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Rhodolite Foundation Day was finally here.
And oh, how I needed a break.
I wasn’t alone. The past week had been nothing but one headache after another for the royal family. Everything about Leon had been called into question, and while I’d never seen his smile falter, I’d felt mine threaten to evacuate the premises on multiple occasions. It was hard to believe a mere week ago, Leon had been a national hero and icon, a governmental institution in his own right. Leader of the domestic affairs faction, beloved by commoners and aristocracy alike, often unofficially treated as second in command to Chevalier—disgraced. Disowned. Despised.
My morning Bible reading had been more important than ever. Even my patience had its limits.
I turned the thin page, my eyes immediately scanning the margins for Mother’s handwritten notes. Most of the time, I read her words before returning to the small lines of printed text. Most of the time.
Sometimes, my heart hurt too much to think about her.
On this particular page, the word ‘smile’ stood out to me. She’d emphasized it with an exclamation mark and two underlines. It was right next to the passage about turning the other cheek when insulted.
My fake smile had received a lot of exercise over the past week. My ability to truly listen for the reason behind the anger had taken a beating. My skill at acknowledging the validity of another person’s opinion while disagreeing kindly and, when possible, presenting my side in such a way as to win that person over had been severely tested.
I had learned it all from Mother.
I sighed and closed the Bible. That was all I could handle today.
And then I felt long fingers grazing the back of my neck and pulling my hair off to one side, soft lips pressing into my skin, and the smile came easily to my face.
“Good morning, Chevalier. Did I wake you?”
“No.” He slid his hands from my shoulders down my arms, crossing them in front of me. “Finished already?”
“For this morning, yes.” I leaned my cheek against his as he rested his chin on my shoulder. We’d spent very little time alone together over the past week, only stealing a quick kiss here or there, and this small gesture felt refreshingly cozy. “What are you doing up so early? I thought you’d sleep in.”
“Do I need a reason?”
“You always have a reason.”
He chuckled and kissed my cheek. “Maybe I just want to spend time with my wife before she leaves to spend time with my brother.”
My eyes flew wide open. I turned my face toward him, and although his crystal blue eyes still held remnants of sleep, his smirk was wide awake. “How do you always—”
He cut me off with a kiss, and suddenly, the question didn’t matter anymore. This mattered. The feel of his soft lips melding with mine was so familiar and yet so special. It woke the butterflies in my stomach with a flurry of feathery wing strokes, and I closed my eyes, savoring the feeling.
“I won’t be with Clavis long,” I breathed.
He pulled me to my feet and into his arms, and the butterflies moved up to circle my heart, wrapping it in warmth as I wrapped my arms around his neck. Our kisses lengthened and deepened, the simple morning greeting progressing to a complex evening invitation. When he scooped me up and carried me back to bed, I felt I should at least attempt a protest, however reluctant and mild it might be.
“Mm, Chevalier, Theresa will be here soon.”
He pressed me into the blankets and climbed on top of me. “You didn’t read as long as usual this morning.” His voice was a seductive purr in my ear, his hands moving with clear intention across my curves. “We have plenty of time.”
That voice did things to me. So did those teeth nibbling on my earlobe, that light caress in just the right spot. And it had been a week. I gasped and arched into his touch, and his lips trailed down my throat, his hand rubbed up and down my thigh…
I was already losing. Willingly.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back as he worked his magic. “No, I asked her to… mm… come early today…”
“She can wait.”
His teeth grazed my collarbone, and I dug my fingers into his back as a shiver ran through me. It was time to admit defeat.
“No… marks…”
He chuckled. “Visible marks.”
Surrender had never felt so good.
We had no plans for the day beyond spending it together and browsing the bookstall at the festival. I was more than a little excited, and judging by his behavior, so was he. And when Theresa knocked at the door some time later, neither of us were ready to stop.
She’d be less upset about me making her wait if she had something to tease me about, I reasoned, tangling my hands in Chevalier’s hair and kissing him as though my life depended on it. And she would understand. I’d let her make fun of my swollen lips all she wanted when I let her in later. This was more important.
Her second knock didn’t come at a good time, either. I was panting too hard to answer, trying to catch my breath, and Chevalier was doing the same next to me. Sunlight glistened off of his sweaty chest as it rose and fell. She knew what sweaty muscles did to me. A few more minutes. Maybe I could buy her something at the festival to make this up to her.
