The Kiss of Deception (21 page)

The songs were finished, and Berdi gave thanks for each item on the platters, all the foods that the Remnant had found in abundance when they were delivered to a new land, and once each food was blessed, we were all invited to eat.

The room went from reverent whispers to festive chatter. The meal was eaten with fingers only, following tradition, but Berdi did break with custom by bringing out one of her blackberry wines and pouring everyone a small glass. I sipped the dark purple liquid and felt its sweetness warm my chest. I turned to Rafe, who was watching me. I boldly looked back as I slowly nibbled a piece of the silky dark pigeon meat and then leisurely licked my greasy fingers, never taking my eyes from him.

Rafe swallowed, though he hadn’t eaten anything yet. He scooped up a handful of pine nuts and leaned back to pop them in his mouth. One fell from his hand to the table, and I reached out and put it in my mouth. I blinked slowly, pulling out every trick I had seen Gwyneth use—and then some. He took another sip of wine and pulled on his collar, his chest rising in a deep breath, and then suddenly the icy curtain fell again. He looked away and began a conversation with Berdi.

My resentment surged. Maybe I didn’t know how to flirt. Or maybe I was just flirting with the
wrong
person. I looked at Gwyneth across from me. She tilted her head toward Kaden. I turned and engaged him in chatter. We talked about the procession, the sacraments, and the games that would begin tomorrow. I noticed our earnest attention to each other set Rafe on edge. His own conversation with Berdi became stilted, and his fingers tapped on the table. I leaned closer to Kaden and asked which games he would participate in tomorrow.

“I’m not really sure.” His eyes narrowed, a question lurking behind them. He glanced at my hand resting on the table in front of him, invading his space, and he leaned closer. “Is there one I should try?”

“I’ve heard a lot of excitement about the log wrestling, but maybe you shouldn’t—” I reached up and laid my hand on his shoulder. “How’s your shoulder since I bandaged it?” Rafe turned his head toward us, halting his conversation with Berdi.

“My shoulder is fine,” Kaden answered. “You nursed it well.”

Rafe pushed back his chair. “Thank you, Berdi, for—”

Fire shot through my temples. I knew what he was doing. One of his quick cold exits. I cut him off, jumping up before he could, and threw my napkin on the table. “I’m not so hungry after all. Excuse me!”

Kaden tried to get up to follow, but Pauline grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. “You can’t leave yet, Kaden. I wanted to ask you…”

I didn’t hear the rest of her words. I was already out the door, charging for our cottage, humiliated, my frustrations doubling back in searing fury. I heard Rafe on my heels.

“Lia! Where are you going?”

“A bath!” I yelled. “I need a good cold bath!”

“It was rude of you to leave dinner so—”

I stopped and spun toward him, my rage so complete it was fortunate I didn’t have my knife strapped to my side.
“
Go away! Do you understand me? Go! Away! Now!
”
I whirled back, not waiting to see if he listened or not. My head throbbed. My nails dug into my palms. When I reached the cottage, I threw open the door. I grabbed soap and a towel from the wardrobe, whirled around, and slammed into Rafe.

I stepped back. “What’s the matter with you? You say one thing to me with your eyes and another with your actions! Every time I think we’ve connected, you stomp off! Every time I want to—” I fought back tears. My throat tightened. “Am I that repulsive to you?”

He stared at me, not answering, even though I stood there waiting for
something
, and I was struck with the horror of the truth. His jaw clenched. The silence was long and cruel. I wanted to die. His eyes were cold and accusing. “It’s not as simple as—”

I couldn’t stand any more of his evasive platitudes. “Go!” I yelled. “Please! Go away! Permanently!” I pushed past him and took pleasure watching him stumble against the bed rail. I charged on toward the creek.

I heard noises, half scream, half animal growl, foreign even to my ears, though they were coming from my own throat. He still followed. I turned on the trail to face him, spitting out my words.

“Why in the gods’ names are you tormenting me? What do you care that I left? You started to leave first!”

His chest heaved, but his words cut icy and even. “I was only leaving because you looked like you were occupied. Are you planning to take Kaden as another lover?”

