Chapter 7
“Miss Beck has arrived, Herr Ambrose,” came Zeller’s unfailing monotone from the parlor door.
For the second time in recent history, Ambrose found himself frowning down at overly fancy stationery with dread blossoming in his chest, and this time, he didn’t have any time at all to sit and brood about it or elsewise go and fall asleep in a gambling den.
He blinked up at Zeller with a wrinkle of his brow, the weighted letter sagging in his fingers, and sighed. “Yes, all right,” he said with a shrug. “Might as well send her in.”
He glanced in the mirror over the fireplace and reached up to brush the hair out of his eyes. If she was going to find him standing there, half flayed by a letter, he should at least be presentable for the occasion.
He sighed and looked back down at the damned thing with a shake of his head, then realized Zeller was still loitering in the doorway, his gloved hands folded in front of him like he was waiting for Ambrose to physically boost him back out into the entryway to let Vix into the parlor.
“Problem?” Ambrose asked, tossing the letter on the little glass table by his favorite chair and crossing his arms.
Zeller cleared his throat, running his gloved fingers over the curling ends of his neat, white mustache. “You wish to receive the lady here?” he asked, glancing around like he wouldn’t recommend it.
“Where else?” Ambrose asked impatiently. “Is there a new sitting room I’m yet unaware of?”
The mustache twitched. “Very good, sir,” said Zeller judgementally, and then he turned to leave, evidently pleased to have delivered a side helping of uncertain anxiety along with his announcement of Vix’s arrival.
As a result, Vix got to enter the room to find her soon-to-be husband wearing a grimace.
Curated, icy thing that she was, she barely blinked, simply setting her reticule on the sideboard, looking around the dusty parlor, and saying, “Good afternoon, Ambrose,” like this wasn’t the first time she’d come to see him in person in weeks. “You aren’t dressed.”
He looked down at himself, and finding his body to be fully covered in the appropriate amount of textile, looked back up at her in puzzlement. “I’m not naked.”
“For the ceremony,” she clarified, raising her brows. “I’m not sure why I assumed you’d be wearing your kit all day long, but I suppose I did expect it.”
He looked out the window, just to ensure that the sun was still only about midway through its journey over the sky, then back at his fiancée. “I usually only need a modest four or five hours to get dressed, Vix.”
“Is that all?” she replied with a tiny curve of her lips. “How austere.”
He gave a tired chuckle, gesturing to the chair to the right of his own, on the other side of the little glass table holding the cursed letter he’d been suffering when she arrived.
She tilted her head gratefully and crossed the room to sit, allowing him to follow her with his eyes as she moved.
“Tell me,” he said, “have you had any correspondence reacting to the banns? Any shocked figures from your past or present, demanding to know why they were not alerted directly to your impending nuptials?”
She gave a fluttering little sigh. “Not half so many as I’d hoped, after the announcement in the Standard,” she said, waving her hand.
“Two acquaintances from school wrote to drip saccharine congratulations all over me in ink, but I knew neither of them well enough to either enjoy or resent the effort. You?”
“Oh,” he said with a wince, nodding at the letter, “just my mother.”
She paused, surprise flickering across her face as she reached out to pluck the letter from its perch, her eyes scanning the lines with quick precision. She released a narrow little breath like she could feel his pain.
“It likely should have occurred to me,” he said, watching her read it, “that my parents might notice my name during the banns in their own godforsaken Sunday service. But, you know, it really did not.”
She cut a glance at him over the top of the letter, dry and flat. “She wants to know if I am pregnant,” she informed him, like he hadn’t read the damned thing himself.
He gave what he hoped was an apologetic face, though he suspected it was more of a visage of pain. “You’re not, are you?”
She huffed out a little breath that almost sounded like amusement. “No.”
“She will be disappointed to hear that,” he said. “I think?”
She snorted then, her hand coming up quickly to brush over her amusement, dark eyes crinkling at the corners.
He looked at her in affront.
“I am sorry,” she said, shaking her head and setting the letter aside. “But if you were my charge, I should have already sent you to bed without supper.”
