6. A New Love
A NEW LOVE
NOBLE
“It’s already begun to work,” Noble announced, marching into the kitchen where Aria sat sipping a hot mug of tea. “We’ve gone out twice, but already we’ve been noticed.” He lifted the newly arrived letter into the air. “My first invitation!"
Aria made a noise of acknowledgment into his cup, barely awake.
The casual tunic he’d taken to wearing around the house was thin and beige and loose, pooling around his small frame and off his white shoulders more as a suggestion of clothing than the actual thing.
Noble was struck yet again by the sight and nearly lost his footing against one of the tiles in the kitchen.
The Aria from long ago had been so…hard. Proper. This one was soft. Perhaps problematically so. Ellor had really done a number on him.
Not that Aria realized. Every day he said that he felt fine, really, and Noble just let him go on thinking as much. Tonight, at least, he’d forcibly pull Aria into his true, strait-laced self. “We’re going out this evening. Properly.”
Aria placed his cup on the bistro table and slowly blinked, like sleep continued to chase him. Poor fellow hadn’t adapted to daytime hours now that he wasn’t working long nights. “It’s tonight?”
“Mmhmm.” Noble grabbed his own steaming mug off one of the kitchen counters and joined Aria at the bistro table.
“A gallery opening for an artist making wooden wall art.” He offered the letter for Aria to take.
“It’s not a huge event, but it’ll get us out of the house and brushing shoulders with some wealthy folks. ”
Aria yawned as he unfolded the letter. He scanned it, hummed as if pleased, and then returned to his tea. “I’ve heard of her. A half-elf, half-orc. Willa Brown. She’s supposedly the hottest new thing in town. Everyone who’s anyone has a piece of hers in their home.”
Noble raised a brow. “Ellor?”
Aria nodded. “He got outbid on a bust of the Moon Goddess and pouted for days.”
“He would.” Noble looked out the mahogany-framed window at the glittering morning waters of the river.
An elven man in a rough-hewn canoe paddled by, a net of fish in a pile at the front.
He was talking to himself and smiling, and though Noble couldn’t make out the words, he nonetheless found himself inspired by his good mood.
“That’s even better, then. I should buy a piece from her tonight.
It’ll show me supporting the arts, and it’ll show how little my coin has been affected by Virginia’s loss. It’s what a proper nobleman would do.”
Aria chuckled as he polished off his tea. “Sure.”
“Why do you laugh?” Noble relaxed his chin into his hand, propped upon the table. “How are you not continually impressed at my ability to come up with these ploys that will save us both?”
Aria’s grin shined like the sun upon the water. “The purpose of buying art is to enjoy the art. But nobles, like you—even like Ellor—don’t even care what it looks like, in the end. What if you get there and it’s all hideous stuff?”
Noble narrowed his eyes in thought. “I suppose that doesn’t matter as much.”
“Willa’s art is not made to show off your wealth or connections or anything else. She doesn’t make these things for the money behind it—she does it because she’s got inspiration. Because she loves to do it.”
Noble watched Aria’s blue stare flash in passion. “You know, when we first met, you were adamant you’d never work as an adame, and only as a bard.”
Aria placed his hands before himself on the table. “Yes, I remember. My plans changed when I met Ellor.”
“But that’s still what you want, right? To be an artist. A bard.” Noble smiled as Aria’s face pinched in thought. The Aria that valued his craft—that Aria was still accounted for, even after all this loss.
“It’s what calls to me. Bardic magic. The same way a wife calls to you, I suspect.”
“Perhaps so.” His singular goal was to return to the way things were. If he married again, he’d be given a new plot of land from The Crown, and he’d be back where he belonged. “That’s all that’s ever been expected of me. Wife, land, children. It carries a lot of weight, this role.”
That weight was why he’d avoided the title earl previously.
Young Noble, naive Noble, loved being unattached.
But Noble now would have given anything to be married to Virginia again.
To go back to the best of his days, when they were newly wed, and could barely leave the bed, and were showered with attention whenever they left their home.
Aria picked up his mug and moved to the kitchen sink. He did that a lot—washed his own dishes. Noble paid Karle, a half-orc cleaner, a significant wage to come in and tidy his home every other day.
Noble got up and prepared to follow Aria’s lead. He could tidy after himself.
“I like your name,” said Aria, eventually. “Earl doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily. Remember?”
Noble barked a single laugh. “I do. I always thought it sounded unnatural to say. Earl Yves St. Clair.”
