Chapter Text
He had waited for her in the east parlor—second cup poured, The Times scarcely touched—until the tea went cool and the ridiculous second kiss failed to materialize at the threshold. The absence pricked more than it should have. So he took the tray himself—tea reheated, eggs soft, toast cut into fours because she ate more that way—and went to find her.
He nudged the door shut with his heel, already picturing the way her voice warmed the morning paper and the second kiss she had begun to demand. A man could be ruled by a sound and a mouth. He had begun to count on it.
But the room was wrong.
Bed smoothed to theater perfection. The chest at its foot flung open like a wound. A scarf’s fringe dragged the rug. The little jewelry box gaped; garments lay ransacked, as if someone had been hauled hand-first through the seams of their own life.
He put the tray down too carefully to be casual.
“Dove?”
Silence put its ear against him. The old fear—absurd, living—ran his spine like a cold hand.
Training moved first. He crossed the room on the edges of his boots, the war-sure way that made floors hold their breath. A glance to the window latch—fast. Wardrobe—ajar. He put two fingers to the doors and eased them wider, breath measured, shoulders turned to make himself a wall if anything leapt. Nothing but dresses breathing on their hooks.
A small thing where it should not have been stopped him: a bare foot, pale as milk, peeking from the dark mouth beneath the bed.
He crouched—one knee down, palm to floorboards—then dropped his shoulder and ducked, soldier-low, into the dark.
She was there, tucked small, the sachet wedged beneath her cheek, eyes closed as if sleep had found her only in a place the room could not look. Laudanum’s sour-sweet ghost lingered at the back of his own throat just seeing her—memory or rage, he couldn’t tell.
“Rey,” he said, soft and speaking straight to her breath.
Her eyes flashed open. She screamed—reflex, wild—and he flinched, rocketing up on instinct. His skull met the bedframe with a solid, ringing thunk that sent a bright white crack of pain through his vision and a bitten-off oath through his teeth. The whole frame shuddered; he saw stars; the tray on the table chimed like a tiny orchestra acknowledging his idiocy.
“You’re all right, sweetheart,” he managed through the sting, hand already there—open, steady, offered near but not on her. “You’re all right.”
For a second she didn’t know what she was—only cold floorboards, dust, the edge of the sachet, the old drowning in her head. Then his voice threaded through the noise—low, certain—and she latched to it like a rope tossed cleanly.
She looked at his hand—the breadth of it, the patience it held—and set her fingers into his. He drew her out with the gentleness of someone lifting a fox from a snare, not a man retrieving his fiancée from under the furniture. The rush of warmer air made her sway.
His coat was already coming off his shoulders. He wrapped it around her as if it had always belonged to her, gathered the collar close at her throat with a careful tug, and only then let himself wince and rub the blossoming lump on his head with the heel of his hand.
“How did you—” He glanced back at the narrow shadow she’d filled, then down at her again as her knees found the edge of the settee. A dry breath of wonder. “You are very small.”
“I am very mortified,” she managed.
“As mortified as your fiancé who just tried to concuss himself on your furniture?” His mouth ticked, a bandage made of humor. “Is the bed not to your liking? I could send for a new mattress and hide a pea beneath to test you. Princess of Wrenwick?”
“Don’t,” she said, because the smile came in spite of her and it hurt to feel it. “Don’t tease.”
The teasing left his face the way light leaves a room when someone closes a door. He sat on the low table opposite, not quite touching her knees with his own.
“Then tell me true,” he said quietly. “Did I frighten you last night?”
Her body remembered the chair and his lap and his voice in her ear; heat raced up her neck, treacherous. “No,” she said, hoping the word would be steady and discovering it was soft. “No. I—” She swallowed. “I liked your touches.”
His eyes closed, just once, not with triumph but with something like gratitude. He leaned forward and kissed her brow, an old-fashioned blessing that made her throat sting.
“Then what is it,” he asked, “that troubles you enough to hide away?”
Tell him, some honest part urged. Tell him you broke into his west wing and stood over his mother’s bed with a bottle of medicine in your hand. Tell him you’re not sorry.
She couldn’t. She could see it—the way his mouth would go rigid with anger, the way he would hold himself perfectly still not to say a thing he’d regret. He would be furious that she’d gone against the forbidding he had spoken; she was sure of it.
“It is nothing,” she said, and hated herself for how it sounded. “I was—”
He only waited. He could be insufferably patient.
She felt one hot tear find air and wiped it away at once. Pride let that one fall and held the rest.
“In India,” she said, eyes on the scatter of garments at her feet because she couldn’t bear his face, “when I was angry with my grandfather, or when I… when the house was too loud inside my head, I hid. Under the bed. In the wardrobe. Anywhere small. I had a bad dream about my parents.” The word scraped. “I couldn’t sleep. So I—”
“So you made yourself small,” he said, and there was no contempt in it. “Until the world fit you again.”
She nodded, stupidly grateful to be translated.
He breathed in—slow, mindful—and set his elbows to his knees like a man listening to a storm through the rafters.
“In two days,” he said, “we will be wed. When your head gets too loud, you wake me. Throw a slipper at my skull if you must; you’ve a good arm.” The corner of his mouth twitched; the rest of him did not. “I will not join you under there—you’ll have to pardon me—because I am far too large and the bed would never recover.”
A helpless giggle jumped out of her, half-hiccup, half-sob. He looked absurdly pleased to have coaxed it from her.
“No more floor, dove,” he said, a little too serious now. “Not while I’ve a bed.”
He reached then, not to pull her to her feet—she was already upright—but to pull her into him, her temple to his shirtfront, his chin resting in her hair. He let out a breath that sounded like a man setting down something heavy.
“Eat,” he said into her crown, the word a kindness not a command.
“I’m not hungry.”
He leaned back far enough to look at her. It was almost comical, the unimpressed patience in his face. “You are always hungry,” he said. “And you get crosser when you pretend you are not.”
He went to the tray, lifted a quarter of toast and held it under her nose like a peace offering. Marmalade shone bitter-bright at the cut edge.
She eyed him, then the toast, then him again with theatrical suspicion. He didn’t blink. In the end, dignity crumbled faster than crust. She leaned forward and took the bite from his hand.
“There,” he said softly. “Proof of life.”
Crumbs sugared her lower lip. She swallowed, then spoke around the next small bite, mouth a little full.
“I remembered something… of you.”
His brows tipped, suspicious in that careful, amused way of his. “Of me?”
She nodded, sudden mischief brightening her eyes. “Did I actually put a frog down your trousers?”
He closed his eyes like a man praying for deliverance. “Of all the things you might carry of me, it had to be that.”
A laugh hiccuped out of her. “You made a very fine noise.”
“Tai would agree,” he said dryly, though the corner of his mouth folded. “He never let me live it down.”
“Well—” she started, brave with toast and the warmth of him so near, “—perhaps I can tease him for it when he visits.”
Something in his face went still. Not cold—careful.
“He won’t,” Ben said, voice even. “Tai didn’t come back from the war.”
The sweetness on her tongue went flat. “Oh.” Heat rose in her throat for all the wrong reasons. “I’m sorry—I didn’t— Ben, I’m so—”
He shook his head once and reached, thumb settling over her knuckles as if quiet were a thing he could place there. “Hush, dove. You’ve nothing to be sorry for.” A breath. “I’ve made my peace with it.”