“My dear woman,” he said sadly. “I’m afraid I am your charge.”
She shook her head. “Absolutely not. I am done governing children. If you wish to abstain from dinner, you shall have to enforce it on yourself.”
“Pity,” he said with a long sigh. “If you haven’t come here to punish me, then to what do I owe the pleasure?”
She blinked at him, as though she herself was not certain. “It seemed like it would be odd,” she said, tilting her head, “to only see you at the ceremony, after only having spoken through tailors and butlers for some weeks.”
“Odd? According to my parents, that is the hallmark of a healthy marriage,” he said with a crooked smile.
“Ah, then perhaps I am remiss,” she answered with a shrug. “I suppose I am also restless. There are many hours to pass before it is time to begin dressing and traveling and so on. I will be quite alone once you leave to be honored.”
“Alone?” he repeated with a frown. “I thought you invited people.”
“Oh, I did,” she confirmed. “But they are your intimates, not mine. And I am not yet your wife. I will simply be observing from the crowd, but I will be permitted to rejoin your side after the knighting.”
He shook his head, his frown deepening. “No, that will not do. Zeller!”
“Oh, you really don’t need to—”
“Zeller!” he called again, standing. “I require you!”
It took a suspiciously brief moment for the German to appear, slipping in through the parlor door as though he’d been standing just outside of it with his elderly ear pressed right to the wood. Ambrose would address that some other time.
“Yes, Herr Ambrose?” he said, innocent as a lamb.
“Zeller, you will be accompanying Miss Beck tonight to St. James’s Palace,” he said. “You will escort her while I am otherwise occupied during the ceremony and ensure she is not left alone.”
The man brightened, clicking his heels together. “Yes, Herr Ambrose! I would be delighted!”
“Excellent,” he said, nodding once at the butler and then once at his bride. “You may go. We depart at half six.”
“Sir,” said Zeller, and he vanished again, off to resume his eavesdropping no doubt.
Ambrose spun around, preparing to explain to Vix that the man could be decent company if you asked about one of his three favorite subjects, only to find that she had risen from the chair and was staring at him with what looked like utter dumbfoundedness.
He paused, uncertain if he’d just overstepped, and took a step toward her. “He can chat if you wind him up correctly, but he’ll be silent if that’s your preference. I’ll give you notes.”
“That was very kind of you,” she said, her voice abrupt and not as icy smooth as it usually was. It almost sounded accusatory.
She looked truly taken aback, those big dark eyes blinking at him with an odd gleam.
“I … thank you?” he said, taking another tentative step. “I don’t want you to be alone all night.”
“Why not?” she asked, direct and firm. “Why don’t you want me to be alone?”
He released a little breath, almost a laugh but not quite, taking another step, just short of the little glass table. “Because that would seem terribly sad to me? Because you are there for me, and I shan’t have you floating about as though becoming my wife means a lifetime of isolation.”
“Ah,” she said, her shoulders easing like she’d found a spot of relief. “For appearances, you mean?”
“Appearances? No!” He stared at her, feeling the oddest urge to turn around and kick something. “Because it is the decent thing to do, Vix. What are you even asking me?”
She huffed, crossing her arms. “This isn’t a complicated question,” she snapped. “I’m confused by your confusion.”
“Well, I suppose that makes two of us,” he replied, raising his brows. “Nothing about securing an escort for your evening seems abstract to me.”
“How very wonderful for you,” she replied, frowning and looking away.
He stared, the silence stretching out in front of him in baffled white relief. Absurdly, he glanced at his mother’s letter again.
“Are you sure you aren’t pregnant?” he said, because he was an idiot. “I hear that causes bouts of emotion.”
She snapped her head back toward him, her eyes little glittering slits. “What did you just say?”
He pressed his lips together, knowing he had stepped in it. “Something stupid,” he confessed. “I don’t like silence.”
She opened her mouth, but nothing short of an aborted little stutter of breath came out, like her voice refused to even humor what he’d said with an audible note. She shook her head, reaching up to rub the space between her eyebrows, and looked down at the floor like it might have answers.
