As Isobelle absorbed all these small details, she realized that although she’d trotted all over the castle, she hadn’t taken any of that time to come up with proper opening remarks. “I’m sorry, Gwen. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Gwen shook her head, then clearly thought better of it, grimacing. “You didn’t,” she replied, and then amended the statement. “Imean, not really. It just caught me off guard, and... and it didn’t occur to me that you’d all have...” She too gazed down at their hands where they rested side by side. “Just for practice,” she concluded, with a note of bitterness in her voice that Isobelle couldn’t identify.
Isobelle made a genuine effort to parse this. “It—it bothers you to think of kissing another girl?” she asked carefully, doing her damnedest not to examine the tangle of confusion that accompanied that particular question. It was, she decided, simply that she couldn’t imagine Gwen, of all people, being so easily shocked by a harmless game.
Gwen huffed a breath that was almost a laugh. “Of course not.”
“So... what exactlyisthe problem, then?”
Isobelle felt Gwen’s eyes on her and made herself lift her head. There they were, the forest-green eyes with those hints of oak, waiting to catch her as firmly as any snare. This time, though, they were unguarded. And in their slow blink, in the tilt of the strong brows framing them, they showed her something... something worryingly close to hurt.
Gwen’s lips parted. “All these things you’ve been teaching me about how to be a lady—it all keeps coming back to context. The same gesture at a feast might mean something completely different at a picnic. The promise of a dance at the midsummer ball is worlds away from an impromptu waltz when someone plays the harp after dinner—even though they’re both just meals, both just dances. That’s what you keep saying—everything is context.”
“Everythingiscontext,” Isobelle agreed, distantly aware that she’d adopted Gwen’s trick of echoing words when she wasn’t sure what was happening.
“Yes!” Gwen’s voice grew louder. “Are you really trying to tell me that you, of all people, don’t see why I might object to kissing someone in front of all her friends, on a dare, to practice for whatever nobleman eventually wins her hand in marriage?”
Isobelle couldn’t seem to disengage—couldn’t break her gaze away from Gwen’s. “I...” she began. “Well, I...” Heavens above, was shestammering? What had Hildeputin that tea?
Some of the heat drained from Gwen’s gaze, her defenses lowering a touch at the sight of Isobelle scrambling for words. “I suppose I just don’t kiss people for practice.”
“I thought...” Isobelle heard herself say, as though someone else—someone particularly insipid—was speaking. “I thought it might be quite nice.”
Gwen’s lashes dipped into a slow blink, and she spoke so softly that Isobelle had to lean in to hear her. “If someone kisses me,” she whispered, “I want it to be because they want to. Because theyneedto.”
Isobelle couldn’t remember how to breathe.
Gwen was gazing at her lips now, and she didn’t bother to conceal the fact. “I want it to be because they can’t take another second wondering,dreamingabout what it would be like.”
Isobelle was watching Gwen’s mouth too—watching the way her lips shaped the words—and she was mesmerized as they curved into a hint of a smile.
Gwen’s voice was soft. “Quite niceisn’t quite enough for me.”
“No,” Isobelle agreed, breathing the word. She was pinned in place now. There was something magnificent about Gwen, gilded by the sunset, seeming to glow from the inside out.
Gwen stepped back. “And given what we’re trying to protectyou from—how little choice you’ll have if we fail—I don’t think it should be enough for you, either.”
Without another word she turned and strode back inside. Isobelle could hear her footsteps, softened by the rug, until the door of her room closed behind her.
Slowly, Isobelle turned and leaned back against the edge of the balustrade. Then she gave up and let her legs fold, slithering down and pulling her knees in against her chest.
She felt she was on the edge of understanding something truly important, but her head was still spinning when she turned it too fast.
What had Gwen said?You, of all people, don’t see why I might object to kissing someone in front of all her friends, on a dare, to practice for whatever nobleman eventually wins her hand in marriage?
Perhaps that was it, and Gwen was hurt because Isobelle had made her think that she expected one of the men to win the tournament. That she should make herself ready for him.
A small part of her mind raised its hand for her attention, attempting to lodge an inquiry as to whether the relevant part of that sentence was definitely the bit pertaining to the nobleman.
Could it have been the dare that was the problem? The game? The audience?
But it had been a very long day, and pushing her way through the fog of that question felt like trying to locate a landmark without any idea of the direction in which it lay, or even what it looked like.
And so, instead, she stayed where she was as the sun sank below the horizon and velvety darkness fell all around her.
She was still sitting there, gazing at Gwen’s door, when Olivia came to find her.
Isobelle took one look at her maid’s face and sat up straighter. “Oh dear,” she said. “What’s happened?”