She wasn’t sure that was true. The little muscle in his jaw said otherwise. But she turned her hand under his and squeezed, letting the apology live there instead of in more words.
After a moment he tried for lightness, the way he did when he didn’t want to bleed on her. “For the record,” he murmured, “it was a toad the size of a cannonball.”
Her mouth curled despite the ache. “Liar.”
“Habitually,” he admitted, and offered her the next neat quarter of toast like a truce. She took it, and he watched her take it, and between them grief settled the way snow does—soft, inevitable, quietly bright.
All day the hours had slid past like cards dealt faceup—domestic, ordinary, bright with edges that pricked. Each evening nearer the wedding had left her warmer and more useless at sleep: giddy in a way that made her want to laugh at herself and also hide. Two nights to vows. One. Soon. The word lay under her tongue like a piece of sugar that refused to melt.
At supper Ben had said the air tasted like tin—that it meant snow. He’d asked, half-teasing and half-earnest, whether she wanted it for their day: hedges sugared white, the chapel frosted, his coat shouldering drifts at the gate. She’d scoffed gently that white Christmases belonged to picture postcards and shop windows, not to real lives, and yet the wish had startled through her like a bird. She’d only lifted a shoulder, pretending she hadn’t wished at all.
She’d thought of Leia, too—often. She had meant to try the west corridor again, to test a handle or two, to listen at a door. But Kaydel had been everywhere at once this afternoon: fresh linens laid just as Rey approached, bottles decanted with brisk precision, doors that ought to have been left carelessly ajar turned neat and tight against their frames. Diligence that felt like watchfulness. Rey had steered clear on instinct, the skin between her shoulders pricking with the feeling of being expected—and caught—if she pressed her luck.
She couldn’t sleep.
She’d fallen off easily enough—curled under too many quilts—but her limbs woke fidgeting, breath shallow, mind bright. She turned toward the window and frowned. Why was it so bright? The fire had gone down to a red sigh, and yet a pale glow washed the walls as if someone had drawn silk over the moon.
She sat, blinked, and then forgot how to breathe.
Snow.
She stumbled to the casement, pressed both palms to the cold pane, her forehead kissing the glass with a soft thunk. The world was blank and luminous, hedges iced to meringue, the lawn smoothed to a single unbroken thought. Even the moor looked gentle.
India had taught her seasons like drumbeats—rain and heat, rain and heat, everything damp and ripening. Snow lived in a childish memory: fogged glass, a frozen step, her mother laughing. This felt like proof of another kind of mercy entirely.
She didn’t bother with sense. Stockings. Boots. Her coat from the peg, her scarf snatched and looped twice, hair half-down. She moved quiet as a thief through the corridor, giddy at the creaks that nobody woke to, and slipped the back latch with a wince that turned into a grin.
The air outside kissed like a secret. The sky was the palest blue, stars putting themselves away. Flurries spun and touched and vanished on her skin. She lifted her hand and let a lace of snow find her pulse—felt it melt there, a cool pinprick turned warmth—and laughed, small and involuntary, as if the night had told her a private joke.
She stood very still to hear what the quiet sounded like on snow. Not empty—held. Somewhere a branch exhaled and shook off its burden; somewhere far off a fox placed a careful foot.
She tipped her head back and opened her mouth to the sky like a child at a sugared window, catching a flake on her tongue, then another, grin widening at the ridiculousness of the pleasure. The world had been transformed without a sound—every thorn made gentle, every rut made pure. It felt like stepping into a realm she’d always been promised and never shown.
Her fingers skimmed low shrubs furred white; drifted up to trace the icy embroidery on the gate. She breathed and watched the breath drift up like a small spirit set free. Arms out, she turned once—slow, a ballerina for no one—and the hem of her nightgown kissed her calves.
Then the giddiness pricked.
She pitched backward with a squeal she tried and failed to swallow, nightgown blooming, a soft thud, and the shock of cold through linen that made her gasp and laugh at once. She swept her arms wide—one, two—felt wings open in the snow, the old motion pulled up out of some buried winter. She lay there, smiling up at the pale, undecided sky, snow stippling her lashes until she blinked and it jeweled her cheeks.
“Look at you,” she told the darkness under her breath, meaning the house, the garden, herself—all of it remade for an hour. She let her hands go still and felt the flakes collect at her knuckles. A sigh slipped out, content as a cat curling into a hearth-warm. For a moment it seemed the whole estate breathed with her.
“What do you think you’re doing.”
It cut the hush like a shot.
She bolted upright, heart hammering. He stood by the yew, greatcoat thrown over nightclothes, collar askew, hair damped dark at the temple. For a second he was only width and shadow and frost—then her eye dropped, and she saw what hung low and black in his hand.
A revolver.
Her stomach dipped. She went very still, breath caught between ribs.
He saw. His jaw tightened while he tucked the weapon back under his coat, motion crisp and practiced. “I heard something,” he said, voice like a wire: low, contained. “Thought someone had come in off the road.”
“It was only me,” she managed, which was both apology and plea.
He started toward her, long strides grinding the snow to fine crystal. “Only you,” he repeated, scanning boots, damp scarf, bare wrist where the coat had ridden up. “Barely dressed. In the dark. Alone.” His mouth flattened. “Are you out of your mind?”
The heat that had been joy turned mortification in a rush. “I’m sorry.”
The muscle at his jaw jumped once. For a heartbeat she thought he might turn, might pocket his fury and leave her to it.
He held out his hand instead. “Come.”
She took a breath. She had just scared him with a door and a darkness and the shape of a gun—the old war standing up in him like an uninvited guest. She could go meekly and be warmed and forgiven.
Or she could do the madder thing—show him the spell she’d run out here to stand inside. She thought it through in one quick, wicked moment: his weight, her leverage; the risk of his temper; the thrill of his restraint and how he’d proved it, over and over. She set her palm in his.
And pulled.
Hard.
He swore—short, surprised—and the great Ben Solo, Lord of Wrenwick, went down beside her with a man’s thump and an indignant explosion of snow.
She rolled onto her side, breathless and triumphant. “When’s the last time you made a snow angel?”
He blinked, face scattered with flakes, a single white star clinging absurdly to his lash. For once his expression was easy to read: affronted, incredulous, not yet amused.
“You just pulled me down.”
“Yes.”
“You’re mad.”
“I was six the last time,” she said, softer. “I forgot how quiet it gets.”
He looked at her a moment longer—as if measuring the precise diameter of her madness—and then the fight went out of his shoulders. He stretched his arms wide into the cold and cut one slow wing in the new snow, sighing as if the sky had wrung it out of him.
She pretended not to watch him pretend not to enjoy it.
She rose and admired her handiwork—his angel, broad-shouldered and lopsided where one wing had dragged. He was still sprawled in it, looking up at her with the defeated dignity of a man who regretted every inch of his height. When she offered her hands he took them, heavy and warm, and let her lever him upright with a groan that seemed to climb his spine.
“Oh, you old miser,” she teased, steadying him as he straightened and pressed a palm to his back. “Shall I fetch the parish bell to toll for your bones?”
