“I’m not the one who’s looking away.” She pressed her knees against his. “May I touch you?”
He visibly jerked in his chair. “What?”
“May I touch your face?” She didn’t think he’d be more surprised if she’d asked him permission to fire a barrage of cannon balls into the castle fortifications. “I promise not to hit you in the nose.”
Her quip didn’t gain her a smile, but Ballard nodded and parted his knees so that she might draw nearer to him. Louvaen leaned in and he closed his eyes. She envied his dark lashes, thick and straight. The black runes and vines twined around his neck and scripted along his hairline. Louvaen touched the one that slithered. The scar squirmed beneath her fingertips, icy to the touch. She crushed the instinct to snatch her hand back and followed the vine’s track across his eyelid and forehead. Her fingers slid into his hair, noting its suppleness as wavy strands caressed her knuckles. She mapped the scar where it crossed with another in his scalp and took its path. Soon both her hands stroked through his hair, over his face and along the rigid tendons in his neck. A pulse drummed a heavy beat under his jaw. Though the scars lay like frozen threads under his flesh, the unmarred expanses of skin flared hot beneath her fingers. He burned as if with fever, and she burned for him.
The sweet tingling from touching his face spread across her body, strongest at her breasts and between her thighs. She traced one of the runic symbols near the hollow of his throat, her palm curved over his collarbone. So beguiled was she by her exploration, she hardly noticed the staccato hitch in his breathing.
“I am in hell,” he said in a cracked voice.
Louvaen recoiled, stumbled against her stool and almost fell on her backside before managing to right herself. The heat of a blush cascaded over her face and chest, washing her in a mortifying fire. “Forgive me.” Her voice sounded thin to her ears. “I didn’t mean to take such liberties.”
Ballard sat as still as if hewn from stone. His hands gripped the chair arms so tight that his black nails had grayed. He stared at his feet instead of her and spoke in the same strained tones. “Good night, Mistress Duenda.”
She bowed, dismissed. “De Sauveterre.” The urge to run nearly overwhelmed her, but she forced herself to walk at a sedate pace and shut the door behind her. The stone wall offered only chilly comfort as she leaned against it, gasping for air. Gods’ knickers, what was wrong with her? Obsessed with protecting Cinnia’s virtue from Gavin, she’d thrown caution out the window and found herself consumed by an attraction to his father. “You daft nitwit,” she muttered. “What were you thinking?”
“Who are you talking to?”
Louvaen nearly leapt out of her shoes. Cinnia stood before her, holding a candle and bundled in her night clothes and a robe. “Cinnia,” she hissed. “You scared me half to death. Quit sneaking up on me.”
The girl looked less than apologetic. “I wasn’t sneaking. You were so busy talking to yourself, you didn’t notice me. What has you so jumpy?” She glanced at the solar’s door. “Anyone still in there?”
Thankful the hall’s dimness hid her blush, Louvaen waved a hand in what she hoped Cinnia took as casual dismissal. “Only de Sauveterre. I offered to read to him, but he preferred his solitude. I was on my way to bed.”
“After you had a conversation with yourself?” Cinnia gazed at Louvaen as if she were moonstruck.
“I’m just thinking aloud.” She steered the topic back to Cinnia. “What are you doing out here in your night rail and robe?”
“Waiting for you. I have something to show you.” She practically danced in place. “I’ve been waiting all day. You were helping Magda make candles and then churning butter for Clarimond. You hate churning butter.”
“I’m only here by his lordship’s leave, my love. I’ll muck out the stables if they ask and not complain. Now what’s so important that it can’t wait until daylight?”
Cinnia reached for her hand. “Come see. I discovered them this morning while I was exploring the castle.”
Louvaen stepped back. “Them?”
Cinnia captured her anyway and tugged. “No more questions. Let’s go.”
“Are you certain we can’t do this in the morning?”
“No. I don’t think I was supposed to find these.”
Louvaen halted their steps. “You didn’t enter any rooms forbidden to us, did you?”
“No. I was walking the corridors waiting for you. I think this castle must have hundreds of them, and I swear they change directions sometimes.”
Louvaen scowled at the notion but didn’t counter it. The castle had a strangeness about it—places where torchlight flickered one way while the shadows it cast scampered another; stairs ended in opposite directions without ever turning. The walls echoed in tight places instead of cavernous ones, and she’d once clearly heard a tapestry in Cinnia’s bower whisper a poem she knew from childhood.
She’d said nothing, first blaming her suspicious nature for seeing treachery and trickery where there was none and then on her sensitivity to sorcery. Cinnia’s remark validated her impressions but didn’t relieve her mind. Ketach Tor, saturated in wild magic, twined and bent around them—a living entity itself.
She squeezed Cinnia’s hand. “Lead on, and let’s make it quick. It’s colder out here than a warty witch’s kiss in a snowstorm.”
Cinnia choked out a laugh. “Lou! Your mother would rise up from her grave and strap you for saying such a thing.”
“Who do you think taught our papa that little gem?”
They laughed together, and Louvaen promised herself she’d be less harsh with the person she loved best in the world.
