Page 70 of Hazard a Guest
He sort of felt that way now. It had only been a few minutes, after all, since Ember had announced their impending nuptials.
“Freddy,” he said softly. “Congratulations.”
“Congratulations,” Freddy repeated, nodding faintly. “Congratulations to me?”
“To all of us,” Ember corrected. “At long last.”
CHAPTER 24
Ember awoke around sunset, mostly face-down in Joe’s bed, her body twisted like a corkscrew in its efforts to claw back the sleep it was owed, or at least a portion of the debt.
She blinked over and over, her arms too heavy to lift and wipe the grog away, and felt her vision swim into focus facing that little table by the window and the window itself, which was currently flooded with pink and orange light, a final flash of color before the somber blue of dusk.
Once she could force herself to move, to straighten her tired limbs, she began the process with groaning complaint from her very own voicebox and no small amount of ache and strain from her stretching muscles.
“Easy there,” came Joe’s voice from the other side of the bed, surprising her enough that she changed the direction of her efforts, folding over on herself toward him, rather than the window and the floor and all the trappings of being upright again.
Had he been there all day? Surely not!
He was leaned against the headboard, a notebook in his lap and Millie’s letter spread out around him in neat little stacks. He’d been making his own notes, she saw, on his own paper by the low light of his own lantern.
“Joe?” she said, as though she needed to ask. “How long was I asleep?”
He chuckled, setting the notebook aside and reaching out to push a tangled nest of hair from her face. “How long is a full day?” he replied gently.
She squeezed her eyes shut and yawned, reaching up with heavy effort, her fingers only brushing her lips after the yawn had fully escaped. She dropped her hand back on the pillow and tried to shake away some of the grog, blinking up at him.
“I wish they had sent one of the forged slips,” he was saying with a little frown, busying himself with restoring and tidying Millie’s full missive, “and one of the real ones. It would have been useful to see them side by side.”
“I’ll have both for you back in London,” she told him, her body nuzzling closer to his, to his warmth. “We don’t need them right now.”
“Don’t we?” he said, glancing up at her over the stack of papers. “To show Mr. Lazarus? To use against Beck?”
“I know my own handwriting, Joe,” she reasoned, giving him a sleepy smile. “It’s not very good, and so probably quite difficult to fake.”
“Hm,” said Joe, a grumble that sounded adjacent to disapproval.
She watched him, a lazy sort of fascination in the tension she saw in his movements, in that single syllable he’d uttered.
“Are you …” She trailed off, wakefulness dripping in through her repose as she pulled herself up a little, onto an angling of pillows, squinting at the back of his curly head. “Joe Cresson! Are you unhappy with me?”
He looked over his shoulder like she’d startled him deeply. “What?”
“You are!” she marveled. “You’re angry!”
“I’m notangry,” he protested, dropping the papers on the stand with his notebook and turning to fully face her. “I am, at worst, a little confused. That’s all.”
“A little confused,” she repeated, an absurd little grin starting to tug on the corners of her lips. “From you, that might as well be a declaration of war, my own. What’s the matter?”
He sighed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose, high color rising into his cheeks.
“Is this because I said I was going to marry you?” she asked, tilting her head. “I suppose I wasn’t very romantic about it, was I?”
“No! Not that!” he exclaimed, at a volume only slightly above normal that still made her startle a bit.
“Gracious!” she said, nudging him with her foot. “You’ll bring the house down.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and huffed. “It’s not that,” he said after a second, at his more typical volume. “I’m happy about that.”