“Little brat,” he returned, breath fogging, trying not to smile as he dusted snow from his coat. “You’ve always been one—”
He turned—and there was no time for anything else before a neat, treacherous fist of powder met his face with a soft thud. Snow burst across his cheek and lashes. Rey laughed, bright and helpless, already dancing backward.
Silence. Melt drew a thin line along his jaw. He turned his head toward her and the expression in his eyes made her stomach swoop.
“Oh,” she said, immediate and appalled. “Ben—I—”
He stooped, gloved hand sinking, snow gathered with a patience that was somehow worse than speed. “Rey,” he said, a warning she knew would not save her. “You threw first.”
“I will never do it again,” she promised with scandalous sincerity. “I swear it. Truce.”
“No truce.” He straightened to his full height.
She ran.
Her skirts snagged at her calves; the cold bit keen through the weave. His boots ate the distance. She heard it then—the laugh he almost never spent—warm and low and a little wild. He caught her at the hips just shy of the fountain and reeled her back, their boots sliding at once; they went down together in a breathless tangle, her back taking the soft shock of drifted snow, his weight braced above her.
“Ben—” she gasped, writhing in a way that didn’t really aim for escape.
“Do you think you should beg me for mercy?” he asked at her temple, and the winter got warmer.
“Yes,” she breathed, which made him huff—almost a laugh—and, wicked, he scooped and pressed a fist of snow to the curve of her neck where the heat lived. She squealed like something scandalized and delighted to be scandalized, shoulders arching against the cold.
“You beast,” she accused, wriggling uselessly. “You are cruel.”
“Cruel?” His mouth skimmed her hairline, voice roughened with the same restraint she’d learned to feel under his palm. “You started this.”
“I surrender—mercy, my lord—mercy—” She was laughing and a little breathless and acutely aware of how his arm knew her waist.
The jest thinned.
The world seemed to hush in their favor. Snow ticked his lashes; a pale halo of falling light made a saint out of a man who would never claim it. He looked—truly looked—down at her, and she felt the words rise like a bell under her breastbone, her mouth shaping sound without breath.
I love—
“I love you,” he said.
It broke out of him as if torn from a wound and offered anyway. Relief and terror lived in it together, a confession dragged up like treasure with both hands shaking. The impact went clean through her, bright as cracked sky; awe opened in her chest and ran warm to her fingers. He looked struck by the same astonishment—like two climbers reaching in the dark and finding, impossibly, each other’s grip.
“I love you,” she breathed back, steadier for having heard him suffer it first.
His jaw worked once; he swallowed, eyes burning as if the cold finally reached him. “I love you because you brought weather back into this house,” he said, voice low and fierce. “Because you laugh at me and make me kinder for it. Because you are brave when you’re frightened and honest when it costs you. Because I forgot how to want anything that wasn’t duty until you stood in a doorway and the room had color again.” He drew a breath that shook. “If I could drag down the moon and then the sun and haul morning here by the throat to make it our day, I would.”
Her throat ached sweetly. “Ben,” she said, soft with the ruin of being chosen.
“Rey,” he answered, as if her name were the vow itself—and then his mouth found hers.
Not careful this time. Hungry.
Snow hissed at his shoulders; their coats fell open. One thoughtless press and the heavy heat of his cock settled against her through linen, the length of him pressing until he found that tender place that made her breath break. Her hips tipped before sense could catch them; a small, shocked sound broke from her mouth. She kissed him deeper without meaning to, tongue slipping past his lips, and the groan it pulled from his chest made her whole body answer.
“Look at me,” he murmured, tilting her chin, guiding her once—just once—in a slow grind that lit her spine. “Sweet girl—”
Panic pricked through the heat—want and worry tangling, shame rising like a blush under her skin. She felt wild with it, wrong and right at once.
He stopped. The halt went through him like cold water. He tore his mouth from hers, breath rough against her cheek. “No,” he said, hating himself for how much he wanted the second stroke. “Not like this.”
His hand gentled at her hip even as his body argued. “Breathe,” he coaxed, forehead to hers. “I shouldn’t have you out here.” A swallowed curse, almost a prayer. “God, you feel what you do to me.”
She trembled, the ache making her foolish and the cold making her honest. “We shouldn’t,” she whispered, miserable with wanting and the knowledge of it. “Ben, I—”
“I know.” He eased her back that bare inch that made the world livable again, thumb brushing the damp curl at her temple. “Be good for me.”
He held her there until her breath matched his, then kissed her once—soft, sealing—and stepped away before he forgot himself. “We need to get you inside,” he said, voice rough and fond. “Before you freeze solid and I have to explain to the household why I allowed the future Lady Solo to perish of mischief.”
“You didn’t seem concerned a moment ago,” she murmured, dazed and smiling like a fool.
“That,” he said, thumb brushing the damp curl at her temple, the other hand still a quiet brand at her hip, “is precisely the problem.”
He took her hand and tucked it against his side, his body a moving wall of warmth. They crossed the threshold on the squeak and drip of melting ice, the hush of the house closing around them as if it had been waiting to be told what it held. In the corridor he shook wet from his cuffs and looked down at her boots, her hair, her ridiculous grin. Disapproval warred and lost.
“You are a menace,” he told her softly. “Dragging me down. Forcing me to behave like a schoolboy.”
“You made a very fine angel,” she said, and because the night had turned her brave: “my lord.”
He gave her the sharp look that used to frighten her and now only warmed her more; the corners of his mouth betrayed him anyway. At the antechamber he steered her toward the hearth with a hand at the small of her back and the kind of sigh that belonged to a man whose house had mischief in it and who had decided he preferred it that way.
At her door he paused, looking at the snow still freckling her lashes, at the damp smear his glove had left at her neck. His mouth tipped, soft and certain.
“I love you,” he said again, quiet as a hand closing over hers. “Sleep.”
“I will,” she whispered, which was a kind of promise she meant to keep until she didn’t.
He touched her knuckles through the glove as if blessing something, and then he turned away down the corridor, boots whispering against the runner until the house swallowed the sound.
She closed the door and leaned her spine to it. The little fire purred. Frost silvered the window like lace. Her heart refused to settle; it ran on the bell of his words—I love you—and heat pooled low where his hands had kindled it.
She peeled the damp nightgown away and let it slide to a sorry heap. Stockings rolled away. Cold teased her shoulders; warmth lived stubborn low.
From the chair she took a fresh chemise—clean, white, still faintly scented of soap—and drew it over her head. Linen fell cool against fevered skin, skimming the peaks of her breasts; the slight catch drew a soft sound from her, and she calmed the ache with the flat of her hands. The sensation jolted straight down. She sat at the bed’s edge, breathing shallow, and touched her swollen lower lip with her thumb the way his mouth had, as if bravery could be imitated by pressure.
“You said not to,” she murmured to the empty room, shame pricking her skin. “Only—only to learn it on you.”
A small, furious whisper: “I just want to know.”
She lay back and let her knees fall a little apart, the chemise riding up indecently over bare thighs. One hand hovered useless at her mouth; the other crept by inches down the flat of her belly, over the slight give that curved into curls. Linen rasped deliciously against her nipples when she breathed. Heat jumped at the first brush of fingertips; her own damp startled her. She tugged the chemise higher—cowardice and courage in the same motion—until cool air kissed where she ached. She touched lower, slow, trying to remember the circles he’d made through fabric: patient, teasing, sure.
