Page 52 of A Taste for the Peculiar

The day she finally stops by Pye’s bedchamber, their control threatens to slip. It’s a completely innocent visit after dinner. Avirin lingers in the doorway and looks over his room. “Almost exactly as I pictured it.”

He chirps a laugh. No doubt she sees the open inkwell on his desk, the broken quill on the floor, the half-buttoned shirt hanging from the mirror. “I am, unfortunately, a servant to disorder.”

When she hums, her eyes land on his. “I’m certain we could find ways to make a bigger mess.”

A thousand images flash across his mind. Avirin, bent over the desk. Avirin, clutching at the curtains. Avirin, watching herself in the mirror. Avirin’s leg hooked over his shoulder, Avirin’s hair across his pillows, Avirin’s body draped in his sheets.

He doesn’t realize he’s moved closer until she looks up at him, her eyes as glossy as her lips. Pye wants to taste her. They want to bury their face between her legs. They reach for her waist and pull her into them, mouth seeking hers —

“My lady,” Emory sings down the corridor, “we’re starting a game of Quadrille!”

Both Pye and Avirin sigh against each other’s lips.

“I’ve asked her just to call me Avirin.” She smiles weakly. “But I did promise I would play.”

“Go,” Pye chuckles and unravels his hold on her. “I could stand to get this room, and my head, in order.”

When she steps away, her fingertips trail down his arm before she finally moves toward the sitting room.

Pye rests his head back against the doorframe before he locks himself in his room for an entire hour. He makes no progress on the mess in his room or his mind.

There is one other place in this cottage that Avirin has not visited. Since the two of them began spending their evenings together, Pye has not returned to it, either. It calls to him tonight when his head is filled with thoughts of her, an abundance of merry little sprites that keep him company.

In the fading light, Pye wanders down the hall and enters the studio. When he lights the oil lamp on the table, everything is as he left it. Stained rags hang from an easel beside a box filled with brushes. On the other side, a glass of murky water sits between crayons and blocks of paint.

Pye turns the easel toward them and picks up a pastel. It is as natural as breathing. Color fills the empty canvas. His fingers earn their stripes, greens and blues and grays blending together. He gets lost in it, smearing and shadowing and highlighting until a blurry picture takes full shape before him.

“I wondered what secrets this room held.”

When Pye turns, Avirin stands in the doorway. Outside, the sun is long gone, leaving them both shrouded in night.

Pye bows to invite her in. “Please, uncover them all.”

She eases the door shut, her eyes roving the supplies. “You’re an artist,” she says reverently, like she treasures this information. “I am glad to see you in your element.”

The corners of Pye’s lips turn up as he lengthens the wick of the oil lamp. “I hope we have many years to discover such things about each other.”

She gives them a meaningful look and steps closer, soaking up the picture before them like she wants to familiarize herself with every detail. On the canvas, a summer storm is rolling in, casting the hillside in a gray haze. In the distance, a cottage sits surrounded by a speckling of flowers. In the foreground, a willow tree blows in the wind, its branches parting to reveal a woman stretched beneath it. She lies in the grass, fingers tucked between the pages of a book. Her eyes are closed. Brown hair haloes her face alongside the horns sprouting from her head, her round cheek resting on her arm. She is calm. She is at peace.

“There are many places that I love,” Pye murmurs. “Places I like to visit. Places my mind wanders to in daydreams. It gladdens me to imagine you there with me.”

Avirin’s lips part.

Pye reaches behind her for their sketchbook. When they offer it to her, she tries to decipher their expression before she opens the cover. The first few pages are mundane — flowers from the garden, the orchard at sunrise — but then a woman’s profile appears. The sketch is rough and unfinished, but her face is full with an unimpressed knit between her brows. The next image of her is more refined, black eyes wide with surprise, her hand covering her mouth.

Soon, the sketchbook becomes only pictures of her. Of Avirin. She is in every corner of every page, her face repeated a hundred different times. One version of her rolls her eyes and tries to hide a smile. Another lowers her lashes and gasps. Still another looks up from beneath her wedding veil with horns framing her face.

“This is what Cascade meant,” Avirin breathes. “When she said…”

Oh, she looks just like the drawings!

Delicately, Avirin traces the pencil marks until a smear of lead colors her finger. Her eyes seem to glisten in the dim light as she looks over herself in miniature. “Do you remember our first lesson?” she asks suddenly. “When you lead me away from the promenade and into the alcove?”

Pye remembers it well. It was the first time they were alone together. The first time they almost kissed. The first time she revealed what she was and trusted him to keep her secret.

“You asked me to choose a word,” she continues. “A code. Something I could say if I wished for things to stop.”

“Honey.” Pye grins. She’d looked into the picnic basket and chosen the first thing she saw.