Chapter 25
They lay, panting, above the covers until the sun began to set.
Roland felt still for the first time in a very long time. Or, he supposed, for the first time since she’d drugged him with that herbal drink after he’d been shot.
It was more accurate to say that he felt genuinely, sincerely still for the first time in a long time—without the aid of medical suppression.
His cheek was cushioned in the springy cloud of her hair, which he’d mussed to hell and back out of its braid during the height of their passion, and he was using the arm he had wrapped around her shoulders to toy with the loose pieces that poked through the once-careful plaiting around the perfect halo of her scalp.
“What does your hair look like when it is loose and wild?” he asked softly, trying to twirl one of the tiny coiling curls around his pinky and finding that it always escaped him.
Inversely, if he twirled a larger cluster of tresses, they would hold the shape he made for a moment before easing back into loose, lovely softness.
“It is not your turn to ask a question,” she said against his shoulder, the curve of her smile denting into his clavicle so cleanly, he could almost map the exact spot of her dimple. “And I am not sure you want to know the answer anyway.”
“I assure you that I do,” he replied, turning into the hair in question and inhaling deeply. “I insist you ask one so that I may find out.”
“Hm,” she said, stifling a little yawn against his flesh and twisting into a sprung coil to stretch, her limbs reaching far into the air for a brief moment, only to release herself back into a sprawl again, collapsing against him with a sweet thud.
“Tell me something you would not tell me, unless otherwise compelled by a game such as this one.”
“That is not a question,” he said, frowning.
“Roland, I could phrase it as one, but I imagine that will just draw out the inevitable,” she answered, giggling.
He frowned a little deeper, considering it. “Well,” he said after a moment. “I didn’t meet Mr. Richards, the coroner, at the Vixen. He does play there, but that isn’t how we know one another.”
She shifted, propping up on her elbow and gazing up at him. “Oh?”
He grimaced, nodding. “I used to supplement my income, in the early days of the Tod & Vixen, by digging graves and carrying coffins for dead too poor to have their own pall bearers. I still help him from time to time, if he needs it.”
She furrowed her brow, looking baffled. “And that shames you?”
“No!” he said, snapping around to look at her.
“No, it isn’t shame. I … I don’t know.” He could feel himself coloring, his cheeks warming as he drew a hand over his face.
“I do a lot of odd jobs when I have the time. I support both of my parents to a degree, though they do also both carry in a decent income on their own now. I was always so embarrassed of everything opposite Tod and Matthew. It is easier to be smug and secretive than humble and laughed at, Mae. Far easier.”
“Yes,” she said with a little laugh. “I know that.”
It made him look at her a little harder, at the glow of her red-brown skin in the purple and orange light. “Yes, I think you might,” he said after a moment. “Fine. Same question, then. Tell me something you wouldn’t unless otherwise compelled.”
“What?!” she said with a little gasp. “I thought you wanted me to shake my hair out.”
“I changed my mind,” he said, twirling another fingerful of hair and tugging it gently. “Besides, there is plenty of time for that.”
She gave an exaggerated frown and turned her face into his shoulder, mumbling something incomprehensible into it.
“What was that?” he said, already starting to smile, pulling another spiky strand of hair loose from her plait. “You’re mumbling, Miss Casper.”
“The thimble,” she managed, just from the corner of her lips, peeking out from the dip of his shoulder. “I never told you how I got it.”
He narrowed his eyes, his full attention now focused on the girl now curled so sweetly into his side. “Mae …” he said, sounding for all the world like a schoolmaster about to deliver a demerit.
“They wanted to know the details,” she muttered, burrowing still deeper, drawing her knees up and pushing them against his side. “All of them. Since the very first day we met.”
“Who did?!”
She was still for a moment and then, ever so slowly, peeked up at him from the crook of his arm.
“Oh, for the love of Christ and all His goats,” Roland exclaimed, an incredulous, infuriated laugh escaping his throat. “I am going to strangle Vix Aster. And you did it, didn’t you? How much does she know?”
Mae gave an apologetic little smile and a shrug. “Everything until the day of the picnic? But …”
“But?!”
“But I am bound to continue to divulge,” she said, quiet as a squeaking mouse, “unless such a time arises as I am otherwise bound to confidence that overrides the sovereignty of the thimble.”
“The sover…” he sputtered, staring down at her. “Mae Casper!”
She buried her face against him, shaking her head. “I know! I know!”