There—no—there. A bright spark woke under her fingertip, the small bud he’d named in a way that scandalized her even in thought. The first second of pressure was good—too good—like pressing a bruise you weren’t ready to admit was there. The second turned sharp, a sting tipping into panic. She flinched, eased off, chased it again. The chemise dragged across sensitized skin; her thighs quivered; her toes curled in the sheets.
“Oh,” she gasped, not pleasure so much as nerves. “Oh—”
She shifted the angle, the pressure, the rhythm—everything and nothing at once. The wet sounds rose, soft and indecent; the slick gleam at her fingertips made her catch her breath in a mortified little sob. She tried to breathe the way he did, steady and deep; tried to circle exactly as his fingers had promised to teach her yes—gentle, then firmer, then barely there—but the brightness kept spiking into too much. Each sweet spike flipped into startle, as if her own touch were a stranger’s.
“Please,” she heard herself whisper, as if begging the room to behave.
It didn’t. Heat climbed her chest into her throat. The small, betraying sounds—her breath; the soft, wet slide; the hurry—collapsed the fragile courage she’d built. Shame rose like floodwater, fast and everywhere.
“I can’t,” she said, miserable, and snatched her hand away as from a flame.
She stared at her glistening fingers, appalled—first at the wanting, then at the failure, then at the proof of both gleaming on her skin. She wiped them on the coverlet in a furtive swipe and hated that, too. Nakedness became exposure in a blink; the corners of the room felt full of eyes.
She yanked the chemise down, tugging it smooth as if tidiness could unmake the sound she’d made. Under the linen the ache subsided to a sulky, pulsing throb that made her feel childish and wrong at once.
He had told her not to touch. He had said the first would be his to give.
She pressed both palms to her ribs and tried to borrow his steadiness, to conjure his voice—the one that made the world right-sized. Instead she heard only the wet little sounds and her own quick breath and the foolish thought that perhaps she was built incorrectly—that on their wedding night she would fail him, and he would know, and he would be kind, which felt somehow worse.
She curled onto her side and dragged the blankets up to her chin, small as she could make herself.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the dark, meaning the disobedience and the fear and the way her fingers had trembled. The house breathed. A log in the grate sighed and settled.
She tried to think of lovely things the way he’d asked: snow angels melting into one another; oranges glowing in the window; the exact way his mouth had said I love you, like a vow he hadn’t needed a priest to witness.
The ache didn’t vanish, but it gentled under the thought of his hand over hers, guiding. In that tender nowhere between waking and sleep, she promised what she would do when morning found them: bear the blush, say it plain. I tried. I couldn’t. Please show me.
She slept at last with her palm tucked to her chest as if she’d hidden a letter there—wanting and shame folded together, waiting for his hands to teach them how to open.
Morning made a mild liar of her.
She woke with wool at her chin, sunlight at the sill, and the soft ache of want banked low—like heat remembered from a closed stove. For a brave half-minute, she believed in the promise of the night before—that she would tell him outright.
Then the room breathed. The house remembered it had servants. And her courage scuttled under the bed with the dust.
The tray was waiting in the east parlor—tea steaming, marmalade, those ridiculous quarters of toast—and he was already there, spectacles on, The Yorkshire Post open to the mill reports; The Times lay beneath, neatly folded. The sight of his hands made the whole of last night rise up inside her skin and look about, guilty as a child caught at a sweet-jar. She sat very straight, poured very carefully, and told herself very severely that she was composed.
The cup rattled once. She steadied it with both hands and pretended she’d meant to from the start.
“You’re quiet,” he observed—not unkindly, as if remarking on the weather.
“I’m trying not to spill,” she replied, cheerful as a shop window.
He took the seat across from her and watched with the patience of a man gentling a skittish mare—not suspicious. Attentive. The line between his brows threatened, then relented. He spoke of town deliveries, a telegram from the factory, a letter from the vicar about tomorrow. She nodded at the right places. Even smiled.
When he reached across the table to touch her fingers where they rested, the contact felt so right she nearly told him everything—how she had tried, how panic had leapt from nowhere, how the shame had filled the room like smoke.
His thumb found where her ring sat and rested there, reverent. The memory of his voice—Tonight you keep my rule, and I keep you—rang through her like the thin edge of a bell.
She shifted too quickly, laughed too lightly. He glanced up, measuring, but let the question pass. Of course he would. He was kind. The knowledge made her throat sting.
She behaved all morning with what she hoped resembled innocence.
She ate what he pressed upon her—for me, dove—and kept her gaze lowered when she felt the blush rise. In his study, she copied letters in his hand and kept her lines very straight and her circles small, because neatness was easier than truth.
When he came to stand behind her chair to correct a slope in the R, his fingers closed lightly over hers—teacher’s touch, husband’s promise—and she went hot to the roots of her hair. He felt the jolt through their joined hands and eased off at once, mistaking it, mercifully, for the nerves any bride must feel the day before vows.
If he teased her, he did it gently: a kiss at her crown that brushed instead of pressed; a low good girl when she finished a page without blotting. The praise landed like a hand on her head—heavy, kind, unbearable.
It made her want to cry and confess and be kissed, in that exact order.
Instead, she lifted the blotting paper and said something sensible about ink.
Twice, he almost asked. She felt it—the change in his breath, the shape of her name setting in his mouth.
Twice, he decided against it and spoke of coal deliveries and wreaths instead.
She tried to be grateful. And was.
And also wanted to shake him until the questions fell out of his pockets so she wouldn’t have to take responsibility for emptying her own.
She wondered if he would be disappointed when he learned her bravery had broken on the edge of herself.
She wondered if there would be correction for disobedience, the kind he had once promised in a voice that wrapped around her wrist—not cruel, only waiting.
The thought worked both heat and fear into her at once, and she rubbed her knuckles as if the memory had left a mark.
She nearly blurted an apology over parsnips at midday—I tried and I failed and I am afraid you will punish me for it—but Rose came in with coal and the dog put his head in her lap.
Guilt made her very dutiful. When he asked—softly—that she take another bite, she obeyed so quickly he smiled without meaning to and called her sweetheart the way men do when the world is sensible.
The tenderness sank into her like a stone dropped into water and kept sinking.
“Tomorrow will be easy,” he said later, wholly sure, settling the cuff at her wrist as though it needed setting.
She heard: I will see to you.
She nodded as one nods to a physician and prayed the patient in her didn’t show through the wife.
Once—because the old reflex got the better of her and because she couldn’t find a sentence that didn’t cost—she said the foolish thing she hated:
“I’ll be good.”
He flinched like a man brushing a hot grate. Then steadied her wrist with his thumb, as if to smooth what she’d just put into the air.
“You are,” he said—quiet, absolute.
And the absolution nearly undid her.
She bit the inside of her cheek and decided—again—to tell him after dusk, when the house grew honest and the corridors stopped listening.
By late afternoon, she had worked herself into such careful order that her head ached with it.
She walked with him through the east corridor while the windows turned blue and the snow made the gardens look magical.
