“Sit,” she commanded, her voice wrecked. Benedict’s heart pinched at the sound—evidence of his failures. “Straddle the chair?”
He obeyed, biting his lip as he offered her his back.
A series of hacking coughs followed her gasp. He peered over his shoulder to examine her. “Are you well?”
Eliza nodded and made a “turn around” gesture with one finger.
He did so, wrapping his arms around the back of the wooden chair. It was a necessary effort to keep from bolting out the door.
A soft breath danced across the sensitive, tender skin. Then, because she was Eliza and always knew what he needed before he did, she pressed a gentle kiss to the base of his neck. Benedict’s eyes squeezed shut, trying to keep the tears at bay. One overwrought display was humiliating enough, but two in as many minutes?
“He tried to tear your wings off,” Eliza whispered, seemingly to herself.
“What?”
Her curls brushed against her cheek when she shook her head—Benedict could picture it in his mind. “Nothing, just… nothing.”
Water dropletstinked back into the basin as she dampened a cloth, then wrung out the excess, and Benedict tensed, preparing for the agony that awaited him.
Instead, because she was Eliza, her touch was softer than a whisper. There was pain—it would be impossible for there to not be—but she ghosted the fabric over his wounds with such...love. It was the only word for the care with which she handled him.
Methodically, she worked around the worst of his cuts, cleaning the blood and soot away. With each swipe of her cloth, she stitched him back together.
Benedict didn’t know when he had fallen to pieces—when they pulled his father’s body out of the flames, when he’d collapsed in Eliza’s arms, her single sob that last night in the garden, when he’d lost his mind and kissed her in his bedroom, the moment he met her? Perhaps it had happened decades before, the morning after Benedict watched his father attempt to drag his mother down to hell alongside him—the first time he’d consciously, intentionally accepted the lie that had shaped his entire life.
What he did know was that every one of Eliza’s brushes against the ripped, ruined flesh of his back left him raw, trembling, and whole.
When she noted his shudders, Eliza pulled her hands away. “I’m sorry. We’ll give you a break.”
He leaned back on his seat, his legs still wrapped around the backrest. He caught her fingers midair where they fluttered, lost. “You could never hurt me.”
Her laugh was all breath. “I could—I’m about to, in fact. Where do you suppose they keep the spirits?” she rasped.
“West’s room, most like,” he said as he pointed to the room off the living area with two fingers. “Try under the bed.”
“Oh, that West! I knew the name was familiar,” she said. “Don’t move.” A kiss dropped onto the top of his head without warning. His heart skipped at the gesture. Every one of her prior touches could be excused to fright, her general kindness. That one, though not strictly romantic, was nearer to it. Benedict fought to remind himself that it likely meant nothing. No one, not even Eliza, could forgive a betrayal as grave as his. Her abduction, abuse at his father’s hands, and the fire—had left her overwhelmed—no tender kiss between them in this moment would extend beyond.
Whatever softness she offered now could not be mistaken for forgiveness—not yet.
Eliza stepped back into the room holding a bottle of some sort of spirit. Her brow furrowed as she examined something in her other hand. It took a second for Benedict to recognize it as his broken pot.
“A violet,” she ground out with a little smile on her lips.
Benedict luxuriated in the sight—the first breath he’d had to take her in since the masquerade. She was utterly filthy. The fire had singed some of the lower petals on her gown. She’d taken some care washing her face and her hands, but every other inchof her was caked in soot. Her hair, those beautiful wild curls, might never untangle again. But she was safe, and perfect, and thrilled to be holding a little violet—his violet—in her palm.
And he was in love with her.
He’d thought it more than once, but now he knew with no doubt. Benedict was entirely capable of love—overflowing with it, in fact. All for this lovely, tender woman.
She brought the flower over for his inspection and held it before him as she set the… absurdly old gin—ugh—down on the table.
“It’s a fen violet, native to this area. I’ve never seen one in person before.”
Benedict bent down to breathe in the sweet scent, the essence of Eliza filling his senses. “Lovely,” he proclaimed.
“You cannot smell a thing,” she insisted with a grin. Primly, she bopped him on the nose with her index finger. Demonstratively, she pulled it away, displaying a soot-coated finger.
His brow furrowed. “I was wearing a rag. I’m almost certain that was already on your finger. But my sense of smell is perfectly intact, and it smells like you.”
