Chapter 14 #2
They filled their small plates with bits of each of the five different cheeses, tasting and discussing before the conversation lulled again.
“What book changed you?” he asked in the warm silence, so different from the silence before.
Nikolett laughed. “All of them. Did you know that many people think parents shouldn’t beat their children? I had no idea until I read story after story about girls standing up to the people who hurt them, running away, telling a teacher who then had the authorities get involved.”
Gus grimaced. “I’m sorry, lass.”
“No need to be, it’s long over. It’s just… It had never occurred to me that getting beaten wasn’t normal, and because of that, I never mentioned it to anyone, even my friends. I don’t know if anyone would have done anything.”
“Probably best for your mental health to assume they would have.”
“The one person I did tell was my grandmother. My mother’s mother.
My grandfather died right around the time I got the books and she came to live with us.
She knew some of it, because she’d see the marks on me, but I told her details about…
it.” The truth of what she’d suffered wasn’t right for this elegant room in Paris.
It belonged in the past, in a too-dark bedroom, the only light coming from candles on the table in the icon corner.
“She was outspoken in that way of old women.”
Gus nodded. “Grannies can be savage.”
“One night I told her about a book I was reading. One where the girl ran away because her parents beat her. The story was about her adventure when she was running from them, but in the end, the authorities didn’t make her go home to her parents. She went to live with another family.”
“What did your granny say?”
“She said that if she were stronger, she would beat my father every time he beat me.” Nikolett swallowed hard against the remembered emotion.
She still didn’t have a name for it, the feeling that swept over her when she realized someone in her life was willing to protect her.
“Said that she wouldn’t blame me for running away. ”
“Lass, you look like you’re about to cry.” Gus came around the table, taking a knee beside her.
“Am I?” She wiped just under her eye with her fingertips. Thankfully, her face was dry. “I don’t really cry.”
“Crying’s good.” He reached up to cup her cheek, thumb sliding over her skin. “What happened next?”
“I let myself imagine a different life. When I was reading, it seemed like the stories were set in another world, even the ones meant to take place in this time.
This reality. Then I started to think of them as real.
As something that was fiction, yes, but possible. Not impossible like magic and dragons.
“Once I did that, instead of a future as a pious wife to a boy from church, I imagined myself traveling the world as an archeologist, a scientist. A translator for the UN.”
“I’m sure you could have done whatever it was you put your mind to.”
“Maybe, but it was all in secret.” Nikolett made a wry face at Gus, who still knelt at her side. “Until the day my father told me I was going to marry.”
“Arranged marriage?” Gus’ tone was disgusted.
She hid a wince. Closed-mindedness about arranged marriage and polyamory was not a good sign in a potential member.
“I have no problem with arranged marriage,” she said carefully. “Matchmakers are, and have been, important members of a community.”
Gus rose, returning to his seat. “True. But I’m surprised to hear you defending it since I assume you didn’t want the marriage your father arranged.”
She refused to feel defensive. “You’re right. I didn’t want it. Because it wasn’t really about marriage. It wasn’t about my father finding a good man to be my husband.”
Gus searched her face, and with an almost-shocking quickness, he got it. “He sold you. Maybe not for money but for something.”
“To pay a debt,” she replied softly. “He’d commissioned a beautiful censer made of brass and gold. There was filigree. Inlay with jade and copper. Made by a renowned artist in the Carpathian Mountains.”
“Your father was a priest?”
“No. He was trying to get elected to the…parish council? I think that is the closest term in English. Looking back, it’s clear that council members were important people outside of the church. Those with influence and money, not just those who were the most devout.”
“He didn’t realize that?”
“Maybe he did.” She shrugged. “But he thought the censer would impress everyone and they would make him a councilor.”
“But he couldn’t afford the censer, so he sold you.”
She clicked her tongue in mock censure. “Sold? No. What he planned was divine. Holy. According to my father, the artist was so impressed by my father’s dedication to his faith, he decided he wanted to be like my father, and to do that he needed a pious wife.”
“Wasn’t just money, you were a religious talisman.”
