Chapter Eight
Eve
I crept into Gabriel’s bedchamber. It still felt wrong and a little wicked to have his given name on my tongue. Not Mr. Ser, not The Seraph, not Captain. Just Gabriel. A delicious secret that he had shared with me.
Entering his bedchamber felt like crossing a forbidden boundary. Like when I was a child and a friend had dared me to climb onto the church platform and stand behind the pulpit. Even though no adults had been in the sanctuary, I kept expecting to be caught and punished.
Today I was cleaning the seraph’s room. He’d left the balcony doors open for so long, every nook and cranny in the place held dirt and crumbled leaves. He was fastidious about his personal hygiene, thank goodness, but I’d noticed he seemed to care very little for what happened around him.
I caught him staring at the sky sometimes with a stark, ravaged expression that turned his eyes hollow. His wings slumped in those moments, a picture of defeat.
Gabriel was gone from Mirkwold, in the village to check on someone he knew. A friend, perhaps? Where was his sedge, and how badly did he miss them?
I repinned the cloth covering my hair to keep it clean from dust and leaned my broom against the wall by the door, surveying the space.
It was tidier than the first time I walked in. He was trying to make it a more hospitable environment. I smiled. No man had ever tidied after himself for me before. Gabriel put Zorababel and the other men in the church to shame.
I hummed a hymn as I moved around the room, straightening here and dusting there.
After I’d cleaned one cobweb-heavy corner, I wiped my forehead and leaned back on my heels.
Something snagged my attention. I squinted in the shadowed corner and pulled out something long, slender, and wrapped in canvas.
It was heavier than I expected, and it wobbled in my hand as I drew it to my lap.
Thin leather cording wrapped around the canvas in a crisscross pattern, loosely tied as if the owner couldn’t be bothered with more effort.
I turned the object over, untangling the cord.
It fell to the wooden floor beside me with a nearly silent thunk, and I unwrapped the layers of canvas, curiosity getting the better of me.
Gabriel had shared some things about his past, but I was hungry for more.
Slowly, a long leather case emerged, soft as butter and supple despite its age.
I blinked in surprise, holding it out. It was…
a scabbard. A gold hilt rose from it, inlaid with stones that sparkled in the dim light.
I’d never seen anything so ornate or beautiful.
I didn’t even have names for the jewels and fine craftsmanship.
Gabriel had told me he was nobility. I hadn’t truly comprehended what that entailed.
He was a seraph: clearly he was far above a human like myself. But now I understood what he meant.
In Anglia there were wealthy families. Godless and hedonistic, I’d been told. They had titles and grand estates. Their sons never had to work, and they ruled our government. If Gabriel had been human, he would’ve been a duke’s son. Someone I’d be lucky to serve, let alone befriend.
Air rushed out of me with that revelation.
My hand went to the gold hilt as if I was enchanted.
I slowly, carefully withdrew the sword. Metal gleamed despite the dim room, and my chest hurt to look at such a beautiful weapon.
Precious metal made up the grip and pommel, twisting in beautiful scrollwork that resembled the wind—simple yet elegant.
It fit Gabriel perfectly. I couldn’t imagine a more breathtaking sight than Gabriel descending like an avenging angel, sword aloft.
Why is this hidden in a corner like a dirty secret? Is he ashamed of the war?
Guilt suddenly stole over me as I realized what a personal thing I’d discovered—not so much the weapon itself, but how he’d treated it. I slid it back into the scabbard and hastily rolled it back up.
He’s not ashamed of the sword, I realized as I backed away from his secret. He’s ashamed of himself.
With one last look, I forced myself away from the evidence of the hurting angel and went back to my duties. I made the massive bed, leaning all the way over to reach the tangled sheets. I lay nearly flat on the bed, my breasts pressed into the mattress and one leg kicked up for balance.
I was a virgin, but I had a fertile imagination.
A dirty image blossomed in my mind, of Gabriel coming across me and walking up behind, gripping my waist. Perhaps my skirt would fall back, exposing my thighs.
Perhaps he would lean forward, to help me reach the sheet.
He was taller than me. Perhaps we would lose our balance and fall the rest of the way onto the mattress.
