Page 80 of The Thirteenth Count

Fern curtsied. Soft. Empty. The glove went back on.

“Charming,” the High said, at a volume made for two. He stepped past her, close enough that she caught vellum and blood beneath the wine on his breath, and his eyes dropped once more to the black dress. “A bold choice tonight, Miss Silverbell. Bold choices have such long memories in this house.” He was already turning away, already smiling at his court. “But we are family now, are we not? In a manner of speaking. And family—” he lifted his glass to the room, “—celebrates together.”

He let the applause crest and settle.

“A demonstration deserves a proper close,” the High announced. “My son has been a diligent tutor; it seems only fitting the court judge the whole of his work. Cassius.” He did not look back at the High Table. He didn’t need to. “A dance, I think. Show us the finished product.”

The quartet was already lifting their instruments. Of course they were. All of it—the tray, the dust, the music—had been arranged before she’d ever climbed the stairs in her mother’s dress. The evening was a working of his, as blood-fed as any rune, and she had been placed in its pattern like a grain of silver.

Cassius came down from the dais.

He crossed the floor unhurried, black in a house of blue, and stopped in front of her and bowed, exactly correct, exactly cold, and held out his hand.

“Miss Silverbell.”

“Lord Blackwell.”

She put her gloved hand in his. His fingers closed. Through two layers of silk, the heat of him reached her anyway. She hated that it could.

The music began—something old and slow and counted in threes—and his other hand settled at her waist as though it had been trained where to rest, which, she supposed, it had. They turned into the first figure and the ballroom revolved around them, gold and blue and watching.

“Frame,” he murmured. “You’re collapsing your left side.”

“Forgive me, Lord Blackwell. I was recently exsanguinated for an audience.”

“Barely a thimble.” But his thumb shifted, an eighth of an inch, steadying the small of her back like a hand under a tipping glass. “Chin.”

She lifted her chin. Over his shoulder: the High Table. Lady Blackwell in deep crimson, watching them with her needlewoman’s stillness. Marcus, slumped and smirking, mouthing something to a neighbor. Lysander in Blackwell blue, expression mild, gaze sharp, tipping his glass a lazy quarter-inch in Fern’s direction as though toasting a jest only the two of them had heard.

The figures turned them, and the High Table swept away, and there was only Cassius’ collar, his jaw, the faint scent of cedar and smoke.

“You’re not wearing the blue,” he said.

“No.”

The room went still.

“Good,” said Cassius Blackwell, so quietly the word barely survived the trip.

Careless, she told herself. He’s being careless. And still she gathered the word up like a dropped coin.

“Her name was Sasha,” Fern said.

His hand tightened once at her waist. “I know.”

“She’d been here since Green Spring. She checked the glass twice before she poured, every time. She⁠—”

“I know, Miss Silverbell.” The name landed like a door closing, and she understood that it was not coldness but cover. His face above her was serene, faintly bored, a tutor enduring a duty, and his hand at her waist was gripping like a man holding the edge of something. “Not here,” he breathed. “You can hate me for it at the eighth bell. Frame.”

She held her frame. They turned through the last figures with the whole gold room wheeling around them, two people in black moving correctly through a machine made of music, and Fern fixed her gaze on his collar and committed treason in the privacy of her own chest.

The music slowed toward its close. His hand drew her through the final turn, and for a moment, a step, less, they were nearer than the dance required, near enough that when he bowed over her hand, she felt his breath cross her knuckles.

“Fern,” he said.

Only that. Almost inaudible, shaped more than spoken, her name given back to her like something he’d been keeping safe in his mouth all evening.

Then the music ended, and he straightened, and his face was the heir’s face, and the ballroom was applauding again.