Page 24 of Dagger’s Shield

DAGGER

Ipicked up the pillow she’d thrown at me and tossed it at her. She caught it one-handed, laid it down the middle of the bed, and smoothed it flat like a border between two countries with a complicated history.

“Is that meant to stop you or me?” I asked.

“It is meant to remove all doubt about whose side is whose.”

“There was never any doubt. You’ll take the window side.” When her head cocked, I nodded at the room’s only way out. “Sight lines. You sleep facing the door.”

She stood for a moment with her hand on the pillow. I’d guessed right, and she hated that I had. God help me, I loved it.

“First crack at the loo?” I asked. “I’ll change while you’re out.”

She gathered her things and left without speaking.

While she was gone, I surveyed the space.

It was a girl’s room with a woman’s luggage in it. Framed photographs stood on the bookshelf—Maëlle at six or seven with her front teeth missing, at nine or ten on a fat gray pony, at twelve in fencing whites. Another shelf held French paperbacks with cracked spines. Yesterday, I knew her dossier. Tonight, I knew the books she’d read when she was a teenager.

The truth was that the last twenty-four hours had been among the best of my life. Our reason for being in France was ugly and likely to get uglier, and still, the way Maëlle had been with me since we left Onteora, laughing at what I said instead of at me, kissing my cheek, calling me mon chevalier, was what I’d wanted for a year but never believed possible.

If I’d said any of that out loud, she’d have heard one thing: he thinks we’re having sex.

That wasn’t it at all.

I’d made myself a set of rules when we decided on this course of action. I could kiss her forehead, cheek, and her hand—every chance I got, as often as the cover allowed. I’d touch her in front of her family, and I’d keep my hands off her when we were alone. I’d run longer ops on worse odds.

Out of habit, I noted the exits—the door, the window, and the drop to the garden below it. Then I made myself stop and change into a T-shirt and bottoms. I was folding my jeans over the arm of the sofa when the door opened.

Maëlle came in, wearing a pink silk chemise, and I nearly swallowed my tongue.

It wasn’t the sort of thing designed to seduce a man. It fell to mid-thigh and covered more of her than half the dresses I’d seen women wear to dinner. That was the trouble with it. How could one garment be that sexy and that innocently beautiful at the same time? There ought to be a law against it. Knowing the French, there probably was, and she was breaking it in her childhood bedroom.

“Stop,” she said, climbing into the bed on the window side.

“I haven’t said a word.”

“You’re thinking loudly.”

“You knew what you were doing when you packed that.”

“I didn’t pack it. It was here.”

“You’re telling me that a piece of silk has sat in a drawer since you left at the age of eighteen?”

Her cheeks flushed, and I knew there was more to the story.

“It’s what I’m sleeping in. It’s nothing that should concern you.”

She got in and tugged the duvet to her chin, daring me to say another word about it. “I’ll think quieter.” I got in on my side, stayed on it, and laced my fingers on top of the covers like a monk. “Anything else?”

“Good night, Dagger.”

She switched off the lamp.

The house was quiet except for a shutter somewhere that needed oiling. She was as awake as I was. No one could hold themselves that still when asleep.

“The medal above the desk,” I said into the dark. “Fencing?”