Chapter Twenty-Four
I smack Emmett on the shoulder, his jacket so wet it squishes under the force of my palm. “Fern?”
“It was the closest I could think to Ivy.”
“Isolde, Isabelle, Imogen?”
“You make a more believable Fern.”
I huff and go to throw another log on the weak fire.
Will I be kicked out of the competition immediately? I wonder. Publicly shamed like my sister, destined to spend the rest of my life crying into a pillow, alone in a dark room? Strung up at Traitors’ Gate like the rebels Eduart described? Or maybe the queen will keep me around. She does love to play with her food.
Emmett is silent as he takes a seat by the fire, soaked clothes and all. He drops his head into his hands and goes completely still.
He can’t so much as look at me.
The fire hisses and pops as I stoke it. “Since we’re here, we might as well not freeze to death,” I say.
I strip off my green velvet coatdress, my ruined shoes, my crinoline, my soggy stockings, then pause. I won’t be able to manage the corset on my own.
I glance over to where Emmett is standing in front of the fire. As if he can feel the weight of my gaze, he lifts his head and his eyes meet mine.
He pauses. “What?”
“I—”
I can’t very well ask him to undress me. “It’s nothing.”
He rises and crosses the room toward me. I curse the way my cheeks turn scarlet red. Maybe I should have let the storm drown me.
“I know my way around a corset, Ivy.”
A million petty comebacks are on my tongue, but I bite it. With careful fingers, he undoes the knot at the small of my back.
His hands creep up my spine, tugging at the laces with deft skill. “You’re shivering,”
he says after a tense second.
His fingers still, but the warm weight of them hovers over my spine. “So hurry up,” I say.
Emmett sighs heavily and returns to his work on the corset. “There,”
he says, with one final tug, and the corset falls to my feet. I step out of it, now in nothing but my soaked chemise and drawers made transparent by the water.
“Better?”
His voice is quiet, tense.
“Yes,”
I answer reluctantly.
Emmett is gentlemanly enough to avert his eyes. He picks up my soaked clothing and arranges it carefully by the fire to dry.
With his back to me, I slip out of my undergarments and wrap myself in the quilt at the foot of the bed.
I settle into the wingback chair in front of the fireplace, and the warmth sends prickles up my body, every joint beginning to thaw.
“Are you trying to ruin me?”
I say with a small smile. Emmett is now slumped low in the chair next to me, still soaked to the bone in his wet clothes. I hope the joke will get a smile out of him, but it only deepens the crease between his eyebrows. I’ve never seen him look so upset.
The fire crackles, and I wiggle my toes out from under the quilt to move them even closer to it. “You’re no use to the cause if you die of hypothermia,”
I say to him.
He doesn’t answer, just keeps staring at the flames, his breathing ragged. The storm outside howls like a banshee.
“Emmett—”
I say more forcefully, and he blinks back to himself. “I don’t understand why you’re angry with me right now.”
This gets his attention fully. “Angry? I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with myself.”
“You can’t control the weather.”
“No, not that. I should have left you alone, let you be. The most selfish thing I’ve ever done is let you get involved in this.”
“It was my idea to sneak off today.”
“But you wouldn’t have had to if it weren’t for me.”
“Stop acting like you’re the only one with ideas! I hate her too. I want to unseat her too!”
“I didn’t mean to suggest you didn’t have ideas of your own.”
“You don’t own the market on being a person with radical ambitions. The only reason I’ve received any of Bram’s attention is because of your help. I agreed to this, remember?”
“I manipulated you. I manipulated Faith. I manipulated my brother. I’m horrible. Your sister was correct in her judgment of me. I’m a horrible person.”
“I don’t believe that’s true.”
“I’m trying—”
His voice cracks like he’s swallowing tears. “I’m trying so hard to do the right thing, but I can’t seem to manage it.”
“I know,”
I say softly. The devastation on his beautiful face is obvious.
“I’ll protect you the best I can,”
Emmett says, and I know he means money. I hate that he knows I need it. I can picture it now, being swept away to a far-off country house, not kept like a mistress, but kept like a secret. Queen Mor will continue ruling, and all will be as it has been. Only Emmett and I will know the truth of what could have been.
I can’t bear to talk about it anymore. “Please change out of those wet clothes. It hurts to look at you like this.”
And it does. It hurts in an aching sort of way I can’t ignore anymore.
Emmett tears his gaze from mine and finally slides out of his wet boots. I turn away to stare at the fire but hear his clothes fall to the floor in succession.
Wrapped in another blanket, he joins me again by the fire. The color is already returning to his lips, and I am relieved to see it.
He arranges his clothes next to mine to dry, and now all we can do is wait. The storm outside shows no signs of slowing down, and judging by the band that has now struck up downstairs, neither does the party below us.