“Exactly, and well put. I sometimes have trouble finding the words for it.”
“I’m going to assume it was a man far too old for you.”
“Of course.”
“And that he saw you as a possession rather than a person?”
Nikolett’s eyes narrowed. “You sound almost like you’ve had experience with this.”
He sighed, hand over his heart and gaze solemn. “I too was traded for religious regalia at a young age.”
Nikolett burst out laughing, the joke wholly unexpected.
Gus grinned, though it faded fast. “Actually, I watched my father treat my mother like a…plaything. She wasn’t a person with feelings and a life. She was this toy he played with every time he passed through.”
Nikolett made a soft noise of sympathy.
“And she never hated him. Never saw how wrong it was the way he treated her. Even after we figured out he gave me a fake, joke name because I wasn’t a person to him either, she didn’t hate him.”
Impulsively, Nikolett rose, walking around the table. He’d come to her twice. It was time for her to go to him.
Gus was staring down at his plate, his hands gripping the edge of the table hard, his fingers were white.
Nikolett cupped his cheek. Slowly, he looked up. Rage glittered in his gaze, and it was fierce, so dark she stopped breathing for a moment. Almost took a step back. Then he blinked and there was only sadness in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I know what it’s like to have a mother you love but also you’re angry with her.”
Gus’ eyes closed, his head tipping just a little, until she felt the weight of it against her palm.
“I didn’t expect it to be like this with us,” he said softly, almost to himself.
“I didn’t expect you either…” The moment felt too heavy, so she added, “cookie guy.”
Gus chuckled as he pushed back his chair. And when he patted his lap in invitation, Nikolett ignored that sense of disquiet, that small voice that said, No, no, not this man. He’s not the one we need and perched on his thigh.
Gus wrapped an arm around her, pulling her across his lap, butt on one of his legs, thighs on the other.
She made a little surprised noise but didn’t resist or push back.
He settled his arms around her hips as he leaned back in the chair.
She was sitting upright rather than leaning against him, so they were able to look at one another.
He looked at her with a calm control that made her want to melt into him, to give in. The closeness and additional physical contact made the shared gaze feel too heavy.
You told him things about yourself that you never told Eric.
It was true, and she had no idea what to do with that.
“I assume you didn’t marry him.”
“No. I told my father I wouldn’t do it and the resulting beating was…bad.”
His arms tightened around her hips, inching her closer to him.
“He told me that I would, that I was his, and that I would do what I was told. Marry who I was told.” Remembering his stance on arranged marriage, she added, “Not an arranged marriage because that would have meant him finding the right people for me, choosing people that could make me happy and I could build a life with.”
“People?”
She hid a wince when she realized she’d used the plural. “I meant, there was no list of good options. Just the artist.”
“It was an exchange of goods. You for an incense holder.”
“Yes.”
“How did you get out of it?”
“I looked up the law. I was only twelve. Too young to marry, even with my father’s permission.”
“Twelve?” Gus’ face twisted with disgust.
“Yes.”
“Lass…have you, uh…”
“Considered that my age wasn’t incidental to the arrangement, instead, I was only worth it to the artist because I was young?
That my father may have been willing to marry me to a pedophile?
” She raised a brow, trying to smile, but the attempted wry expression wobbled and she gave up.
“I have to believe that my father didn’t know. Foolish of me.”
“We do what we have to, to survive.” They shared a moment of silence before Gus’ lips curved. “The law. You used the law to protect yourself. A law passed by politicians.”
She returned the smile. “Exactly.”
“You decided to go into politics so you could make the kind of laws that had protected you.”
“The police didn’t want to get involved when I first went to them, but I pushed.
And pushed. I wrote letters to everyone I could think of.
Eventually the authorities told my father I was too young to marry.
Then they lectured me about how I was rude and abrasive and disrespectful.
The presbyter lectured me about obedience to my father. ”
She didn’t tell Gus about how these meetings with old men full of their own righteousness had taken place while she sat hunched over, breathing hard, thanks to cracked and broken ribs, eyes black with bruises and swollen shut.