“What changed?”
Noble stepped beside Aria, and dipped his empty cup into the hot, soapy water he’d poured into the sink.
“I did, I guess.” He met Virginia. He wanted to have Virginia.
That meant changing his name. That meant changing his priorities.
The way his parents looked as he placed the ring on Virginia’s hand, at the altar—so proud. So pleased.
Virginia divorced him nearly two weeks ago, and neither of his parents, nor any of his aunts and uncles, had deigned to visit. Busy season down in Sallansa, he reasoned. He was barely one of them, he knew. But the first several days after Virginia left… The silence around Noble was cavernous.
Aria placed his teacup on a rack beside the sink, and relaxed against the cabinets while Noble washed his.
“Sometimes I’ve wondered what our younger selves would think of us now.
My younger self would be ashamed I’d become some lord’s plaything.
An adame without any of the respect the title carried. ”
Not for the first time, Noble wanted to wring Ellor’s neck. In lieu of violence, he sighed, and spoke lightly. “My younger self would hate my haircut. I know that for certain.”
Aria’s responding laugh did the job, filling the empty space of Noble’s home, suffusing the tension in his heart.
ARIA
Aria approached Noble standing in front of Willa’s largest piece—a floor-to-ceiling wood panel with carvings that depicted the March of Elfkind into Elysium.
Like most of her works, it leaned religious, and blasphemous, in nature.
Several of the elves were completely undressed. Daring, but improper.
“Is this the one?” Aria asked, looking up at Noble to try to read his face. His shining black eyes were narrowed, and the big, overly expressive line of his brows seemed more perplexed than anything else. “The one you’re going to bid on, I mean.”
Noble had dressed sharp in a black suit and crisp white shirt that did nothing for his golden complexion. He swirled the red wine in his glass absently. “I’m trying to figure it out.”
“The piece? It’s the March of—"
“No, no.” Noble laughed, and finally tore his eyes away to look down at Aria instead.
His smile seemed especially sharp on this night, with his beard freshly trimmed, and his eyes glassy from the many free drinks.
“I know what the piece is. I’m trying to figure out if I hate it because I hate it or because you got in my head this morning. ”
“Me?” Aria pressed a hand to his own chest, over his beige, floor-length tunic frock, in shock. “What did I do?”
“What you said about us titled folk buying art just to buy it. I fear my mind has been polluted, and I came in judgmental and ready to hate everything just to please you.” Noble gestured with the wine glass at the panel and said, “Does it please you to know I think it’s overwrought?”
Aria’s responding, unexpected laugh was too loud. He only had a single glass of wine—no excuse to act without propriety. He put a hand over his mouth, surprised at himself, and then shook his head. “You’re being unfair. It’s not that bad.”
“Do you like it?”
Aria turned back to the piece and considered it, but briefly, because he already knew his answer.
“No. Not particularly.” He wasn’t even religious—he’d no real affection for any of the gods, specifically the elven god Elys, or the proud, war-torn history of elves—but he thought Willa’s obvious jab was just that.
Obvious. Even more than that, though… He leaned in and whispered, “It’s ugly.
” Noble laughed loudly this time, and Aria found himself unable to stop grinning, even as he said, “Shh. Noble! Shh! It’s too quiet in here. People are going to start looking.”
And they had attracted attention, because Willa herself appeared on the other side of Noble and said, “Hi. Can I answer any questions?”
Aria straightened his spine and said, “Hello. It’s nice to meet you—Willa Brown, right?”
“Indeed,” she said, presenting her fist. Aria tapped it with the back of his own fist, and she unfurled her fingers to offer her hand for Noble to shake. Which he did, clearing the laughter from his chest. “You’re laughing at this piece, I see.”
Aria could have thrown himself out the tall window at the other end of the room. “Oh, no, it’s not that.”
Noble released a smooth chuckle, donned that Sun God grin, and slid a hand onto Willa’s thin upper arm with gentle affection.
“We were, but only because this elf here—” He motioned with his elbow to one of the wood-carved elves marching up into the sky, her breasts bare, arms outstretched.
“She’s so beautiful that I wondered if she’d dare meet with me at dinner tomorrow night. ”
Willa visibly relaxed. She smiled at Noble in return. “She’s a pious woman. She’d never be caught at the side of a human man like you.”
“But I’m no mere human man,” said Noble. “I’ve not introduced myself, I realize. I’m Lord Yves St. Clair. How do you do?”