The next day, I made sure to check the front step before I woke Elodie. I felt only the heavy weight of inevitability when I opened the door and saw another package waiting there, wrapped and tied up neatly and addressed to me in that same familiar scrawl.
I brought it in and opened it carefully, holding my breath that the rustling of the paper wouldn't wake Elodie prematurely. The wrapping fell away to reveal an ornate teapot made of ceramic so fine it was nearly translucent, glazed with an intricate ironwork pattern and accented with bits of gold. Bundled up inside the teapot was a small paper sack that, upon opening, proved to be a tea blend that smelled of the same intoxicating spices that the cup he'd brought me the day before had. He'd also included a small jar of honey and a pot of cream sealed up with wax.
I kept the tea and its accompaniments for myself, a small indulgence, but packed the pot back up in its wrapping and set it aside, to sell at the market the next chance I had.
On market day, I bundled Bansi's gifts up with the rest of my wares, and Elodie and I hauled them down to the square as we always did. I left her in Corine's care with a hurried excuse, and made my way to the stall of a jeweler I was passing friends with.
He bought the watch from me, and a few other items, and gave me a considering look as he counted out my payment. "Where'd you get your hands on such fine things, then, Renad?" he asked, and gave me a conspiratorial wink. "You doing some after-hours work there in the Walk, are you? I wouldn't have taken you for the cutpurse type."
I could have bridled at the implication, but what was the point? I just sighed and pushed the whole lot closer to him. "I didn't steal them, Gustav. I came by them honestly."
He didn't believe me, but I didn't care. So long as he gave me a fair price for the goods, he could believe whatever he liked about where they'd come from. And the price he quoted me was more than fair -- it made my breath catch in my throat and my heart bounce against my ribs. It was more than I'd expected, more than I could have fathomed. If Bansi'd been there, I'd have told him he'd spent too much, far too much.
Just as well he wasn't. I clamped down on my awestruck horror and accepted a receipt from Gustav. No one carried that kind of coin on them, not in this part of the city. He promised he'd have it on hand at the shop if I came by, or he could send it by courier if I cared to wait a few days longer.
"That won't be necessary," I told him. "Sign it over to the school on Bridle Street, will you?"
His smile softened, then warmed. "That I will. You're a good man, Renad. A good father."
His praise brought heat to my cheeks, and I was sure it burned color there bright for all to see. I didn't feel like a good father most days. At best, I felt like a passable one. I was always keenly aware of all the ways in which I was lacking, all the opportunities I couldn't provide for Elodie because I hadn't the means or the status. But I did my best, and hoped it was enough, and she seemed to love me all the same.
But this, at least, I could provide. I could give her an education. I could give her a future.
"I'll send that note off straightaway, don't you worry," Gustav said, settling back and tucking my items away beneath his little makeshift table. "School starts soon. Can't have her enrolling late, can we?"
I thanked him, then bid him a good day. And the next day, another gift arrived on our doorstep, and I began my collection again.
Near two weeks passed like that, the only sign of Bansi in the parcels that appeared every morning as though left by ghosts, and the haunting reminder of him in the spiced tea I rationed out for myself, one precious cup at a time. I had almost stopped expecting him at the shop, had stopped stiffening every time the door rattled open expecting him to sweep in and demand my time and attention, so that when he did, I hadn't even glanced up from my accounting books, and was thoroughly unprepared.
"Ren! What are you doing?" He leaned over the counter, forearms braced across it, wagging his hips like a puppy with too much exuberance to be contained. "Whatever it is, it can wait. Come with me."
I looked up at him and smiled, false-bright. "Bansi, hello. It's good to see you, too. Oh, the past two weeks have been just fine for me, thanks for asking. How about you?"
Bansi's brows lifted. He laughed, deep and rich. Something glinted in his eye, and it certainly wasn't consternation at being so thoroughly chastened. "Do you really think so? That its good to see me?"
I sighed and leaned my head in my hand. "You're incorrigible."
"Tell you a secret?"
I raised a brow at him, but he just smiled at me until I caved and leaned forward as well, meeting him half way. His lips brushed my ear, his breath hot, as he whispered, "You like it."
