“No more than usual,” she said on a laugh, collecting the shears and starting to cut. Which reminded me, I still needed to give Ruairi a good trimming. I glanced over at the razor. Maybe I’d shave his hair clean off. He’d probably go into hiding for months. Wouldn’t that be brilliant?
Ten minutes was all it took—and thank goodness for that. My neck couldn’t take much more pulling and dragging.
Eava propped her fists onto her hips, giving me a good once-over before nodding her approval. “You look very smart indeed, Little Rían.”
First my doo-da, now that feckin’ nickname. “How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?” I dragged the towel from my neck, using magic to clean the hair from the floor and send it to the bin.
When I stood, she caught me in a strong embrace, her wrinkled cheek pressed to the scar across my chest. “Ye could be a thousand years old and ye’d still be my little blue-eyed boy.”
“I hate hugs.”
Her hold on me tightened. “No ye don’t.” She drew back after a moment, keeping a hold on my arms. “Are ye gonna tell me why yer goin’ through all this trouble fer a woman?”
“This has nothing to do with a woman.”
The corners of her lips lifted. “I know a smitten man when I see one.”
“I am far from smitten.” Actually, I wasn’t sure why I was going through all this trouble in the first place. Yes, I would meet Aveen at her sister’s birthday ball tonight, but it wasn’t as if she would see me without my glamour.
The door burst open, and Tadgh strolled in. “What do I smell?”
The plate of tarts vanished. “I don’t know what yer on about,” Eava said with a wink before disappearing as well.
Instead of leaving, Tadhg collapsed onto my bed with a groan. “Why aren’t you ready yet? We’re going to be late.”
“I wasn’t aware bawdy houses took reservations.”
He snorted.
I went to my armoire of shirts and selected a crisp new one to pair with my black waistcoat. Tadhg lounged across my mattress. Although he didn’t currently have a bottle in his hand, from the song he was singing, he was clearly well on his way to getting steamed.
The waistcoat was too . . . boring. Sir Edward would surely wear something flashier. I flicked through the hangers, exchanging the waistcoat in my hand for a different one.
“This one’s better, isn’t it?” I said more to myself than him. My brother was the last person I’d ask for fashion advice. Look at him now, in a pair of dark green trousers, a half-tucked white-ish shirt with the buttons opened at his scarred throat, and a pair of black braces. If I were to describe his style in one word: tragic.
Tadhg’s bloodshot eyes narrowed from where he laid upside down on my bed, his dark hair hanging loose. “You’re messing, right? That’s the same waistcoat you had a moment ago.”
“It is clearly different.”
“Bollocks.”
“This one has silver thread.” I pointed down to the delicate stitching Meranda had added as an embellishment. A new favorite. “The other had black.”
Tadhg groaned and flopped over. “Just close your eyes and pick one. You always look exactly the same. Black or blue. Like a feckin’ bruise.”
I’d give him a bruise in a minute if he didn’t stop snorting to himself like he was the funniest man in existence. “Not all of us are content to sit around covered in shite.”
If the Queen caught wind of me looking like him—missing buttons, stained collar, holes in his trousers—she’d have my head. Literally. I had a reputation to uphold: the face of justice.
How do you expect to garner any respect if you look as though you just crawled out of a barn?You are a prince. You need to look like one.
When I was a child, I’d once come home from Tadhg’s with dirt on my sleeve and ended up naked for a week. If I couldn’t take care of my clothes, she’d said, then I didn’t deserve to wear them. It had been the dead of winter. She’d stripped my bed of its quilts and refused to let me light a fire.
I’d nearly died from pneumonia.
Not that the Queen had cared. If I wasn’t strong enough to survive a little cold air, I didn’t deserve to live.I never came home dirty again—unlike my brother, who couldn’t seem to stay clean.
“Your clothes are going to be on you for exactly ten minutes,” Tadhg muttered. “Who cares what you’re wearing?”