Page 103 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

“The Tiendoms sometimes send my Order requests for Haelan assistance. May I take these with me?”

There was no scenario in which Osric would have said no. She was freezing his blood. Besides, she had just saved his life—again.

“They’re yours,” said Osric.

He placed both letters in a thick envelope and handed it to Fairhrim.

She visibly relaxed afterwards, even deigning to sit upon one of the chairs across from Osric’s desk. “If Wellesley was the Kentish queen’s lover, that would explain why he was helping her store the Pox.Andif we have her writing to the Agannor—well, I don’t think we could ask for more solid proof. You’re brilliant.”

“Iambrilliant,” said Osric modestly.

Fairhrim extracted something from the dressing gown’s pocket.

“Without all due ceremony,” she said, placing the thing—a shimmery white pouch—on Osric’s desk. “Circumstances are never quite right to give it to you, but I’d like you to have it.”

“For me?” blinked Osric.

“It’s what I came to drop off yesterday, before everything got so exceptionally derailed.”

“No one ever gives me things,” said Osric as he unfastened the pouch and opened the velvet box within.

“You’re hard to buy for. You’ve got everything. But—”

An elegant pocket watch, shaped like a heart, twinkled in Osric’s hands.

“But you told me once that you haven’t a heart, so I got you one. I had it made by my mother’s preferredmaître horloger. I thought gold would be your preference. I hope I was right. I had it customised a bit.It runs a quarter of an hour fast, to keep you from being late. And there’s a lunar calendar integrated into it.”

Delicately, confusedly, Osric held the thing as though, instead of a ticking pocket watch, she had given him her beating heart. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had given him a present.

“I know it’s just a trinket to you,” continued Fairhrim. “I know you can buy whatever you want. But consider it a thank-you, for the asylum—and now these letters—and many other things besides…”

She leaned over and pressed a kiss, light as a petal, to his cheek. Then she looked away, flustered. Fairhrim made a lovely picture when she was flustered.

Osric’s throat felt thickish. He cleared it. “Thank you.”

In her blush he found the small hurt of hope.

He wanted to say something deeper, graver, thanthank you. The pocket watch ticked against his palm, instants and aeons, a chronometry of longing. Tick, tock, tell her, don’t tell her. Tick, tock, yes, no. There is still time. It’s already too late. You must. You cannot.

“What’s down there?” asked Fairhrim.

Osric was jostled from the threshold. He looked where she pointed: rusted structures below the terrace. “What remains of Rosefell’s pleasure grounds. A fernery. An aviary. Hothouses—or what’s left of them, anyway.”

“Hothouses? May I see?”

“Now? You really ought to rest.”

“I always do what I ought,” said Fairhrim.

“I always do what I oughtn’t, and look where it gets me,” said Osric.

She gave him one of her almost smiles. “Is there a middle ground?”

“Shall we go see if we can find it?”

Osric extended his arm. Fairhrim reached for it. She thought it courtesy. It wasn’t. It was an excuse to touch her.

They exited Rosefell Hall and descended past the terrace through a little wood, among larks singing and brambles clinging. The pleasuregrounds were set in the valley below the house, down wide steps overgrown with mats of juniper.