Chapter 35 #2
His smile gentled, and the steadiness he had been holding onto all evening wavered, just slightly, because she was here, she was actually here. Standing on a Rowanwood balcony in a golden gown, and she had chosen to be here, with him, and he wanted—
He wanted to see her face.
“Lucie. May I—that is, would you permit me to remove your mask? Only if you—”
“Yes,” she said.
He moved behind her. The dark ribbons of the mask were knotted at the back against the soft arrangement of her hair, and he worked at them gently, mindful to keep his fingers from brushing any other part of her.
“You are always so careful with me,” she said quietly.
“So very proper. Always keeping your distance, always waiting to be certain you have leave.” A small breath.
“I need you to put it out of your mind, Kazrian—the idea that there was ever a moment when I did not want you near. There was not. Whatever I said, whatever I did, however far I sent you—I wanted you near the whole of the time. I have always wanted your touch.”
His hands went still on the ribbons. For a moment he could not speak at all. Then he finished loosening them, steadier now, and drew the mask gently away and set it down upon the little round table.
She did not immediately turn to face him, and he hesitated a moment, then lifted one hand and brushed his knuckles slowly down the side of her neck and over her shoulder.
He felt the shiver that went through her.
And then, because he had been wanting to kiss her since approximately five minutes after first meeting her, he lowered his head and pressed his lips to the skin at the curve of her shoulder. He heard the soft, shaken sigh of her breath, and it almost undid him entirely.
He turned her toward him. He lifted his hand and brought it to her cheek and drew his thumb slowly, softly, across the warm skin there.
She closed her eyes and leaned into his palm, and he thought his heart might simply stop.
It was a recognition, a homecoming, the first smooth turn of two gears that had been made for one another finally fitting together.
“Lucie,” he said. His voice had gone hoarse.
He could feel the warmth of her breath against his wrist. “Whatever sort of life you want—I will gladly give it to you. It does not matter to me whether it is grand or simple or something in between, or what anyone else may happen to think of it. If you will have me, then whatever you want is what I want, because the only part of it that is important to me is the part where I am beside you.”
She was quiet for a moment. Her eyes shone. “I hear,” she said, “that there is an excellent storeroom at The Honeycomb.”
A laugh broke from him. “It is settled, then. When shall we take up residence?”
“I shall have to consult the garden gnome. He is very particular about who is permitted to live on the premises. You may not meet his standards.”
“I shall bring references.”
“See that you do.” But her voice had gone unsteady now, the teasing thinning away, and for a moment she had to press her trembling lips together.
“Lucie,” he said, and this time there was nothing light in it at all. His thumb moved once more across her cheek. “Will you have me? Knowing all of it—knowing that there may be easier paths, simpler choices, that the world will not make it easy for us—will you have me?”
She looked up at him, and the tears stood bright and unshed in her eyes. “Kazrian.” Her hands came up and rested against his chest. “My heart has only ever been yours.”
She gripped the front of his coat, stood on tiptoe, and rose to meet him.
Her mouth was soft and warm under his, and he bent to her and gathered her closer, one hand sliding to the small of her back and the other rising to cradle the nape of her neck.
She made a sound against his mouth—a small, breathless thing, half gasp and half relief—and the kiss deepened and turned and grew until there was no careful distance left anywhere in the whole of the world.
“Lucie,” he managed, pulling back just far enough to speak, his forehead against hers.
“Do not,” she whispered as her hands released his coat and came up to spread across the back of his neck, “say anything sensible.”
He kissed her again, slower this time, deeper, a thing with weight and warmth and all the aching tenderness of three years’ worth of wanting. Her hands slid back down to his chest and rested there, and he could feel the small, unsteady press of her palms against his racing heart.
When they finally drew apart, it was only because breathing had become a somewhat urgent necessity. She looked up at him. “In case I did not make myself clear,” she said breathlessly, “that was a ‘yes.’”
He laughed and pressed his mouth to her forehead and murmured, “You made yourself perfectly clear.” And her arms came around him, and they stood there for a moment in the soft glow of the balcony with the music drifting out from the ballroom and his heart so full he thought it might crack the rest of him open entirely.