“My grandmother and I moved away, to live with her sister, and I started working toward qualifying for university. And at night, instead of hearing stories about the pious king turned saint, my grandmother told me stories about Vasilisa the Beautiful, who yes, marries the king, but because he loves her for her skills, not just her looks. And she incinerates her enemies with a magic skull given to her by a forest witch.”
“A very timely and practical story,” Gus said with a nod.
“And Olga of Kiev,” Nikolett added. “Who ruled Kievan Rus’ and killed her enemies.”
“Is she the one who used birds to burn down a city to avenge her husband’s death?”
“That’s after burning some men alive, and locking others in a bathhouse and burning it around them.” Nikolett shrugged one shoulder. “Some say it was to avenge her husband, some say she killed them for insulting her with a marriage proposal.”
“Right, then, don’t insult Olga.”
There was another knock on the door. Nikolett was on her feet, stepping away from Gus before she realized what she was doing.
She turned back to him, mouth open to apologize, but the look on his face—both understanding and sad—had her swallowing her words.
She returned to her seat as Maxim brought in their final course: dessert. There was a fresh bottle of wine, and Gus took it to the bar cart, opening it and pouring two glasses as Maxim switched out their plates.
“Do you need anything Adm—” Maxim caught himself. “Do you need anything, holgyem?”
Nikoeltt made a face at him for calling her the equivalent of “ma’am.” Maxim smiled before wheeling the cart out.
She accepted the small glass of thick, gold wine Gus passed her, smiling as she did, but he wasn’t looking at her.
Whatever awkwardness had been introduced faded as they assessed the dessert options.
“Now, you can change my contact to tarte tatin guy.” Gus passed her half the apple tart he’d just split.
Calling it an apple tart was like calling a Róbert Berény masterpiece just a painting. The pastry formed beautiful scallops around the edge of the golden, caramelized apples which were arranged in an angular, almost-architectural pattern.
She smiled as she accepted the plate. “No, I think I like ‘cookie guy.’”
He made an overtly disgruntled face and she chuckled.
“At least ‘braw cookie guy’?”
“Braw…what language is that?”
“English,” he assured her. “Well, Scottish English. Means handsome.” He wiggled his dark eyebrows at her.
She laughed. “Is Scottish English a different language?”
“Depends on who you ask.”
“How many languages do you speak?”
“If you count Scottish English as its own, six.”
“Impressive. English, Scottish English, Hungarian…” She raised a brow.
“Spanish, French.” He tipped his head toward the window and the black sky and gold and white lights of Paris.
“That’s five.”
“Mandarin. Though I’m still learning. And my Hungarian and French aren’t fluent. Not sure I should count them.”
“You have a cute accent when you speak Hungarian,” she said in that language.
“Thank you. I’m working on getting rid of it.” He spoke Hungarian and over the course of the sentence, the burr that clearly marked him as Scottish disappeared from his words.
“Impressive.” Very impressive. There was a slight roundness to his pronunciation that marked him as a non-native speaker, but she wouldn’t have been able to identify where he was from.
“Thank you.”
Nikolett took a bite of the tart. Sweet caramel, buttery pastry, and tart, crisp apple. She closed her eyes, savoring. She chased it with the final sips of her dessert wine. A perfect, sweet combination.
“Lass.” Gus was back to English and his voice sounded rough. “If you keep making that noise and licking that spoon, I’m going to kiss you.”
Nikolett’s eyes popped open. When he’d merely held her, when he’d seemed to pull back when she jumped off his lap, she assumed any chance of intimacy between them was done.
She was wrong.
Gus was leaning forward, into the table, his gaze on her lips.
Decision time.
Ignoring the cacophony of thoughts and emotions warring inside her, Nikolett scooped up a bit of caramel sauce with the spoon and placed it in her mouth, curved side up. She hummed as the sweet caramel hit her tongue, then slowly pulled the utensils from between her lips.
Gus was out of his seat a moment later.
His movements were fast and sure, almost alarmingly so, as he came around the small table. He held out a hand, and when she placed hers in his, he pulled her to her feet.
He bent, she strained up, and their lips met in a kiss that felt like both a beginning and an end.