“You’ve forgotten what a great deal of work it is to be so handsome and charming.”
I look pointedly at his hair. “Perhaps you could show me the equation and methodology behind that one. I should very much like to understand how much effort you’ve put into it.”
“It truly was essential when I came to the city without knowing a soul. I had to get invitations to dinner and dances and social engagements somehow. I used to put more stock in its effectiveness, until a certain someone proved resistant.”
“Why was it so important? You don’t seem to enjoy any of your social engagements.”
“I was looking for someone. If no one is willing to talk to you, you can’t get much information. Then I caught wind of Lord Downpike’s warmongering, and that overtook everything else. I keep a constant watch on the moods of the important families—whether or not they would support aggression against the continental countries and the Hallin line.”
“So your charm was a tool.”
“Effective enough, until you. You know, I’ve been reading more of your father’s book in an effort to better understand where you come from.”
“But he’s wrong on—”
“No, no, meaning everything he says I dismiss entirely. But there’s one chapter about the Melenese language I found fascinating. Is it true you have fifteen different words for love?” He leans forward, his lips a challenge, like he wants me to ask why he would bring such a thing up.
I refuse to rise to his bait. “Yes. It’s much clearer, really. There’s a word for the first blush of youthful love free of desire. For longing to be with someone so much you would rather throw yourself to the tides than be without them. For the stale but steady relationship between faithful members of an arranged marriage. For how to feel about someone you thought was everything but ended up never feeling the same way about you. For the poison left over when you love someone and it ends so badly you cannot release the feelings. For the love between a mother and her children, a father and his children, a grandmother and her progeny, the love between two dear friends, the love that is the first building block of a lifelong affair. There’s even a word for a love so devastating nothing before or after is ever seen the same.”
“Beautiful,” he says. “But I counted only eleven.”
“I’m not as fluent in Melenese as I’d like. Alben took even our ability to love from us.”
“That is a tragedy beyond expression,” he says, and at first I think he is teasing but there is no curve to his lips, no dance to his eyes. The air between us is charged with something unquantifiable either in math or magic. I can’t look away and I don’t want to. But I remind myself that we are unchaperoned, and I am a lady, and there are rules to this sort of thing.
I slap myself in the forehead, startling Finn and Sir Bird, who flaps away to the other end of the room. “What is it?” Finn asks.
“I’ve just now remembered something very important.”
“Yes?”
“I’m not an Alben woman.”
He frowns, confused. “You’d forgotten that?”
“A great many people have tried to make me, from the time I was small.” I smile, admiring the line of his jaw and the curve of his mouth, and let myself feel whatever I want to feel, even if I cannot remember the exact word for it.
He narrows his eyes. “Is everything all right?”
I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him full on the mouth.
Twenty-six
AS SOON AS MY LIPS FIND HIS, HE BACKS AWAY, nearly falling off his chair. “I didn’t make you do that!” His eyes are wide with panic. “Please believe me, I really have not been using any charm spells, and I would never take advantage of—”
I put my finger—from the hand without the glove—over his mouth and trace the soft curve of his bottom lip. “Please stop talking.” Hooking the collar of his shirt, I pull him toward me and kiss him again.
This time he does not break away, cradling the back of my head with his hand, his thumb stroking down the side of my neck. His lips are soft and warm and fit mine like the answer to an equation I didn’t know I was trying to solve.
Fate is a choice, and I cannot imagine any other choice making me as weightlessly happy as I am in this moment.
We break apart and I beam, unable to contain the giddy warmth spreading inside me. Finn looks the least composed I have ever seen him, a sloppy smile on his face. “That was—you are—”
“You know what they say about Melenese women. We are given to great passion and must be trained in the Alben ways of modesty and decorum.”
“I would much rather be trained in your ways.”
“I suspect you’d be a quick study.”