Chapter Twenty-Three #2
His eyes were teasing, friendly, but I flinched nonetheless, the memory of Bastian’s presence in my head—gnawing at my thoughts like meat on a bone—as tender as a fresh bruise.
I still did not know what, if anything, the Weaver King had seen in my mind during his trial.
The bare fact that I had not yet been escorted from Fortblanche seemed to imply that he had come up empty—or was it just that he was holding his cards to his chest, waiting for the right moment to play them?
“If I did catch him off guard, it was not due to my own merit.” I demurred, pushing my worries aside. “I’ve been hoping to thank you, sir, for the help you gave me in the gardens, but until tonight I have not been given the chance.”
His eyes reached for mine, but I glanced away, drawing out the chase.
“I’ll admit, I thought you might have forgotten me,” I said, letting my hand fall from his shoulder. “I enjoyed our walk, but I was rather hoping there’d be another.”
The pull of his smirk in my periphery was a fishhook, dragging gently over my stomach.
“Were you?” he mused, reclaiming the hand I’d dropped and resting it on the back of his neck.
His hair tickled at my fingernails, thick and tuggable, slightly matted with sweat.
“No, Miss Lovett, I have not forgotten you—quite the opposite, in fact,” Noé went on in my ear.
“It is only that my preferences have been noted by those above me, so I have had to be more…discreet.”
He turned me on the dance floor, my gaze sliding naturally to a hawkish figure watching us from near the bar—Bastian Alaire, his pale mouth flattened in a stern line.
I stiffened at his fierce stare, then tensed further when I noticed Eliot slouched against the bar top a few yards to the Weaver King’s left.
Unlike Bastian, he seemed utterly indifferent to Noé and me, gazing distractedly at his waistcoat pocket as if eyeing the time on his pocket watch.
After the way he’d looked at me earlier, his ambivalence rankled me more than the Weaver King’s hostility, like a flat knife slipped into my flesh.
“Did it hurt terribly?”
I jolted back to myself at the feeling of Noé’s knuckle grazing over my temple, his meaning unspoken—and yet I understood him perfectly. I swallowed, recalling the pressure of his father’s words against my skull, the invasive feel of his power, usurping me from within.
“Worse than you think.”
He drew his knuckle back and forth in broad, sweeping motions, as if by doing so he could leech away the remnants of pain that had gnawed into my skin. “I’m sorry,” he murmured in a hushed, low voice.
I nodded silently in acknowledgment, my voice trapped like a pinned moth.
As it had been when we strolled in the garden, the suddenness of Noé’s touch was disorienting—his nearness meaningful, in a calculated and intentional way that Eliot’s was not.
With Eliot, every moment of contact felt instinctive—rushed and desperate, like the impulsive leap to catch a glass that was wobbling at the edge of a table.
By contrast, Noé’s movements were communicative, assertive, each brush of his hands containing a message: of encouragement, attraction. Approval.
It should have drawn me to him, but instead, I found it made me feel like a bird in his hand—trapped, and entirely at his mercy. Gathering myself, I leaned into the crest of the music, letting my attention drift.
Moments later, a solitary violin note quavered through the air—the song had reached its conclusion without my noticing, the couples around us separating to politely applaud. Stepping back, Noé bowed, catching my fingers as they fell and bringing them chastely to his lips.
“Thank you for indulging me, Miss Lovett,” he muttered against my fingertips. “Perhaps you might find it in your heart to do so again soon. I think another turn in the fresh air would do us both good.”
I smiled distractedly, but my focus was elsewhere—caught on the figure whose head was now raised to observe us. Eliot. Though he still lounged casually against the bar, his expression was alert; his eyes were stormy, clouded with emotion I couldn’t place.
“I have never seen Lear so attentive to anyone. He seems always to be watching you—have you noticed?”
Noé’s hand tensed on mine—I’d forgotten he was holding it, and I startled, feeling caught. “No, sir,” I replied. “Though, if he is, I am sure he is only checking to ensure I haven’t embarrassed him.”
I looked back at Noé, hoping for levity, but his expression was as flat and inscrutable as a blank canvas. He hummed skeptically, the sound rumbling up the column of his throat like a cat’s low purr.
Dropping my hand, he raised his arm, beckoning Eliot over. “Lear.”
My pulse skipped, my fingers numb and tingling in the absence of his touch.
Noé’s call was resonant, cutting through the room like a proclamation; I kept quiet, praying that somehow, Eliot wouldn’t hear his summons, but he stiffened, chin lifting at his friend’s call.
His eyes darted briefly, questioningly, to me before he shouldered through the crowd of onlookers to where we waited in the center of the floor.
When he reached us, Noé grinned. “You’ve been standing on the sidelines all night, my friend,” he said cordially. “Come join in on the fun—would you like a dance with Miss Lovett?”
He tilted his head in my direction, a disk of cold iron slipping beneath my spine as I glanced at Eliot, who was stridently avoiding my gaze.