He may as well have punched me in the gut, my breath was so completely taken away. I looked at him, my mouth open, still trying to comprehend his words. “
Another lover?
”

“I saw you,” he said, his eyes piercing me. “Your tryst in the woods. I think you called him Walther.”

It took several seconds for me to even understand what he was talking about. When I finally did, a blinding black cloud whirled behind my eyes. “
You stupid, stupid oaf!
” I screeched. “Walther is my
brother!
” I shoved him with the flats of both hands, and he reeled back.

I fled toward the creek. This time there were no footsteps behind me. No demands that I stop. Nothing. I felt ill, as if the greasy pigeon was batting its way back up from my stomach.
A lover.

He’d said it with complete contempt. Had he been spying on me? Did he see what he wanted to see and nothing else? What he had expected of me? I retraced every step of my reunion with Walther, wondering how it could have been misconstrued. It couldn’t, unless you were looking for something unseemly. I had run to Walther. I called his name. I hugged him, kissed his cheeks, laughed and whirled in joy with him, and that was all.

Except that it was a secretive meeting, deep in the woods.

When I reached the creek, I planted myself on a boulder and rubbed my ankle. It throbbed from my careless stomping.

What had I done? My throat twisted into a painful knot. Rafe only saw me as a fickle, dallying maid who played with a multitude of inn guests. I closed my eyes and swallowed, trying to force the ache away.

I would own up to my mistake, and I had made a perfectly glorious one. I had presumed too much. Rafe was a guest of the inn. I was a maid who worked there. And that was all. I thought of the terrible scene in the dining room. My shameless flirting with Kaden, and everything I had said to Rafe. Heat flushed my face. How could I have made such a mistake?

I slid from the rock to the ground, hugging my knees and staring at the creek. I had no interest in cold or hot baths anymore. I only wanted to crawl into a bed where I could sleep forever and pretend today had never happened. I thought about getting up, walking to the cottage, and melting into the mattress, but instead my eyes stayed locked on the creek as I thought of Rafe, his face, his eyes, his warmth, his disdain, his vile presumptions.

I had thought he was different. Everything about him seemed different, every way that he made me feel. I’d thought we had some sort of special connection. I was obviously so very wrong.

The sparkling color of the creek dimmed to shadowy gray as daylight receded. I knew it was time to go before Pauline worried about where I was and came looking for me, but my legs were too tired to carry me. I heard a noise, a soft shuffling. I turned my head toward the path, wondering if Pauline had already hunted me down, but it wasn’t her. It was Rafe.

I closed my eyes and took a long pained breath.
Please leave.
I couldn’t deal with him anymore. I opened my eyes. He was still there, a bottle in one hand, a small basket in the other. He stood tall and still and so beautifully and irritatingly perfect. I looked at him blankly, betraying no emotion.
Leave.

He took a step closer. I shook my head, and he stopped. “You were right, Lia,” he said quietly.

I remained silent.

“When we first met, you called me an ill-mannered boor.” He shifted from one foot to the other, pausing to look at the ground, an awkward worried expression crossing his face. He looked back up. “I’m everything you could ever call me, and more. Including stupid oaf. Maybe especially that.” He walked closer.

I shook my head again, wanting him to stop. He didn’t. I got to my feet, grimacing as I put weight on my ankle. “Rafe,” I said quietly, “just go away. It’s all a big mistake—”

“Please. Let me get this out while I still have the courage to say it.” The troubled crease deepened between his brows. “My life’s complicated, Lia. There are so many things I can’t explain to you. Things you wouldn’t even want to know. But there’s one thing you could never call me.” He set the bottle and basket down on a patch of grass. “The one thing you can never call me is repulsed by you.”

I swallowed. He closed what gap was left between us, and I had to lift my chin to see him. He looked down at me. “Because ever since that first day I met you, I’ve gone to sleep every single night thinking about you, and every morning when I wake, my first thoughts are of you.” He stepped impossibly closer and lifted his hands, cupping my face, his touch so gentle it was barely there. “When I’m not with you, I wonder where you are. I wonder what you’re doing. I think about how much I want to touch you. I want to feel your skin, your hair, run every dark strand through my fingers. I want to hold you, your hands, your chin.” His face drew nearer, and I felt his breath on my skin. “I want to pull you close and never let you go,” he whispered.

