Courting Trouble

Betrothed

|Betrothed.|

"Nice?" Malisha scoffed thinking bitterly to herself. She considered letting the question slide, but she knew Thomas. Once he got latched on to an idea, there was no shaking him off and she knew she could not afford to do that.

"No, it is nothing like that," she answered him hastily but it seemed that Duke's awkward position on the mat was quite hard to over look.

"But I heard him, he has asked you to marry him." Thomas protested still unconvinced. When his mother took too long to respond to him, he turned around to Duke to seek clarification there.

"Sir? Are you going to be my new daddy?"

"I knew it! You see. " the voice of Malisha conscience quipped only to be shut down by the girl herself.

"Will you please shut up?" Malisha groaned out in frustration. "This boy is going to be the death of me."

"Well...Will I? " As for Duke, he had never been one to take rejection or no as an answer for that matter and seeing an opportunity there, he seized it turning over the question to her with a grin so wide and so diabolical that it caused the voice of Malisha's conscience to cry out in alarm.

"That look spells trouble! "

"and you are not helping!" Malisha fired back as a panicky feeling began to set in, settling inside her gut and twisting with fear of the moments to come. In truth, there was no really right way of answering their questions and the more Malisha dallied, the more the matter of the proposal continued to spiral out of her control.

"You need to salvage this situation before it really gets out of hand ."

"I know, I know! Don't you think that I do? " She thought back, looking around the room for answers that seemed to elude her until a light bulb moment went off in her head and she grinned back in triumph. "Of course!" She thought as her eyes fixed on the wooden door. Never had she appreciated a door as much as she did then and now, it would come to her aid, helping her in the way that only she saw fit.

"Baby? Will you run along and play with auntie Mishpa?"

Thomas openned his mouth to protest, but she didn't give him a chance. Taking the advice of her 'inner voice', she quickly gathered up her son's toys and held his little hand before escorting him through her 'bedroom' door and down the staircase to the elevator that was waiting outside.

"I will call you up later. Right now I need to have a word with that 'nice' gentleman back there, Okay?" She added, just to pacify him and Thomas nodded back in agreement. She knew that in his little head, 'having a word' meant having grown up talk and there was nothing that that boy found more boring or more disgusting than those three words strung up in one sentence together. After she had made sure that he was safely down the elevator with with his toys and a maid to accompany him there, Malisha made her way back to her room with a plan of vengeance in her mind. Her eyes narrowed and her features hardened, all guns blazing as she prepared herself  to confront the menace that had just that afternoon wormed its way into her house and up into her room just to torment her.

"Woah! Woah! Easy there Kitty Cat. I meant no foul with that proposal. " Duke retaliated as he took a precautionary step backwards. After kneeling for so long, he had finally decided to stand up seeing that the subject of his affections was slow in giving him the positive answer that he expected.

"Kitty Cat? I like him already."

"Just shut up!"

"And you! How dare you?" Malisha accused poking a finger in the general direction of the menace all the while willing her inner voice to shut up and let her be. "Sometimes I swear you are Loki himself Reborn! "

"So you actually think I'm a god?" it was cheesy comment and he grinned widely, knowingly as a smirk that gave the Cheshire cat a run for its money curved his lips.

"Grr..." Malisha stomped her feet in frustration. "Should you continue to seed chaos wherever you go?"

"Only with you Malisha, only with you. But really, it's not like we do not already know each other?"

"Uuuuhm... No! Do we really? Do we know each other Duke? "

"Don't you remember?"

"That was a very long time ago and it definately doesn't count!" She thundered turning aside so as to hide her feelings from him and his scrutinous eyes. He had seen it however and it pleased him to know that he had frazzled her so. He knew that she did not trust him and so it was no surprise that she found his every intention questionable. However, he would make her remember. He swore it himself. He would make her acknowledge the feelings that he was sure were buried somewhere deep beneath all that anger and all that hate waiting for him to excavate them.

"I know you remember." He told her once again, but she still could not face him.

"What is he up to?" She thought, questioning her very own logic and her experience with the enigma that was Duke Carlisle. "What is this mean, annoying and irritating man up to?" She continued to prod as she wore out the floorboards with her endless pacing. Her frustration was now at its peak and it was all she could do not to rash out or cry out for the lack of an appropriate thing to do. What disturbed her most was the fact that he was trying to be nice. It worried her so because she could not tell if he was actually being real or if this was just a new tactic, a new trick in his old mean play book.

"What's the matter Malisha, cat got your tongue?" The words left Duke's mouth before he could even stop them,his tongue having somehow developing a brain of its own when he had not been watching.

Like a hunter who had caught a whiff of her prey, the girl stopped pacing and turned to fix her cold angry eyes on the man causing him to bite down on his tongue if only to still it as he waited anxiously for her to make the next move. However, the woman seemed to be satisfied with just glaring, boring her eyes through him probably wishing that somehow, through the power of her stare he would somehow light up and burn for his insolence. However and as with all other things that had something to do with Malisha, this too also evoked memories. Certain memories of the same scowl and a fire that was now alight burning feverishly in the depths of her eyes.