I sat back. He was smirking, so damn pleased with himself. His smile drew an answering one from me. "Not so much as you do."
"Ah, well. That is true." He hooked my arm and drew me around to his side. "Come with me. Your bookkeeping will wait."
"My customers won't."
"I have another secret, if you want to hear."
I drew back and cocked my head, let the impish smile that I knew delighted him play about my mouth. "You're full of them today, aren't you?"
He caught me, one hand clasping mine while the other slid around my waist and drew me close. He nuzzled in against my throat as though he meant it for a prelude to a kiss. Heat grazed his earlobe, and it might have been his tongue, or could as easily have been my imagination. "Do you want to hear it?"
"Very well." I tipped my head back and gave him an indulgent smile. "Tell me."
Against my ear, he murmured, "Yes, they will."
It took me the space of a moment to realize what he meant, that he was still referring to my passing comment about the patience of my customers. I drew back again, and this time I meant it. I crossed my arms over my chest and gave him a flat look.
"Don't scowl at me like that. Just because you don't believe it doesn't mean it isn't true."
"It isn't true. Your flattery may be well-meant, but it will do me no favors. I've a business to run. Customers won't stop by if my doors are always closed when they do."
"Your customers would wait as long as you asked them to, and flock to your door the minute you hung your shingle back up."
I couldn't help but roll my eyes at his optimism. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't I?" He asked the question with a hardness to his voice that I was unaccustomed to hearing. He grabbed my arm and his fingers bit deep. He sought out my gaze so intently that I couldn't help but meet it, and once I did, it held me captive. "I spent months in here with you, I worked at your side every day. I spoke with your customers. I walked amongst them and asked their opinions, and listened when they spoke. I know how they feel about you. They come here because they trust you, as a businessman and a craftsman both. You don't see it because you don't ask, and you don't listen. You undervalue yourself, Ren. But I don't. And neither do they."
He meant the words to be encouraging, I knew, but they only upset me. It felt as though a weight pressing against my chest, forcing the air from my lungs, wringing tears from my eyes. I tightened my arms across my chest and fought them back, but they still made my voice wet and thick. "If that were true, I wouldn't be struggling. I wouldn't be drowning. If all that were true, my business would be successful, wouldn't it?"
A shadow passed across his gaze, clouding the confidence that had been there before. "I don't know," he said after a moment, and gestured as though lost. "I don't know your trade. But I do know business, and I know people. I know what I hear, what I've seen. I know what loyalty looks like. I make my living by trade, too, you know, I just have to travel a little farther to sell my goods."
I didn't like the direction this conversation seemed to be taking, didn't like fighting with him and hadn't the stamina for it today, so I just smiled at him, like I meant it, and said, "Not for long, though, right?"
His brows furrowed with a confused expression. "What do you mean?"
"Aren't you still planning to buy a house? You won't have to travel near so long from home to market, once you do."
The confusion vanished, wiped away beneath a brilliant smile. "Quite right." He pulled on my hand, drawing me with him. "Which brings me back to my original point."
I was already halfway across the shop, my boots scudding across the rough-hewn floorboards as he dragged me along. "What point was that?"
"Come with me, Ren. You'll see."
He was as impossible to stop as a storm cloud, and it had been a slow day anyway. I relented, shaking my head at my own foolishness, and let him usher me outside. He held my coat out as though he meant to help me into it, like a valet. I shook my head and teased him for it, but who was I to refuse a bit of refined treatment? I was already taking advantage of Bansi in so many other ways, this scarcely registered.
Once Bansi had his coat on as well, he led me through the town, back into the upper city. Some of my willingness to humor him fled as the cobbles turned to paving stones beneath our boots, and the buildings rose up grand and impressive to either side of us, until it seemed as though we walked through a canyon, and I felt small and unimportant.
"Where are we going?" I asked once the discomfort of it had worn me down too well to keep my tongue held any longer. "I rather think our last visit here was disastrous enough to last me a lifetime."
"Do you?" He slipped his arm about my waist and drew me against his side as we walked. "I thought it was quite productive."
I turned my head to stare at him. "You left shirtless and practically indecent."
His grin flashed. "Oh yes." His voice was practically a purr, full of self-satisfaction and remembered pleasure. "I remember."