I had no valid excuse for her third knock.
“Chevalier, that’s the third time.”
He hummed against my skin, making me giggle.
“That tickles. You’re doing that on purpose.”
I felt his lips curving into a smirk. He was just drawing things out now, showering me in kisses as the sweat dried and the euphoria faded, and I couldn’t say I didn’t like it.
“We have all day, Chevalier.”
“Ivetta, tell him to get off of you and answer the door! Or I’m telling everybody about—”
“Coming!” I called back hastily. I didn’t know what she intended to threaten me with, but she had plenty of options, and my insides were already cringing from her shouting in the hallway for everybody to hear.
Chevalier, however, was not embarrassed, nor was he in a rush. He flipped us over and held me on top of him with strong, skilled hands, doing unholy things to me with his teeth and lips.
“Chevalier—”
“I got off of you,” he interrupted me, and then he sealed my lips with a kiss that made my head spin. Again. “And you answered the door.”
“You know that’s not—”
“Hey, Luke, guess what they’re doing?” I heard Theresa ask loudly.
I nearly fell off the edge of the bed in my scramble to escape a chuckling Chevalier and find my nightgown. “I’m coming!” I shouted back. “And you,” I hissed, throwing Chevalier’s pants at him. “Put these on.”
When I finally opened the door, my face was bright red, Chevalier wore a smug smirk as he vanished into the bathroom, and Theresa’s green eyes were sparkling with impish delight. Luke was nowhere to be seen. Whether he’d ever really been there, I didn’t know, and I wasn’t about to ask.
“I can come back later, if you need more time,” Theresa teased. “But the cook wants to know when—”
“Get in here.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her into the room. “I just need to dress and brush my hair, and then we can go.”
“What about breakfast? It sounded like you two were working up quite the appetite.”
I spun away from her, unable to meet her eyes after that comment. Especially since I was about to regurgitate the line I'd decided to use to trick her into coming with me to the gardens. “Chevalier wants to get an early start on the festival, so I want to pick out the perfect rose for my hair from the gardeners’ morning clippings right away.”
I could almost hear her raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“You could have just told me that. I think I’m capable of picking out a rose for your hair.”
“I want to pick it out myself. And, um…” I thought quickly, glancing at the bathroom door where Chevalier had disappeared. “And there’s something else, but I can’t say it here,” I said, lowering my voice to a whisper.
“Oh, okay,” she said knowingly. “Are you dressing up today, or…?”
I shook my head. “No, I’ll be just a minute while I change.”
“I’ll grab your hair brush. Leaving it down, then?”
“Yes.”
I let out a small sigh of relief as I opened my bureau drawer. Everybody said I was a bad liar, so I’d gone with the truth. The partial truth. Yes, I wanted a rose for my hair, and yes, I couldn’t tell her why I wanted her to come to the gardens with me. I just hoped she wouldn’t get too mad at me when all was said and done.
“Oh, Ivetta…” she said, her tone suddenly pitying.
“What?” I asked, momentarily confused, and then I froze. I’d been so distracted, I hadn’t gone behind the dressing screen to change. She had a full view of my bare back and all of its scars.
I pulled on my dress hastily.
“Sorry!”
“No, it’s fine, I just forgot about that really big one,” she said hurriedly. “O-or I haven’t seen it in a while, anyway. So, um, ready for the festival?”
Her voice climbed in pitch with her false cheer as she chattered on about anything and nothing. She knew how much I hated my scars, and I knew she hadn’t meant to point them out to me, but the damage had been done. I felt her eyes tracing that line from my left hip to my right shoulder while she brushed my hair, and I couldn’t look at her in the mirror. I memorized every aspect of my dress instead, the one identical to Belle’s. Long red skirt. Gold belt from the hips to just under the bust. Black fabric over the chest and mid-back, and above that, a strip of white over the upper back.
I usually wore the one with the green skirt, but it felt symbolic, wearing the first dress Chevalier ever gave me to our first festival as a married couple.
As a couple, married or otherwise. I’d just been his maid this time a year ago.
Without any scars at all.
I leaped to my feet as soon as Theresa finished, calling out to Chevalier, “I’ll be back soon!”
Then Theresa was following me out the door and down the hall, and an awkward silence was settling between us.
