Page 67 of Mortdale

His gaze moved back and forth over my face. “You’re also pretty pleasant when you don’t open your mouth just to lie to me.”

“You married a woman with many excessive and outrageous hobbies. You have the return address. Send me back. I’m sure they’ll expeditiously ship your lordship a replacement in tip-top shape.”

“Sort of getting attached to all the lying and the scheming. Might even have a preference for it now.”

My cheeks burned. “I told you. It’s best for you if you don’t know anything. I cannot make you an accomplice.”

He pulled the black chiffon scarf off my head, bunching it in his fist and pocketing it. I thought he was done there, but he combed back every strand of hair covering my face, tucking it all behind my ears like I was a toddler.

I blinked fast. “What are you doing?”

“Who and what do you keep hiding from?” he asked.

I clung tight to the handle of my parasol. “I just hate being stared at, that’s all.”

“No one will be staring at you.”

“Trust me, they all stare.” They all saw the grey hair, the pale brows, the pale lashes, the less-pigmented patches of my skin; they all saw those first before they saw me. And they drew assumptions without even wanting to know me. Sick. Diseased. Contagious. It’s because of the curse. And it wasn’t because of the freaking curse. I wished they didn’t associate something that was the most unique part of me with the worst thing that had happened to me.

“Then let them. What are you scared they will find?”

“I’m scared they will stare long enough until they find me hideous and consequently farcical. And yes, I am as vain as they come,” I said, blowing some hair out of my eyes. “And I don’t want them to laugh in my face. I can bear almost anything, just not when they laugh.”

His gloved fingers came under my chin and his thumb skimmed my jaw. “You’re the least hideous thing I have ever seen.”

Heat gathered on my cheeks and the tip of my ears. “Well, keep going,” I said, tapping the tip of my finger to the cotton I’d rolled up my nostril to make sure it was still there.

He suddenly turned around and sighed before facing me again a few moments later. “You’re not hideous,” he repeated, in an absolutely serious, crosspatch way.

“Wow,” I gaped, giving him a thumbs up. It truly took much grump and gloom to be this way; the effort wasn’t lost on me. “You’re really good at this.”

His bottom lip rolled between his teeth. “Quit attempting to be funny.”

“I am funny. No attempting involved. You should try laughing at my jokes sometimes. I’ve been dying to see your fangs.” Immediately, I glanced at the skies in an attempt to find the sun because I couldn’t have said that out loud without the possibility of a heat stroke.

Alas, there was no sun.

He tipped his head back, and I could see the tip of his tongue resting against his front teeth. It must have been the sun again because I could almost swear he smiled a little.

It had to be the sun.

Or the curse. The curse for sure. I was probably losing my bearings already. Struck by bouts of dementia. An alienist could take one look at me and prescribe me respite by the sea.

The entire sermon paused when we entered the Basilica. Everyone shifted on the dark wooden pews in our direction, doing a lot of plain, good old staring. Except, they didn’t seem quite so sure who to stare at because their eyeballs were playing spahiristike between me and my husband. At the head of the aisle stood the exarch, wearing a deep red-coloured chasuble with a white stole around his neck. Looking every bit the vampire I was sure he was. Was it an exarch audition condition? Pasty white skin, blood-red lips, ink-black hair, huge fangs visible with every sneer? In fact, he resembled those vampires from drawings and caricatures so much, it looked like he was cross-dressing as a vampire.

Logan led us to the very front pews while Henry and Arthur sat right behind us. The latter had not even sent a look in my direction since I’d come down this morning. He’d resisted every provocation, joke and lie I’d thrown his way through breakfast. And I dreaded it was because of my husband—his close friend since childhood.

The exarch began his sermon again, glaring in our direction through the whole three first paragraphs.

I leaned in Logan’s ear, my lungs filling with the cold scent of bergamot, vetiver, and clove smoke. “What’s his problem?”

“You’re staring at it,” my husband said, folding his arms across his chest.

Damn him. “I wasn’t staring at you. More like glancing.” I cleared my throat. “Did you steal his firstborn or something like that?”

“Something like that.”

“Maybe you should give it back. He looks pretty cross about it.” I ducked down in the pew a little, hiding behind his ridiculously huge muscled arm. “I think he’s going to throw that heavy censer at us.”