Chapter 11 Whimsical Misery
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHIMSICAL MISERY
We’ve been working on our escape plan for Prospero, which includes magical potions that I don’t understand, so I’ve tuned most of it out. I don’t have a significant role; I only go to and from the dungeons if Ariadne can get me inside.
Tomorrow is D-day, but today is a tea party. One I’m told is special. It’s Gus’s birthday—a dormouse with a peculiar knack for falling asleep during almost every tea party, so I haven’t gotten to know him much yet.
Mitzy has been much nicer to me since I’ve been helping her and the other kitchen mice prepare for the party. I set the last plate on the table and place my hands on my hips.
“I think we did it!” I announce.
“That we have, Mistress,” Mitzy says, what I assume is a smile winding up her cheeks. “Hatter will be much pleased.”
That makes something in my chest bloom and heat. The longer I’m here, the more I can’t seem to help my reaction to him, and this thing I’m certain only I feel growing.
In my world, a man would’ve made a move already if he felt something. Then again, we’re not in my world.
“Why don’t you run along and tell Hatter the party is done? He likes to approve of everything,” Mitzy says.
“I don’t think I’m the one to tell him, do you? Besides, he’s hatting in his workshop. I don’t want to disturb him.”
She grins. This time it’s clearly a grin, and it’s at my floundering. “No. You’re the perfect person to interrupt him, Eleanor. Now run along.”
As I turn toward the hill leading me to the house, I feel like a child who’s been scolded.
When I open the door to Fin’s workshop, a fabric roll flies through the hair and nearly brains me. “Hey! Watch it!” I squeal, ducking out of range.
It hits a wall and thunks to the floor, unrolling a bit before stopping near a chair leg.
Finlo eyes me, frustratingly devastating heat beaming from his eyes, and I shift on my feet to escape its intensity. “Oh, Tiger Lily. I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.” The heat in his eyes dissipates, and I’m caught in an equally devastating smile he gives me.
“Mitzy sent me. What are you doing?”
Leaning over his station, he glowers at the mess of fabric torn to bits. I recognize the heap as what was my hat in progress.
“Oh, Fin. What have you done?”
“It wasn’t good enough,” he mutters angrily, hanging his head.
“Sure it was. It wasn’t perfect yet, but it was getting there.” Reaching over his arm, I lift some of the ruined hat before dropping it back down.
“No!” he growls, turning toward me. “It wasn’t perfect enough. Not enough to be worn by you.”
My stomach knots, and I wish he wouldn’t say such things. They only confuse the narrative in my head that involves the two of us.
Clearing my throat, I squeeze his arm. “Well, we will start fresh. After the tea party?”
This calms him, and tension leaves his shoulders as he huffs out an exasperated exhale.
“Mitzy wants you to come check our progress on the tea table,” I remind him, trying to keep his wandering mind off the hat beneath him.
“Tea table,” he mutters.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I offer. “I can assure you, it’s going to be a grand tea.”
His smile is nearly blinding as he lifts his head and looks up at me. “You’re fitting in here rather nicely, Tiger Lily.”
I still don’t know why he calls me that. I assume it will come to me one of these days, but I have a feeling that the reasoning will be another dismal blow to my wanting to return home.
I’m already reluctant because of Finlo and the love he offers if we were to continue getting to know one another. The other saner side of me says it is complete nonsense because someone like Finlo isn’t someone one takes as a lover.
Anger wells in my chest at the idea he’s any less than any human man back in my world. Fuck that.
He’s more.
“Are you alright?” Fin whispers, turning to look me over. His hands steady on my face, thumbs brushing over my cheeks. “You’re flushed again. If you’re getting sick, I’m going to stab the wind.”
I chuckle. “The wind?”
“The wind is a wicked creature, always causing a chill.”
That has my mind spinning in wonder. Is the wind a living entity here?
“I’m alright, Fin. I’m just—” Go on, tell him you’re in a war with yourself over your feelings for him. “I’m just a bit hungry, is all,” I lie.
He checks his watch, which is upside down and not currently in operation. “Well, it’s a good thing it’s tea time!”
Turning me by my shoulders, he leads me toward the door. My heart nearly stops when he drops over my shoulder, his lips skimming my ear. “Don’t worry your beautiful head, your hat will be the grandest of them all.”
It was a lie about the hunger. But as I walk beside Fin, exiting the house into the cool breeze of the possibly corporeal wind, I’m now ravenous.
But not for food.
Fuck, I’m turning into a tree.
After all, they love flesh.
“No! I really think you should get down! You could get hurt!” I yell.
Chaos swarms around me. Gus, the Dormouse, is fast asleep on his slice of birthday cake, Bonnie is on the other side of Fin, shouting at him to ‘Use sense’, and Lewis is picking his pocket watch clean, unaffected.
A few other tea party goers are all shouting over the anarchy around the table, having conversations of their own, of a ludicrous nature.
Fin strikes at the wind again, the butter knife in his hand no more threatening than a loaf of bread. “I will have my revenge for this sickness of yours, if it is the last thing I do!”
I’m exasperated.
This all started because Fin reached over under the table and squeezed my thigh a little too close to somewhere that’s been aching since our earlier run-in in the workshop, and a flush returned to my cheeks the exact moment the wind blew, and then all hell broke loose.