I took a good, long look at him, how he strode down the street as though he owned it, and not even the memory of doing so half-clothed was enough to take the spring out of his step. "You have no shame at all, do you?"
"No," he said without even stopping to think. "I gave it up years back. It's a wretched vice, and terrible for the health."
I laughed, I couldn't not, bent double in the street with my hands braced against my knees. He waited for me, turning to watch me with a small smile flitting about the corners of his mouth, as though my mirth pleased him. When at last I had regained my composure, I straightened and wiped the tears from my eyes. "Only you," I told him, "would talk about shame as though it were some contagious disease."
"Isn't it?" He slung his arm around me again and we resumed walking. His hips and shoulders and sometimes his thigh brushed mine with every step. "Children aren't born with any sense of shame at all. We catch it from others, and suffer its ravages for life."
"That's very poetic, Ban. But don't think I didn't notice that you avoided the question." I stopped walking, grabbed onto the elbow of the arm he had around my waist. He kept going a few steps longer, letting it bring him around to face me, his hand on the other side of my waist now, standing close and looking down at me with his same enigmatic smile. "What are you bringing me here for?"
He slid his other hand along my jaw. When his eyes darkened and he bent down to me, I stiffened and turned my face away. "Ban…" I put an edge to my voice.
It didn't stop him, didn't even slow him. He turned my face back to him and skimmed his lips across mine.
Heat curled through my stomach, skittered out across my skin until every nerve ending was humming. I didn't realize I'd parted to his kiss until his tongue grazed against mine and I gasped, brought my hands up to grab onto his hair and hold him against me. He chuckled, low and sinful, and angled his head to adjust the fit of his mouth on mine until it was perfect, until he could coax me open even further, lick the taste of me off the insides of my lips, my teeth, the roof of my mouth. When my breath shuddered out of me, he swallowed it and pulled me closer.
"Ban." I tightened my hands in his hair and broke away, but I only went far enough to lean my brow against his. I couldn't catch my breath, but his didn't seem any steadier. "Not here. We're in the middle of the street."
He just nuzzled close, lips caressing my jaw, my throat. "I told you," he murmured as one hand stole inside my coat and traced fingertips along the small of my back. "I don't have any shame."
I shivered and leaned in against him. "I do."
His lips curved on my skin. "Keep me around long enough and I'll cure you of it."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
He straightened and looked down on me, smiling and warm. His thumb brushed over my mouth, pressed ever so slightly harder into the center of my lower lip until my breath caught, and his smile widened. "I'm taking you to see my house," he said in a whisper that should have belonged in the bedroom, spoken with only skin and sheets between us.
I was so distracted by the intimate tone of his voice that I nearly missed the words behind it. I drew back, shook my head to clear away the fog of desire. "What? Your house?"
He laughed, delighted, like a child. "Didn't I mention? I suppose I got distracted." He turned, at my side again, and resumed walking as though we'd never been interrupted, though I was still stumbling and half-dazed from the kiss. "I haven't been around so much the past few weeks—"
"You haven't been around at all the past few weeks, if you hadn't noticed."
He shot me a sidelong smile and continued." —because I've been very busy finalizing the purchase of my house."
I'd have stopped short if it hadn't been for Bansi's hand on my waist, his arm across my back, keeping me moving through automatic instinct. "Purchase? You bought it? Already?" I marveled and shook my head. "The first one?"
He laughed, low and husky and intimate. "Is there any other?"
"Bansi. You can't buy a house in two weeks." It had taken months to sort out the arrangements for the home I'd purchased for Elodie and me, with barristers involved and seemingly endless negotiation, and it had been a fairly straightforward transaction. I could only imagine how much more complicated things became when you were talking about homes the size and price of the ones Bansi had been looking at. It was a wonder anyone managed to buy a home in the upper city at all.
But Bansi just smiled and kept walking, guiding me along with him. "You can, as a matter of fact, if you know how to do it. It cost me a fair bit more, of course, but the expense was worth it. I don't like to drag things out."
"You bought a house," I said dully, but repeating it didn't help the concept make any more sense. "In two weeks."
"The last of my furniture should be arriving today. I wanted your opinion on where I should put a few things. You always had a better eye for that than I did."
