Greer’s eyes meet mine. We’re both shocked at his sudden casualness. It’s as if a curtain has fallen and the real Bram is in front of us. He looks younger, his shoulders more relaxed.
“Thank you for coming to my rescue,” I say.
Bram flashes a half smile, showing off his single dimple. “Trust me when I say, anytime. Any body of water too—the sea, a lake, a particularly deep bathtub.”
The carriage rattles down a few more blocks. I’m shivering in my waterlogged dress but desperate not to show it. Bram’s clothes are wet too, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“So, who are they saying?” I ask after a moment.
Bram looks from the window to me. “Excuse me?”
“Who are they saying you should choose?” I ask it with the lilt of a joke, but my curiosity really is killing me.
“I feel fairly sure that everyone is advocating for who they’ve put money on at the clubs. Lady Marion Thorne has the highest odds, but you, Ivy Benton, will bring the biggest payout.”
“That’s a kind way of saying everyone thinks I’m going to lose.” I laugh, and Bram laughs along with me. I’m surprised to find that I love the sound of it, love this version of him, so unencumbered by the constant surveillance of the ton.
“Tell me, how did you two meet?” Bram asks us.
Greer and I look to each other. “Ivy smashed my fifth birthday cake, and then her sister tried to smush it back together with her bare hands,” Greer says. “She was... unsuccessful.”
And even with all the things I feel about Greer, I can’t help but smile at the memory: Lydia, Greer, and I all covered in pink icing on the floor. Greer smiles too, and it looks odd on this new face of hers, but I can still feel the echo of the girls we used to be, and for a heartbeat, I miss them.
“You have a sister?” Bram asks.
“I do,” I reply. “Lydia is a remarkably sparkly sort of person. Even at seven, she commanded the spotlight.”
Greer nods in enthusiastic agreement that I’m surprised to find genuine. “She was the star of every party she ever walked into. Ivy wasn’t quite as elegant and polkaed right into the French buttercream our cook had spent all week on. I sat down on the floor and wailed until Ivy scooped me up and placated me with a water ice. In Ivy’s defense, she felt terrible—still does. It’s been over a decade, and she still shows up on my step with a cake every year.”
Every year except for this year. She doesn’t say that part.
There’s a lot she doesn’t say, like how she and Lydia grew tired of my obsession with faeries when we were twelve. Lydia gave me a dressing-down about needing to stop acting like a baby, but Greer didn’t say a word, she just stopped showing up to play with me. All I knew was that one day I was making faerie court dresses out of flower petals with my sister and best friend and the next I was alone. They left me alone in the garden.
It felt so unlike her, I thought for the better part of a year that maybe she was a changeling. That would explain why we’d grownapart. I wrote my theories in a notebook I stole from Mama’s stash, like I was a detective.
Eventually I moved on. It was either play alone or play with Lydia and Greer: I chose the latter.
“You saidwas.” Bram’s brows knit together in a question.
“What do you mean?” Greer asks.
“You said Lydiawasthe star of every party.”
Greer glances at me nervously.
“She’s taken ill these past few months,” I say quickly. “Her nerves have been poorly, and she’s been convalescing. I’m hopeful the season will prove an excuse for her to reenter society.”
Bram smiles warmly. “Lydia.” He says her name slowly, like he’s committing it to memory. “I’d love to meet her, though I appreciate the warning to keep the Benton sisters away from any cakes.”
When we reach Caledonia Cottage, Bram shoos away the footman and helps me down from the carriage himself. I linger awkwardly as he looks down at me. I wish I could ask him to heal my hands again, the way he did the first day we met, but that would require an explanation of how the injuries came about, and I can’t do that.
He delivers me to the door, and I horrify poor Lottie for the second time today. She blushes deeply as she curtsies to him and rushes me upstairs. “What on earth happened?”
“I fell into the river.”
“Was it so he’d jump in and catch you?” She cranes her neck to get a look at Bram through the window as his carriage pulls away. “That might be the handsomest boy I’ve ever seen.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I grumble.
