Page 45 of A Taste for the Peculiar

TWENTY-FOUR

Avirin

Days later, Cascade is on her way. Everyone else at Mothry Cottage seems almost as excited as Avirin, whistling while they bustle through preparations. Selbie is in particularly high spirits, chatting excitedly when Avirin joins her to pick vegetables in the garden. When Cascade finally arrives, she kisses everyone on both cheeks before she lifts Avirin’s chin.

“Would you look at that?” Cascade smirks knowingly toward Pye. “Married life agrees with you.”

Dinner is a delicious spread of Cascade’s favorite foods, salmagundi and celery à la crême and fried battered cardoons. It’s a magnificent arrangement, and Avirin is pleasantly surprised that everyone who works at the cottage joins them for the meal. Emory, the human woman whose quick stride Avirin noticed through her door. Marsyas, a satyr who pulls out his flute at the end of the final course. Chap, a young man intent on learning to handle the horses, no matter how many times they nip at him.

They all dine together while Cascade regales them with stories of the latest gossip from the city. Any rumors about Avirin’s transformation are conspicuously missing. Cascade must be censoring the more brutal news, but Avirin appreciates it all the same. It is far easier to put her concerns out of her mind in this room full of warmth and laughter.

After dinner, the foursome retires to the sitting room. Pye stokes the fire while Selbie pours the cider and settles onto the loveseat with Cascade. Avirin fidgets with her glass. As the woman of the house, she knows what she should be doing. She should perch on the edge of her chair, smile presentably, entertain her guest. Yet Cascade takes one look at her and waves her hand.

“Do not trouble yourself, Lady Riften.” She lights a cigar and takes a slow puff, letting the smoke linger in her mouth. “I know where to find everything in this house. I can attend to myself.”

Lady Riften. It’s the first time Avirin has been called that. It makes her feel strangely buoyant, and with a smile, she takes the chair opposite Pye and listens while he and Cascade reminisce about their childhood.

One glass turns to another. Before Avirin realizes it, the air in the room has grown cozy and lax. Her feet slip out of her shoes and curl up beneath her. Pye unties their cravat. Selbie drapes her legs over Cascade’s lap, and Cascade traces her fingers along Selbie’s knee.

Avirin can’t help but watch them murmuring to each other, their eyes locked and heads inclined. Never has she seen two people so comfortable together. She noticed it all throughout dinner; Selbie and Cascade passing dishes to each other without looking, their faces shifting into the same expressions, bodies moving with an innate awareness of the other. How can they be so in tune?

Is it their peculiarities?

The question shocks Avirin, and she almost stifles the thought, but she clings to it instead. By the ton’s standards, these two women should be saddled with shame, but Cascade and Selbie aren’t. They do not shove any part of themselves aside or linger in shadow; they sit in the center of the room with their love on full display.

Perhaps fully knowing oneself — fully embracing oneself — is what makes it possible. Without that, could they ever give the whole of themselves away? Could they ever truly know the depths of someone else?

Gooseflesh lifts on Avirin’s arm, and she realizes Pye is watching her from across the room. The attention makes her shiver.

“Are you cold, dear wife?”

The words are innocent enough, but everything Pye says is tinged with impishness. He’s toying with her, goading her, issuing some unspoken challenge. She wants to resist its power and give into it all at once.

Pye swirls the drink in their glass. “I can add more logs to the fire.” He rests his palm on one of his thighs. “Or you could join me.”

Her pulse thuds. No matter if they are husband and wife, they are among company. Two people sitting so closely would be unheard of…yet Selbie and Cascade have already done so. No one stormed the cottage to balk at their indecency. The world did not end.

Avirin doesn’t realize her body is moving until she’s already standing. Pye’s head tilts, hair slipping out of their eyes. Cascade and Selbie watch, mischievous and hungry.

Avirin tries to maintain her breathing as she crosses to Pye’s armchair. He looks up at her. his legs falling open in submission. It notches something tighter in her stomach. Joining him may have been her choice, but she has no doubt he knew what decision she’d make before she did. If she had denied him, he would have taken it in stride. Since the moment they met, there has always been a luscious certainty when Pye looks at her. How does he predict her? How does he maintain his poise, even when she tries to shake him?

He takes the glass from her hand and sets it beside his. She lowers herself to his lap, but her spine refuses to be anything but rigid, clinging to some ingrained sense of propriety.

Pye eases a warm hand up the back of her neck, his every motion fluid against her stiffness. “You can relax.”

She bites back a sound.

Their voice stays low and steady against her ear. “Give your weight to me. Sink back.”

Heat curls between her legs, fanned by Cascade and Selbie watching them. It feels like Avirin’s on display in some exquisite humiliation. Look how helpless she is for me. How pitiful. She doesn’t know why it spurs her desire. It should feel wrong, yet with Pye behind her, her mind melts. She forgets the rules she’s always been taught. She forgets everything she’s supposed to do, to say, to feel, and gives herself over to desire.

Cascade wets her lips. “Now, Pye…” Cascade mouths against Selbie’s jaw, but both women keep their eyes on Avirin. The couples are in a tantalizing tug-of-war, pulling their partners closer every time the other pair does. “Why did you request my presence so urgently?”

Pye whispers against Avirin’s ear “Should we tell them about our agreement?”

She shudders. The evening has slowly heated to a boiling point, and her hunger is fully awake now. It’s been almost three weeks since she last fed, and that craving makes her bold, the emptiness inside her growling like a starved animal. “He’s depriving me,” she says. “He won’t touch me.”

Selbie gasps.