you will.”

Swallowing hard, she looked away from him. Why had Anatol and Gregorio had that conversation?

And why had Anatol said such a thing?

“What Anatol said has no bearing on our relationship. It’s true Anatol and I have no formal understanding of commitment”—and clearly he didn’t want one—“and I’m free to love as I choose. I’m sorry, but I don’t choose you.”

Gregorio looked for a moment like she’d physically slapped him and, just for a heartbeat, she felt bad about it. Then she turned and went for the door—safety. Fleeing her suddenly hard-beating heart and her body that was reacting in an unwelcome way toward the prospect of having Gregorio touch her.

But he came after her, not letting her run away. He whirled her around to face him and her body tensed. If he touched her, she might lose her resolve, if—

He handed her a book.

It was thick and leather bound. She looked at the spine, A History of Inventions. “Why are you giving me this?”

“You seem interested in such things, like the steam transport and the helium float. You’d be amazed at all the things the Edaeii family suppressed during their reign in order to keep the people under their thumb. All the inventions were put back into production as soon as the mob hit the gates of Belai. Read it. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

Flustered, and a bit uncomfortable, she hugged the book to herself. “I’ll give it a try,” she said slowly. Then her anger snapped. “But don’t expect me to finish it if it bores me.”

He smiled at her, but there was something hungry, almost predatory, in his eyes. “Of course not.”

“Good night.” She nodded at him and turned to leave the room.

“Sleep well, Evangeline.”

As she turned, his words swept over her, laden with innuendo. They seemed to stroke her bare skin like a hand in a soft leather glove.