Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
“I find your hair rather beautiful.”
The words escaped Aurelise’s lips before she could catch them, floating into the night air like one of her wayward melodies. She watched, fascinated, as Prince Ryden’s eyes crinkled in surprised delight, moonlight catching in their depths.
“I used to tell myself it vexed me,” she continued, her voice carrying a dreamy quality she’d never heard from herself before. “All that midnight blue, drawing everyone’s attention. But I cannot seem to locate that feeling anymore. I can find only …”
She shifted slightly. The grass between them was cool and pale, brushing softly against her cheek as she lay turned toward him.
Her gloved fingers reached toward those dark strands that looked impossibly soft in the silver light.
But at the last moment, some vestige of propriety made her lower her hand, though it took considerable effort.
“It’s beautiful,” she finished simply.
A slow smile curved Prince Ryden’s lips. “I find I rather like you this way.”
She laughed, a soft, breathy sound. “Thoroughly addled? My thoughts all …” She turned her gaze toward the branches above and lifted her hand, allowing her fingers to drift lazily through the air. A gentle melody followed her movements, notes that swayed and spun. “Scattered to the winds?”
“No.” The prince’s voice was low. “I like you utterly honest.”
“Ah.” She settled back against the grass, feeling the cool blades through the fabric of her dress. “I’m certain honesty was precisely your aim when you convinced me to undertake dare number nine.”
The reality of her current situation should have horrified her.
Here she lay, stretched out on the grass beside the lake at what must be well past midnight, with Prince Ryden similarly reclined barely a few feet away.
Between them rested an ornate moonwood pipe, its bowl—spell-tempered to remain cool enough not to burn the grass—still faintly glowing with the last wisps of driftshade leaf, that notorious vanilla-spicy substance she’d sworn she would never, under any circumstances, sample.
Yet somehow, mere hours ago, she’d allowed him to convince her otherwise.
She’d been in the Sun Salon, surrounded by lists and confection samples and an alarming number of decisions for her upcoming tea.
Though the event was still ten days hence, the weight of it had been crushing her beneath its expectations.
Her music had betrayed her anxiety, high tremulous notes fluttering about like distressed songbirds, despite her improved control these days.
Thimble and Spark had been attempting to help, though their anxiety only added to her own. Are you absolutely CERTAIN this is the direction you’d like to take your event? Spark had asked multiple times. I don’t believe any other lady is approaching hers in quite the same fashion.
That was when Prince Ryden had appeared in the doorway, taking in the scene with those keen ink-blue eyes that missed nothing. “Lady Aurelise, you appear to be under siege by your own preparations.”
“Everything must be perfect,” she’d said, hearing the edge of panic in her own voice. “Because if not, then—”
“The world shall cease its turning?” He’d strolled into the room with that casual confidence that both irritated and oddly soothed her. “The seas shall boil? The stars shall tumble from the skies?”
“No, because I—I am attempting something that is somewhat … daring, and I fear that if every other element is not perfect, then this single daring element will not be well received.”
He had looked utterly intrigued at her mention of a ‘daring’ element—something she had not breathed a word of to anyone else. Leaning against the back of an armchair, he had tilted his head in that infuriatingly attentive way of his.
“Daring?” he’d echoed. “Do tell me more.”
But at that, her music had risen in a flurry of anxious notes, and her composure had splintered. She’d pressed her hands to her face, trying to steady her breath, whispering silent reassurances that she could manage this. It was only a small event. It was surely not as overwhelming as it seemed.
Surely not as overwhelming as R declaring, in his last letter, that she had already stolen everything there was of him to steal—a confession she still had not found the courage to answer.
Perhaps the prince realized how close she was to unraveling, because he’d straightened from the chair and taken a careful step closer. “This calls for desperate measures. I know precisely what you require.”
She’d lowered her hands, taken a deep breath, and regarded him with deep suspicion. “If you’re about to suggest another midnight adventure—”
“Of course.” That wicked grin had appeared, the one that inevitably preceded trouble. “With the express intent of sampling a small remedy for overwrought nerves. And,” he’d added, eyes glinting with amusement, “it will conveniently allow you to cross another item from that list of yours.”
