Page 16 of My Fae Lady

“I’m not pouting,” I grumped, crossing my arms defiantly over my chest. “I’m resting after my battle with the floor.”

“If you’d like to practice your promenade,” she said, and the hidden smile broke free, turning her lips completely, “I recommend you do so in a more sensible pair of shoes.”

I squinted up at her. “Whatever do you mean? These are the ridiculous shoes you put me in. You insisted—”

“Hm. No, I don’t think so,” she said airily.

Gritting my teeth, I imagined making her eat those damned shoes. Heels and all. The vision calmed me. “But you protested when—”

“I protested your bare feet,” she said with a slow lift of her shoulders. “We are not animals. We are civilized. We wear shoes in this house. Alas, those shoes are a few decades too old to be of use to us.”

“Darkness take them,” I shouted. Sitting upright, I grabbed the heeled torture devices and flung them down the hall, far away from me.

“That was a very impressive tantrum,” Giselle said placidly. “If you’re quite done, I can show you how to promenade properly now.”

“I’ll get you back for making me wear those shoes,” I warned her.

Her lips pressed together, fighting back the start of a mocking grin. “You’re certainly welcome to try.”

She moved in closer again and offered her hand. Giselle beamed down at me good-naturedly. Her expression softened further when I hesitated. The new glint in her eyes turned tender.

She waited there, patient and poised. Her insistence on helping me yet again made my heart pinch painfully. What was this woman after by being kind to me?

I rubbed at my chest right above my heart to make the pinch go away, then I took her hand in mine, curious why a woman so aggravating affected me so.

⊱❀⊰

After dinner, we met for a nightcap in the parlor where she lectured me about my posture—again—and taught me how a gentleman drinks from his glass in measured swallows, but she declined to give me anything more than sparkling water to practice with.

Giselle was dressed in yet another colorful ensemble in a rosy hue that complemented her skin, this one flowy and trimmed in lace, the shoes soft white slippers. I perched on the edge of the settee as commanded. She’d forced me to wear a forest-green paisley smoking jacket to hide any falling ash while I held a lit cigar.

“But I don’t smoke,” I protested, poking at the brass buttons on the jacket.

“You still must look the part. What if Mr. Hilferty invites you out for a nightcap? You’ll need to be prepared. Take these,” she said, pressing three items into my hand: a handkerchief, a gilded money clip, and a strange little timepiece. “These are the necessary tools every gentleman keeps upon his person. They will complete any costume you wear.”

I wadded the handkerchief up and attempted to stuff it into my pocket along with the money clip. Giselle rolled her eyes at me and clucked her tongue. She plucked out the silk and showed me how to fold it in the Seelie fashion before tucking it away more delicately.

I let her fuss over me, measuring the timepiece in my palm. It was lightweight and smelled only of silver. I felt no magic, neither orderly nor chaotic, running through it.

“Do you like the pocket watch?” she asked, leaning closer across the settee. “It belonged to my mother. Unlike my Seelie father, she was mostly human. She had lots of little gadgets like that. When I was young, I spent hours taking them apart and putting them back together again.”

Admittedly, it made me curious. I rarely interacted with human artifacts. I acted next from muscle memory, lifting the piece into the air and allowing the wild magic in the room to take it from me. House knew what I wanted, and for a moment, it was as though we’d never been apart.

I wanted to see inside the little clock, to understand how it worked without the arcane. House obliged, carefully separating metal from glass, gears from springs, and the hands from the face. They hovered before me, twirling slowly for my inspection.

Giselle gasped, and her hand went over her heart. “How did you get House to do that?”

I squinted at the little pieces. “When the gears turn, the hands move, but what makes the gears turn?”

“It’s the tightly coiled spring,” she said, awe in her voice. “Now, tell me how you did that. No, wait! Just let me get my lens, and I’ll watch you do it all again.”

Casually, I uncurled my fingers, and House put the pocket watch back together again: gears and springs, clock face and hands strung together like pieces of an intricate puzzle, before dropping the whole of it into my palm. Giselle had only just gotten to her feet.

She spun on me, blinking in surprise. I chuckled at her shocked expression.

“I said wait!” she groaned, her hands in frustrated fists at her sides. “I wasn’t ready. What are you doing, House? I’m the one who taught you to put human artifacts back together. I didn’t tell you to do that!”

I grinned up at her, sliding the timepiece into my pocket. “And now we’re even.”