He put it on, and she sighed. ‘I know you don’t like it, and I think this is uneven.’
Mihály caught her hand before she could take it off to go back to work, skimming his thumb over her skin.
‘It’s beautiful, Csilla. My not liking it has nothing to do with your handiwork.’
That was fair enough, though her sore fingers would have liked more appreciation. ‘What’s wrong with it then?’
He slipped it off and handed it back to her. She held it up again. Itwasuneven, but the flaw was slight enough that maybe no one would notice.
‘The only thing wrong with it is where I’m going to wear it to.’
‘Hm? We can’t go anywhere.’ She’d assumed the woman had just wanted to dress him up like a fine horse or carefully crafted doll.
He snorted. ‘Tell the rich about your rules. Those lucky enough to have made it in before closing consider themselves deserving of a distraction. I’m to go with the madame and be quite a centrepiece.’
What kind of people couldn’t stand a few days of austerity when it might mean saving their lives? They had everything they needed on hand.
Unlike Elmere, dying alone.
The fabric suddenly seemed a gleaming shroud.
‘You should come with us,’ Mihály continued, as if it was his decision, as if the frivolity were something that mattered. ‘You have a whole wardrobe of things you can wear.’
Evie’s things. She recoiled, though there was a tiny part of her that was tempted. Church wards didn’t get chances to attend things like balls.
And they shouldn’t want to. She could dress up and go, but it would be another game of pretend. She’d seen other girls on their way to parties, her arms laden with bandages and pungent with herbs instead of perfume. They didn’t look like their skirts were heavy, or oil made their hair itch. They didn’t look like they had anything to lose.
A small, terrible part of her wished she could take that easiness.
‘Even if Ilan doesn’t want to help us, you can find out more about what’s been happening in the other territories. Maybe they know something that can help.’ Probably a lie, but a comforting one.
‘I’d be useless, I don’t even dance.’ The closest she’d ever gotten was twirling Erzsébet, and that fancy had left her with a ripped frock and claw marks in her chest.
‘Dancing is easy,’ Mihály said. ‘Let me teach you.’
She raised a sceptical eyebrow, but he was already pushing away the low table and chairs, creating a dance floor on the pansy-patterned rug.
‘But we don’t have any music—’ She broke off. He looked cheerful again, a little more like the man he pretended to be when others were around. Anything that took the morose look out of his eyes after his wretched experience with the demon was worth indulging in a little.
‘It’s no matter. Come here.’ He held out his hand with a posture that said not to argue.
With a sigh she stood in front of him, holding out her arms. It felt ridiculous. ‘Like this?’
He took one hand in his own and placed the other on his upper arm.
‘You’re very short.’ He jostled his arm a bit, trying to get her to reach and get his hand closer to her waist than her ribs, and she drew herself up to the very top of her height. The crown of her head still barely came up to his shoulder.
‘You’re very tall.’ Her neck ached from looking up at him at this distance.
If she focused on what was uncomfortable, she wouldn’t focus on anything else, like the warm pressure of his hand enclosing her fingers, the fact that if she took a half-step forward she would be laying her head on his chest.
He really was all she had now.
‘Come now, as I count. Right foot back, left foot back, step together... One, two, three, one, two, three...’
Mihály gave her a quick twirl, her skirts lifting, before pulling her into him. Too close. He smelled like sweet tobacco, and the thrum of his quickening heartbeat echoed beneath the shirt scratching against her cheek. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to feel when dancing with a handsome man, but it probably wasn’t this twist like a stomach full of sour milk.
Or perhaps it was. A lot of what she’d heard made love sound terrible.
