Rook(81)

“It has been a long day, Mademoiselle, and still I hope to avoid fighting a duel for your honor before the night is out. I do not think we will be bothered in here.”

“I brought you this,” she said. It was a thin knife, tiny, for opening letters.

“You will allow me to look?”

She lifted her shirttail cautiously, and René got on his knees to untie the knotted bandage, unwinding it from her middle until he could see the bare swath of skin with her stitches. The air was cool, giving her goose bumps. Sophia tried to slow her breathing, not an easy thing when her heart was slamming such an unnerving tattoo against her chest. René’s expression was controlled. Set. Like the day he’d cut the cornfield. He held the candle close, studying.

“Do they hurt?” he asked. “Even a little?”

“They itch like the devil.”

“Good.” He rose from his knees, more slowly than his usual spring, and picked up the small knife she had set on the table. He began running it through the candle flame, as he’d done with the needle. He smiled at her look of mild alarm. “We have done so well, no need to ruin all of my good work.” When he judged the blade to be clean, he said, “Ready?”

She nodded, still holding up her shirt.

He knelt down again. “Be very still, yes?” He slid the knife carefully under the first knot, the metal hot against her skin, and, with a firm tug, pulled free the first piece of silk.

“Ow!”

René eyed the thread’s tiny hole before he looked up at her. “You are ridiculous, you do know this? I gave you twenty-two stitches, poured alcohol straight into the wound, an act that has earned me a fist in the eye from my uncle émile, and you did not make a sound. And now you cry out like a child?”

She shrugged. “That was pain, this is discomfort. It’s hardly the same thing.”

“Well, if you are not quiet now, we will have Hammond breaking down the door. Or my maman.” He sighed in mock exasperation. “Hold back my hair for me. It is in the way and I do not have a tie.”

Sophia moved the hair away from his face, gathering it into her hand, fascinated that it felt like hair—it was so red and male she’d half thought it might feel like something different.

He turned her body to the light, and then slit a thread and pulled, slit and pulled, and now that she knew what to expect, she was quiet. When he was done he sat back on his heels. A pinkish-red line, neat and straight.

“Finished,” he said.

“Thank you.”

René was still on his knees. “You should keep it well tied tomorrow,” he said, “to be certain it will not tear.”

Sophia didn’t answer. She also didn’t move, and neither did he; she still had his hair in her hand, the other holding up her shirttail. The candle flame wavered. René closed his eyes, brow furrowed. Sophia held her breath, and the hand with his hair pulled just a little, the smallest of tugs. The lines in his forehead deepened. She pulled him again and this time he relented, leaning in to lay his cheek on the new scar.

He sighed and she breathed, his face warm, prickling the sensitive skin, arms coming up around her legs as she held him in, both hands now full of his hair. Then he slid to his feet and took her head in his hands.

“Look at me,” he said, the blue of his eyes blazing in the candlelight. “You are sure?”

“Yes.”

“There is no money.”

“I don’t care.”

Her breath was so short she could hardly speak. She had one hand on his chest, the rhythm of it fast and hard beneath her palm. He was so beautiful, and so unsure, and she had never been more so.

“Sophia …,” he whispered.

She slipped her other arm around his bruised neck and put her lips on the pulse at the base of his throat.

He made a noise somewhere deep in his chest, and then he had his mouth on hers, hard, holding her head still as she was pressed back, rattling the shelves, and then back again until she hit the wall. All at once she was boiling, frantic, trying to kiss him more, hold him closer with fistfuls of his shirt, pinned by his body to the painted plaster. He seemed to have forgotten his worries about noise. It was a long time before his lips broke away and he put his forehead against hers, breath coming fast.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered into the pause, chest heaving against his. “We’re betrothed.”

He actually laughed before he kissed her again, this time exploring her neck, her ears, cheeks, and both her eyelids before wandering back to her mouth. Everything about him felt good: her head still resting in one of his hands, as if she might try to get away, his other hand tracing the curve of her side, her fingers through his belt loops, the foot she had hooked behind his knee. Sophia wondered how she could have ever wanted to be anywhere but inside a linen closet.

When he broke away again, his cheek was next to hers. “I do not know what will happen after.”

She stroked his back. “It doesn’t matter what happens after. Not anymore.”

“You will stay with me?”

“Yes.”

He leaned away to look in her eyes. “You believe me?”

“Yes.”

“Together, then?”

She felt the smile on his mouth when she kissed him in answer, and this time she was able to feel how right this was. Like circling the earth, opposing forces all brought into balance. Then his warmth was gone and he had her hand.