“I don’t want to talk, but I dowant.” I reach out and caress her face. “I desire you every time I see you, and so I’ve arranged my life to not see you.”
“Don’t avoid me,” Isabeau whispers, and in that moment, I realize that she has already guessed my identity. Perhaps, she knew the whole time. “I would miss you if you vanished again.”
Chapter 11
“Red is the colour of magic in every country, and has been so from the very earliest times. The caps of fairies and magicians are well-nigh always red.”
—Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, edited and selected by W. B. Yeats [1888]
We stand in the empty hallway, as Isabeau studies the carved patterns in the oversize wooden door. Her hesitation is obvious, and it stings. I was too honest, and now that she knows me, she pauses. Is it wrong that I still desire her after she abandoned me?
“Can we not keep this pretense? Take me into the library and seduce me as if I were a merchant’s daughter or a noble you don’t already know,” I say.
“Would you rather talk or dance?” Isabeau offers so softly that I am alarmed.
“I want you to prove you are as gifted a lover as you boast. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Seduce women. I hear about them. Lady Iversson most recently?” I hear the bite in my words, and I know she deserves more, butthisis what I can offer her.
“I have done so, but I am more than that.” Isabeau’s back is to me now, and I hear the affront in her voice.
“I have no doubt, Your Grace.” I place a hand on the middle of Isabeau’s spine. “Any woman would surely be lucky to have your attention.”
“Then remove your mask,” Isabeau begs.
I pull Isabeau toward me, making her turn to face me. “I cannot havemorewith you, Maudite. That is not the fate before me. I can be your friend later, have those conversations, spend time with you. If I do that tonight, I cannot haveyour touch. Let me have this one night with you? Give me my illusion?”
Isabeau pulls a key tied to a red ribbon from under her shirt. I realize that the key is hidden between her breasts just as she removes the strange necklace. In the next moment, the lock click sounds loudly in the silence of the hallway as Isabeau opens the door and replaces the key around her neck and tucks it under her clothing.
The room is opulent, lit lowly by sconces. Several steps into the room, an ornately carved clock—as tall as a person—stands so that the light from a nearby lantern reflects on a brass and mother-of-pearl face. The pendulum glints as it swings in and out of the light, ticking like a steady metronome.
I have worked in here since when my feet dangled from a chair, too small to reach the floor. Beyond this room—hidden from everyone else—is the Hunter’s Archive, but I say none of that. Right now, I am a woman with her lover, not the Hunter-in-Training.
“Lock the door.”
Isabeau removes her mask, drops it to a table, and says, “Perhaps, this is a mista—”
“Kiss me, Isabeau.” I step closer and tilt my head upward in an invitation that I haven’t made to her in ten years. I push Isabeau against an overflowing shelf of history books and taunt, “Unless you are afraid? Or uninterested? Have I grown too old? Too ugly?”
“You remain perfect.” Isabeau slants her mouth over my lips, and I swear my body melts.
I part my lips eagerly, giving no doubt that I have, in fact, acquired some measure of experience since our long-ago kisses in closets and pantries. My hands grip Isabeau, one on her back and the other on her hip, melding us together from breast to thigh.
Isabeau slips her tongue inside my mouth.
Yes,my body rejoices,we have needed this, needed her, craved her.
I am boneless at even a kiss, but then Isabeau’s hand tightens on my side, and I jerk away from her.
“Did I hurt you?”
“It’s fine. I have a wound there, so ...” I step back, trying not to check whether I am bleeding through my stitches.
“A bruise? Has someone hurt you?”
A moment passes before I admit, “Faeries.” I lift the other shoulder in a shrug. “It happens.”
Gently, Isabeau touches my side again. “A claw mark just here. In the park. That was ...you.”
“Please don’t.” I catch her face in my hand. “As I said, I want seduction, Maudite, not conversation.”