I shot him a sidelong glance, frowning. "I did? Are you certain you're talking to the right person? I don't own a fraction of the things you do, and I haven't the faintest idea what to do with all the space you seem to require just to live. I'm hardly the person to ask."
His smile didn't waver, didn't dim. "Yes, Ren," he murmured. "I think I've a fair idea of who it is I'm talking to. And you've a better knack for it than you think. You don't have to have familiarity with something to be able to glance at it and know it looks wrong."
"Well," I said, nonplussed. "Don't be surprised if I end up crowding all your furniture into two rooms, and wondering what to do with all the ones left empty."
He squeezed my waist and guided me down a street that intersected with the one we were on, and there before us rose the grand, stately home I had toured two weeks before with Bansi. But now it belonged to him, and instead of empty halls and rooms, I could see his furniture through the drawn curtains, his trunks, a lamp someone had set carelessly in the windowsill that sent a pang through me. We had used to sit by it together, squeezed into a chair meant for one, my legs over his lap and a book spread open upon my knees, the both of us reading together by that lamp's flickering light and enjoying the opportunity to simply be close to one another.
I drew an unsteady breath. My lungs felt too small, my chest filled too full to accept even the smallest breath of air. I shouldn't have come. All this while, I had refused him, and this was why. I didn't want the reminders of how things had been between us. Those days were gone, and they couldn't return, but surrounded by all these things I knew near as well as he did, they felt closer than they ever had.
He led me inside and I went, stumbling, shaken. It looked like a mockery of the life I had known with him, things scattered about, half of them in boxes or trunks, those that were out left haphazardly in entirely the wrong place. I started putting order to it automatically, out of necessity, because the wrongness of everything here was like a pebble in a boot, a small irritant I couldn't ignore lest it develop to something far more damaging. There was a decorative tea set on top of a trunk that belonged on the mantle, so I put it there and tidied the arrangement of the cups and pot and sugar bowl. When I turned back around, Bansi was watching me, smiling at me. He was silent, but even so, I knew he was laughing at me.
I crossed my arms and hunched my shoulders, feeling small and vulnerable. "What?" I demanded, scowling. "You brought me here to help, didn't you?"
Some of the sharp edges on his grin dulled, leaving it softer and warmer. "I did at that." He crossed the room to me, braced his hands on my hips and then slid them around to the small of my back, drawing me in. His chin fit almost perfectly over my shoulder. The point of it was a little sharp, a little uncomfortable. The embrace itself was little better. "I knew you were the right person to ask."
"You've a hundred people in your family. At least half of them must be in town." I drew back. He slid his hands up to my shoulders, traced his thumb over the place where the collar of my shirt lay against the skin of my throat, absently drawing slow arcs across skin and cloth as though he didn't even realize he was doing it. "I'm surprised you didn't ask any of them over to help. You could have had everything moved and unpacked inside an hour."
His smile slipped away entirely. "Sure." He turned away, standing in profile with his head bent, running a thumbnail over the dented brass finishings of one of his trunks. "They'd have had everything here within an hour. And then they'd have spent the rest of the day squawking at me about what a terrible decision it was and how disappointed they are in me and what the news will do to my poor grandmother back home and how any troubles I have now all stem from the fact that I dishonored my vows to Riksa and—" He broke off, drawing a ragged breath that made his shoulders tense. He pressed his fingers against the trunk, hard enough to turn them grey and bloodless. "This is a good thing, this house. I want to be happy today. But I wouldn't be, if they were here."
I moved toward him slowly, a step at a time, until I was at his side, our shoulders brushing. I looked down at the wood grain on the top of his trunk, polished to a high shine. His hand was splayed across it, fingers spread wide and slightly curved, as though he were grasping for purchase, clinging like it was wreckage on a stormy sea, or a cliff whose edge he dangled from.
I spread my hand across the smooth, warm wood, close enough that the edge of our little fingers brushed. He gulped in air and shifted his hand, pressing closer, sliding his fingers over mine.
I looked at him, then. He was still in profile, still staring down at where we were barely touching as though that connection held some indecipherable meaning. With my other hand, I reached and touched the edge of his jaw, guided his face around toward mine. "Are you all right?" I asked him quietly.