“I’m sorry about your father,”
I say to him. What Eduart said has been weighing on me all day, and I have a desperate need to talk about something other than the two of us.
“It would be easier if I was mad at him, I think,”
Emmett says. “But I’m just sad. It’s strange, loving someone you don’t know. It’s even stranger knowing that they live just down the hall. I have these . . . memories of him. I remember reading books on his lap and him teaching me to skip stones on the pond behind our house.”
“Did he ever try to contact you beyond the hidden messages in the library?”
Emmett shakes his head. “The terms of her bargain seem to forbid it. No letters. He can’t even pass messages using someone else; their voice goes suddenly mute. Nearly gave my old governess a heart attack the first time it happened. It’s one of my earliest memories.”
“Are you still close to your governess?”
Emmett shifts uncomfortably. “I was. She died just over a year ago. I think she would have liked you. You’re tough like she was.”
I shake my head. I’m stubborn, which is different and not nearly as admirable. “I don’t think I’m tough.”
Emmett just chuckles. “Well, she would have seen what I see.”
“I would have liked to meet her,”
I say. I have a feeling that the list of people Emmett loves is small. He keeps them tucked away, close to his chest.
“She was a walking contradiction. Tougher on me than anyone, but the closest I ever got to parental love. I was a lonely child, spent all my time on the floor, making up stories with my toy soldiers. She loved the ballet, so I loved the ballet; we went every chance we got. It was the only time I ever left the palace grounds.”
This room feels removed from reality, a bubble of only two.
“That’s actually where I met Faith,”
Emmett continues. “It was last summer, after my governess died, and I was sitting in the audience alone. Faith took pity on me.”
The warmth in my chest dissipates into something cold and petty. “That sounds just like Faith, so beatific. A saint, really,”
I say sarcastically.
“Are you jealous?”
Emmett raises a brow, and I think of his earlier confession, the tenderness in it. I don’t feel tender at all, I feel scared of this well of emotion I can’t control.
I paste a smile on my face. “That’s hilarious. You should try comedy more often.”
Eventually our clothes dry enough that I’m able to slip back into my chemise and drawers. The thin cotton doesn’t offer much in the way of modesty, so I keep the blanket draped over my shoulders. Emmett pulls on his half-damp breeches and goes downstairs to get us some dinner. The sun has long since gone down, but the storm is still raging.
He comes back up with a tray of cold cuts, crusty bread, hothouse peaches, and watered-down ale. “I turned down the mysterious stew,”
he says, laying the tray on the small card table by the window.
“What if mysterious stew is my favorite food?”
“Then we’ll have to refine your tastes before you become a princess.”
We eat in ravenous silence, and Emmett places our now-empty tray out in the hallway. The party downstairs has quieted some, though the storm has not done the same.
“We ought to try to get some sleep,”
Emmett says. “I want to be off at first light. We can think of our excuse on the way back to camp.”
“Agreed.”
The panic-induced nausea has mostly retreated. My life may very well be ruined, but today has been so long, I’m too exhausted to truly consider it. I’ll save the worry for tomorrow.
We both stand awkwardly, not knowing what to do. Our glances flit to the bed, impossible to ignore in the middle of the room.
“You should take the bed,”
Emmett says. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“You paid for the room, that hardly seems fair,”
I protest.
“I’m a gentleman,”
Emmett argues back.
“Is that what you tell all the girls you seduce?”
“Are you feeling seduced?”
“I wasn’t talking about me!”
I cross to the far side of the bed in a huff and slide under the covers. The linen sheets have been washed nearly to death, but it smells clean, and the mattress is soft enough to sink into.
I toss the other pillow to Emmett, and he lies down on the floor on the other side of the bed. I blow out the lantern, and the room is drenched in darkness, the only light coming from the flickering embers in the fireplace.
I can’t get settled. I’m too acutely aware of Emmett’s warm body on the floor, just feet away from me. From the sound of blankets rustling, he can’t get comfortable either.
I lie still and listen to Emmett and the tapping of the rain on the windows until my whole body feels electric. After a few minutes, I can stand it no longer. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, just come up to the bed. It’s big enough for two.”
The mattress creaks as Emmett climbs up and settles in next to me. He lays his head on the pillow and then turns to face me, both of us on our sides. He’s so close I can feel the heat of his breath, see the fringe of his dark lashes and the way his hazel eyes glint in the low firelight.
“I bet you wish I was seducing you right now,”
he whispers, a ghost of a smile on his mouth.
“What would you do if I were one of those girls you take out into the garden during balls?”
“I took you to the garden during a ball.”
“You know what I mean.”
Emmett looks at me for a breath and then slowly extends a hand, laying it, featherlight, on the side of my face, his thumb at my jawbone.
