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I stared at him, my heart thundering. Of course, I am not a dolt in any sense; I had supposed he felt something for me and had only hoped he would keep it to himself. Forever. Not that a part of me didn’t wish for the opposite. But that was when I assumed his feelings in that respect were equivalent to what he felt for any of the nameless women who passed in and out of his bed. And why would I lower myself to that, when he and I already had something that was vastly more valuable?

But he was offering me his name?

Once, while following a trail of blue foxberries in the woods east of Novosibirsk, I had tripped over a root and gone tumbling end-over-end down the side of a gully, landing with a great splash in the little stream at the bottom. Luckily, I fell into a pile of sodden leaves trapped in a side channel by the current, and not upon the sharp rocks only inches to my left. But the breath was knocked out of me entirely, and I simply lay there aching from innumerable bruises for several minutes—and yet even then, I hadn’t been stunned like this.

He sighed. “Well, I don’t expect you to do anything with this information. I have grown rather used to pining, so it won’t put me out to keep at it, I suppose.”

“I would order you to do all sorts of terrible things,” I managed, though my voice sounded very far away.

“You seem to have a talent for that already.”

“I would have you accompany me on every field study,” I said. “I would have you rising at six and carrying my cameras and equipment everywhere. You would never escape a day of hard work again. And you would certainly have to retract all of the studies you faked.”

He glared at me. “Yes, you would do all that, wouldn’t you? Well then, instead, why don’t you just marry me?”

I said nothing for several minutes. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the pit-pat of snow upon the windows. “That’s a more sensible suggestion,” I said.

He burst out laughing. By the time he finished, he was wiping at his eyes. “Sensible, she says. Sensible.”

“Well, it is,” I snapped. “I didn’t say we would marry. But why would I want your name? I don’t wish to order you about like a servant. You may keep it, and your mad faerie logic, to yourself.”

“Very well,” he said. “Is that it, then? Your answer is no?”

“I didn’t say that,” I snapped, irritated and hopelessly flustered. I thought inanely that this sort of thing would never have happened with Leopold. Leopold had been predictable in every way, and as transparent as spring water. “I’m going to leave,” he would announce at a dinner party he wasn’t enjoying, and then he would. “I have stopped listening,” he would say to a longwinded colleague, and then go back to his book. I was aware that people found him peculiar because of this, but it suited me very well. A kiss would always be preceded by “I’m going to kiss you.” I don’t know why anyone would mind this—it’s very relaxing to know what other people are about to do. I suppose that’s why we got on so well. Of course, Wendell has as much in common with Leopold as a rock has with a rooster.

The fire was suddenly far too hot, so hot I’d nearly sweated through my shirt. “Well—I—how on earth am I supposed to answer?”

He threw his hands up in exasperation. “Do you want to marry me?”

“That’s—that’s beside the point.” A nonsensical reply, but it came the closest to expressing how I felt. I had never even considered marrying Wendell—why on earth would I? Wendell Bambleby! Certainly I’d imagined being with him in other ways, particularly since I’d grown used to having him around—travelling with him across the continent, no doubt arguing half the time; conducting research; scouring woodland and heath for lost doors to the faerie realms. And yes, I liked the prospect of being with him often, or even all the time, and felt a sort of hollowness fill me when I thought about us parting ways. But I couldn’t marry one of the Folk, particularly not a faerie king, even if he was Wendell.

“It’s the point in its entirety, you madwoman,” he said. “Do you not find me handsome? I can change my appearance to suit whatever direction your tastes run.”

“Oh, God.” I pressed my face into my hands. “You are not helping.”

I said nothing for a while, and he let me think without interruption. Part of the problem, I realized, was that I was not accustomed to thinking about him in such a way. And so I took his hand—tentatively, as one might reach for a ladle they thought might be hot. Then I lowered myself onto the flagstones by the fire so that we were next to each other, our knees touching.

“What are you doing?” he said, half hopeful and half alarmed. Well, I was glad that I’d unsettled him—served him right, after throwing all that at me out of nowhere.

“I am only conducting a test.”

He sighed. “Of course. I should have guessed you’d want to be bloodless about this.”

“I am not trying to be!”

“You’ve done nothing but talk at me since I told you I loved you.”

“Is that a problem?” For he hadn’t said it as if it were. “Were you expecting me to throw myself at you? Would you have then said a dozen pretty things about my eyes or hair?”

“No, it would have been, ‘Get off me, you imposter, and tell me what you did with Emily.’ ”

“All right, be quiet.” The bloody fire hissed and crackled away, and a bead of sweat trickled down my neck. Wanting to be through with this quickly, I leaned forward and kissed him.

Almost. I lost my nerve halfway there, somewhere around the moment I noticed he had a freckle next to his eye and wondered ridiculously if that was something he would remove if I asked it of him, and instead of a proper kiss, I merely brushed my lips against his. It was a shadow of a kiss, cool and insubstantial, and I almost wish I could be romantic and say it was somehow transformative, but in truth, I barely felt it. But then his eyes came open, and he smiled at me with such innocent happiness that my ridiculous heart gave a leap and would have answered him instantly, if it was the organ in charge of my decision-making.

“Choose whenever you wish,” he said. “No doubt you will first need to draw up a list of pros and cons, or perhaps a series of bar plots. If you like, I will help you organize them into categories.”

I cleared my throat. “It strikes me that this is all pointless speculation. You cannot marry me. I am not going to be left behind, pining for you, when you return to your kingdom. I have no time for pining.”