Chapter Seventeen #2
“Baxter,” his aunt supplied from behind them, apparently unable to hold her tongue a moment longer.
Arden gave her a warning look over his shoulder. She only smiled, lifting her hand to mime locking her lips with a key, and Arden turned back to Oriana.
“My aunt enjoyed the book too, as you can tell.”
Oriana smiled, her cheeks still flushed—likely due to the book’s more scandalous content. She bit her lip, considering for a moment. She pulled the book she’d been reading before from the pocket of her skirt, passing it to him.
This book had a dark-blue leather cover, with the title embossed in silver: A Pirate’s Gift.
“You can borrow it if you like,” she told him. “It’s different from Affair of the Darkest Heart. It takes place in a fantasy world where no one is Luster, only Lack, but I enjoyed it.”
“I’m sure I will too,” Arden said, though he could practically feel his aunt’s stare boring a hole in the back of his head, and he knew that as soon as they were alone, she would snatch the book from his hands before he could read a word.
Oriana’s smile turned eager. “I always thought I loved to read because books were so much more interesting than anything that happened in Garlin, but I’m surprised fiction holds your attention after your time in Strall. I’ve heard the city is most exciting.”
“Er . . .” Arden began. “Have you ever been to Strall, Miss Mayles?”
“Oh no, but I’ve always dreamed of going. I had a friend from there once. He used to tell me all about the tall buildings and how there were so many people—ten times as many as Garlin.”
“Oh, more than that.” Arden tried to imagine what a woman like Oriana Mayles would find to admire in Garlin, but he could sooner imagine her on the moon itself than in Strall.
It wouldn’t suit her—too loud, too cold, too busy for someone as delicate and gentle.
But if he convinced Oriana to marry him, Strall would become her home.
What if he was right and she hated it there?
Unbidden, he thought of Mavis, honed as she was by Strall. It was her home, just as it was his, despite the fact that they’d grown up on opposite sides of the city.
“Perhaps you might take me there one day, Mr. Ryskamp,” Oriana prompted when he didn’t respond. He shook his head, tamping all thoughts of Mavis down, though he knew by now that they would rise back up quickly enough no matter how he tried to fight them.
“I would endeavor to be the best tour guide you could ask for, Miss Mayles.” He inclined his head. “Perhaps we could go to the grand opera house? Or I could take you ice-skating on Telmidge Pond.”
“Ice-skating!” Oriana exclaimed, her eyes going wide as saucers. “I’ve read about that, but I never imagined I’d get to go myself. Do they really do that in Strall?”
He smiled. “Every winter. As soon as the pond freezes, merchants set up stands around the pond to sell mugs of hot chocolate and spiced nuts.”
Oriana sighed. “That sounds absolutely magical. Does it snow in Strall too?”
“Through most of winter,” he told her.
She stopped short. “I’ve never seen snow,” she said quietly.
Arden wanted to laugh, but he managed to hold it back. As ludicrous as it seemed to him, of course Oriana had never seen snow. His aunt had remarked several times since he arrived in Garlin that it never got cold here, even in the dead of winter.
“I think I’ll love Strall,” Oriana said softly, beginning to walk again.
Her eyes were fixed ahead but far away like they got when she was reading, as if she were already imagining life in Strall—life with him.
When he spared a glance over his shoulder, his aunt gave him an encouraging smile.
For the first time since she’d lain down her ridiculous stipulation, Arden truly thought he might succeed.
He waited for triumph to lace through him, but when Oriana turned her attention to him and fixed him with her beautiful, bright smile, Arden couldn’t bring himself to feel anything at all.
When they reached Mayles House, Arden cleared his throat.
“Might I call on you again tomorrow, Miss Mayles?” He pitched his voice loud enough so his aunt would have no trouble hearing it.
“I would be delighted, Mr. Ryskamp.” With one last demure smile, Oriana disappeared inside.
“Well done, boy,” Aunt Philomena said once they were alone, giving him a rare, approving look. “Perhaps there is hope for you after all.”
But as he offered her his arm and she took it, Arden couldn’t shake the feeling that he was making a mistake—and unlike every other mistake he’d made that led him here, broke and desperate, marrying Oriana Mayles would be a mistake that wouldn’t affect only him. Could he do that to her?
Once she was in the carriage, alone with Thaddeus, Mavis blurted out the question that had been on her mind since her conversation with Mrs. Florrick.
“Thaddeus, are you penniless?”
It wasn’t the most tactful approach, but lucky for her, Delphinia Lindcourt was utterly tactless.
While that had been one of the reasons Thaddeus had been so taken with her, now his gaze darkened and his mouth twisted into a scowl.
He didn’t look at her, instead keeping his gaze focused out the carriage window.
“How could I be penniless?” he muttered under his breath. “That’s ridiculous.”
It wasn’t a denial.
“Well, Mrs. Florrick said you hadn’t paid your bill at the club—”
“Mrs. Florrick is an imbecile,” Thaddeus snapped, cutting his gaze toward her and leaning across the carriage, gray eyes blazing, jaw tense, hand curled into a fist in his lap. “And so are you if you believe any bit of rot that lying bitch says.”
For a moment, Mavis didn’t move. It wasn’t often she tasted fear these days, certainly not in the company of men like Thaddeus Mayles, but she hadn’t forgotten the way it felt on the back of her tongue, and she knew it now.
In the small space of the carriage, with Thaddeus looming over her, she realized just how thoroughly she had misjudged him.
He might be a conceited, snobby blowhard, but he was also desperate, and if there was one thing life in the Low City taught Mavis, it was that a desperate man was a lethal one.
Thaddeus must have seen the fear in her eyes because he sucked in a breath and huffed it out, forcing his fist to unclench and his shoulders to drop. He leaned back, running his palm over his face and sinking into the cushions of the carriage seat.
“I’m sorry, dearest,” he said, his voice switching back to his usual droll tone. “It’s been a very long day, and I hate to think you believe any nastiness that might be said about me. You know me better than that, don’t you?”
Mavis managed a small, relieved smile. “Yes, of course.” But though the blare of danger was still ringing in her ears, she couldn’t resist pushing him a little further.
“But now Mrs. Florrick and Hortensia Tsu have mentioned the wedding being at the end of summer—surely that isn’t true, is it, Thaddeus? ”
Thaddeus leaned across the carriage again, but this time he took Mavis’s hand and lifted it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the back. It took all Mavis’s self-control not to yank her hand out of his grip then and there.
“I wanted it to be a surprise for you, Delphinia, but is it so surprising that I can’t bear to remain apart from you for another moment? Even waiting another few weeks will be torture, darling.”
Mavis wanted to scream, but she managed to keep it locked inside, along with her scattered thoughts, as she tried to wrap her mind around the fact that while she had been conning Thaddeus, he had been conning her.