Page 98 of The False Vow

Noé’s expression didn’t waver. “Absolutely,” he replied. “You must do so. Being with me would make you far too happy. It would run completely counter to your strict moral code of self-loathing and misery—you could never endure it.”

His response took me aback. For a moment, I was almost offended; then the indignation passed and I laughed. Shaking my head, I raised my arm to swat at him.

He grabbed my hand before I could make contact, giving me a tug. I fell, or perhaps let myself fall, into him; there was a brief tussle, a shove, a push, and then he relented. When our play fight was over, I was lying half on top of him, his shoulder propped up against the sofa’s back, my upper body resting on his chest.

Our noses were almost brushing. Winding his fingers through mine, he gave them a squeeze, then pitched his forehead tentatively forward so that it touched mine.

“Do you even realize what it does to me, looking at you?”

His voice sent shivers over me. Pulling away, I rolled my eyes. “You are being unbearably dramatic.”

“Am I?” Noé replied lightly. “I think I’m behaving myself quite well. I have not even mentioned the many evenings I have spent in raptures over the fragile beauty of your wrists.”

Loosely, he picked up my arm again, bringing it to his mouth. A quake went through me when he pressed his lips to the heel of my palm, though this one, at least, I managed to quell.

“Or how you have ruined all my favorite vices, and made it so I cannot enjoy a single one of them for thought of you.” Another kiss, on the inside of my elbow. I felt my skin growing warm. “Or how when I saw your brother berating you in that pub, I felt a fury like I have never known before, and I was terrified that I might kill him.”

He lifted his head, meeting my eyes again. Unlike previously, there was no laughter in his gaze; he was all severeness, that icy calculation I’d seen before—that I’d glimpsed upon the first day of meeting him. It should have chilled me, but when I reached for the disgust that used to flow so willingly through my encounters with him, I could not find it. The well seemed to have closed over; it had been replaced by something else.

Sighing, I laid a thumb against the bow of his upper lip. “This will only end in disaster.”

He smiled. I felt his mouth move against my finger, and my heart lurched. “But we are not at the end yet, are we?”

I did not have a chance to reply before he kissed me.

Chapter Forty-Three

Fortblanche felt emptier with him gone.

Noé had been absent for about an hour, having left the estate shortly after I’d finally departed the library, when Mia came to inform me that a guest was awaiting me. As I walked through the halls to the front entrance, I wondered at who it could be. Mireille, perhaps—back with another missive from Dorian? Or Nathalie, come to update me on her mouse’s findings?

Could it be Eliot?

But that last thought, I put away quickly. I did not want to look at it.

I glimpsed a blond figure chatting with Bernard as I arrived in the entry hall. The pair of them were standing by the front doors, the former gesticulating animatedly with the silk parasol she was clutching, the latter listening on, his round head bobbing. At the sound of my heeled slippers clicking over the stone floor, they glanced up.

I hesitated as I met my visitor’s gaze. “Anais,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

The fair-haired silkwitch blinked. She was dressed in a cheerful frock of periwinkle blue, her hair braided and bound by some impossibly intricate arrangement of white ribbons, which crisscrossed her skull like latticework. “I’ve come for my gloves,” she said. “You mentioned your maids put them aside for me, but your butler”—here she paused to glare at Bernard—“insists they have done no such thing.”

The gloves. She was still fixated on those? For a moment, I found myself intrigued, but then a wave of exhaustion rolled over me, and I simply became too tired to care. “I don’t have them,” I said flatly. “My maids were mistaken. I’m sorry.”

She called after me as I turned to leave. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

I paused. I’d dressed in a plain frock before descending to greet Anais—drab cotton in a pale dove gray. Certainly not glamorous attire by any measure, but what did it matter?

I looked back at the other silkwitch, who crossed her arms. “You know the rest of the girls will be here in an hour,” she said. When I gave no response, she continued in a prompting manner. “For your final fitting? I came by early, so that I might catch you before their arrival. Have you forgotten?”

Shit. The final dress fitting—the last entry on Bastian’s bridal schedule prior to the wedding itself. In the haze of all that had preceded Noé’s departure, I’d forgotten.

A wave of panic crested over me. This fitting was an opportunity, I knew that—my last opportunity to question my bridesmaids before Bastian’s wedding-day deadline—and yet the thought of facing my fellow silkwitches made my stomach feel as though it were filled with rocks. Even if I’d been wrong to accuse Clio, one of those girls had been in the turret room with me last night. If Nathalie’s mouse hadn’t intervened, one of them likely would have killed me.

My pulse quickened. What was it that Noé had said? All it takes is a door left open…and all your beautiful plans will fall to nothing.

I was just so tired of having to defend myself. And now that death had drawn so close…I could feel its cold breath on the back of my neck, and the truth is, I was scared.

I’d been silent for a long moment. When I sensed Anais’s expression turning inquisitive, I gathered myself. “No,” I breathed. “Of course not. Just give me a minute.”