Lord Edmond had been there when he was summoned to the royal castle a few weeks ago to tell him about his marriage arrangements. When Rohan had angrily left the palace, as he was threatened that if he did not marry this human, he would be sent back to the asylum, Lord Edmond had ridden away in his carriage to avoid the sun, and his damn carriage had passed by him and splashed dirty mud on his clean trousers. That much insolence, Rohan could not tolerate.
There was silence at the back of the hall, apart from the soft music on the platform, before Rohan handed his glass of blood wine to the darkness, and it disappeared into it. The glass was returned to him empty.
"The servants did not keep you company while I was away getting my wife, did they?" He crooked his head toward the darkness and then clicked his tongue. "I thought so much. I brought her back. I did not kill her as I planned. I thought I would enjoy killing her, but then I changed my mind."
A faint knock on the door made Rohan pause midway through parting his lips to speak to the darkness. The door opened without invitation, and Rav entered, moving like a man who had long learned not to question what should not be questioned whenever his lordship spoke into an empty space.
He walked past without a glance toward the darkened part he knew no one was there, and if there was, he or anyone else could not see it, but the lordship alone. Setting a fresh glass of blood beside the empty blood wine glass, he straightened.
Rohan's eyes turned to the vampire women dancing on the platform as he listened to the voices no one could hear but him. The women had progressed to prancing around without corsets, their breasts small, their nipples the size of pennies.
Rohan wondered idily what Bells's breasts looked like. He remembered how the swell of her breasts had been in his view in the carriage when she woke up from sleep in his arms.
She'd worn a corset because all respectable women did, but Rohan imagined what a pleasure it would be to unlace it with slow hands. Would she blush as it fell away to bare her natural beauty? Damn, he wanted to see them.
He felt himself harden, and he lounged back in his seat and closed his eyes. He didn't want to sully the image of his little bunny with the half-naked dancers, but his thoughts did not allow his erection to go down for quite some time. Thus, he looked away from them to turn to Rav, who was speaking to him.
"My Lord, shall we move the lady's things to a different chamber?" Rav asked. The room the servants had arranged for her had been Rohan's when he was a prince, and before he was taken to the asylum, it had been a faded and ruined place until His Majesty sent people to arrange it for the lady. But then Rohan had not stopped them because he believed his bride would never make it into Nightbrook to live in his space, but now...
Rohan said nothing at first, merely rolling his cigar between his gloved fingers. Then, with a slow exhale, he flicked the ash aside and murmured, "No. Leave her there."
Rav was taken aback for a moment. To anyone else, this might not have been a big deal for his bride to be in his old room, but to Rohan, it was, and Rav knew that. He had never allowed even servants to enter it to clean it since the day he came back, not to mention letting her stay there. What could his lordship be planning to do with his new bride? Was he taking her as a replacement for his pet—a slave that had been given to him as a gift, whom he had kept alive for two days before sending her body back to the relative who had gifted her?
Rav did not question it and wisely chose silence. He would rather spare himself the gore the man might describe in his plans for his bride.
Instead, Rav moved to the next matter. "Shall I bring the women to your chamber for the night?" he asked, referring to the dancing women on the platform, who after their nightly performance for Rohan were sent to perform other duties to him in the room.
A smirk tugged at the corners of Rohan's lips as he finally turned his head to look at the boring dancers. "I have a wife to see tonight," he said smoothly, raising his glass in an almost toasting gesture before taking another slow sip. Then he added, "Send them back to their madame, I do not need them anymore."
Rav was hesitant to follow that order as he knew his lordship's appetite when it came to women. He could never go a day without having a woman in his bed, but today he was ordering him to send them away. Something was not right about everything here. Was he planning to really spend the night with his human bride? He'd never taken a human to bed.
"What do you plan to do with the lady now that you have brought her home, my Lord?" Rav finally decided to ask, as he was not looking forward to seeing the body of that young woman.
She was not just anyone but a woman given to him as part of an agreement to end the feud between humans and vampires. Her death could ultimately bring chaos to the now peaceful land, not to mention, his lordship might get into trouble and be sent back to that dreadful place where he had spent years without seeing the light of day, being purged into sanity. When Rohan was sent to the asylum, Rav had been sent there to serve him and stay in the mad house. He did not look forward to returning there with his master.
So, if he could, he would rather try to prevent her death at all costs.
"What do you think?" Rohan arched an amused brow at his valet, who had served him even in the asylum.
"Uhm, feed her to the wild wolves and make it seem like an accident?"
Rohan threw his head back and roared with laughter, as if he had just heard the funniest joke in the world. In reality, he never laughed at the things normal people found amusing. He was the kind of man who would chuckle at someone tripping over a pitchfork and accidentally falling to their death.
"Wild guess, but not close. Try again." He cocked his head to the side and bit down on his cigar, clearly enjoying the guessing game.
"You plan to push her from the top of the roof and tell His Majesty she had killed herself because she didn't want to live with you?"
Rohan smirked wickedly. "You know me so well, Raven, but none of that comes close to what I plan to do. But rest assured, I am keeping her alive."
When Rohan planned to keep someone alive, it became worse than killing that person, but he did not speak and nodded his head. Rav bowed his head and exited the hall that was built like a mini theater, leaving only the master of the house and the unseen presence once more.
For a long moment, Rohan simply sat there, watching the now empty stage as Rav had sent the dancers out. He sat there with the patience of a god among mortals.
Then, in the hush of the room, he finally spoke again.
"You don't believe I plan to keep her as well?" he asked the darkness with a serious expression, and then he smiled, his white set of teeth glimmering in the dim room. "Of course, I have my reasons for keeping her."
With a slow, satisfied drag of smoke, he got up and said, "Because I have found her again after so many years of wondering if she still lives. Goodnight, Kuhn. I need to pay a visit to my bunny, that bunny needs a lot of lessons."