But he was a gentleman, despite his brooding, and he’d roll away from me before his body would crush me. And then—and then—
My hand brushed something soft in the sheets. What’s this? My fingers curled around it and I withdrew, revealing a gleaming white feather just longer than the span of my hand from fingertip to wrist. Perhaps a secondary feather, from the middle of his wing? Or even a tertial, the inner part.
I turned it in the winter light filtering through the windows, marveling at how the vanes caught the light, making the tiny, downy barbs glow.
I once saw a wealthy woman in a fancy milliner’s shop.
Zorababel had given me enough coin on our betrothal day to buy myself a gift.
I went out with another one of the young women in our church, Silence Bellwether, to the fanciest millinery I knew of to buy ribbon and a sprig of silk flowers to spruce up my bonnet.
While there, a wealthy woman had sniffed over the wares, arguing with her adolescent daughter about the quality of the goods. She’d worn milky white jewels in her ears and around her neck that caught the light, making it luminescent. Later, Silence told me those were called opals.
That’s what this feather reminded me of. Opals.
I ran my finger along the edge of the vanes, letting it ruffle as I turned the shaft this way and that.
I had so many questions about Gabriel’s wings, but it seemed impolite to ask.
I also didn’t want to draw his ire. After a glance to make sure I was alone, I lifted the feather to my nose and sniffed.
It didn’t have the odd, natural smell of a raven or hawk’s feather.
It smelled of musky male and something spiced, something like cardamom. I closed my eyes and sniffed again.
I stroked it across my nose, then my lips. It was so soft.
No, this is dangerous. And foolish beyond words. I jerked myself right and stuffed the feather in my pocket.
A clatter on the balcony made my heart leap. I spun around, the bed still half-made behind me, to see the balcony door pushed open and Gabriel walk through.
He was already inside, head down and fingers unbuttoning a leather vest he sometimes wore.
My chest heated at the sight. So did other parts of me. I must’ve squeaked, for he froze and looked up, vest off and in one hand. My breath caught in my throat. He was so beautiful it wasn’t fair.
His bare chest glistened with a hint of perspiration from his flight, and his black hair hung in his eyes. He flicked it backward with a head movement, which only drew my attention to the corded muscles in his shoulders. His green eyes narrowed on me.
We stared at one another, nothing but our breath between us. I could’ve gone deaf from the sound of our breathing.
“I didn’t expect to see you in here.” He dropped his vest over the back of a chair.
“Ermph,” was all I could muster. The rippling baritone of his voice did a funny thing to my stomach. I clenched my teeth against the ribbon of desire twisting inside me. This was why I needed to leave sooner than I’d intended.
He walked toward me, toeing off shoes as he came. His glorious wings pulled back, tight and low, though I could see he was careful not to let them drag the ground. Make sure to sweep daily, I made a mental note.
His eyes flicked to me, then the bed, then around the room, as if expecting to see something else.
“I…I’m cleaning,” I said, probably unnecessarily.
His nostrils flared. “Eve.”
“Yes?” I asked uncertainly.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Do…what?” I glanced behind me. “Oh! Make the bed? I think I must. It’s part of a housekeeper’s duties.” A strange heat grew his eyes.
My stomach flipped. I should leave. I should go. Before one of us does….I don’t know what.
There was a long, awkward pause between us. At least, awkward for me. Maybe he was merely thinking of how to get his annoying, mousy housekeeper out of his chambers.
“In the future, I think—”
“Beg your pardon, sir, I—”
We broke off, staring at one another. In the silence, his vest slid off the back of the chair and hit the floor with a dull thud.
Unable to bear the thickening tension in the room, I surged forward to use that as my escape.
I slipped past him and crouched, picking up the leather vest, damp from the high altitude and his exertion.
“I’ll take care of this, sir, and—” I rose, turning, and nearly rammed my nose into his sternum. “Oh.”
Heat radiated from him, and the scent of cardamom clung to the air between us. The very scant, very thin air between us.
I looked up, eyes surely wide. I wanted him. More than anything I had ever wanted, except for perhaps my freedom. My body burned for him.
He looked down, blinking as if surprised to see me there. The heat in his eyes strengthened. “Eve,” he rasped.
And then his mouth was on mine and he was kissing me.
I gasped in surprise, which made him still. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t—couldn’t—do anything but instinctively want more. And the fear that he would stop and pull away made me drop the vest and cling to him. I threw my arms around his neck and my fingers brushed the arch of his wings.