She thought: When we are alone after dinner, I will say it plain. I tried. I couldn’t. Please show me.
That was when Hux found them. His step was brisk, his mouth composed into the kind of politeness she had learned to dread.
“Expect guests tonight,” he said, adjusting his cuffs like the decision had been ordained by God and trains alike. “The kitchen is prepared. A feast. Beds aired.”
Ben’s head came up from the memorandum he’d been pretending to read at the console table. “They aren’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow.”
“I am not speaking of those guests,” Hux replied, with the tiniest gleam that never quite reached his eyes.
Ben stilled. That little muscle in his jaw—the one Rey watched without meaning to—moved. “You didn’t.”
“I did,” Hux said, and had the audacity to look pleased with himself. “You cannot go into a marriage without your brothers. I will not allow it.”
“They are not—” Ben began, then cut himself off. “How many.”
“Enough to rattle the silver,” Hux said. “Do not worry. I told them to be on their best behavior and to make a good impression for your new lady.”
Rey’s breath made a fog upon the cold windowpanes. Brothers. She didn’t know the shape of that word for Ben; only that it came wrapped in mud and khaki and a grief he wore like an old injury. “Shall I speak to the staff about the table?” she asked, to be useful, to be brave.
“If you like,” Hux said, already turning. “They will be here within the hour.”
Ben’s hand found the edge of the console and stayed there. He did not look at Rey; he looked at the snow. “You should not have done this,” he told Hux, low and even.
“And yet,” Hux said, and left with his ledger tucked like a sword under his arm.
Rey reached for Ben’s sleeve then, the broad wool warm from his body. “Will it be… good?” She hated that she sounded like a girl at a schoolroom window, asking about a storm.
His mouth softened at her hand. “It will be noisy,” he said. “And survivable.” A beat, then softer, to her alone: “I am sorry you must meet them all at once.”
“I am not,” Rey said, surprising them both. “I would like to know the men who knew you before me.”
He looked at her properly then. Whatever moved through his eyes was unwieldy; a tenderness with teeth. “Very well,” he said, and the corner of his mouth tipped. “Let us feed the wolves.”
They came with the wind.
Hooves struck sparks off the frozen stones; a whistle from the porter at the gate; a bark from Chewie that shook the carved wreaths upon the doors. The lamps along the drive made halos in the blowing snow. Rey stood with Ben in the entrance hall while the footmen danced a quick, efficient ballet of cloaks and trunks. She had chosen a jeweled dark-green gown: candle-caught, more rooted than bright. When the door swung wide, cold rushed in with laughter.
The first was tall and loud, his grin as chipped as the incisor that flashed when he saw Ben. Victor caught Ben by the shoulder and thumped him in a way that would have knocked a smaller man flat. “Christ, you look like a lord,” he crowed. “They’ve polished you.”
“They’ve tried,” Ben said dryly, and endured the thump, the quick fierce clasp that was a hug in every language men refused to speak.
Behind Victor came a woman whose entrance parted the hall like a knife through silk. Her gown was dark black and jeweled—finer than anything Rey had seen in Yorkshire—and fitted so close it looked stitched onto the body, a tea-time scandal from Paris. A little feathered hat perched prettily; her hair was a deep red the candlelight loved, her skin warmly tanned, her eyes a green so bright it felt almost impossible in winter. Sultry, yes—nearly dangerous—but the look she gave Rey was welcoming enough to soften the edge.
She went first to Ben as if they were already acquainted, leaning in for the Parisian kisses. He stepped back a fraction—courteous, not unkind—catching her hands and bowing over them instead. The deflection was subtle; the discomfort obvious to anyone watching him as closely as Rey did.
Victor, delighted, drew the woman toward Rey. “My love—this is Rey. Rey, this is Tava.”
“Enchantée,” Tava said, Paris tucked into her mouth. She pressed a kiss to one of Rey’s cheeks and then the other, light and quick, and Rey found herself smiling simply because it felt like being welcomed. “I have heard so much of you—from Ben’s letters to Victor. You arrive on every page.”
“I hope what you heard was kind,” Rey managed.
“Worse,” Tava confided, eyes bright. “Adoring.”
The word thrummed through Rey.
Tava’s gaze flicked over Rey’s bodice and sleeves with the fast, gentle appraisal of a dressmaker. “Were the dresses to your liking?” she asked, almost offhand—and Rey blinked, caught off guard.
“The… from Paris?” Rey said. “They fit as if they knew me.”
Tava’s mouth tipped. “Ben wrote to Victor about his engagement. I sent what I would have wanted, had I been coming north to marry a lord.” A teasing glance at Ben. “He asked very nicely.”
Heat rose in Rey’s chest, sudden and soft. So that was why she had found the finer things tucked away in the wardrobe on her first night—silks and trims no shop in town could have sold her. She looked at Ben; he only adjusted his cuff and studied the floorboards as if they were a problem to be solved.
More men followed, each different as the stones that paved the moor road—all Englishmen who’d served with Ben. Ricardo—Cardo—brought a London platform’s bustle still clinging to his coat; he smelled faintly of coal smoke and could not keep his hands still, flicking a pocket match open and shut like a nervous habit. Asher was quiet as snowfall, a steady pair of eyes and a voice made for night watches. Kerrick had a scar across his knuckles that looked like it ought to have a story and did not offer one. Alec, lean and keen-eyed, wore his cap at an angle like he’d forgotten how to stand at ease—every glance an inventory, every silence a map. And then the great hulking Trudge, whose Christian name no one seemed inclined to use or recall; gentle as his size was not, he handed Rey a parcel wrapped in brown paper and too many knots.
“For me?” she said, touched beyond sense.
“From London,” Trudge rumbled, flushing under his winter whiskers. “Thought as how you might like sweets.”
Inside she found sugared violets and almonds in their coats of white, a little box of candied orange, a ribbon she suspected Tava had tied to make the whole thing look Parisian. Emotion pricked her uselessly behind the breastbone. “I do,” Rey said. “Very much.”
Ben stood half-turned to his men, half to her, as if unsure which world required his back. The lines of his face eased by degrees as the talking filled the hall; some inner brace unlatched and let breath through. When Victor called him something that made the footmen studiously deaf, Ben’s mouth—Rey’s mouth—betrayed itself into a smile.
“Dining room,” Hux said crisply, materializing like a summons. “Shoes wiped. Cloaks hung. Hands washed. We are not animals.”
They were very nearly animals, but they were charming ones.
The table gleamed. Candles shone upon crystal and bone china. The kitchen had turned itself out like a miracle—roast beef high and blushing, Yorkshire puddings that rose like proud hats, pots of horseradish that set the eyes to watering, parsnips glazed to caramel, a Christmas pudding waiting in its boiled cloth. There was claret and a good brown ale, and something French that Tava pronounced with a purr and that made Cardo pronounce himself in love with England. Chewie made a hopeful circuit and laid his head upon Rey’s knee with the weight of a small anvil until Ben snapped his name and the dog, offended, slunk to the hearth with a sigh.