Then he drew back and retrieved her mask from the table. “May I?” he asked, holding it up.
She turned, presenting the back of her head, and he settled the mask gently into place, his fingers carefully working the ribbons.
When the knot was secure, he brought his lips to the curve of her shoulder once more.
“My heart,” he whispered, and pressed a kiss there, “has only ever been yours too.”
The evening passed in a glittering cascade of music and light and the endless, breathless joy of being together in the midst of all of it.
They danced every dance. They danced the slow, sweeping waltzes and the quicker, brighter turns, and where her steps faltered, because she had far less practice at these dances than he did, he led her so surely and so steadily that she felt as though she had known every one.
She felt as though she belonged. And none of it—not one single moment of it—felt anything less than extraordinary.
She was his. He was hers. And whatever came after this—whatever the whispers and the difficulties and the slow, stubborn inches of change yet to be won—none of it could touch this. None of it could undo the simple, shining fact of the two of them, standing together in a room full of light.
Then the music quieted and Lady Lelianna’s voice rose above the low hum of voices. “Dearest guests, it is midnight! The hour has come! Masks off, if you please.”
A ripple of anticipation moved through the crowd.
Laughter and murmurs and the rustle of silk as hands rose to ribbons and clasps.
The enchantments laid into the masks would dissolve at the final stroke—borrowed faces fading, illusions falling away, the whole dazzling masquerade peeling back to reveal whoever had been underneath all along.
Kazrian turned to her.
His eyes searched hers, and in them was a question he did not need to speak aloud. Whether she wished to slip away before the masks came off, to keep the secret a little longer, to remain hidden behind the cream-and-gold filigree and the small golden honeybees at her temples.
Together, openly, and without apology.
His words. His letter. The promise she had held against her chest and read until the ink blurred before her eyes.
Her heart was pounding. It was, she would freely admit, rather terrifying.
The thought of an entire ballroom turning to look at her and finding not a masked stranger in gold silk but Lucie Fields, confectioner, human, the girl from Elmrow Lane who had no earthly business standing in the middle of a Rowanwood ball with her hand in a lord’s.
But she did not want to hide any longer.
“Yes,” she said.
The first stroke of midnight rang out, deep and resonant, filling the ballroom from floor to vaulted ceiling.
She reached for the ribbons herself this time.
Her fingers found the knot at the back, and she pulled it loose.
The second stroke sounded. The third. She felt the ribbons give, felt the mask loosen against her face, and her hands came forward, and his rose to meet them, and together—his fingers over hers—they drew the mask slowly away.
He held her gaze, and she smiled up at him, helplessly and entirely, and stars, how she wanted to kiss him again.
Around them, ribbons were untied and masks were lifted, and the room filled with the bright chaos of revelation—gasps and shrieks of laughter and delighted exclamations as people discovered who they had been dancing with, who they had been flirting with, who had been standing beside them the whole evening in an entirely different face.
The eleventh stroke.
The twelfth.
A hush descended over the gathering. The chatter faded to murmurs, and the murmurs faded to whispers, and the whispers faded to a single, breathless stillness that settled over the room like frost.
Lucie felt it before she saw it. The weight of attention. Dozens upon dozens of eyes, all directed at the same place.
At them.
At her.
She had expected it. She had steeled herself for it.
And still the force of it sent her pulse racing, a sharp drumbeat beneath the golden silk.
She could hear the whispers start up again.
She saw fans rise to mouths. She saw heads lean close together.
She saw, at the edge of her vision, a woman press her gloved hand to her chest in unmistakable shock.
This is what we wanted.
She held on to that. She held on to it with both hands, the way she had held on to his letter. They had chosen this. They had chosen to stand here, unmasked, together, in the center of a Rowanwood ballroom, before the whole gleaming weight of Bloomhaven society. They had chosen to let them look.
Kazrian held his hand out, palm up.
And she extended her own and laid it in his, and his fingers closed warm and certain around hers.
The murmuring swelled. A gasp, somewhere off to the left. A whisper that carried further than its owner had meant it to.