“You make me so happy,” she whispered against his lips.
At her words, he pulled back. His eyes were dazed and heavy-lidded, and she could see the faintest suggestion of his smile in the dark.
When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “I thought I might die just now, you know. My brain went all white.”
She laughed a little.
He dimpled back at her, but his eyes—dark blue in the shadows—looked serious. “Do you know what I thought, Ruby-love? On the point of death?”
“Tell me.”
He let his head fall back. His lashes dropped. “I thought it would be a good death.” His arm stretched across her body, holding her against him. “A good life. Because you existed in the world, and I got to see it.”
Gently, he stroked the damp expanse of her back. She turned her cheek to press against his heartbeat. She was trembling, she realized. Not fear, precisely, but longing. She wanted what she had when she’d taken him into her body: a joining that could not be undone.
For as long as she dared, let herself believe that she could have this. That this moment—this dark sweet pleasure, this night of slow fire and stars—need never end. That his hand on her back could shelter her from the rest of the world.
Eventually, she slept. They both did, holding fast to each other, until dawn broke the horizon and lightened the sky behind the glass.
They woke to discover that the princess was missing.
Chapter 23
They had assembled in the kitchen: Ruby and Archer, Alice, Signor Neri, Gerry and Lamentation, Eugénie and Wall.
No Princess Serafina. No Zenobia. And no Tamsin.
“They went back down to St. Petroc’s,” Alice said. Her voice was shaking, and she held Vanessa against her chest despite the way the puppy’s nails raked across her muslin morning dress. “Last night. After supper. And they did not come back.”
“I was not aware that she had gone.” Neri was wringing his hands. His face was drawn, his thin mouth stiff with misery. “She did not tell me that she meant to go.”
“I was outside with Vanessa. It was dark—I heard them arguing behind the kitchen. The princess was ordering Tamsin back inside, and Tamsin kept telling her not to, erm, be so stupid. And then Zenobia started to bark and they set off together.” Alice’s blue-green eyes seemed huge beneath the black fringe of her lashes. “I should have waited up for them. I assumed they would be back—I never dreamed—”
Ruby touched Alice’s shoulder. “It’s all right. It’s not your fault.”
“It is,” Alice said miserably. “I should have told someone right away that they’d gone, only I didn’t wish to anger them. I was afraid that if... that if I told anyone, they would see it as a betrayal.”
“Alice,” Ruby murmured.
But before she could say anything else, Archer cut in. “You raised the alarm as soon as you realized they were gone. You’ve done well. We’ll find them.”
Alice lifted her lashes to fix upon him, and Ruby realized that she had done so as well. All of them had.
If he said he could turn the ocean into wine, Ruby thought, everyone here would believe him. And not because of his charm or his assurance in himself or his exquisite smile. But because he had proven, again and again, that he was a man worthy of their trust.
“What do we do, Cap?” Lamentation asked.
Archer took a breath. He looked like a pirate in truth: his face dark with his morning whiskers, his jacket thrown over a shirt open at the neck. His chest gleamed gold beneath the white cotton—gold but for the places touched with white scars. “First,” he said, “we go down to the village and see what we can learn.”
* * *
They went to the apothecary, the milliner, the colorman’s stall: all the shops the princess had frequented. They divided their forces and looked in alleys and carts, checked the harbor, talked to everyone they could find. Ruby found it almost impossibly difficult to engage strangers in conversation that way—to interrogate them without explicitly mentioning the Monfalcone princess.
They reunited in Floss Enys’s public room. Neri was too fretful to eat or drink; he merely paced in circles around their table, polishing his spectacles and straightening his velvet cuffs.
“I’m sorry,” Floss said. “I’ve been asking around for you all day—quiet-like. Subtle, as you said.” She broke off, and her eyes darted to the edge of the room. “Benji!” she shouted. “Don’t you let that cat eat from your plate again—curseyou, Benji Woon, to the pits of hell—”
She strode over, her apron flapping at her legs.
