Chapter 9
Dear Friend,
Do you ever get tired? Of all the constraints on your time, the expectations, the tedium of opinionated men who know less than you, the endless requests for an audience, of having your every move scrutinized? Tell me you do, even as I watch you push forward. If you can, then so can I.
A grateful subject,
N.
N,
No one’s ever asked. But we’ll push forward together.
With equal gratitude,
Your Friend,
VR
Fitz concluded that his life could only be a farce.
Like some cruel twist of nefarious Pagan gods, once he finally made it up to his rooms after consuming the evening meal with his friends and lingering in the dining hall for a couple- fine, several- hands of cards, he realized the location of his room was…
right next to Lady Noelle’s. She shared a room with two of her sisters, but it wasn’t either of her sisters that Fitz had written to.
That wrote him back. That held him in their thrall. That he desperately wanted to kiss.
Hell, if he did kiss Lady Noelle, teasing and incomparable mad woman that she was, would he stop at kissing, or would she be his ruin? He ought to care what his best friend would say to his exquisite plight; but the force she had over him, whatever one wanted to name it, was too strong to ignore.
When he’d seen her in a dress that wasn’t gray or black or navy, the one this morning had been a soft green that mirrored one of the colors swirling within her hazel eyes, he’d felt like he’d been kicked in the lungs.
Even the ethereal form he envisioned writing to in his mind could scarcely compare.
Rubbing his eyes, Fitz laid down on his bed, which was surprisingly comfortable for a bed at an inn.
He could hear sounds through the thin walls, but the voices were too hushed to make out.
Was she abed? Did she have some ghastly concoction of ivory and ruffled lace and linen to sleep in?
Her hair was probably in a braid. He didn’t care.
She was the one woman he wanted to touch until his hands studied every inch of her, every freckle, every scar, every laugh line.
He could take his time doing just that; if there were enough time in all the world it still wouldn’t be enough.
He was beyond the clutches of hope or reason. Every time he offered hints that he wanted her, she berated him or played entirely aloof. It was maddening. It made her even more desirable.
“For a second there, I almost believed you.”
She didn’t believe he wanted her. A highly astute woman like Lady Noelle probably wanted honesty, not flattery.
She wouldn’t like what she found there at the center of who he was.
No one who had ever seen all of him had ever stayed or cared for very long.
(Well, except her brother Lawrence; but he didn’t really count.)
He didn’t fault her for her intellect, he found it attractive; but he would never be one to discuss the classics or understand her allusions to them.
He’d been mocked most of his life, by peers and family alike for being a man with a pretty face instead of a brain; but when she joked, it never cut him down like the others did.
She didn’t have it in her to mock anyone who didn’t deserve it.
Why did she have to keep doing that? Being attractive for not only her visage, but for her very essence as well.
He sat up, huffing as he threw off the counterpane. He stood and threw on his shirt and breeches. He threw a banyan over his shoulders and belted it at the waist. Fitz had no idea where he was going as usual, but lying or sitting still felt like pressing on a bruise.
As soon as he opened his door, he nearly collided with a feminine figure in the hallway. A pair of familiar spectacles looked up at him from the floor where she sat, knees bunched up under her nightgown, a blanket thrown about her shoulders.
“What in god’s name are you doing in the hallway?” He asked the subject of his torment.
A long sigh peeled out of her. “I wanted to read. Had to put the candles out so my sisters could sleep.”
His eyes swept over her to look around them at the vacated hallway. “So you decided this…coaching inn landing was an appropriate place?”
“I have a knife.” She replied, looking back to the book she clutched with ink-stained fingers. He cleared his throat and sat down beside her, leaning his back against his own suite door, wrapping his arms around his knees.
He had only one question that thundered through him, unable to be contained: “And where is this knife…concealed?” He asked, lowering his voice and looking into her eyes with a raised brow.
Her cheeks heated. Belatedly, he recognized that she wasn’t wearing her spectacles. She cleared her throat before she looked up at him. “I couldn’t possibly tell you that.” And she shook her head. He took the book from her before she could run away from the conversation with it as her accomplice.
She made to protest, but he held up a hand. “Tell me, and I’ll give it back.”
She crossed her arms in front of her, her eyes murderous. He drank in the sight of her, long hair neatly braided, cheeks flushed thoroughly, feet tucked into a pair of soft slippers, the smell of rosewater and thyme. He’d never experienced her like this and what if he never did again?
She shook her head as she spoke, “When I decided to read out here, alone, I thought ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ Turns out I’m a bigger ninny than I could have imagined.”
“A ninny? Is that what you think of yourself?”
he asked, leaning closer to her, wrapping one hand around her warm, freckled cheek, those eyes burning into him.
She nodded. Just then, a drunken patron of the inn ambled up the top of the stairs, and Noelle looked to Fitz with wide, startled eyes.
This was exactly the moment he could capitalize on.
“Then allow me to demonstrate how I think of you,” and he used the hand that throbbed against her skin in anticipation to pull her mouth to his.
The soft collision of her lips with his own wreaked havoc on his self-control.
One hand stole to her waist, pulling her closer against his body, the other cupping the back of her head.
She returned his brazen touch for a brazen touch of her own, her hands wrapping around his middle.
He drank the sound she made when his tongue, at her behest, entered her mouth and drew patterns therein.
The taste of her, the reverberations of her sounds, affected him like a toxin.
Fitz’ eyes were closed, but he heard the heavy thud of boots pass by them on the landing and then the closing of a door down the hall as the patron found their room.
Noelle’s lips tangled with his as he bit her bottom lip.
She leaned into him, grasping one of his shoulders until finally she pulled away and gasped.
She breathed his name between them as though in shock. One hand came up to cover her mouth.
He met her gaze, unabashed, and said, “Don’t tell me you wish we hadn’t done that, or ask me to apologize, because I feel neither of those sentiments. I’d do it again. I’d incur any risk to feel your lips pressed to mine. Only, I’m still mildly worried about that knife you mentioned earlier.”
She only looked at him as though she was registering and decoding each of his words.
“The knife?” she asked, blinking dazedly and then shaking her head to clear it.
“Oh yes, the knife. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking about that at all just now,” she said as she covered her mouth shyly with a hand.
He envied that hand, pressed tightly to her lips.
His entire body envied that small, dainty hand.
He wanted to ask what she was thinking about but knew that he shouldn’t. Doing things he knew he shouldn’t was an area which Fitz excelled at exclusively. It was different with her. She deserved all the things a man, a suitor if that’s how he wanted to be considered, should do.
“I will bid you good night. I’m sure I won’t go to sleep for thinking about where you hide your knives,” he paused, his eyes ran over her, assessing her, causing a smile from her as she suppressed a laugh, and then he continued, “And you, I hope,
will be thinking about all the suggestions my lips have just given you.”
She opened her mouth to speak; but he felt she was going to protest or say that he had been too forward, so he cut her off before she could, “I shall see you on the morrow.”
And he stood, leaning out a hand to help her up. When she stood before him, one arm wrapped around her waist, he could have stood there all night testing his resolve but silently savoring any contact with her.
“Good night, Fitz,” she said, her voice soft and warm like a blanket, and squeezed his hand before turning the door and going back into her room.
When he was left alone on the landing outside their respective rooms, he realized she’d left her book behind.