Steelhands - Jaida Jones [41]
The most recent—before the country boy—had been the infamous Crown Prince of Arlemagne, whom I’d only met the once, completely by accident, when I’d left the Airman to stretch my legs and ended up at Roy’s place in the Crescents as friends sometimes do. The prince’d looked like one of those dolls they sold to little girls along the Rue, blond ponytail and blue eyes and roses in his cheeks. They’d been having tea, of all things, and I couldn’t understand a damn word of Arlemagne myself, but Roy’d been kind enough to take pity on me, explaining that tea was not all they were having and would I very kindly escort my dragon-stinking ass elsewhere, since all my scowling was putting a damper on the mood.
There was no way that one could’ve ended well. Even if the Arlemagne didn’t get their knickers in a bunch about men kissing other men—and they did, as I understood it, almost as much as they didn’t like being slapped on the ass in public—you couldn’t just up and have an affair with the heir to the throne and expect everything to run smoothly after that.
Honestly, I didn’t know who was stupider about that one.
For a man I knew could be impossibly clever—when he had the mind to be—Roy had about the same amount of good sense as a common house cat, but with less grace to stick the landing. He’d gone and got himself exiled for that one, and that was where he’d met Hal—the latest in a long line of young men who didn’t look back when they slammed the door. He’d lasted longer than the others, though. That was one good thing I could say for him.
It was with no small amount of trepidation that I was coming to accept him in my own way though I still felt like I was waiting for the other boot to come down, so to speak.
But it didn’t mean that I couldn’t be polite as I knew how in the meantime. Some people around here had manners, like greeting your friends when they paid a visit.
“You said he was changing, right?” I asked Hal, partly to make sure he wasn’t really cooking and partly because all the silence between us left me feeling distinctly uncomfortable. It wasn’t that he was unfriendly—quite the contrary, actually—but more like if you let him, he’d drift off to another place altogether. That usually left me holding the thread of the conversation and feeling like an idiot once I’d realized what’d happened. I was used to dealing with simple folk whose everyday thoughts didn’t work the same as dreaming. When Roy said Hal’s different, I believed him all right. “Hasn’t taken it into his head to try making dinner or anything like that, has he?”
“Bastion, no,” Hal said, shaking his head with a little laugh that didn’t seem unkind. There wasn’t any mocking in it, anyway. “I don’t think he’d eat at all if we didn’t go out.”
“True enough,” I agreed. “He burns bread just by looking at it. I’ve seen it happen.”
Hal laughed again, touching the knob of a coat hanger on the wall beside him. “I tried to bring him a cheese sandwich once. He told me to add lettuce, tomato, salt and pepper, then to take out the cheese and bring it back to him when I was done.”
“And you actually did it?” I asked, since not only would I have told Roy exactly what he could do with a good cheese sandwich, I’d probably have threatened to give him a demonstration just so I’d know he’d received the message.
Hal shrugged lopsidedly, one shoulder higher than the other. “I don’t mind. If I’m home, then I usually have the time to spare anyway, and I’d rather he eats than doesn’t.”
“Now, there’s a sensible statement if ever I heard one,” I said, and I even meant it, too. “If he ever gets it into his head to start dieting again or something like that …”
“You can count on me,” Hal said, with a little burst of firmness. So there was some steel under all those wispy clouds of his. Guess I shouldn’t have been all that surprised. It took a lot to be able to deal with someone like Roy on a daily basis. I knew it firsthand from my years in the ’Versity, back when there’d been