“Your consideration is appreciated, sir,” he returned levelly to Noé, “yet you know the sidelines are my preferred habitat.”
Noé’s chuckle was like a knife. “Is that so, sir ?” he mocked, his smirk curling higher.
“Why so formal, Lear—are we not practically brothers?” He nodded toward me again, more emphatically.
“Go on—there is no need to deny yourself on my account. Miss Lovett and I have both witnessed your fascination with her firsthand.”
There was a hard, chilly fury about him that I had not encountered before, like the sea at low tide, its churning belly slunk against the ocean floor. It made my blood crawl in my veins, but Eliot only stepped forward, his voice dropping to a murmur.
“Noé, come now,” he said. He’d moved slightly in front of me, so that I could not see his face, but his tone was beseeching. “I’d prefer not to, is all.”
“ Eliot ,” Noé rebutted, matching his lower volume. “I asked if you would like to have the next dance with Miss Lovett.” He gave a bemused laugh, his wrath vanishing along with it—so all that was left was a stark iciness, like the white stare of a frozen lake. “Shall we consult my father?”
He had not so much as raised his voice, but nonetheless, the command in his question was clear. Ahead of me, Eliot’s shoulders drew rigidly together.
“No need, sir ,” he said tersely. Turning, he offered his hand to me, his stare still fixed on his friend. “Miss Lovett—shall we?”
“There we are.” Satisfied, Noé dropped back, his gaze swinging between Eliot and me as if searching for something in the space between us. After a moment, he winked at me and turned.
“Have fun, you two,” he called over his shoulder. Raising an arm, he waved at the silent orchestra. “Play on!”
The musicians obeyed, leaping into a new song, the jerk of the other couples as they began to move quickly shielding us from Noé’s retreating figure.
I recognized the tune: the Kotoran Waltz, the first dance Eliot had taught me.
Placing my hand awkwardly on his shoulder, I cleared my throat. “Areyou—”
“Don’t.” Eliot’s palm flexed on my back as he pulled me close, his focus on an anonymous point past my shoulder. “He’s testing us. It would be best to remain on neutral subjects.”
I gritted my teeth but said nothing further, maneuvering carefully through the waltz’s opening steps. Eliot’s eyes skated down to mine as I followed him successfully through a sweeping turn, approval flaring in them. “You’ve learned well.”
I did not want the compliment to please me, but it did. “You’re a good teacher.”
He scoffed. “You’d be the first to accuse me of it. Noé has always said I am horribly impatient.”
Fondness crept into his words as he spoke, his cheek dimpling in the ghost of a smile before he flattened it away with a twist of his mouth. I glanced up at him, relying on my memory to glide through the next few movements. “I thought the two of you were friends.”
“We are.” I could feel the bunch of Eliot’s shoulder muscles beneath his suit jacket as he stiffened reflectively. “He is the closest thing I’ve had to a sibling, since Ophelia passed. But…he has always been the jealous sort. His reaction just now—that was all it was.”
“Jealousy?” I frowned. “How peculiar. You should remind him again that I am but the ward of your great-uncle—that you see me as nothing more than your poor country cousin.”
Eliot’s jaw ticked. “I have. It makes no difference.”
“Then—”
“Lovett.” Dropping his chin, Eliot caught my eyes—his suddenly darker, as if behind his irises, a candle had gone out. “It has nothing to do with you, yourself. He simply fears another wanting what he wants.”
He spoke bluntly, his words quick and businesslike, and yet—they stirred something in me. Holding his gaze, I heard myself ask, “And do you? Want what he wants?”
Eliot’s hand flinched against mine, his pace momentarily faltering as if I’d startled him. “Why would you ask me that?” he hissed. “What do you want me to say?”
His voice was rough—angry, but with a pleading undercurrent to it as well, as though he desperately wished to know my response. I blanched at the sound of it, abruptly uneasy. When I gave no reply, Eliot huffed and shook his head.
“Do not pose questions to me that you refuse to answer yourself.”
Irritation snapped in my stomach. “Do not deflect questions you’re too afraid to.”
Caught in the glow of the chandelier we were passing beneath, his expression was a blaze of gold. It made him look like a god, laurel-crowned, vengeful, and incredibly alive. “Is that what you think I am, Miss Lovett?” he murmured, the words hot on my skin. “Afraid of you?”
For a long second, I could not speak, the music spinning gently between us. When I gathered myself, I swallowed and said, “I don’t think of you at all, Mr.Lear.”
He laughed, hushed and disbelieving. “Then why,” he asked, leaning closer, “are you blushing?”
Unthinking, I raised my fingers to my cheek, breaking away from him. As if in response, the music stopped, the musicians laying down their bows to renewed cheers. Neither Eliot nor I bothered to clap; instead, we stood, assessing one another, the heave of my chest matching his.
And somewhere across the room, I felt Noé Alaire watching us back.