x
“You should probably take this,” I said, shrugging out of Chevalier’s coat and handing it back to him. We’d stayed outside long enough that the palace hallways were now dark and empty, so I hadn’t worried too much about anybody seeing me in it. My guards were around the corner, though, and I had no valid excuse for wearing the king’s ceremonial coat on a warm, clear night. Other than just wanting to. It already smelled like Chevalier.
“I wondered if you were giving it back,” Chevalier teased, draping it over his arm.
“Well, you said it looks better on me,” I teased back.
“But this is a nice view, too,” he said, leaning over to place a quick kiss on my bare shoulder.
“Stop that!” I giggled, pushing him away. “We’re almost to my room!”
“Which I’ll have to check before I leave, of course.”
“No,” I said, struggling to hold a firm tone when I was smiling so much.
“What if Gilbert snuck in?” he asked, looping his arm around my waist and pulling me toward him.
“I think I’d be safer with Gilbert than with you right now,” I replied.
He pushed me back against the wall, sealing my lips with a heated kiss that stole my breath and made my knees weak. I clutched desperately at his shirt as his fingers glided across my shoulder and around to cradle the back of my head. He left me with a last tug on my lower lip, smirking as I gasped for breath.
“You may be right.”
I swallowed and nodded. He chuckled and pulled me away from the wall, resuming his walk with enviably steady legs. I was still blushing when we reached my room.
“Is Theresa here?” I asked Julius, hoping the darkness disguised my red cheeks.
“No, Princess Ivetta.”
Chevalier reached past me to open my door. I turned to face him and stopped him with a hand on his chest. “No.”
“Ivetta,” he said, his tone serious for the first time in over an hour.
“No,” I repeated. “Byron, if you could please get Theresa. Chevalier, if you want to stand here and wait for them to get back, you can do that. Otherwise, goodnight.”
He sighed and removed my hand from his chest. “Goodnight, Ivetta.”
I closed the door and smiled. His concern was touching, but I knew better than to expect he would behave if I let him into my room now. Not tonight. I went into the bathroom, humming as I pulled my right glove off, smiling wider as I removed the ring from my left hand and set it carefully on the edge of the sink. My left glove joined its partner on the floor, as did my shoes and stockings. I’d have to wait until Theresa got back to help me with the dress. After a moment’s hesitation, I turned the sink’s faucets to start the water, washing my face, shoulders, and collarbone blindly in the dark. Theresa would be excited enough without seeing traces of my smeared lipstick from Chevalier’s kisses all over me. I dried myself and slid the ring back onto my finger, relishing the feel of the cool metal against my skin. It was a perfect fit. Of course. And I’d probably never know how he figured out my size. I reached back to undo the pins holding my hair and stepped out into the bedroom, looking over at the uncovered windows for the first time, and froze.
Gilbert was sitting on my sofa.
He smiled, his blood-red eye glinting in the silvery moonlight. “That was careless of you, little dove.”
I took a deep breath, swallowing down the fear threatening to take over, and resumed removing the hairpins with trembling fingers. He was across the room, and I was next to the door. All I had to do was open it. Or scream. He didn’t have me trapped, and he didn’t have any power over me.
His black-gloved hand patted the cushion next to him. I took a step forward before I realized what I was doing, but I stopped myself before the next step, feeling queasy at how quickly I responded to the command he’d trained into me two months ago. His smile widened.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice even.
“I came to see you,” he replied, as if that explained him sneaking into my room in the middle of the night.
“Well, you can see me tomorrow,” I said firmly.
“Alone?”
My mouth went dry. The braided bun came undone with the last hairpin, the braids falling down my back with the rest of my hair. I poured the pins into my right hand and clenched them tightly in my fist.
“Yes, alone. But not here.”
He stood up and walked toward me. I took a step back as he approached, an icy chill wrapping around my pounding heart. The door was right there. All I had to do was scream. But he knew that. Why was he here? What did he want?
“You know I hate being lied to, little dove,” he said, but his voice was soft, without the menacing edge I remembered the last time he accused me of lying. I stared in confusion at the shadows hiding his face. What had I said that was a lie? I said I’d meet him alone, and I had no intention of breaking my word, no matter how much I disliked the idea. My guards would be with me, anyway, so-
Oh.
“I’m so used to the guards that I didn’t even think of them,” I admitted. “But they usually wait in the hallway like this, and they’ll keep their distance if I tell them to, so if you want to meet somewhere-”
His cold finger reached out to trace a scar on my right arm, stopping me mid sentence. I flinched and covered the scar with my left hand, although I knew all the others were still visible.
“I-I normally wear long sleeves or long gloves…”
“So I’ve heard.”
He fingered my ring, and I realized this was like the gazebo, when he was less interested in threatening me and more interested in…me. The light touch he used to slide his hand under mine and remove it from my arm was the same light touch he’d used that day when he traced the lines on my hand, and the effect on me was the same, too. More confusion. He pressed a kiss to the back of my hand, and his blood-red eye moved up to hold my gaze.
“May I have this dance?”
I didn’t know what to think, much less say. He smiled and reached past me to lock the door. I followed his fingers with my eyes, but I didn’t stop him, and I didn’t resist his hand taking my right wrist and pouring the hairpins into his cupped palm. He led me to a more open section of the room, dropping the hairpins on my vanity along the way. The chill of his right hand rested on my waist as his left hand took my right hand, and I put my left hand on his right shoulder, unsure why I was even going along with this.
“Is this why you wanted to see me?” I asked hesitantly.
“We didn’t get to dance at the ball,” he replied, pulling me a little closer.
There was an almost serene quality about him, and I wasn’t sure it was all a trick of the moonlight. I remembered the night he came to my room after Chevalier rescued me, how non-threatening he’d been, and I wondered if that wasn’t as much the medicine clouding my perception as I’d thought.