This was no good. I wanted her to be in the best mood possible when Clavis sprang his trap on her.
“Last year at the festival, Chevalier was only interested in the bookstall. But Leon brought us drinks—ale for him and Chevalier; apple cider for me—and we stopped for a funnel cake, too. I want to do that again this year. And look around a bit.”
“That sounds like fun,” Theresa replied encouragingly. “And read in the gardens afterwards?”
I nodded. “I guess I want to reenact everything. Do you know how much he confused me that day? I didn’t know what to think about him.”
“Do you know how much gossip you gave the other servants that day?” Theresa looked over at me and smiled. “I mean, everybody already thought it was strange that he hadn’t chased you away yet, but then he took you to a festival. All sorts of rumors started flying about you two.”
I felt my cheeks warming, even now. “And none of them were true.”
Theresa laughed. “Well, the one everybody thought was the most far-fetched, the one about him actually liking you, that one turned out to be true.”
“Well, yes.” I was smiling again, thinking about it. “But wait. Why was that more far-fetched than the one about me being his mistress?”
She shrugged. “Well, you know. He’s so unemotional and logical. Or he seems that way, anyway. And back then, he didn’t like anybody, and he only kept people around if they served a purpose. So…”
“That’s enough. I get it.”
“Why is this making you blush?” she teased. “Were you not just making mad, passionate love to the man?”
“Theresa!”
“Hey, do you ever pretend you’re still his maid? Make a game out of it?”
“No, we don’t!”
I was willing to sacrifice my dignity for the sake of distracting her, to an extent, so I redirected her to a safer topic by recounting everything from the festival a year ago, including what Chevalier had told me of his perspective. It worked. She wasn't paying attention to our surroundings at all when we reached the gardens.
“He told you that was the first time he wanted to kiss you?” Theresa exclaimed. “And you didn’t even know?”
“I was just confused about why he was acting somewhat nice for a change.”
“You’re so oblivious, Ivetta! Even now, when you’re—”
She interrupted herself with a surprised shriek as she disappeared from my sight. I looked up at her, fumbling around in a net suspended beneath a tree limb, and had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing.
“Where is Clavis? I’m going to kill him!” she raged. “Ivetta! Don’t just stand there! Do something!”
“I can’t climb trees,” I lied. Babysitting the Stotts boys had forced me to learn, but she didn’t know that. And the point was for Jin to rescue her.
“Well, get somebody who—Jin! Cyran! Over here!”
Right on cue, Cyran and Jin rounded a corner in the path. Jin’s eyes widened, and then he smiled wryly and shook his head.
“This is what Clavis wanted you to show me, isn’t it?” he asked Cyran. “Don’t worry, Theresa, I’ll get you down.”
“Cyran, your boss is a dead man!” Theresa shouted. “Where are you, Clavis? I know you’re watching! Come out where I can see you, you coward!”
As Clavis predicted, Jin worked quickly to disengage the net trap, having an intimate knowledge of the contraption thanks to his frequent partnership with Clavis in matters of mischief and mayhem. I watched in breathless anticipation as the net—and Theresa—fell into Jin’s waiting arms. She shoved him away; he set her down; she struggled to free herself from the net, then finally conceded she needed his help; and when he finished untangling her, Clavis triggered the real trap.
Or maybe he had it rigged to trigger on its own. I didn’t know how the thing worked. I only knew that it did, indeed, work.
A metallic boing of springs marked the launch of restraints dropping from the tree, snapping shut the moment they made contact with something—or, in this case, somebody. Theresa shrieked again, but it was too late. She and Jin were locked together, and then the net Jin thought he’d disengaged snapped taut and whipped them off the ground to hang from the tree again.
Cyran and I were laughing, as was Clavis, when he emerged from his hiding spot. Theresa was cursing Jin and Clavis equally while she flailed about, making the net swing wildly. Fortunately, Clavis had chosen a sturdy tree limb for the job. I couldn’t see the look on Jin’s face, nor could I hear whatever he was saying to Theresa over her shouting and our laughing, but the occasional non-profane words from her were telling.
“Watch your hands and wipe that smile off your face! Nobody does that without buying me dinner first!”
And in a final festive fare, rainbow-colored confetti exploded from the branch to rain down on them.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsspqSi2Emt