It took him a moment to notice that her shoulders were shaking.
He almost didn’t believe it, because she wasn’t making a sound.
“Madam,” he said, his breath barely more than a whisper. “Are you laughing at me?”
She shook her head rather than looking up, rather than answer.
“You are!” he insisted, taking another step toward her. “You are laughing at me!”
She made a sound like a whimper, a helpless thing, turning her body toward the wall so that he could not see her, but it was too late.
He crossed the remaining space between them and reached out to tilt her chin back toward him, only to find her red-faced and teary-eyed, half beside herself, hiccuping with the force of her laughter.
She blinked up at him, half-heartedly trying to swat his hand away as he held her chin still, staring in awe at the gall of this woman and her twice-damned amusement.
“You … you,” she attempted, gasping through stuttering little breaths. “Pregnant?!”
She dissolved again, her laughter coming out in little sobs. “Pregnant!” she said again, and collapsed forward against his shoulder, her body shaking with the force of it.
He caught her, the warm, bundled feeling of her body against his chest, trembling with hysteria, filling him with the oddest mix of sensations and impulses, leaving him with no choice but to remain frozen in confused, awestruck horror.
He could feel her tears soaking through the linen of his shirt, right above his heart, her head still shaking back and forth like she was denying that she was laughing at him, her hands clutching at the fabric on either side of his waist.
He could smell the jasmine soap in her hair. He could feel the soft give of her curving, warm body. He could feel quite a lot, actually.
And yet, she was still laughing at him.
He wondered at why he’d been so resentful of numbness when this was the alternative.
She stilled after a moment, taking a series of long, ragged breaths before she finally eased her grip on him, tilting her head back to look at him with her red, puffy eyes with a kind of wonder.
“You said you wanted to toy with me someday,” she whispered, hiccuping a little. “I suppose now you have.”
He stared down at her with baffled resignation. “Whatever that was,” he assured her, “it was not intentional. And if one of us was being made a toy of, it was not you.”
She hiccuped again, pressing her lips together like she was trying to keep it inside.
“I am a virgin,” she said, still pressed up against him close enough to end his life.
He blinked. He reminded himself to breathe. “All right.”
She took a little breath, another skittering of laughter escaping, a tear slipping down her cheek as she shook her head again, trying to keep those lips firmly turned inward. “I can’t be pregnant, you see. Because I am a virgin.”
He wondered if he had died earlier today and this was hell.
“Oh,” he answered, because that was all he could make himself say.
She blinked, seeming to realize all at once that they were plastered together in an extremely firm embrace. She looked down at her own chest, mashed up against his, with a kind of wide-eyed horror, and echoed his “oh!”, taking a quick step backward, then hiccuping again.
He really couldn’t do much more than watch with a sort of desperate resignation as she wiped at her cheeks and tucked her hair back into order, sucking in several deep breaths through her pursed, ridiculously plush lips.
She steadied herself, giving him a bashful glance out of the corner of her eye and a shrug. “Apologies,” she said, shaking her head. “I quite lost myself for a moment there.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” he croaked, still not trusting himself to move. “Better now?”
She hiccuped once more in answer and nodded.
“I … hm,” she said, bracing her hands together and stretching her neck from one side to the other. “I ought to head home and start my toilette. I have a new dress for tonight. It will match your coat.”
“Will it?” he replied, still not entirely sure his feet were touching the ground. “That sounds nice.”
She nodded and bit her lip, looking at him indirectly like she was suddenly shy about it. “Tell Mr. Zeller I will meet him in the palace foyer. Half six.”
“Half six,” Ambrose agreed, still staring.
She nodded and straightened her shoulders, stepping around him to pace back to the door that would take her to the outside world. She faltered only a little when she felt him turn to watch her as she rounded him.
He waited until she had picked up her reticule, clutching it to her side, and her fingers landed on the brass doorknob before he spoke.
“Vix,” he said, just before she could turn the knob and flee.
She froze so delicately, in such small little motions, her head clicking ever so slightly to the side. “Yes, Ambrose?” she said softly.
“When I am toying with you,” he told her, “you will know.”