A Brother's Price

Odelia and Trini are going to die .
    If they did, he couldn’t bear going on too. It would be more than just the grief of losing them. No one would think him clean, not even his own family, who knew of his indiscretions with Ren. Everything balanced on an edge of cascading disaster. If Ren was infected, the Queens couldn’t allow him to marry Lylia and the younger princesses. If his family had to give back the four thousand, they would lose the mercantile, and would have to pay the penalty.
    His sisters had planned to stop in Annaboro for a few days before going on to Heron Landing. With a quick boat, the Moorlands could fetch back Cullen with his reputation fairly intact. With four brothers, why would his sisters need to visit a crib? The public opinion would be that, unlike Ren, his sisters were clean and thus Cullen was safe, regardless of any dalliance.
    But Jerin’s brother’s price would be worthless forever. The betrothal notice had gone to the newspaper before his sisters left. His return to his sisters—and the reason why—would be equally public. Returning the four thousand crowns would be a crippling blow to his family. Much as his sisters loved him, they would have no choice but to set him up in a crib, servicing strangers for ten crowns a night.
    He stared down at the bleak drop below the balcony, a storm of dark emotions raging through him. My life has been ruined by a man already dead .
    “Jerin!” Ren dashed out into the cold pounding rain and caught his arm. “What are you doing out here?”
    “If he was alive, I would hunt him down and cut out his heart!” Jerin trembled with the desire to do violence. Never before had he wanted to hold on to someone— preferably by the throat—and squeeze the very life out of him. Nothing would be slow and painful enough to ease the pain inside himself. “Why did he do this? He had everything!”
    “Jerin, we’re clean!” Ren shouted over the roll of thunder. “If Keifer had anything, he didn’t pass it to me or the others!”
    He blinked the cold rain and the hot tears out his eyes. “Clean?”
    Ren smiled at him, oblivious to the rain. “There’s not a single trace of anything! Keifer’s noble lovers must have been clean. Nobles don’t visit cribs!”
    It sounded so sane and reasonable. Of course, nobles were never pushed to desperation—they had money to buy the pretty son of a poor farmer if they had to bend that low. Surely if the women slept with Keifer, it was part and parcel of using him to commit treason. Had sex and the lure of doing something forbidden been simply an easy leash to control Keifer with?
    The darkest and bleakest of Jerin’s emotions drained away, leaving him feeling bruised.
    “Come on.” Ren tugged him back toward the suite. “Come out of the rain, and take off those wet things before you catch a cold.”
    Numbly he followed. She pulled his nightshirt up over his head. She was soaked to the skin and shivering herself.
    “You need to get dry too.” He reached for the buttons of her shirt.
    Ren toweled his hair as he undid her clothes, dropping them into damp piles at their feet. All at once, it seemed, they were naked, pressed close together, kissing. All the fear and anger and hurt twisted into a desperate, consuming need to be together.
    Two steps, and they were on the bed. Ren reached between them, took hold of him, and guided him into her. One smooth warm stroke, and they were joined as one.
    “We shouldn’t have done that,” Jerin murmured much later. “Not yet.”
    “We’re wife and husband minus a large circus act called a royal wedding. It’s only a show for the common folk. The betrothal contracts are the true binding word, and those are all signed and legal.”
    “We’re married,” he whispered, barely believing it. A few weeks ago he was a simple landed gentry’s son, without a title, in an obscure part of the realm. “I’m Prince Consort.”
    “Yes, my love, you are.”
    “You love me?”
    “With all my heart.”
    “I wanted to tell you, before you left the Whistler home, that I loved you, but there didn’t seem to be a way. I never dreamed you would want me for a husband.”
    “A hundred years ago, and I would have carried you off that first night, Odelia and your sisters be damned.”
     
    She brought a basin and a towel to the nightstand. Dampening the towel, she washed him clean, the warm nubby fabric rubbing gently against him.
    “That’s nice,” he said sleepily.
    “Go