“Theresa will be here soon,” I finally said.
His feet stilled, but his hand slid from my waist to the small of my back, and my heart rate shot up. I pulled my hand free from his and kept it with my other hand as a barricade between us.
“Gilbert-”
He brushed my hair back behind my ear and cupped my cheek in his hand. “You should have been mine, Ivetta.”
“But I’m not,” I said, my voice wavering as the coolness of his thumb stroked my flushed cheek. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me. If you hadn’t helped Chevalier find me, I probably would have died, so thank you. Now, please-”
He’d pulled my hips flush with his, and only my forearms kept our torsos apart. The panic was coming back. Even if he just kissed me, that was too much. I shouldn’t have let him stay this long. I shouldn’t have let him stay at all. He leaned in, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Please - don’t-”
His cool lips brushed against my cheek, not my lips, and his hand slid around to the back of my head, pressing it into his chest.
“You should know that Chevalier and I have an agreement concerning you,” he murmured into my ear, holding me tightly against him. “If he mistreats you, I’m taking you back, even if that means I have to burn this country to the ground.”
“Please don’t say that,” I whispered.
“But as long as he keeps you happy,” Gilbert continued, stroking my hair, “I’ll support him and you.” He kissed my cheek again and sighed. “Goodnight, little dove.”
And then he was gone. I opened my eyes cautiously as he unlocked the door and vanished into the hallway. The door closed behind him. Neither Julius nor Chevalier came in to check on me. I took a deep breath and looked down at my ring, the central diamond seeming to glow amidst the dark garnets in the soft moonlight. Chevalier knew Gilbert would be in here, but he also knew Gilbert wouldn’t hurt me, so he respected my wishes and waited outside. He was probably talking to Gilbert right now. Because they had an agreement about me - an agreement Gilbert must have insisted upon before he renounced our former marriage agreement. Chevalier wouldn’t have gone along with it any other way.
Was I still meeting Gilbert tomorrow?
Theresa burst into my room, dashing toward me and yanking my hand closer to the window. “Let me see!” she squealed. “Oh, my gosh, this is gorgeous! How did he do it? Did he just give it to you after the dance? I saw him take you out to the balcony, but then I had to get back to work.”
“Um…he proposed again.”
“Again?” she squealed, throwing her arms around me for a crushing hug. “Ivetta, I’m so happy for you! You looked like a queen out there! And now nobody can tell him he can’t marry you.”
That was true, wasn’t it? A private proposal might have met opposition, but not a single person in the ballroom could say a word against Chevalier when he made his choice in that very public manner. The thought lifted my heart and brought a smile back to my face.
“I can’t breathe, Theresa,” I gasped.
She released me, her wide smile lighting up her sparkling green eyes. “I know you left the ball early, too. You know you have to tell me everything.”
I shook my head, feeling the stretch in my cheeks as my smile widened, too. “Tomorrow. I’m really, really tired.”
She bounced toward me and hugged me again. “Tomorrow. Does that mean you’re sleeping in?”
“I doubt Sariel has any lessons planned,” I replied, giggling as I pushed her away.
“And Marge wouldn’t dare go against anything you say, which means I get to sleep in, too - unless you say otherwise, of course,” Theresa said, pulling me toward the dressing screen. “She nearly died when she heard about the proposal.”
“She did not.”
“Yes, she did! She almost fell down a flight of stairs,” Theresa said, whipping through the buttons at the back of my dress with practiced speed. “I love this fabric.”
“So does Chevalier,” I said without thinking.
“I bet he does,” she said, her voice dripping with implication.
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Just get me out of this corset.”
She giggled, and when I changed into my nightgown and turned to face her, her smile had taken on a distinctly impish quality. “Tomorrow,” I repeated. “But don’t think we can sit here gabbing all day. I have a few things to do.”
“I know, I know,” she said, putting my clothes away. “You’re a big, important princess now, and everybody wants to see you. Which reminds me, that noblewoman Nokto dumped asked me about having tea with you.”
“Why didn’t she ask me herself?” I asked, heading into the bathroom. “I saw her at the ball.”
“Well, you and Chevalier were in high demand,” Theresa called after me. “And you left before she got the chance.”
I ran through the list in my head. Visiting the stables with Keith, tea with Adèle, baking with Yves, meeting with Gilbert - whatever that looked like - I probably shouldn’t sleep in too late if I wanted to get it all done in one day. Some guests were staying for a few days, but some weren’t, and I didn’t know who was leaving when.
“Adèle and I are having tea tomorrow afternoon,” I said when I finished in the bathroom and returned to the bedroom. “If that noblewoman wants to join us, that should be fine. What was her name?“
“Elise,” Theresa supplied, changing into her own nightgown. “Elise Belmont. Her father runs a small barony in Nokto’s territory, and he wants her to marry up in a big way. Who’s Adèle?”
“Duchess Latoure,” I replied, pulling the curtains closed. “I don’t understand how you can change with these open.”
“It’s called confidence,” she said. I could picture the smirk on her face, even though I couldn’t see it in the dark. “That viscountess wants to talk to you, too. The one whose husband spilled wine on her. Camille.”
“Camille?” I yawned, climbing into bed.
“Lady Lavigne. Whatever. You’re going to call her by her first name, anyway,” Theresa replied, echoing my yawn. “Want her to come to tea, too?”
“Sure.” I yawned again. The sheets rustled as Theresa climbed into her side of the bed. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
At least I wouldn’t have a lot of spare time to spend with Gilbert. I closed my eyes, shoving thoughts of him aside. He was a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, I’d rather think about sitting by the pond with Chevalier, trading kisses and whispered words under the moonlight.
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