Stories began as bread does: passed hand to hand until everyone had a piece. The campaign came up in fragments—miserable coffee; boots with soles like paper; a particular officer whose moustache had been so grand it seemed designed to gather dust. They spoke around it, through it; the way men tell the truth sideways so it stings less. Someone mentioned Tai, and the air thinned.
“To Tai,” Victor said, standing a little unsteadily with his glass. “Who taught me cards and never took my money.”
“To Tai,” Asher echoed, not standing, because he did not need the height to make it real.
Alec’s jaw set; he didn’t drink so much as absorb the burn. “Who kept count when the days blurred.”
Ben rose last. He did not look at Rey; he looked at the flame in his glass a long time, as if it might give him leave. “To Tai,” he said, and his voice had gone rough in the way it did when the past pried his mouth open. “Who deserved to come home.”
They drank. Tai was only a garden memory to Rey, but grief knew its kin and took a quiet chair at the table. She touched Ben’s knee under the cloth, just a brush of fingers. His hand found hers and held—not the crush of public gallantry, but a private touch.
Cardo, perhaps feeling the weight and wanting air, struck a match with a flourish and, with the quick wickedness of a street conjuror, lit a splash of brandy upon the back of a spoon. Blue fire walked the metal. Rey startled, a small sound escaping her; Ben’s thumb moved at once over the inside of her wrist in a soothing stroke, and she was absurdly grateful for how immediate he was when she flinched. Cardo made the flame dance, then die, and looked around for applause. Tava gave him a sultry little golf clap. Hux, from the far end of the table, said in his thin voice, “If you set my table on fire, I’ll draft a bill for your burial.”
Laughter rose, grateful for something easy to hold.
Rey discovered she liked feeding men. It was noisy, yes, and there were crumbs where there shouldn’t be and a great deal of impossible cutlery that no one, not even Hux, could quite keep straight. But it warmed her to carve and pass and be passed back. She liked seeing Ben in the middle of a pack of wolves who, for all their teeth, deferred to him without thinking. She liked watching him ease in increments—as if he were thawing beside the roast—and then catch himself, a flick of that jaw, a quick scan of faces as if he feared what they might say if he were careless.
Rey leaned toward Ben and said, soft so it wouldn’t be a test, “I did not realize you were keeping so many friends from me.”
“That is a kind way to put it,” he said, wry as a blade, and kissed the edge of her knuckles.
The parlor had folded into comfort—lamps turned low, holly breathing green in the sconces, the hearth gone from roar to steady glow. Hux had arranged the seating like a campaign: a settee by the fire, two wing chairs flanking it, a pair of slipper chairs angled for talk, a low table glimmering with brandy and a dish of candied peel. Rey sat at one end of the settee, skirts drawn to make room; Ben took the place at her side. Chewie snored at their feet with the obstinacy of a boulder. Tava made a throne of the nearest slipper chair, one bare foot tucked beneath her; Victor sprawled at its side on a rug cushion he’d commandeered.
“Paris!” Victor boomed, as if the word itself could unstopper the decanter. “We dragged him to the Moulin Rouge—dragged, I tell you—plumes like cavalry standards, legs like—well.” He flapped a hand, grinning at the ceiling. “And what does our lord do? He asks for a bookshop.”
Tava laughed into her wrist. “Because he has taste.”
“Because he has ice where God meant to put sin,” Victor corrected, delighted with himself. “I said: ‘Ben, look—red doors!’ And he said: ‘Have you any Flaubert?’”
“Both of which can be indecent,” Ricardo observed, lighting a match with a conjuror’s flick and then making a little blue flame walk along his fingers until Hux’s cough killed the trick mid-step.
Ben’s mouth did the smallest, unwilling thing. Rey, who watched him more than was seemly, felt the warmth of it like a hand behind her ribs. His palm rested along the settee’s carved arm; his thumb idled once against the wood when Victor’s story turned lewder for his own amusement and then, mercifully, back to mischief.
“Tell her,” Victor urged the room at large, rolling onto one elbow. “Tell her what he was like before he went and got himself subdued.”
The subtle shift was so small Rey might have missed it—the way the air thinned, the way Ben’s stillness changed temperature. She felt it, the way one feels a draught a room would rather you didn’t notice. “Victor,” Ben said, very calmly, the word laid down like a card.
Victor pretended not to hear. He angled a glance past Ben to Rey as if she were the audience and he the comic. “Oh, he had a temper,” he said, sing-song with drink, smug with the safety of old friendship. “Left hook like God’s own opinion. You should see it work.” His smile flashed, chipped and boyish. “It’s done a number or two.”
“Victor.” Ben didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. The little muscle in his jaw moved once, then held.
Rey’s fingers found the silk of her skirt and smoothed it uselessly. Something in her went very alert, trying to map what she did not yet know.
“Come now,” Victor coaxed, pushing himself up to sit. He swayed, found his balance on an easy grin, and got to his feet because men like Victor always stood for their worst ideas. “You should have seen him then,” he told Rey, stepping closer to where Ben sat. “We could hardly pull him off a man—” He caught himself, hiccuped a laugh that wasn’t one, and patted Ben’s cheek with the fondness of an idiot. “But look at you now. Subdued. A gentleman. Domestic.”
Ben caught Victor’s wrist—precise, unyielding—before the second pat could land. Stopping the motion the way a rider takes a bit between finger and thumb and says: enough.
“Do not,” Ben said, low and dangerous.
Victor blinked, then took the warning as a toy. “Don’t worry, friend,” he said, and tipped his head, slanting that sideways glance at Rey again as if she had asked to be included. “Plenty of men here to drag you off me if you start seeing red. Besides—” and here he grinned, unbearable, “—I haven’t stolen anything. You can check my pockets.”
Ben stood.
Rey felt the force of it from the settee; the air seemed to jerk. He was on Victor in three steps—no lunge, just brutal economy—fist in the man’s lapel, a twist at the wrist he’d caught, and then the solid, sick sound of back to mantel. The decanter chimed; a glass rattled to its saucer; Victor made a startled “oh—” that turned into a choked laugh, the kind that said he’d poked the bear and loved the moment he realized it too late.
Chairs scraped. Alec rose, quiet and ready. Chewie barked, nails scrambling on the rug, the deep warning in him making the portraits look down.
“Lord Solo,” Hux said from his post by the hearth—General’s voice, but frayed with long practice. “That will do.” It had the flavor of oh God, not again.
Ben didn’t look at Hux. He was very close to Victor, sleeves neat, mouth grim, eyes gone far. Not cold. Away—like a door inside him had opened and the corridor behind it had weather.
“Ben,” Rey said.
It was barely a thread of sound—soft, more breath than voice. But it ran to him as if the house had been built to carry only that voice. His grip tightened once—the last flicker of the thing that had him—then loosened. He stepped back by inches, as if wading up out of water. He released Victor’s wrist; he smoothed the crushed worsted at the lapel with humiliating care.
Tava was already up. She slid between them with Parisian efficiency and took Victor by the ear with two elegant fingers, the way one lifts a boy from a sweet-jar. “Apologize to your friend,” she said, the purr gone from her mouth. “In his own home, Victor? Shame.”
Victor, eyes bright and a little wild, tried a grin that didn’t fit. “Sorry, your lordship,” he muttered, halfway sincere, muddled by claret. “Only teasing.”