“She isn’t sick!” Bonnie shouts.
“Yes! Thank you!” I tell her.
“She’s just ugly!” Bonnie adds.
I purse my lips at her as she breaks into fits of giggles in her chair, one wing curling over her belly.
“Oh, that’s it.” I crawl onto the table. “Come down from here this instant before you get hurt.” Already, he’s knocked over cakes, a three-tiered tart rack, and two teapots.
“No! If the wind thinks it can best me, let it try!”
“The wind isn’t a living creature,” I argue, staying out of range of the butter knife he’s wielding through the air.
The wind choses that moment to blow, knocking Fin’s hat off his head and onto the ground.
“Oh, you dastardly creature!” he growls, but I’m surprised by the peaked ears on either side of his head, the tips of which must’ve been hidden under his hat before.
How had I never noticed them?
Was I not looking?
Fin swipes at the wind with his knife, nearly tripping over the rest of the birthday cake, and I rush him, capturing him by the front of his jacket to keep him steady.
Pulling him close, I land chest to chest with him.
He captures one arm around my body, one hand still raised in the air with the knife in his hand.
“I’m not sick,” I whisper, knocked breathless by his proximity.
“Then what is that flush in your cheeks?”
“I’d rather not talk about it here,” I tell him.
He looks down, registering all the Wonderland creatures currently eyeing us like we’re the best entertainment they’ve seen all year.
“Why ever not?”
“Fin, it’s not something I can tell you here.”
He simply nods, dropping the knife as he wraps his hand around my wrist and drags me off the table behind him toward the house.
When we’re inside, I have no plan for how to calm him down without feeling exposed.
He takes me all the way to the bedroom, slamming the door behind us and then the window. The bedside candle flickers to life as he wafts his hand toward it, the first bout of magic I’ve witnessed him do. Although I’m still uncertain his ears weren’t magically glamoured before.
“Is this private enough for you?” he huffs.
I sigh, rubbing my temples.
“Tell me why your cheeks were red if it wasn’t the wind and his games.”
Now, he’s referring to the wind with a pronoun?
This world will never cease to confuse my brain.
“It was because you touched me,” I admit, feeling like the world is spinning out of control around me.
I don’t know how he will react, which has me on edge.
“I caused your sickness?” His face changes as he strides backward a few steps toward the dresser nearest the window.
“What? No!”
This is going great, Eleanor.
Striding over, I look up at him.
His green eyes are filled with worry I placed there, and guilt fizzles in my stomach with an acrid burn.
“You reached under the table and squeezed my leg earlier, do you recall?”
His brows furrow, but he nods.
Okay, you’ve got this. Pull up your big girl panties.
I’ve been with men before, but telling Finlo Pennington I’m attracted to him and explaining attraction feels like the most nerve-wracking thing I’ve ever endured.
“I liked it,” I admit. “That’s why my cheeks were flushed.”
His eyes narrow. “So, I caused your sickness. You should’ve told me so right then instead of making me try to fight someone else for the offense. I’ll need to apologize. Oh, what will the rest of the party think?”
“The rest of the party is as mad as you; they’ll be fine.” I stiffen as I realize I’ve said it aloud.
A laugh huffs out of him. “You’re right. I wish you’d have told me. I’ll be more careful in the future. I won’t touch you again, Tiger Lily. I swear it.”
I sigh, hanging my head in defeat.
“I don’t think that will help at all. Because there are times I’ve been flushed before, and it had nothing to do with your touching me. It was your mere proximity, Fin. Don’t you understand?”
“So, you can’t be near me, either?” Sadness braids through his tone, and wrenches my gut into a tight knot.
“No, I—”
“I don’t think I could say goodbye to you again. It was so hard the first time, Eleanor. And now, you’re new Eleanor, and there’s this… something about you. I can’t quite explain it, but—” I lift on tiptoes and press my lips to his, silencing his spiralling words.
It’s brief, a quick peck to express what I can’t put into words right now.
“Well,” he breathes, cupping either side of my face and peering into my eyes as if searching for something.
“I like it when I’m near you. I like it when you touch me.
I like you, Hatter. I want more from you than tea parties and hats, and I know it’s wrong, and I’m sorry.
I can’t help it. I think I always might’ve felt this way, but then it was a girlhood crush, not something I could act on, and—” His lips press to mine, his kiss lingering longer than the one I’d given him.
My heart is racing, my body thrumming with some kind of magic only Finlo can weave.
Moving against his lips, I deepen the kiss. He follows my lead, opening to me when I prod his lips with my tongue.
My arms wrap around his neck, and his hands tangle in my hair, our moans becoming the mad thing between us instead of our words.
When he breaks the kiss and looks down at me, a thumb presses into the flush I know paints my cheeks again. “I’ve loved you since I met you, but it was different then. I don’t quite understand this feeling, this new facet of love that’s growing towards you.”
“I know,” I whisper.
Pressing his forehead to mine, he regains control of himself as I try to do the same. “I’ll have to go apologize to Henry.”
“Who’s Henry?”
“The wind.” He gives me a look like I’m the insane one before pulling away and striding toward the door.
“The wind has a name?”