Chapter Four
I learned early on in my thieving that if I wished a man to follow me, never to turn round and search for him.
The power lay in the chase; once one acknowledged their desire to be caught, they ceased to be a prize and became, instead, a snare.
I knew this well, yet one week later, I was back in the Diplomat again.
“Fish fork on your left , Miss Tamerlane—no, no , not that one; that is the meat fork. Did you not observe the variation in the length of the tines? The two are practically different utensils.”
Eliot Lear’s hand came down hard on the edge of the coffee table, his fingers wrapping round the thin metal spine of the otherwise unremarkable silver fork that lay there, only an inch away from the one I was holding.
I gripped my instrument tighter as his presence swarmed near me, resisting the urge to lift it high and plunge its tines into the back of his fist.
“How silly of me,” I said instead. “And here I thought they simply resembled a pair of forks.”
The flash of Eliot’s eye caught in the gleam of my utensil, narrowed and reproachful.
Turning my chin defiantly away, I set the fork down, back in its place closest to the chipped white plate that was acting, for this afternoon, as the makeshift centerpiece of our mock table setting.
Around us, Eliot’s suite—room fifteen, the same one he’d cornered me in just seven days ago—already bore several untidy scars from the day’s activities.
A half dozen books lay limply on the floor around the couch where I was seated, and just as many were stacked neatly by the fireplace, straight-spined as if awaiting their execution.
I glanced over at the large oval mirror, which had been brought out from the bedroom and now leaned against the wall across from me, studying the reflection I saw there.
My dark eyes, normally a favorite feature of mine, appeared tired, gazing back at me with a maligned expression, as though they’d been forced to witness a great abuse.
Fixed near the back of my head, my once-proud bun was sagging, several brown tendrils wisping against my neck.
Already, the dye I’d applied the previous week was fading; when I’d left my apartment earlier in the morning, my hair had gleamed in the sun like a dull copper coin.
All in all, I did not look happy.
Internally, I loosed a sigh. I’d arrived at the Diplomat just after dawn, and now the sun was inching back down toward the horizon, clearly as eager to put this day to rest as I was.
For hours, I’d been forced to sit still while Eliot droned on and on about the proper greeting to employ when sitting down for breakfast, and which subjects were best reserved for dinner, and which were never to be brought up at all, only referenced coyly through a complex series of innuendos.
I’d tried my best to absorb his teachings; truly, I had.
And yet, here I was on the tail end of our sixth session together, and all it had taken was a common dinner fork to pull my disguise apart at the seams.
To expose me as a liar—a fraud.
My stomach, already hollow and angry from the lack of a recent meal, clenched.
Not for the first time, I wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake, agreeing to Eliot’s bargain.
At my current level of performance, how could I possibly stand a chance of convincing Noé Alaire that I was a girl worth keeping beyond the first night of his competition? I could barely even convince myself.
In the mirror, a form shifted—Eliot, who’d been standing at the head of the coffee table to my right, bent to adjust the fork I’d laid down.
I readied for him to fire another directive at me, or else some criticism of a twitchy mannerism I didn’t know I had, but he only straightened silently once he’d finished, crossing his arms as if in waiting.
Taking the bait, I shifted toward him. When our stares met, he arched a brow, smooth and dark.
After so much time spent in close quarters, I was pleased to find his beauty, while undiminished, had dulled to the point where I could now observe him without feeling dazed.
A few more practices like this, and I hoped I would find him quite plain indeed.
Eliot cleared his throat. “I just thought I’d see if you had any comments about the knives, before we moved on,” he said, nodding to the table spread. “Or is it only the forks that you’re cross with?”
I scowled. “No comments, I’m afraid. Though if you’re inquiring as to my thoughts on what to do with them, several ideas come to mind.” Without moving my gaze from his, I let my fingers drift toward the right side of the plate, where a pair of blades glinted.
Before I could make contact with one, Eliot swept the entire set away, closing his palm around their hilts.
Shaking his head, he slapped the flat of the bottom knife against his other palm, so that it thwacked against his skin.
“Wit is a useful tool, but it is no master key, Miss Tamerlane,” he said, his voice cool and unhurried.
