Page 69 of A Slipper in the Smoke
“Yes,” she said. “I loved to dance.”
“Which was your favourite?”
She taught him the steps to a Navarran speciality, at least the parts she could remember, but in the end they fell into each other’s arms and just swayed together until the candles wore away to stubs.
Finally, near morning, they departed back to their own chambers.
“Goodnight, Elena,” he said, kissing her hand at the door.
“Goodnight, Pip.”
They swept once more into a kiss far from chaste, and it took all of his restraint not to follow her inside her room.
In the morning—just a few hours later—he woke to Susan staring over him. He groaned at the light and the lack of sleep, stuffing his head back under the covers.
“Late night?” said Susan, her voice heavy with grinning.
Pip muttered something incomprehensible.
“Did Elena like the feast?”
He removed his head from the covers. “Yes.”
“Did you?”
“Very much so.” He sighed, rolling over in bed. “I like her too much, don’t I?”
“I rather suspect so.” Susan paused. “Phillippe—”
“Oh no, full name, I must be in trouble.”
Susan did not laugh. “I must admit, I was hesitant when this whole thing came to light, but having met her—having seen the way she makes you light up—I would be remiss on a personal level if I didn’t at least point out that, well… have you considered making her your mistress?”
Pip swallowed, sitting upright. He caught Susan’s gaze, just to be sure she wasn’t joking. Her face was as stony as it had ever been. “I wouldn’t do her the dishonour.”
“Maybe you should let her decide what counts as a dishonour,” she said. “She likes you. A great deal. She has nothing to keep her here. And I’m sure neither one of us likes the idea of leaving her in her present circumstances.”
She wasn’t wrong here. Worse than the thought of leaving Elena was the thought of leaving her with that awful woman in that rickety, run-down apartment. But would she want to go with him to Toulouse, to live with him in what her holy book regarded as sin?
Could he take her saying no?
Could he take her sayingyes,and taking her back to Toulouse, and her hating life at court, and loving him in the shadows, and him having to one day marry someone else?
Would she do that? Wouldhe?
If it was happiness, it wasn’t the complete kind—fractured and dysfunctional, a broken automaton she would never be able to fix.
You could let her decide.
But, even as he pondered it, he knew that wasn’t what she really wanted, that she wouldn’t destroy her plans of years for a boy she’d only known a couple of weeks.
Her feverish words came back to haunt him.
Take me home.
I want to go home. I need to go home.
He couldn’t bring her to Toulouse. He couldn’t leave her behind, either.