A shiver goes through me. “Your hands are cold,”
I whisper.
“The girls I seduce aren’t usually this critical of me.”
“Am I not one of those girls?”
If I were, this is the part where they’d kiss, right? I bet he’d cradle their jaws in his hands, really gentle, and tip their heads to taste them better.
If we were anything but friends, we’d probably be kissing by now.
“You belong to my brother.”
“I don’t belong to anyone.”
He sighs heavily. “You know what I mean.”
“What would you do, Emmett?”
I ask, even though I know I shouldn’t. I have a perverse need to push him to reject me outright so I can extinguish this stupid, insufferable fire in my rib cage that ignites in his presence.
“You’re being mean, Ivy.”
The rain on the windows mirrors my own frantic heartbeat. Just the heat of his body next to mine sets me on fire.
I roll over on my back, terrified I’ll lean in and kiss him if he keeps looking at me like that.
“Have you ever kissed someone?”
His voice is so quiet I can hardly hear it over the sound of the storm.
The image of him and Faith, their lips touching, the way his hand fell to the swell of her hip, flashes through my mind.
“Yes. Bram,”
I answer, deliberately petulant.
“You know what I’m asking.”
I hesitate.
“No one is going to want to kiss you if you can’t look at them,”
Emmett says.
“I’m not looking at you, and you want to kiss me.”
I want him to deny it, tell me I’m wrong.
“I want to kiss everyone,”
he says, and that stings more.
“And everyone wants to kiss you, how lucky.”
I try to make it sound like a joke, but I can’t manage it, my voice comes out brittle.
“But not you,”
he says quietly.
“No, not me.”
“Did you kiss him back?”
“Yes.”
Did I? I tried to.
“You looked beautiful that night,”
Emmett adds almost guiltily. “I’m not surprised he kissed you. You’re doing your job well.”
“There’s no need for flattery,” I reply.
“It’s not flattery if it’s the truth.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I’m pretty sure I froze up. He didn’t try to kiss me after that fight at the club. Maybe he didn’t want to.”
“You asked what I would do if you were one of those girls I take to the garden at parties. You want the truth?”
Emmett asks. “I wouldn’t do anything, not if you don’t even know how to kiss.”
“Now you’re the one being mean.”
He’s silent for a moment, and it’s as if I can hear the wheels turning in his head. There’s an unceasing heat where his eyes bore into the side of my face.
“I could teach you,” he says.
The excuse is gossamer thin. He knows as well as I do, I’ll be kicked out of the competition, or worse, upon our return to camp tomorrow. I’m never going to kiss Bram again.
I should say no. But it’s Emmett.
It’s Emmett, as in, I have no control over it.
I turn to look at him, our faces only a breath apart. And his eyes, his eyes. The peculiar hazel color dances gold in the moonlight.
His gaze pins me like a shadowboxed butterfly.
“All right,”
I whisper. I’m flushed all over, like the knowledge that he’s about to touch me is as good as the touching itself.
I push myself up so I’m sitting cross-legged on the bed. Emmett rises and places a warm hand on my knee.
He leans in, but just as I expect his lips to brush mine, he pulls back and makes me chase it.
For a moment, there is just warmth, and pressure.
I press my lips to his, harder, but don’t know what to do next. Emmett stills against me. I pull back and huff out a sigh of frustration.
Emmett chuckles, and I slap his chest.
“You’re too stiff,” he says.
“I know. So teach me how to do it better.”
His gaze flicks down.
He presses his thumb to my bottom lip. Automatically, my jaw unhinges and my lips drop open. “Relax,”
he whispers against my mouth.
It’s softer this time. He weaves one hand through the tendrils of unbound hair on my neck and another around the small of my waist. The heat and the weight of him is everywhere, as if my body is covered with a cascade of sparks.
My hands scramble for purchase. I wind them through his hair and tug just a little too hard. “Easy,”
he murmurs.
His tongue darts between my lips, and I freeze.
“Let me in,”
he breathes. “Take it.”
I open to the velvet pressure of his tongue, his mouth soft but unrelenting.
He tugs hard at the hair at the nape of my neck, tipping me back onto the bed. He hovers over me, caging me in with his tall frame.
I move, desperate for some relief, and he pulls me against him until I can feel every hard plane of his body. I gasp, desperate for air, and he trails his tongue along the jackrabbit beat of my pulse until he reaches my earlobe. His teeth close around the tender skin, not hard enough to hurt but enough to make me arch against him.
He kisses the exact opposite of his brother. He’s not polite at all, it’s like he’s starving for it.
His hands wander even lower down, ghosting over my breasts, then grasping the soft part of my waist hard enough to bruise. I want him impossibly closer. He’s unlocked something in me. I didn’t know kissing could feel like this. I didn’t know anything could feel like this.