“If you are to succeed in the Alaires’ trials, you must learn how to wield your competitors’ preferred weapons. ”
Bending at his waist, he leaned closer to the coffee table. His shadow draped like a shawl over my shoulders; I wished to brush it away like a dusting of soot.
“Salad fork, fish fork, meat fork.” Using the tips of his blades, Eliot pointed at the three utensils on the left-hand side of the plate, progressing from the outermost inward before reaching to set the knives down one by one.
“Roast and butter knives,” he continued, tapping each in turn.
“Then, soup spoon, and lastly, oyster fork.” He motioned toward the diminutive, two-pronged instrument at the end of the spread.
“Learn them or be exposed as a fraud on your first night. As a Lear, I will survive the fall from grace. You may not.”
I fisted my hands in my lap as he stepped away from the table, my nerves fraught. Sound as his advice was, there was something about his manner which I’d found over the course of our sessions made me want to push back against it.
“Perhaps that is true,” I countered, unable to restrain myself. “But you are not as invulnerable as you pretend, sir. You forget, it is for you I am doing this. If I fall, all hopes of justice for your sister fall with me.”
Eliot’s eyes blazed a cold, searing green as he turned back to look at me.
“Actually, I believe it is for yourself that you are doing this,” he replied.
“So that you may save yourself from the fate inflicted upon your less fortunate sisters. Is that not what you wish?” he pressed.
“To stand tall on your wedding day and peer down at all the girls who once thought themselves superior to you? To win ?”
His gaze was hard and assessing, and my pulse quickened at it.
Is that not what you wish? To win ? His question stuck like a bone in my throat.
How could he know? How could he see the bitter, jealous seed that had been planted in me the day I’d been turned away from that society ball, the desire to prove myself—
To prove myself better —
To beat them all, every last one who had ever denied me?
When I shifted, uncomfortable, Eliot smirked.
“We are both of us acting according to our own selfish motives, Miss Tamerlane,” he went on.
“I have long since stopped pretending to myself that there is any moral cause to my mission, and I suggest you do the same. Neither of us is a good person. It is why we are so well suited.”
For a moment longer, he lingered near me, his stare gripping my chin like a flexed hand. Then, just as I began to gather myself, he turned, moving briskly toward the center of the room.
“I think we’re ready to move on to dancing.”
At his extended palm, I recoiled. “I know how to dance.”
He huffed an exasperated breath. “You know the Kotoran Waltz? The Harvest March? The—”
“I know all of them.” I cut in before he could finish. When he frowned at me, I pursed my lips, angling myself away as if embarrassed to face him directly. “I learned them when I came to the Isle d’Eylau,” I said shyly. “I thought it would help me…fit in.”
A lie. I’d done no such thing upon my arrival at the capital; I hadn’t thought I’d needed to.
But the notion of Eliot’s fingers on me, drawing me near to him and holding me there…
My skin itched imagining it. It was one thing to let my marks behave like that; with them, through every flirtation, every caress, there was always a separation like a pane of glass between us.
It was a mask they were touching, a pretty mask meant to fool them; it was not real .
Eliot, though…He’d seen too much of me already. Allowing him anything more…
Well, it simply would not do.
I expected him to protest, but it seemed my ploy worked, because he only shook his head. “Fine,” he relented—slightly begrudgingly, I noted. “Move over, then.”
Before I could argue, he crossed back toward the sofa, squeezing around the coffee table to settle beside me.
I hastily scooted sideways, pulling my thigh away from him as he dug in his trouser pocket for a folded-up slip of paper.
Suspicious, I eyed the spiked ridge of handwriting I could see running along its top edge: It was unfamiliar, bristling with violent jags like a thorned branch.
“So,” Eliot started after a pause, rubbing his thumb over the paper’s folded crease, “the Vainglory. What do you know ofit?”
I perked up. Finally— after a week of tedium, at last we were moving past unending lists of rules and lectures, onto a subject with meat.
“I know it is a competition,” I replied slowly, wary of startling him with my eagerness, lest he change paths and try to revive the dance topic again. “For Noé Alaire’s hand in marriage.”