-CHAPTER 21-
Félix languidly tucked his hands into the crook of each elbow, his back rounding as he eased out from his chair, half-resting against the rosewood partner's desk. Bach stood at attention with the gest of a soldat, but his shoulders were too stiff, too perfect. Félix hid a smirk.
He could not be fooled.
Once, Bach slowly shut and opened his eyes.
Then twice.
On the third attempt, a rigid cough—slightly strangled—escaped him.
"Would you like me to top up your wine cup, Your Grace?" he said with forced interest.
Félix laughed almost but slapped the urge back down his throat with a slight outward firming of his jaw. He had barely even glanced at his loaded wine cup—what was Bach going on about?
"Since you have nothing of note to say to me…" the duke intoned calmly, watching the subtle shift of the butler's expression from nervous to fright in real-time. Félix went on, "I, on the other hand, have something worth saying to you. A question, if you will. It is regarding your actions at the king's plot."
Bach pushed his head back slightly, the skin around the region where his brows met folding into a ridge.
"What did you mean by that grandiose show of charitable deeds yesterday? That, too, on my coin. What statement were you trying to make by going to such lengths and risking my wrath as perfectly as you did? What made you do it?" Félix asked tersely.
Bach signed his growing discomfort from standing for so long by shifting his weight from one leg to another. But Félix ignored it. It did not matter. What did was getting an answer; this time, he would not let Bach excuse his way out as he'd done before.
"Your Grace…"
Bach paused. Félix caught the slow descent of his lean Adam's apple as he swallowed. Hard.
"Actually," Bach continued with a small crack in his voice, "I heard from one of the men on the field that wages have been withheld for quite some time. Eighty days, precisely."
The duke sat up straight, the tension on his shoulder caps releasing.
"Sometime last month, they had halted the construction of the Grand Opera House on account of delayed wage payment. I gathered that the workers had stirred unrest at the earl's house one night before marching off to the baron's house, costing the five hundred-something their employment in a blink."
Félix sat dazed for a beat of a minute, his eyes blurring out Bach from view. Quickly, though, his mind picked up and looking down at the report, he began needling through it, desperate for clues—anything to corroborate Bach's claims.
After a few minutes of frantically flipping through the pages of the financial report, he found what he was looking for. A sigh heaved out of his parted lips. So that was it? That was the puzzle he'd been trying to fathom before. The daily wage allocation crashed considerably even while the five-hundred-something workers were still employed. He'd finally figured out how that lapse in the report came to be.
But just as easily as the duke's face had lit up, a scowl formed, and he slammed the desk with a force that jolted Bach's shoulders up in the air. "Who did you hear this from? Where is your source? Who are they?"
"I could look into your activities for today and see how possible it is for me to arrange a meeting for you to talk with him personally if you would like that. Your Grace."
Félix let the suggestion hang in the air because he did not have a better way to handle his growing dissatisfaction with not having worked this out himself. Why had it taken his butler showing up there to tell him that before he could piece the fragments together? Shouldn't he know any better as Duke of a twenty-thousand-strong duchy?
"Why are you just telling me this now?" Félix charged. "Were you waiting for them to stage a demonstration at my gates before you told me?"
"Not at all, Your Grace. No one is coming to harass you, nor will I let them near here."
Big words. Félix scoffed, eyeing Bach—whose scant arm muscle would offer him no advantage in combat, should it ever come to that. If anything, it would be he, Félix, doing the protecting.
Situating one fist on the chair handle, elbow jutting out, Félix waited for the butler to answer his question directly.
"I did not tell you because I didn't want to override my actual duties here, Your Grace," Bach ended in a tone Félix did not like. One inlaid with defeat.
"Tell me."
Bach's eyes widened.
"Tell me from now on anything that concerns me or my affairs here. As my butler, you are also my eyes and ears in here and out in the world. Remember that."
Bach nodded, a small smile forming on his lips before he hopped off. "What if it is something personally tied to you? I mean intimate…"
Félix blinked. "Tell me that as well—whatever you know or come to learn."
Bach stood silent for a minute, wrinkling his brows as if buried in thoughts. When he was ready to speak, he said, "Do I have permission to delve into this area that concerns you then, Your Grace?"
"What area?" the duke asked.
"It's about the woman who visited this morning—"
"Your important guest, you mean," Félix cut in.
"I am sorry, Your Grace," Bach said, with a soft bowing of head.
"What do you want to say to me about her? Is it tied to what you wanted to say before, coming in here with sweet talk and my favorite wine?"
"I'm afraid so, Your Grace. Truly, there's nothing I do that ever escapes your watchful gaze." Bach smiled. "But about that woman from before—she did not leave. I did not let her."
A muscle in Félix's jaw twitched, pulling taut so hard that it popped.
"Now, that is what I like to call doing too much. This is you overstepping, or didn't you know that?"
Bach nodded agreeingly. "It is true that I overstepped, Your Grace, and really, pardon me for this one. I needed to do what I did. While you were upstairs with the princess, I sought the woman's company to learn more about this girl you've been having sleepless nights over ever since seeing her at the ball. At Lady Agatha's Ball," he added firmly.
"Bach!"
Félix's ears were smoking now. That was personal. Much too personal.
"I found something out that is against the law. Something you could use to hold the baron by the throat and make him accountable for his actions."
"And what's that?" Félix said with a sneer, clamping down his anger.
"It is one of disregard for the common law, Your Grace." Bach stopped to catch his breath. "The girl—Estella—is being sold off to marry the Viscount Alistair."
Well,thatwascommonknowledge.
"But they did not abide by the law of betrothal rites."
Whatdoeshemean?
"Estella is just seventeen. Your Grace. She is only seventeen."