Now, lying beside him under the stars, Aurelise had to admit his ‘remedy’ had been remarkably effective. The crushing weight of anxiety had dissolved into something soft and manageable, like clouds she could shape with her fingers.
At least for this particular dare she’d maintained enough presence of mind to dress properly.
After Marta had retired for the evening, Aurelise had donned a walking dress of deep burgundy silk, complete with gloves and sturdy slippers.
Not that proper attire would save her reputation if they were discovered.
A lady alone with a gentleman, unchaperoned, partaking of driftshade leaf?
The scandal would destroy her family’s standing entirely.
She would become the cautionary tale mothers whispered to their daughters.
Yet somehow, with the gentle haze wrapped around her thoughts like silk, she could not summon the appropriate alarm.
The night sang around them—whisperwings weaving their rhythmic chorus through the dark, the lake murmuring softly against the shore, a few garden pixies giggling in the branches above. Even the air felt different, charged with possibilities she normally would not allow herself to consider.
“What else could I possibly have been after,” Prince Ryden asked, “beyond the simple satisfaction of watching you complete another dare?”
“I suspect,” she said, rolling onto her side again to face him properly, “that your true intention was to render me thoroughly insensible, whereupon you would take advantage of my compromised state like the notorious scoundrel everyone knows you to be.”
He laughed, a startled sound that seemed to surprise him as much as her. “Scoundrel, am I?”
“Mmm.” She nodded sagely, though the effect was somewhat ruined by her inability to stop smiling. “Everyone speaks of it. Your reputation quite precedes you.”
The playfulness vanished from his expression as he pushed himself up on one elbow, looking down at her with sudden intensity. “I hope you know I would never do such a thing. I would never take advantage of you, not in any state.”
For a few quiet moments, she merely stared up at him, sensing the weight of his sincerity. When she spoke, her words were soft: “Your reputation suggests otherwise.”
“My reputation,” he said simply, “is largely fabrication.”
Some of the haze cleared from her mind. “Truly?”
“Well.” That familiar grin tugged at his lips again. “Not entirely fabrication, I’ll grant you. There exists more than a little truth within the stories.” The smile gentled, became something more vulnerable. “But I would never do anything you did not wish me to do.”
The implication hung between them, unspoken but clear in the way he held her gaze, and a strange, breath-stealing warmth unfurled low within her. He would do something … if she wished it.
But she did not wish anything of the sort.
Certainly not. It was merely the driftshade muddling her thoughts, making her notice how the moonlight played across his features, how his shirt had come slightly undone at the top, revealing a triangle of skin that she very definitely needed to look away from now.
She rolled onto her back again, needing distance from that intense gaze. He followed suit, stretching out beside her once more.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” he said softly. “Something most people do not know.”
“Hmm.” Her gaze drifted upward, tracing the dark lacework of branches overhead. The silence between them was easy—warm, unhurried. “My siblings call me Lise,” she offered eventually.
Several moments of quiet followed. Then: “Lise.” He spoke the name like a secret, the sound barely more than a breath. Then he laughed, quiet and wondering, and when she turned to look at him, he was shaking his head as though he’d just discovered something miraculous.
“What?” she asked.
He met her eyes, and the tenderness in that single glance caused her breath to falter. “Nothing,” he answered, though his smile held secrets she couldn’t decipher. “It suits you perfectly. I like it. Lady Lise.”
The way he said it, like he was tasting something sweet, sent heat flooding through her. “Your turn,” she said quickly, though she did not look away. “Tell me something about yourself that remains hidden from society.”
He was quiet a long time, and when he finally spoke, his voice had gone distant. “My father never loved me.”
The words fell between them like stones into still water. Aurelise’s lips parted on a soft exhale. “What?” She rolled onto her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows, her gaze intent on him.
“He was not a good man.” Ryden stared up at the canopy of leaves above them, his profile sharp in the moonlight.
“He treated my mother abhorrently. His treatment of me was hardly better. He gave me this, actually.” Without looking at her, he pulled aside the loose collar of his shirt, pointing to the vaguely star-shaped marking just above his collarbone.
The scar she’d asked about the night they had swum in the lake.