Steelhands - Jaida Jones [36]
He was as sweet as a hand-raised dove when he wanted to be, though at first I’d thought of him more like a hawk, wild and strange and ready to turn on you and claw your eyes out at any moment. There was also his nose, hooked like all those of the other members of his father’s family, but I’d never thought of that as a flaw, really. It did somehow make him look handsome.
“You’ll have to leave so I can get changed,” I told him, clasping the green set to my chest. I knew he’d approve of the choice, since he was always going on and on about how the right greens made my eyes look like something more than the gray we both knew they really were. It didn’t seem all that important to me, since they were going on under my skirts, but I knew it was the kind of thing that’d put him at ease.
“I’ll turn around,” Toverre said, facing the fireplace. “But if you think I’m going back out into that hall to wait, you’ve taken leave of your senses.”
“I didn’t actually think that,” I admitted.
“I know,” Toverre replied. “You’re always very clever.”
“Thank you,” I said as sincerely as I knew how. “It’s a wonderful present.”
Toverre’s shoulders stiffened and I imagined him scowling fiercely, though since he’d turned to stare into the fire, I couldn’t actually see his face.
“You’re welcome,” he said after a moment’s silence. “Just hurry up and put them on. I need to know right away if something doesn’t fit.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. Lingering would’ve only meant spending more time half-naked in my room, which was feeling colder and colder day by day, what with the absence of the plate in the chimney. I was going to have to do something about that, maybe try to keep the fire lit all the time, but that didn’t seem too practical. And I could always put the plate back—now that it was clear to me why someone had put it up the chimney in the first place.
I was probably the only girl in Thremedon tonight getting undressed with her fiancé in the room and thinking about fireplaces.
It hadn’t always been like this between Toverre and me. I’d liked him fine while we were growing up, of course, and when I’d heard about the arrangement our families had made I’d counted myself pretty lucky, given my other options. Sure, Toverre was as mad as a badger in winter and not as slow-moving, but he was kind and we got along and he didn’t have a nose like a fat red tomato like Ermengilde’s fiancé had. And he’d never once tried to look down my blouse. I hadn’t known the reasons for that then, of course, but he seemed pretty ideal to me at the time.
On top of that, it was funny to get mud on him and watch him run home crying.
One night, during one of Da’s dinner parties when all the young ones were left to their own devices, I’d even gotten undressed for Toverre on my own inspiration, with him watching. I’d stolen some of the wine from the cellar and dressed myself in one of my mam’s old corsets because I already knew it made me look particularly grown-up—which really meant that it pushed my breasts together and up in a way that men seemed to find near impossible to resist. We were going to be married, I’d reasoned, and Toverre had said he was all right with it—even implied he was looking forward to the ceremony, that rotten liar—but the look on his face after I’d unlaced my top told me everything I ever needed to know.
We did spend the night together after that, though I’m sure it wasn’t what either of us had been expecting. Toverre lay with his head on my chest instead, and told me all about the boy his mother had hired to work in the stables.
I’d liked him, too, because he knew how to handle the horses and didn’t boast about it.
In the morning, I’d realized I wasn’t heartbroken, just extremely embarrassed, and Toverre and I had finally decided that in order for our friendship to continue as it was, we’d never speak about that night again. Also, I wouldn’t throw mud at him anymore. I’d agreed to the latter only because we were too old for it by that point. All in all, making that big mistake of mine had made us closer, if not