“You haven’t answered my question.”
I pick up a book and then set it back down on the table with rather a more resounding thump than I intended. “Which question?”
“What is it with tragic romances and this town?”
“I have no idea.”
“You do have an idea, I think. Aren’t you dying to tell someone?”
“Are youverybored? Is that why you insist on showing up at inopportune moments and being quite so deeply irritating?”
“Extremely bored,” he says, agreeably.
“Surely you can find something to do besides drop by and steal my things.”
“Your erstwhile suitor and I get on quite well these days; I often drop by and steal his things, too.”
I drop into a chair and put my head in my hands. Carefully. “This is so weird,” I moan. “Why is this all so weird?”
I feel more than hear him draw close to me; he moves as silently as the cat. He pulls out a chair beside me, and I swear I canfeelhis body; it’s as though I’m filled with iron filings and they’re all pointing directly at him. Why must, of all things, I be cursed to be trapped in a bookshop, unable to leave, while the most attractive man I have ever,everset eyes on wanders in and out completely at his own inscrutable exhortations? Oh, and also he’s a pirate. Who’s apparently under a curse that gives him a horror of large bodies of water. That’s if I believe him at all, which I am not sure I do.
He does smell like sea air, though—sun and salt, and the strange plants that grow close to the water’s edge.
“Something brought you here,” he says, softly. I try to fold my arms again, drop them, and then glare at him. He’s close, and watching me thoughtfully. For once that irritating dimple isn’t playing about his cheek. “Something brought me here. This town, as far from the sea as one can get in the Widdenmar. This bookstore, lonely and falling apart, waiting for someone who loves books, who just wanted a chance to sit down and beleft alone to read, to make a few connections, real connections, with other people…
“I don’t know if there’s any such thing as fate, but I know this curse is real, yours and mine both. Perhaps they’re connected in some way.”
“You don’t seriously believe all that,” I say.
“No prince, no matter how many your parents send up here, is going to break your curse,” he says, gently.
He’s right, but I’m not in the mood to give him a single inch of ground. “Stealing my teacups isn’t going to break yours,” I say.
He smiles, the aggravating dimple reappearing. “Perhaps,” he says.
“Perhaps not,” I say, “and I really wouldn’t mind having that one back.” Of course, I wouldn’t really like it back; it is hideously ugly, after all, and Sasha replaced it with quite a nice one.
“It was a fair exchange,” he says, leaning forward.
“Exchange for what?” I wish I sounded calm, cool, collected; but I can hear my voice, and I sound, frankly, a little breathy.
“The crab claw,” he murmurs, his gaze dropping to my mouth.
I swallow, and then his words sink in. “The crab claw? The one from yourpocket?”
“A powerful talisman, that,” he says. His voice is like a drug, like a deep blanket; I could wrap it around myself. I would, if I didn’t have the bizarre suspicion that he is trying toseduce meby talking about a broken bit ofcrab clawlike he’s just given me the beating heart of the god of love. Powerful talisman, my second-best crown.
I take a deep breath and try to shift backward, put a little space between us.
“I will happily return your crab claw in exchange for my teacup,” I say, my voice reassuringly even. “You just wait right hereand I’ll go get it.” I push myself to my feet, but he puts a hand on my wrist, and I freeze. I feel as though the warmth of his hand is seeping through to my very bones.
“What happened to your hand?” he says.
“My…hand?” I look down at his hand on my arm, and then, beyond that, to my hand, still wrapped in a cloth. Yes,thathand. I pull it away. “Nothing.”
He raises an eyebrow at me.
“I burned myself,” I admit.