“You are never leaving this flat,” he informed her. “Not ever!”
“Oh, how terrible,” she muttered impishly, hugging herself tighter against him. “How shall I survive it?”
He sighed, melting away inside despite himself, and shook his head, unable to suppress the rumbling chuckle that followed. “You gave more than you got,” he said. “You’d make a bad gambler.”
“Oh, is that a fact?” she said, still muffled. “My turn again?”
“Indeed.”
There was a pause as she unfolded herself from her shame, considering her options. “Do you ever imagine being married?”
“No,” he said immediately.
“Oh,” she answered, soft but not judgemental.
“Well, wait,” he said, turning to look at her in the lowering light. “I suppose now I have. No before the question. Yes after.”
“I see,” she answered, still very soft. “Your turn.”
He smiled slowly, reaching out to trace the curve of her cheek. “Do you love me?”
She took a soft little gulping breath, biting down on it and swallowing it into her lungs. She nodded.
“Good,” he said, still gazing at her. “I should hate to be in love all by myself. Really hate it. Very much.”
“You aren’t,” she whispered. “You aren’t alone.”
“Neither are you,” he told her. “My love.”
“How did you imagine it?” she said, inching closer, snaking a bare leg through his. “Just now, when you thought of being married for the first time.”
“Like this,” he said, looking around the shadowy room. “You here on my pillows, asking me questions I only half want to answer. Your hair between my fingers. Your taste on my lips.”
“Not bells? Or aisles in a church?” she asked. “Not applause and a vicar?”
“Definitely not,” he said, allowing a snort to escape. “Isn’t that just the part everyone suffers through to get to the enjoyable bit?”
“I’ve always thought so,” she said thoughtfully, “but no, Vix and Hannah and even Rosalind all seemed to really love the wedding itself. I think I would rather elope. It would be a reason, an excuse, to finally see somewhere that isn’t London, but I can’t do that. I know I can’t do that.”
“You can’t?” he said, surprised. “Whyever not?”
She pulled her lips into a flat, dimpled line, as though the unspoken were hugged with parentheses. “You know why,” she said. “Especially right now.”
“Hm,” he said, instead of telling her how absurd that was. Instead of telling her that it wasn’t her job to right all the wrongs in the world. “I’ve never left London either. Where would you wish to go?”
“Venice, maybe,” she said, looking dreamy. “Or Seville. Ooh! New York? What about you?”
He shrugged, blushing again. “I always thought Old York sounded plenty exotic, truth be told.”
She grinned. “Perhaps it is. I have never been there either.”
“You have to leave England to elope, however,” he said, giving a little grunt as he moved onto his side, propping his head on his hand so he could look down at her, dragging the tips of his fingers down the dipping curves of her side. “Scotland, I think, or elsewhere.”
“Is that true?” she said, looking up at him. “How do you know that?”
He grinned. “I know everything.”
She scoffed and rolled her eyes.
“A lot of whores dream of eloping,” he said after a moment. “A lot of men dream of eloping with them. I know all about the allures of a place up north called Gretna Green, where you can pay a blacksmith a tuppence to wed you in minutes, rather than do anything at all the respectable way.”
“A blacksmith,” she repeated, squinting at him. “Are you teasing me?”
“Only if a cow doesn’t truly have four stomachs,” he answered, leaning down to capture her lips, gently and softly.
“I’ll ask Rosalind anyhow,” she said, flopping onto her back and scooting into the shadow his body made. “We ought to light a candle, Roland. It’s getting dark.”
“It is getting dark,” he agreed, glancing up and around the room. “Whose turn is it?”
She grinned, opening her mouth with such a smug glint in her eye that he immediately kissed her again to stop her from answering.
“No, you don’t!” he said against her lips, laughing at the way her body shook with amusement. “I invented that trick. That wasn’t my question.”
“Fine,” she said with a little sigh. “Ask, for mine will be what you have to eat in this secret flat of yours.”
His heart gave a little lurch, thumping and scraping against his ribs as the words swelled in his chest and tickled at his tongue. He inhaled deeply, bracing himself, and forced himself to be a man. “My question,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Are you staying here tonight?” he asked, afraid to move, to even let his fingers twitch where they rested on her bare hip. “With me?”
She reached out and stroked his hair, miming the way he twined hers around his fingers. “Oh, Roland,” she whispered. “Of course I am.”