We stood there, every second an eternity, and slowly our lips met, warm, gentle, his mouth soft against mine, his breaths becoming mine, and then just as slowly, the perfect moment paused, and our lips parted again.

He pulled back far enough to look at me, his hands sliding from my face to my hair, his fingers tangling in it. My own hands reached up, slipping behind his head. I pulled him to me, our lips scarcely touching, taking the tingle and warmth of each other in, and then our mouths pressed together again.

“Lia?”

We heard Pauline’s distant worried call and moved away from each other. I wiped my lips, adjusting my shirt, and saw her coming around the path. Rafe and I stood like awkward wooden soldiers. Pauline stopped short when she saw us. “I’m sorry. It was getting dark, and when I didn’t find you in the cottage—”

“We were just walking back,” Rafe answered. We looked at each other, and he sent me a message with his eyes. It only lasted a brief second, but it was a full, knowing look that said everything I had felt and imagined about us was true.

He stooped and grabbed the basket and bottle, handing them to me. “I thought your appetite might return.”

I nodded. Yes, it seemed it already had.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I leaned forward in the tub as Pauline scrubbed my back, savoring the slippery luxury of the bath oils on my skin and the hot water soothing my bruised muscles. Pauline dropped the sponge in the water in front of me, splashing my face.

“Come back to earth, Lia,” she called.

“It’s not every day one has a first kiss,” I said.

“May I remind you that it wasn’t your first kiss?”

“It felt like it was. It was the first one that mattered.”

She had told me as we were drawing water for our baths that everyone could hear us yelling from the dining room, so Berdi and Gwyneth had started another round of songs to drown out our words, but Pauline had heard me shout
go away
, so she never thought she’d end up interrupting a kiss. She’d already apologized several times, but I told her that nothing could take away from the moment.

She lifted a pitcher of warm rosewater. “Now?”

I stood and she let the fragrant water trickle over my head and down my body into the tub. I wrapped myself in a towel and stepped out, still reliving every moment, especially that last brief exchange looking into each other’s eyes.

“A farmer,” I sighed. “Isn’t that romantic?”

“Yes,” Pauline agreed.

“So much more genuine than a stuffy old prince.” I smiled. He worked the land.
He made things grow.
“Pauline? When did you—” And then I remembered it wasn’t a subject I should broach with her.

“When did I what?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

She sat on the end of the bed, rubbing oil onto her freshly bathed ankles. She appeared to have forgotten my half-said question, but after a moment she asked, “When did I know I had fallen in love with Mikael?”

I sat down across from her. “Yes.”

She sighed, pulling her knees up and hugging them. “It was early spring. I had seen Mikael several times in the village. He always had plenty of girls around him, so I never thought he’d noticed me. But he had. One day as I walked by, I felt his gaze on me, even though I didn’t look his way. Every time I went by after that, he stopped, ignoring the attentions of those around him, and he watched me until I passed, and then one day—” I watched her eyes looking at the opposite wall but seeing something else. Seeing Mikael. “I was on my way to the dressmaker, and he suddenly fell in step beside me. I was so nervous I just looked straight ahead. He didn’t say anything, just walked beside me, and when we were almost at the shop, he said, ‘I’m Mikael.’ I started to reply, and he stopped me. He said, ‘You don’t have to tell me who you are. I already know. You’re the most exquisite creature the gods ever created.’”

“And that’s when you knew you loved him?”

She laughed. “Oh, no. What soldier doesn’t have a posy of sweet words at the ready?” She sighed and shook her head. “No, it was two weeks later, when he’d exhausted every posy at his disposal, and he seemed so dejected, and he looked at me. Just looked at me.” Her eyes glistened. “And then he whispered my name in the sweetest, weakest, most honest voice, ‘
Pauline
.’ That’s all, just my name,
Pauline.
That’s when I knew. He had nothing left, but he wasn’t giving up.” She smiled, her expression dreamy, and resumed massaging oil into her foot and ankle.

Was it possible that Pauline and Mikael had shared something true and real, or had Mikael just drawn from a new well of tricks? Whichever it was, he had gone back to his old ways and warmed his lap now with a fresh supply of girls, forgetting Pauline and tossing aside whatever they had. But that didn’t make her love for
him
any less true.