Page 26 of Hazard a Guest
That was enough to bring her back to herself.
She blinked, looking around at their surroundings, surprised to find that they were not in the gardens at all, but rather an indoor conservatory lined with flowering bushes and sculptures. A fountain tinkled in the middle.
She looked down at her shoes, somehow expecting dirt, and found only polished flagstones against the heels and toes of her soft suede boots.
When she looked up again, it was into Joseph Cresson’s silver eyes.
“Ember?” he said again, rounding his body to face her, pulling both of her hands into his own.
“Yes,” she managed to say, still creaking, still raspy. “Yes, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? You’ve done nothing amiss,” he said, still looking so awfully concerned. “Who was that man? Was that Thaddeus Beck?”
She nodded, trying to make herself swallow, to do anything to soothe the odd, jagged edges of her throat. “I … I knew him? I know him? I didn’t know that,” she said nonsensically, bending her fingers in his grip, hooking them into the spaces between his so that he would not let go. “Joseph, I knew him.”
“It’s all right,” he assured her. “It’s all right. We are alone here. Do you want to sit? Do you want to just catch your breath?”
She filled her lungs and nodded, the whole concept of it hitting her like a revelation. “Yes,” she said. “I should sit.”
Somehow, he led her to a bench and sat her down on it without requiring her to relinquish the hold on his hands. He settled beside her and let her grasp him, their entwined hands sitting in her lap, cradled by the braided wool of her skirt.
She stared down at it, at the clash of flesh, freckled pale fingers and smooth tanned ones against the thick golden wool. Absurdly, it seemed to calm her; it seemed to tell her heart to stop knocking quite so hard, because the door was open now. Someone had answered.
“Do you prefer Joseph?” she heard herself asking, knowing it was silly and non sequitur. “Or something else?”
He smiled at her again, that close-lipped, gentle smile that she’d liked so well last night. “Joe if you like,” he answered softly, “but Joseph is just fine.”
“Joe,” she decided, nodding. “I like Joe.”
“That is nice to hear,” he replied, a note of something teasing in his voice.
It surprised her so much that the last floating part of her soul snapped right back into her body, and finally, she could exhale.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for coming to save me.”
“Always,” he assured her, as though such a promise was a natural thing. As though she deserved it.
She relaxed her fingers, easing her clinging grip on his hands, but he did not take them away from her. He left them there inher lap, loosely laced with hers, as though she could keep them for as long as she needed them.
It was so hard not to keep staring at the effect of it, and even harder not to let her mind unspool with what it might mean. The only sensible option was to force her attention elsewhere.
Before them was a large copper statue of the first Lord Penrose, looking very much the privateer. Ember stared at his slashed, flared pantaloons, at the curling toes of his buckled shoes, at his absurd feathered hat, and she reminded herself that life was as it always had been: perfectly absurd.
Thaddeus Beck couldn’t take that away. He hadn’t. He wouldn’t.
She wanted to tell Mr. Cresson that he was a marvel. That he was singular. That he was unlike any other man.
But she knew he wouldn’t believe her.
So she sat instead, holding his hands and looking up at Lord Penrose the First, and letting her body find its ease in staggering little breaths.
“You know,” she said without looking at him, “I was a little sad at first by how you’d changed. It was selfish, really, and short-sighted. You are not changed at all, are you? You are just more yourself.”
He was quiet for a moment, digesting what she said. “I hope that is true,” he answered, “but I don’t think I am so very different.”
She laughed, a chuckle opening a tap of warmth back in her chest as she brought her gaze back to his. “Haven’t you a mirror, Joe?”
He blushed, looking positively chastened by his own transformation. “Oh,” he said, averting his eyes. “Yes, that.”
