She turns pink. “Oh no! They’re not… structural. Just decorative! Not for…” she trails off.
“But how am I supposed to get into bed?” I ask patiently.
“They don’t stay on the bed at night,” she replies quickly.
“Do they do night raids to hunt blankets and scented candles?”
Ruby huffs with laughter at my poor joke. “They’re very well behaved at night, no hunting or mischief.”
“Good, but what is thepointof the cushions?” I’m honestly baffled. Why have a pillow you don’t sleep on? “And if I trip over them on the floor?—”
“You won’t! I’ll move them before we go to bed.” She squirms a bit as she says the last part, as though talking about us going to bed is bringing up memories. Perhaps of last night.
Good. I want her remembering screaming as she came on my tongue.
“Look.” She goes over and tugs on a new horizontal mirror I hadn’t noticed on the wall. It flips down to reveal a shelf. “They go here.”
I blink at the ingenious solution to a problem she created. Rubbing my hand over my stubbly jaw, I nod. Okay, I suppose I asked for this by giving her a credit card and free rein.
“I’ll change it back to how it was.” There’s the exact mix of cheery sadness in her words to defeat all my objections to this absurd pile of prettiness.
“It’s alright. Pillow Mountain can stay if you like it.”
“No it’s?—”
“Doyoulike it?” I ask more firmly.
Ruby looks up at me, and her brown eyes are full of uncertainty. “Yes?”
“Then it all stays.” If I still have access to the bed, and her, it can look however she wants it. “It’s your bedroom too.”
“For now,” she whispers the part I was hoping would remain unsaid, and eventually outdated by her falling in love with me.
I grunt what could be interpreted as an agreement, but is actually a wordless “Over my dead body”.
“I sorted out the annulment paperwork,” she continues hesitantly. “I don’t want you to think I wasted all my time today.”
“I don’t think that.” She wasted her time with one thing, but not what she’s assuming.
“I don’t want to change it to a style you don’t like,” she says. “I suppose you…” She hesitates. “I was wondering…”
“What?” I ask, curious.
“Why is your home so plain?” She sweeps a hand to encompass the pale-cream nothingness of the room, other than what she’s put here. “Not just your bedroom, but everywhere.”
I hesitate, because I don’t want to scare her. But this is the reality of being an Angelini.
“It was redecorated after my family died here,” I say simply, and I’m surprised to find it doesn’t hurt as much as it did.
“Oh.” She’s instantly stricken. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“It’s okay,” I reassure her. “It’s time to move on. It was a necessity to redecorate then, but to try to put it back as it was didn’t feel right. I was hardly in the mood to discuss paint colours, so it remained…” I shrug. “Boring.”
She shakes her head, sympathy and distress all over her face, and guides me to sit on the bed as though I’m an invalid.
I go with it.
“Would you tell me what happened to your parents, and grandparents, and Lucia’s husband?” she asks gently. “I’d like to hear, if you’d…”
