I felt the air shift as he moved around me. His hand brushed mine, and I started.
“We must dampen it first,” he said, and his usually smooth voice was a little roughened.
He must have raised the ewer of plain water, because I heard the heavy slosh and clink of it, and then felt the warm trickle of water. Once he had poured water over the front of my Hair, he asked me to turn around. I kneeled on the chair now, bending my head over the basin and letting my Hair fall forward into the water so he could dampen the back. I shivered at first, as the nape of my neck felt the first chill—but pleasurably. It was calming, feeling the Hair grow heavier as it saturated and darkened, bending my spine even more with its weight so that my face was just inches from the water in the basin.
Then, his hands were in my Hair. A shock of unexpected intimacy that set my cheeks blazing. It was only his hands, I told myself sharply, but couldn’t stop the flush from creeping down my neck. And we were both fully clothed, brightly lit by the fire that was all at once too warm—although I knew I would be glad of it in a moment, when the length of my Hair was wet and cold. His hands weren’t even bare—he wore a pair of old, dark gloves to keep the dye from staining his skin. Despite this, I could still feel how long and deft his fingers were and the slight pressure of his rings.
It would have made an odd picture for anyone walking in unexpectedly. I was bent over the basin, on my knees, back arched, clutching the edges of it with both hands, my arms bent at the elbows. The Hair was pulled back from my neck and over my head, dragging with its own weight, and falling about me as dense and impenetrable as the velvet curtains around a four-poster bed, moving and coiling gently. Patrickstood beside me still, one knee on the edge of the chair. He shifted his weight as he poured from the ewer, so close that I felt the press of his knee against my thigh.
“Now, the dye,” he said, his voice low but still startling in the silence.
I felt the movement of air as he went to fetch the other pitcher, and then I smelled it—strong and herbaceous, acrid enough to catch at the back of my throat.
“Stay still,” he said when I struggled to get comfortable, “or I’ll get it on your ears.”
Was it my imagination, or did his voice sound … different? A little thready. A little less certain. Less smug than usual, certainly.
The dye felt different from the water, moving thick and slow as honey; stinging a little where it touched my scalp.
“Turn over again,” he said. And when I hesitated, he added, “So I can dye the front.”
I was loath to look at him, so on the pretense of preventing the dye from getting in my eyes, I kept them closed. He held the rope of saturated Hair in his fist as I twisted round, and, unusually, I felt it lie limp as a trusting cat for him. I felt him lift it a little and arrange it into the basin again as I settled into my new position, and he was close enough for me to feel the slight disturbance in the air as he moved.
Beneath the overpowering fragrance of the dye, I caught a hint of his now-familiar scent—something expensive and complex, with that edge of rosemary. It felt like we were doing something indecent. Which was ridiculous, obviously.
My position was more awkward now, and I wriggled until I was lying fully on my back on the chair, propped up on my elbows, knees bent. My skirts had tangled around my shins somewhat, and my head was thrown back now over the basin to expose the length of my throat, making me feel rather like a spring hare dangled in the hunter’s hand.
I’d had a reprieve from my embarrassment as he waited for me to change my position, but now I felt his hands in the Hair again. He threaded his fingers through it, coaxing it away from my face so that he could work on the dyeing. Something cold against my temple made me gasp—a damp cloth, I realized, to swab away any staining. He must have seen me flinch against it, because he paused.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, and my voice came out in an appalling squeak.
He kept running his hands through my Hair, close against the scalp, and I forced myself to breathe evenly. They were just hands. It was just Hair—even if it wasmymagical Hair. If I felt tingling all through my body, well, then, that was my own inexplicable response to someone else handling it, and to the oddity of Patrick acting almost as a lady’s maid.
Then I felt him adjust his position again and felt the press of his leg on my left side joined by another at my right. To reach deep into the roots without bending over me from a standing posture, he had straddled me on the chair, with a leg on either side of my hips. He was seemingly being very careful not to touch me more than necessary, but the light pressure of his knees on either side were enough to speed my breathing again. It felt dangerous, in some way I couldn’t define to myself. I thought I heard him swallow—a small, convulsive sound.
For the first time, he was clumsy. I felt the dye splash my face, warm and smarting, and my eyes flew open despite myself. His face was right above mine; so close that I tried to jerk back, and he looked as startled at this as I did. For a second, we stared at each other. His color-shifting eyes seemed darker, the pupils huge and black and swimming in the brown-green creek-water irises. I had never seen him look this unguarded, this unmasked. And then, quick as a shutter closing, the smirk was back.
“My apologies,” he said, wiping at the dye on my cheek with the damp cloth.
I tried to say it was all right, but my mouth was dry. All at once I was aware again of how uncomfortable I was: how tense my muscles were; how hard the chair was against my back; how tight and tangled my skirts were about my legs.
“Almost done,” he said, raising the ewer of dye again. I kept my eyes open, because closing them now seemed like it would have a meaning I did not intend, and I stared at the ceiling as he colored the final strands.
When he had finished, he stood, and the air felt cold where he had been. I watched as he picked up some towels from where they had hung over the back of a chair and tossed them to me.
“Wrap up your Hair,” he said. “It will take a while for the dye to set.”
I sat up slowly, bones creaking.
“Wait,” he said, and peeled off the old, stained gloves. “Wear these, or your hands will be black.”
I leaned forward to twist my hair into a long rope, then wrapped it in the towel, and made a turban of it upon my head. While I did this, he stared into the fire, his lips pressed tightly together.
“I will sleep in the chair by the fire tonight,” he said. “It will be comfortable enough.”
I nodded. We sat in silence for a time, until Patrick indicated that it was time to unwrap the Hair and take a look. It tumbled down about my shoulders, dark and unfamiliar, already nearly dry. It felt strange now—sluggish. Like something that happened to be attached to my head, rather than something with a life of its own. Perhaps this was how ordinary hair felt all the time. It reminded me of how it had felt when I had first woken in the Tower, my arms pinned behind me by the intruder, and it made me feel oddly powerless and vulnerable now.