“You weren’t,” Tava said, giving the ear a neat little twist that made him wince. “And the only reason you know a thing about his left hook is because you’ve used it for shelter your whole life—picking at men twice your size until he hauls you out of the gutter you chose.” She flicked him a look that could cut silk. “Say it properly.”
Victor glanced at Ben—really looked—and nodded, sobering. “I’m sorry,” he said again, to Ben and then, unexpectedly, to Rey. “Mouth before mind.”
Ben’s breath came once, measured. He turned—not to the room, not to Hux—to Rey. “Forgive me,” he said, quiet and unadorned. “My house keeps its ghosts too near the fire.”
He sat back beside her, the settee dipping under his weight. He kissed her brow—careful, almost formal. She did not flinch, but she disliked, fiercely, how swiftly it had happened—how a joke had become a wall and how easily he’d found the strength to build it. His hand found hers; the pressure was not reassurance so much as anchorage, as if he needed the line more than she did. She let him have it. Her palm was steady; her pulse was not.
Tava snapped her fan once and reclaimed her chair with the air of restoring order on a battlefield. “Mon Dieu,” she declared, eyes glittering. “There isn’t a gentleman in this room—only animals in very good coats.” She tipped Rey a look that was wicked and almost kind. “Do not worry, darling. I will muzzle mine.”
Victor—contrition already losing to his natural idiocy—perked. “Are you not an animal yourself, madame?”
“Certainly not,” Tava said, settling back into her chair like a cat reclaiming a sun patch. “I am the one with the leash.”
Laughter came on a tide—relieved, a little breathless. The room remembered how to be warm. Ben’s hand stayed over Rey’s, a quiet weight; his thumb traced one slow stroke, permission to breathe.
“Careful, Tava,” Cardo drawled from the hearth, mischief bright in the low light. “If you corrupt her, Lord Solo will toss you into the snow before morning.”
“Hush,” Tava said, amused as sin. She crossed her long ankles, smoke ribboning up from her cigarette. “She’ll be quite corrupted tomorrow night anyway—by the way he looks at her when he thinks no one sees.”
Heat climbed Rey’s throat so fast her ears stung. She made a helpless sound, half-laugh, half-protest, and covered her face like a girl at the footlights. Beside her, Ben’s hand tightened on the settee’s carved arm and then eased—a commander remembering this was not a yard.
“Tava,” he warned.
“What?” Tava cooed, wholly unrepentant. “I am a friend to romance.” Her gaze slid to Rey, back to Ben, wicked and almost kind. “I know a photographer in Montmartre who would make very pretty studies of your English jewel. On a chaise, a kiss of rouge, hair turned to silk by kisses. Nothing vulgar. You would appreciate it.”
“Enough,” Ben said—teeth in the word without snapping. “Speak of yourself all you please. Leave her out of your Paris.”
Rey dropped her hands. Her cheeks burned; her spine held. “I’ve a mouth,” she said, prim and perilous. “If there are photographs of me, I shall decide why.”
Delighted oohs skirled around the room like schoolboys who’d seen a governess wink. Victor slapped the rug with his palm; Alec grinned until his bad tooth looked rakish; Trudge’s laugh rumbled up from somewhere geological.
“Not innocent,” Kerrick observed, dead as a firing squad. “Inexperienced.”
“Which is curable,” Asher added mildly, and somehow made it a blessing.
Ben pinched the bridge of his nose with the doomed dignity of a man outnumbered by merriment. “Gentlemen.”
“Forgive me,” Tava murmured to Rey, conspiratorial beneath the lacquer. “I am scandalous by trade. It spills when I am warm.”
“I don’t mind,” Rey said—and shocked herself by meaning it. She tipped her chin, small and regal. “Apparently I’ll be corrupted by the way he looks at me.”
Victor howled. “Christ, Ben. She has teeth.”
Ben’s hand slid to Rey’s shoulder, thumb grazing once—there and good—without making a show of it. “She always has.”
“Then stop pretending we don’t see you bare yours,” Tava teased, softening the blow by blowing him a kiss he refused to catch. “You look at her like a man who’s found a church that won’t turn him out.”
Rey felt it land low and dangerous and sweet. Ben went still, then exhaled; a flicker touched his mouth he didn’t share with anyone but her.
Cardo snapped open his silver case like a magician about to release a dove. “Rey, for courage? Kif. From Tangier—takes the frost out of a man.”
Ben’s hand appeared, two fingers turning the offer aside before she had to. “Not for her.”
”I like my head,” Rey said serenely, and sipped her tea as proof.
“Smart girl,” Asher murmured, finishing his first glass at last.
Tava tapped ash into a shell-shaped dish and smiled in a way that made the portraits reconsider their morals. “Darling, if ever you want a proper scandal, send a letter ahead. We’ll tie your hair with ribbon and teach the camera to be very devout. A locket-sized sin.”
Hux watched the fire over his tumbler. “If any locket-sized sins cross my inventory,” he said without looking up, “I resign.”
“Saint Hux,” Alec sighed. “Keeper of grams and virtue.”
Victor had already knocked over one harmless story and was winding up another, eyes bright, hands painting the air. “Picture it,” he declared, too loud for the room, too pleased with himself to notice Ben go a shade still. “Venice, a night so wet the canals climbed the steps to kiss your boots. Lanterns like orange moons. We ducked off the Rialto where a violin was playing and the girls wore ribbons—rot and roses, the whole city.”
Laughter rustled—Tava’s a purr, Ricardo’s a bark. Rey’s fingers tightened on the arm of the settee. Ben hadn’t moved; only that little muscle in his jaw began its patient grind.
Victor leaned in, reveling. “Our lord here, the prude of the Adriatic—wouldn’t set foot over the threshold. And then some man puts his hand where it shouldn’t be, and before I could say mamma mia, our Ben had him flat to the bricks by the throat, speaking the prettiest Italian I’ve ever heard—le mani giù, signore—as if he might pray the man into manners.”
Ben’s mouth did not change. His thumb, on the glass, tapped once and went still.
Tava rolled her eyes, already rising. “Here we go again,” she said, wicked and protective at once. She caught Victor by the collar before he could add the punchline he thought he was owed. “Enough Venetian catechism for one evening, darling. You have told the story twice and grown handsomer each time. It is a lie.”
“It is not,” Victor protested, grinning, already pliant as she tugged. “He choked the fellow until he promised to—”
“Victor.” Tava’s tone sharpened like a sweet knife. She looked at Ben, saw what Rey saw—the blanking in his eyes, the carefulness—and turned the blade.
“Come,” Tava decreed, wicked. “Bed. You’ll be horse-whipped at dawn.”
Victor blinked up at her, eyes bright as a boy’s. “At dawn?” He stretched like a cat and grinned at the ceiling. “We’ve the whole night before us, madame.”
Tava swatted him with her fan; he yelped and kissed it.
Ben, long-suffering and entirely amused now that the room had righted itself, didn’t look away from his glass. “Crop’s by the front door,” he said, too mild to be innocent.
A scandalized chorus rose—Hux’s cough like a sabre; Ricardo’s delighted oh! Kerrick pushed off the mantel, disappeared, and returned holding the thing aloft like a relic: black leather, neatly oiled, loop gleaming.
