“No.”
“We are wed, and I do not even know your name.” She let out a breath as if he had struck it from her with a blow. She pulled the chair from the table and sat, afraid she might not be able to stay standing.
When he approached her and took a second chair to twist it toward her, and sit so that his knees brushed hers, she did not recoil from him. They slept in each other’s embrace each night. If he wished to harm her, there was nowhere for her to run.
Hands lifted hers from her lap, and he kissed her fingers. “My name…my true name, the day I was born, was Faustus Diogenus, in the city of Istanbul. I have not been that man for many years, I fear. The name I prefer, the one I think of myself as, is Gideon.”
“No surname?”
He shrugged. “They’re useless when one has no family and hails from nowhere and everywhere at once. I pick and choose new surnames as they suit me. But I required something more German to convince the locals, and…Johann Faust is who I became.”
“You do not look German at all.” He was from the east. The Ottoman empire. It made so much more sense, than him claiming he was half Spanish and half German.
“Not much to be done about that.”
“I am a fool. I should have known. I should have put it together.”
“No, Marguerite. You are struggling to keep your head above water in a world that is flooding in a storm.” He reached out and gently stroked her hair.
“Gideon.” She tried it to see how it felt, watching those silver eyes in return as they trained on her as if she were the only thing in the world. “It is a far better name for you than Johann.”
He chuckled. “I am happy you think so.”
“I must ask a promise of you, Gideon.” It did flow much nicer. It was a better name.
“Say it, and it is yours.”
“Swear to me, my husband, that if I ask you something…you will not lie to me.” She shook her head. “I will not ask you to tell me all your secrets. I fear that a necromancer must have many to spare.”
The grunt he made was enough of a confirmation of that.
“But if I ask you a question, promise me that you will speak the truth.”
He kissed her hands again. “Yes. I swear it on my mortal life.”
“Then I must ask you this…did you command Leopold’s father to kill him? Were you in control of him?” She did not dare think about the consequences of the answer. If he were to say yes…
“No.” The answer came quickly, and searching his silver eyes for the lie, she found none. Or perhaps she was simply naïve. But she had no means of proving him wrong.
She nodded once and took his hands. The simple gesture softened his expression. The hard lines smoothed at the edges of his eyes, and for a second, she was caught off guard by how beautiful he was. How perfectly handsome.
Lifting a hand from his, she placed her palm to his cheek. His eyes slipped shut, and he leaned into her touch. He looked so…desperate for her affection. So grateful for every moment. “You truly do love me.”
“Did you doubt?”
“Of course. I am no one but the bastard daughter of a king. Besides, you do not know me.”
“I fear you stole my heart the moment I saw you, sketching away in secret in the courtyard, pretending to be studying your book.” He smiled, eyes still shut, still basking in her gentle touch. “I knew you well enough then. You were not one to do as you were told. You would defy me at every turn. You would do as you wished—when you wished it, and I would have no say in the matter. And in that moment, my fate was sealed. I had to have you. I had to free that young woman from the chains in which her life had placed her.”
“An odd manner of freedom I have, married to a man whose name I did not know, nor his dark vocation, until a fortnight after our wedding day.”
“I never said I was perfect.”
Laughing, she leaned in and acted on impulse. She kissed him. It was hardly the passionate embraces he paid her when she least expected it. It was shy—furtive and unsure. She did not know what she was doing. Her first kiss had been given to Leopold when she was but a child. He had not reciprocated, and at the time she had not understood why.
She expected him to crash over her like a tide. To take her kiss as the waving of the flag at the beginning of the tourney, and to throw her onto the table and have her. She knew how deeply he desired her—the proof of it was often plain without his intention. The feeling was growing startlingly mutual.
A large part of her wanted him to do it.