"Old habits do die hard Malisha." he said triying to bring down the tension with a joke.

"As is the case of the kettle calling the pot black?" she countered not skipping a beat. It was just like old times and it almost made Duke skip with glee.

"So you agree then?"

"That you were a bully then and are still one now?"

"Aaah...so you do remember the good old days?" Duke said changing tactics faster than she could say blink.

"You're insufferable! You know that?" she shouted, throwing up her hands in the air in a tantrum.

"Come on Malisha," he tried again. "Ever since we were kids, it has always been you, you know that. You have been the only one to stand up to me, the only one to take me on, to put me on the straight and narrow path and to always point me in the right direction. In short, I guess what I am trying to say is that, I need you Malisha. I really do." he ended hoping that his little speech would have at least touched something. He was out of practice and he knew it and there was also that great possibility that it would all came out badly as with most pick up lines. He could only hope however that Malisha was as out of practice like he was having evaded the dating scene for those  four years even though it was probably other different reasons than the ones he had to give.

"That was ..." Malisha's inner voice began to say but she tuned it out as her thoughts went back to certain youngman, who also could be quite soft spoken, full of sweet words dripping with that same sugary disgustingness that Duke was trying to mimic. Even then, she continued to watch Duke silently, even as the man continued to inch forward convinced, that he had her in his clutches just like the other man had, hands outstretched and slightly shaking as they tried to capture her hands and possibly her lips as well.

"What is he doing?"

"You have no idea, but I am not planning to wait around for you to find out! " Malisha thought back angrily as she took a precautionary step backwards. Her lips parted and her mouth emitted a glower so feral that it stopped Duke still in his tracks and from further pursuing her.

"Get. Out." Malisha told him with so much calm that Duke would have been a fool not to sense the undercurrents of danger lying within it. "Get out right now!" She hissed out again, this time, preparing to brandish her book as some sort of weapon.

Defeated, Duke studied her silently and as he did so, he realised two things. One, there was no more progress to made with her and two as a result of one, further arguing with her would only turn out to be a useless feat. That said, he still gave in to one more foolish, boyish impulse and bowed down at his waist even as he shot her a smirk that he now knew irritated the heck out of her.

"I said, get out right now!" Malisha all but screamed as she moved to physically handle him and throw him out the room that she had now claimed as her own. However, before she could retaliate any further, the man strode out of her room and put a barrier between them. A barrier of stone and wood that was sealed with the soft clicking of her door.

Slowly, Duke stepped down the last step and rode down the silver elevator feeling quite peeved despite his endless dramatics. Things had not gone well and definitely not in the way he had expected them to. Coupled with that and a number of other factors such as being manhandled, just then being kicked out of her room and even earlier being watered in rose water did not do anything to help his already frayed emotions. He was angry and frustrated and as exited the elevator, he growled out in rage unaware that in doing so he had just come face to face with a pacing and quite anxious General.

"Is everything alright sir?" he asked him, his eyes eyeing the small hand print that had reddened his left cheek. 

"I'm fine General." Duke told him dismissively, walking on beyond him, past him and down the wide hallway towards the front entrance. With the General following only a few paces behind him, Duke walked out into the open through the massive front doors and trudged  down the front steps to his waiting car.

"Once again, we are so sorry for everything." The General supplied, apologising yet again for what he saw as his daughter's errors against such a great leader. Another wave of his hand and Duke stepped into his car, dismissing the General's worries like they were nothing which they were seeing that he had been the one to instigate it. Not that the General would ever know that, for those that fully knew it were few and neither would they ever disclose for it did not concern him. Their loyalty to their Phaedra was also absolute and neither would the laws of their country permit it. For there in Veterum, as with all monarchies, the privacy of their overlord was assured by law with every breach to the rule being punishable as high treason.

As Duke settled in inside his state Limousine his normal facade of cool indifference settled in as well. Now normally, it would not have been easy but considering that he was already mad, the mask came on effortlessly. However, as his ever efficient valet stepped in to close his door, the man could not help but feel worried about a matter that had been left unattended. It was a small matter or so it seemed, the issue of the General and his daughter. However Duke knew his wrath and the retribution he would rain down on Malisha for embarrassing him.

"Will that be all sir?" Alfred, his personal valet after noticing the hesitation in his Phaedra's eyes asked him.

"Actually, no." Duke replied softly before making his voice louder in order to address the General. "General."

"Yes, Sir?" The older man stepped up before the open doors and peered in in order to better hear his Commander. When he dallied, he continued to look on apprehensively too nervous to fidget as he awaited the Phaedra to finally speak.

"Take care of my betrothed!"