Nero remained in place for another minute, features still frozen, stark and disbelieving—as if he’d just escaped a game of Russian roulette.
Finally, he slunk back to his room.
Elena removed herself from the door, unsure of exactly what she’d just witnessed and why it had left her feeling so uncomfortable, like worms were wriggling under her skin. She wanted to take a bath.
She sat down, trying to calm herself, counting the threads in the bedsheets and the flowers in the vase. If it helped, she didn’t register it.
A knock sounded on the door.
“Come in,” Elena whispered.
Pip appeared in the gap, wearing a crisp white shirt, dark trousers, and a cream-coloured corset waistcoat printed with a swirling pattern. It hugged the soft shafts of his body, illuminating the shape of him, and the shirt parted at the neck revealed the start of a rather nice chest.
Elena’s insides tingled. Her mouth went strangely dry.
Pip frowned. “Are you all right?”
“You look… good.”
“Good?”
“I am not particularly great with words.”
Pip laughed, coming towards her and extending a hand. “You look lovely,” he said. “Shall we?”
Elena took his arm and slotted herself against him. They walked silently through the dark corridors, hardly daring to speak, moving towards the ballroom but not quite meeting it before Pip turned a corner and led her to a white door decorated with glass petals.
“Close your eyes,” he instructed.
Elena did. The door clicked open. He tugged her inside, whispering instructions not to peek as he slunk away from her side. She heard him fiddling with something at the side, and suddenly music was playing.
“Can I open themyet?”
“No, not quite yet…” he said, with a laugh in his voice. She heard the sound of a match being struck. “All right. Now.”
Elena opened her eyes and sucked in a breath. Pip had decorated a parlour in white streamers and lace, and had set up a table in the centre brimming with candlelight and silver. Inside the dishes were a myriad of spiced foods, the smell of which made Elena’s mouth water.
She looked across at Pip, unable to convey her gratitude. It had been years since anyone had done anything like this for her, years since—
Never. No one had ever done something likethis.
“What’s wrong?” said Pip. “Did I make a mistake? Is it too much? Not enough? Is the food not to your liking?”
Elena walked up to him, grabbed his shirt, and eclipsed the gap between them by pressing her lips to his. Any gasp he had was swiftly muffled, any objection utterly lost beneath the softness of their mouths. Sensation dissolved around her. She had not expected it to feel like this, a furnace of heat, a wonderful, soft hardness. He tasted of spiced wine and gentle embers and she wanted to climb into him, to unravel beneath to, to—
She pulled away, shocked at her own thoughts, the brazenness of her actions.
Pip blinked at her with the dazed, startled expression of a bird that had flown into a window.
“Sorry,” Elena said, “I’ve been waiting a very long time to kiss someone like that.”
Pip’s throat bobbed. “I’ve been waiting a very long time to meet someone like you.”
“Like me?” she tilted her head. “And what am I like?”
“I don’t know,” he said, throat still trembling. “Good. Kind. Intelligent. Warm. Funny.”
“You’re those things too, Pip.”