“Your instrument, madame.” He bowed so gravely the room broke.
Tava actually considered the flex with a deft wrist and smiled until the banisters blushed. Victor, drunk and doomed, lifted both hands like a sinner greeting the noose.
“Mercy!” he laughed, climbing to his feet. “Save me from the Frenchwoman with the whip!”
“No one is saving you,” Asher said mildly, and even Chewie huffed in agreement.
Tava curtsied to Rey—perfectly polite, perfectly outrageous—hooked her free hand into Victor’s collar, and towed her prize toward the stairs with that Parisian sway that made the portraits avert their eyes. Victor sent one last pleading look over his shoulder. Ben saluted him with his glass in a soldier’s farewell that promised precisely no aid.
The door breathed shut on their laughter. The house exhaled.
Rey, who had never in her life watched a woman march a man to bed as if leading him to chapel, turned her face up to Ben. “Why on earth would she actually take it?”
His ears went faintly, beautifully pink. He set his glass down with unusual care. “Because,” he said, dry as the moor wind, “I have no wish to fill your head with whatever wickedness is presently occurring in that guest room.”
“Wickedness,” she repeated, intrigued in a way that made his mouth twitch.
“Spectacular wickedness,” he amended, resigned. “Remind Rose in the morning to burn those sheets.”
“Burn them?”
“With tongs,” he said gravely. “And a bell, book, and candle.”
She bit her lip against a grin and leaned into his side, warm with scandal and affection. The muscle at his jaw had stilled; his hand on her knee remained, anchoring and asked-for. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m simply sparing my fiancée an education she does not need tonight.”
A whisper, almost an apology to the air: “Another time.”
Her lashes lowered; she didn’t dare an answer. Some small instinct made her shrink into the quiet—the same one that had her smoothing sheets in the dark and pretending her hands had never trembled. It was easier to look meek than to betray the flush that threatened to rise again, the memory of linen and shame still ghosting her skin.
He heard his own words, went pink, and found his severity. “Not a word more on it—not tonight, not in my house, and not within earshot of a vicar.”
She nodded—obedient, composed, the picture of innocence—and then, despite herself, the corner of her mouth betrayed her, the smallest spark.
He groaned, defeated. “Bed. Now. Before you set the tables blushing.”
They rose with the room still soft around them: Asher murmuring something low to Kerrick, Ricardo showing Chewie how a coin vanished, Hux tallying damages with a pencil that might have been a sword. In the corridor the house fell back into its hush; the lamps made little islands on polished floor, and the windows wore the moon like watered silk.
He took her hand because he always did when the halls were quiet, tucking it into the crook of his arm, palm warm against the formal steel of his waistcoat.
At her door he stopped. He looked down at her, that rough gentleness back in his mouth.
“I love you,” he said, as if the words ought to be said here too, not only under snow or mistletoe. It still sounded new in him—warmed, tested, set again.
She went soft under it; she always would. “I love you,” she returned, steady now, not hushed at all.
His hand lifted—hesitated—then cupped the side of her face with careful possession. He leaned in as if the house might fine him for it and kissed her once, slow enough to count. He could have left her with that; he meant to. But the question had been knocking at her ribs since Victor’s laugh had turned into something else, since that little muscle in Ben’s jaw had learned a different lesson.
“What did Victor mean,” she asked, because there was no other way to be with him, “about Venice. About your temper. About… checking pockets.” A beat. “About the things you don’t say.”
The change in him was small and total. Not distance—he did not step away—but the air cooled, as if a door had opened on a corridor he kept barred. Shame and iron moved through his eyes like old companions taking their posts.
“I should not have put my hands on a man in front of you,” he said. The words were even; the shame sat like ash on his tongue. “It was ugly. It was beneath this house. I—hate that you saw it.”
“I wasn’t afraid of you,” she said, and found it was true; the fear had another shape. “I was afraid of not knowing you. Of the speed of it. How quickly you were… somewhere I couldn’t follow.”
He breathed, once—quiet and hurt. “Who I am with you is not who I was down there.”
“Then who were you?” The question came out softer than she meant, which made it land harder. “And how do I live beside a door I cannot open?”
A shadow crossed his mouth that wasn’t anger so much as the ache that comes before it. “Rey.” Low; warning himself more than her. “This week has me strung like wire. You as well.” His jaw tightened, loosened. “The nerves are getting to both of us.”
“They are.” She hated how much relief that admission gave her. It made her braver. “But nerves don’t put your hand at a man’s throat.”
“No,” he said, and the iron left his voice; only the honesty stayed. “Ghosts do. And I will not invite them up here, to your door, on the night before I marry you.” He lifted his hands and framed her face as if apology could be a touch. “Forgive me. Not for the anger—I won’t pretend I don’t have it—but for letting you see it turned loose.”
Her chin tipped a fraction—defense and surrender both. “I don’t want you polite at me. I want you true.”
“In time,” he said, rough with promise. “Ask me in daylight. Ask me when the house is bright and there are oranges on the table and the snow looks like blessing instead of silence. I will give you the pocket and Venice and the temper. Not tonight. I won’t let old demons make a chair at our table.”
She held his wrists, felt the thud of his pulse under her fingers, steadying both of them. “You promise.”
“I keep what I promise.” His thumb traced the light along her cheekbone, reverent despite the strain. “Let it rest for now. Dream of lovely things, dove. Do you hear me? Fir and oranges. The way the snow made you laugh. The sound you make when I kiss you under cursed shrubbery.” A ghost of humor touched his mouth; the shame didn’t leave, but it stood down.
She almost smiled; he bent and stole the almost into a real one.
“Sleep,” he murmured against her mouth, the words drifting into a smile of his own. “Because you will not get much rest tomorrow night.”
Heat sparked under her skin so fast it felt like a secret catching fire—and, with it, the small, humiliating memory of her own hand beneath the covers. The way shame had rushed up and turned wanting into wrong. For an instant her face tried to show it. She smoothed it away—smoothed herself the way one calms a dress over stays—tucking the worry deep where it wouldn’t rise to her eyes. She could tell him tomorrow, when his hands were there to make sense of what hers could not. Not now. Not with his mouth soft and the night still holy.
“Sinful,” she said, pretending to scold to save herself.
“Devoted,” he corrected, kissing her brow as if it were a rite. He stepped back before he could contradict himself with his hands. “Goodnight, Mrs.-Almost-Solo.”
“Goodnight, my lord,” she returned, wicked and obedient, and hid the tremor by biting the inside of her cheek, folding the worry like a handkerchief and tucking it under her ribs for morning.
From somewhere down the corridor came a sharp crack—clean as a pistol but followed by laughter.
“Mercy, mon chéri!” Victor howled, the plea echoing off the paneling.
Tava’s giggle followed, warm as sin. “Encore.”
Rey’s mouth fell open; the giggle burst out of her before she could swallow it. Ben closed his eyes, then rolled them with the long-suffering of a man whose house had acquired Paris for the night.
“Try to get some rest,” he said dryly.
She bit her lip to keep from laughing again and nodded, eyes bright, as the ordinary quiet of the hall returned—except, of course, for one last distant snap and a delighted French oath that sent her to bed grinning.