She blinked.
Then she stared.
“And you may not be of this world, but you’re an Ulfr,” he finished.
“How can I make money if I don’t work?” she asked.
“If you need anything, you ask for it. It will be provided for you,” he answered.
“But—”
“Now,” he interrupted again. “As for the children—”
It was she who interrupted this time, and she did it by snapping, “Hang on a ding-donged second.”
“Ilsa—”
“No.” She kept snapping and now she did it advancing; her hand up, finger pointing at him and jabbing the air. “You listen to me now and stop cutting me off. It’s rude.” She stopped moving and dropped her hand. “You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do; where I can go and who I can see.”
She stopped talking so he requested, “May I speak?”
“Only if you don’t piss me off when you do it,” she allowed and he really didn’t want to find her amusing.
But, damn it all, he did.
He just didn’t let it show.
“I’m afraid what I’m about to say will do that…if I take your meaning as I’ve learned what those words mean from Finnie, Cora and Circe.”
Her head tipped to the side. “Finnie, Cora and Circe?”
“Women here from your world married to men from mine.”
Her eyes got huge and that wasn’t amusing.
It was endearing.
Gods, but he’d made a colossal mistake bringing her here.
“What?” she cried.
He drew in breath and explained, “Finnie, the Ice Princess of Lunwyn, Cora, the Gracious, Princess of Hawkvale, and Circe, the warrior Queen of Korwahk, are all from your world.”
Her eyes got even bigger.
Thus more endearing.
Bloody hell.
“Cora, the Gracious is of my people?” she breathed.
“You’ve heard of her,” Apollo deduced.
She threw out a hand and exclaimed, “Hell yeah! Everyone raves about her in the Vale.”
“She’s much loved,” Apollo agreed.
“Totally,” she stated. “Holy cow. She’s from home?”
Apollo crossed his arms on his chest. “Your home, as is hers, is here now, Ilsa.”
“Well, yeah. I know,” she replied immediately. “But you know what I mean.”
“My point is, it would be good to stop thinking of the other world as home.”
She said nothing but the excited surprise drifted from her delicate features as she held his gaze.
He tried not to think that he rather enjoyed the excited surprise lighting her features and reverted to their previous subject.
“As I was saying, I’m afraid I’ll anger you with what I have to say but in this world you are a woman, you are my charge and you are an Ulfr. Further, you’re aristocracy by birth as well as marriage. Your father in Fleuridia was a count. Therefore, all around, you are an aristocrat and must behave in this world as one.”
Her tone was cautious when she asked, “I can assume it’s widely known your wife has passed.”
“It is,” he affirmed tersely.
“So everyone will know she’s not me. And anyway, if I’m not here then I don’t have to behave in any way that’s expected of me.”
“I have decided to explain your…” he paused, “appearance by saying you’re a distant cousin of Ilsa’s with an uncanny resemblance to her but you grew up in the Vale, thus you don’t know how to speak Fleuridian. You’ve come to be sheltered here due to your parents’ untimely demise and your unwed status seeing as your husband also met an untimely end.”
She took another step to him and stopped, saying, “But don’t you see, Apollo? If I just go, no explanations have to be made.”
“You’re not going, Ilsa,” he denied.
She mimicked him, crossing her arms on her chest. “I’m not staying, Apollo.”
He was losing patience, not that he had much in the first place.
“It’s not safe,” he told her curtly.
“I was on the run from Pol for three years. Yes, this world is different but I think I can take care of myself.”
“I’ll remind you that you were on the run and he found you. When first I laid eyes on you, you were not doing so well at keeping yourself safe.”
She clamped her mouth shut and he knew his point was made.
So he moved on.
“It’s my duty—” he began to continue but she interrupted him.
“I’m not a duty. I’m a person.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“And I can work and I can take care of myself. And if I can’t, frankly, that’s none of your business. I’ll deal with that too.”
He tried a new tactic and asked, “And how will you feed yourself?”
“I haven’t decided yet but it isn’t like you don’t have restaurants, pubs. I’ll get a job as a waitress.”
His brows shot together and when she saw it, for some reason, she took a step back.
But he ignored that.
“A barmaid?” he asked, his voice dripping with derision and at the sound of it, her spine straightened so quickly, it was wonder he didn’t hear it snap.
“Yes,” she hissed. “A barmaid,” she mimicked his tone then defended her questionable choice of profession. “It’s honest work.”
“You’re an Ulfr,” he reminded her.
“Yes, that’s my last name given to me by a man I now detest so it’s a name I don’t want. And the other man who has that name, I don’t like all that much. So I’ll be going back to my maiden name and no one will even know I’m an Ulfr. Which is okay by me because the time that I was,”—she leaned in— “all of it,” she stressed, her meaning clear, “I didn’t like all that much.”
He didn’t like her meaning. Not at all.
And he didn’t hesitate to take issue with it.
“Did you suffer at my men’s hands?” he asked.
“No, they were awesome. Every last one. But you haven’t been all that great.”
“Well, you can rest in the knowledge, my dove, that you won’t have to concern yourself with me,” he returned. “I’ll be away to Bellebryn the minute I drop you at Karsvall.”
“That’s fabulous news,” she replied sarcastically. “But even if I don’t have to concern myself with you, I do have to concern myself with your children.”