Suddenly he pushes me away. I raise my hand to my kiss-swollen lips. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No.”
“Then why—”
“Ivy,”
he says in that peculiar, exhausted way of his.
“What?”
I whisper.
He stands suddenly, backing away from the bed. “You’ve done perfectly well. I think the kissing lesson is over.”
I’m feverish with jealousy of the girls who got to have him before me, for real, without the veil of pretense and denial.
“Perfectly well?”
I try to keep my voice light. It’s taking all my strength not to reach out to him and beg for more. “Top marks in His Royal Highness Prince Emmett De Vere’s school of kissing? Will I be valedictorian?”
He laughs humorlessly. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
I’m just another in a long list of girls. I would be foolish to let myself think I was special. “I wouldn’t dare.”
I wrap my arms around my middle and hug myself tight. I try to think of Bram and his easy smile. He’s such a lovely boy. Emmett isn’t lovely at all. He’s reckless and mercurial, and he will never be mine.
I felt his body against mine. I’m not foolish enough to think I’m alone in my want. Emmett would give me more, I know he would. All I’d have to do is push a little harder, and he would have me pinned to this mattress in seconds.
But I am alone with this stupid, throbbing ache in my rib cage that longs for something like love. Emmett can’t give it to me, and it wouldn’t be mine to take anyway.
He disappears into the attached washroom and is in there for so long, I begin to fear he’s sleeping in the bathtub, but finally I hear the squeak of the door and the soft padding of his footsteps. The bed sinks as he lies down next to me.
Emmett’s ragged breathing slows after a long time, and I think he must be asleep. It gives me the bravery to ask a question that’s been weighing on me.
“Were you always on the lookout for the perfect May Queen?”
I roll over again to face him, but he stays on his back. I stare at his profile, silhouetted in the moonlight streaming in from the window.
“I hoped you were asleep,”
he replies.
“You have quite the reputation. Was it all subterfuge?”
“A lot of it,”
he admits. “But not all.”
I hate that it stings to hear him say it.
“Would you like to know the truth?” he asks.
“Always.”
“The Tremaines’ youngest daughter was meeting up with the scullery maid. I was simply providing lookout, and then a cover story when the two young lovers were almost caught.”
“And Christine Cambere?”
“Got her shoe caught in a trellis trying to climb the garden wall to return to her bedroom unseen. I was only helping to get her unstuck. Parties bore her.”
“So none of the rumors are true?” I ask.
“None of the more popular ones. I’m not a saint, I’m just not clumsy enough to get caught. The tryst I had was actually with Christine’s sister Georgia, though we were quite good at keeping that one under wraps. I’ve had my fair share of lady’s maids, barmaids, milkmaids.”
I can’t tell if he’s joking. “And Faith,” I add.
Emmett goes quiet. “And Faith.”
“You said you didn’t love her.”
He wrings his hands in the sheets before he answers. “Faith and I hurt each other because we weren’t what the other wanted. I was too self-obsessed to give Faith the respect she deserved, and she didn’t love me in the way I was hungry for. We were clumsy, and things got broken, but it doesn’t mean some great love story was ruined. Faith and I have talked, we’re friends now. I can assure you she does not love me, nor I her.”
I expect to feel jealous, but instead I just feel sad for him.
“I was only eight when my father gave me up,”
he says. “I so desperately wanted love that I searched for it everywhere. They had to switch out the maids who built my fires daily, after I started growing too attached to them and asking them to stay with me. At night, when I was supposed to be sleeping, I’d sneak out to the stables and read stories to the horses, like they were my friends, even though the grooms told me they weren’t. I spent the first few years after my father’s separation writing him letters at night, detailing every single thing I did that day. I thought one day we’d be reunited and he’d want to know all I had done in his absence. But I stopped believing that some time ago.”
I want to reach out and touch him, offer some comfort, but I can’t.
“My confession is this,”
Emmett continues. “I grew up without a family, in drafty palace rooms with nothing but a governess, a tutor, and a battalion of toy soldiers for company. I’ve spent my whole life on my hands and knees, clamoring for crumbs of love. I don’t know if there will ever come a time I am not hungry for it.”
Emmett’s sullen nature, his recklessness with his heart, it’s all coming into focus now.
I offer him a confession in return. “Sometimes I’m afraid that I was too coddled. I think my parents and sister loved me so much, I’m not prepared for a world that doesn’t love me the same way.”
“The only person on earth I’m certain who loves me is Bram,”
he replies.
Like a girl possessed, I reach out across the expanse of our shared bed and grasp his cold hand in mine. He squeezes, and I squeeze back. I could love you. Let me love you, but I can’t, and he knows it as well as I do.
I will be Bram’s or I will be no one’s.
And now the only thing I can do is live with it.