He reaches up and wipes a tear from my cheek. I hadn’t even realized I was crying. It’s on the tip of his finger, and he turns it into a snowflake before it melts into a bead of liquid once more.
“It’s all right,” he says. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“It’s so stupid. When my sister went missing, I thought that maybe she was... there.”
Bram looks at me, not with pity but with shared sadness. “I’m so sorry, Ivy.”
He fidgets with the ring on his right pinkie finger. He has a bandof gold on all ten of his fingers, but this is the most delicate band, inlaid with a tiny pearl.
I gesture to the rings. “Do they mean anything?”
Bram shrugs. “Tokens from home.”
He slips the pearl ring onto my pointer finger.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to.”
“Why?”
“When I look across ballrooms and see it on your finger, it will feel like I am touching you, even when I’m not.”
I blush, and he reaches out and tips my chin up to look at him. “I want to know you too, Ivy Benton.”
I’m suddenly terrified he’s going to kiss me, and I want to kiss him too, in an abstract sort of way, but I don’t feel ready. I take the apple and knife out of my pocket just to have something to do with my hands. Bram watches intently as I carve out another wedge. I offer it to him on the tip of my knife once more.
His eyes bore directly into mine as he leans down, as if to kiss me, then wraps his full lips around the slice and eats it directly off the knife.
I exhale shakily, but he just grins as he chews.
I place the apple and the knife back in my pocket, but my knuckles bump the folded-up note Lottie handed me earlier in the day.
Later, in the privacy of my room, I unfold it. In unfamiliar, boyish handwriting are the wordsI believe in you. EDV.And below that, a tiny sketch of a shrimp with a heart right in the middle of its head.
Marion Thorne
Faith Fairchild might really be the death of me.
“Psst, Marion,” she whispers on our turn around the palace grounds. Before I can protest, she’s pulling me by the crook of my arm into the glass walls of the orangery. Ivy Benton’s little stunt with Prince Bram might have been insufferable, but at least it got Viscountess Bolingbroke off our backs for a little while.
Faith is panting, her cheeks flush with exertion. Her chestnut hair is braided in a crown up on her head, but it’s humid today, and little wisps are curling around her ears.
She runs a tongue over her full bottom lip and—
“Marion,” she says more harshly, and I blink back to myself. Get a grip.
“There was something I wanted to speak about with you,” she says.
Anything,I nearly say, but that would be silly, so I just nod.
“Would you mind if I swapped rooms with Olive?”
I blink a few times. “Swapped rooms?”
“Yes, so you and I can share.” Faith exhales. “I can hardly stand to look at Ivy. I know she’s been sneaking off with Emmett, and afterthat stunt with Bram, I’m even more tempted to smother her in her sleep. It’s really for everyone’s safety. I don’t think Olive would mind moving across the hall, and then I could take her spot with you.”
I laugh at her joke, but it comes out hollow. It’s about Emmett, of course. I should have seen this coming. I was so stupid to assume anything else.