He frowned a little, wrinkles gathering between his brows. I turned my hand over, spread my fingers so that his slipped into the spaces between like teeth in a gear. I grasped his hand, held it tight enough that his palm pressed flat to mine.
"I'm sorry," I said, still hushed, still uncertain. "Your family… I didn't realize they were giving you so much trouble."
The look he gave me, canted from the edge of his gaze, was dark, wry, more than a little bitter. "No. I know you didn't."
I looked down at our hands, joined together, clasped close. His knuckles were white where his fingers wrapped through mine. His grip was tight enough to edge toward painful. He always smiled, always made light, no matter what he was truly feeling. But I knew him well enough to find the signs he couldn't hide, the ones that told me he was hurting, despite the curve to his lips.
"Would you like to tell me about it?"
Surprise flashed across his expression, come in an instant and gone just as fast, swept away beneath another joyless smile, a careless shrug. He used the motion to shake his hand from mine, as though it were an accident, and gestured at nothing in particular. "What's to say? You know what they can be like."
I reached out, caught his hand in midair and clasped it between both of mine, forcing it still. His gaze shot to mine, startled again, hidden just as quickly. "Let me rephrase," I said. I released one hand and brought it up to his cheek, pressed it there until he drew another ragged breath and his gaze went soft. "Tell me about it."
His mouth flinched again, this time more grimace than smile. He tried to make another helpless gesture, but I held onto him and brought both our hands up until I could press kisses to his knuckles. I kept my gaze steady on his face, waiting for him to talk, searching for any signs he was about to shrug it off again.
He didn't. This time, when the mask slipped, it stayed off. It left him looking vulnerable and more than a little bewildered. He brought his hand up, the one I wasn't keeping for myself, and touched the corner of my eye with the pads of his fingers. "What is this?" he asked, quiet but sincere. "You've never wanted to talk about them before."
I reared back, stung, but at the last moment, kept myself from going so far as to break the connection between us. It felt fragile, delicate, like the first thread-like roots of a plant, reaching tentatively through the soil. "We've talked about your family plenty."
"Before, sure. But not..." He dropped his gaze, cleared his throat. "Not recently."
I was sure he was wrong. But some other, deeper part of me knew he was right. "I've never asked about them, have I?"
His expression was answer enough. He didn't have to speak the words to tell me so. I'd known it before I asked.
"Tell me."
He grimaced again, rubbed his free hand over his brow and sighed. "It'll be long in the telling, I'm afraid--"
"Do it anyway. I don't care."
His lips curved again, his expression wry once more, but this time there was true humor behind it. He squeezed my hand and ran his thumb in a caress over mine. "You may not, but I'm half-famished already. If you want me to make it through the telling, we'd best find sustenance first."
I drew a breath, resolve settling over me like a well-tailored coat. He caught my eye and smiled, a quick flash of genuine humor. "I'm not putting you off, Ren. I'll tell you whatever you care to hear, only let me eat, won't you?"
I held myself in check, fighting off the instinctive urge to refuse, to fix my mistake right now, immediately. I wanted him to sit down and tell me everything there was to tell, so I could stop feeling so wretched for not asking earlier.
I let my breath out slowly, then smiled and slid my hand from his. "Of course. I'm hungry, too." I wasn't, but I would be soon enough. "Let's get something to eat. I don't suppose you know what's good around here yet?"
He returned my smile, and turned away to grab my coat from where I'd shed it and let it lie draped over a trunk. He offered it to me, held open for me to slide into like he had earlier, like he didn't even realize that it was a valet's duty, and a man of his station should never have deigned to serve someone else in such a fashion. Like he didn't care.
When I had the coat on, I turned while he was still close behind me, caught him by his own lapel and drew him in for a kiss. He was stiff against me at first, startled, but he softened quick enough and pulled me flush against him with an arm around my back.
We parted when his stomach rumbled a reminder of our purpose. I laughed and did up my buttons while he steered me to the door. "As a matter of fact," he said, "I did visit this little cafe down the street a few days back, when I was here finalizing the deal. Their soup was excellent. There's another place in the other direction that I've heard wonderful things about, too, though." He locked the door behind us and smiled at his key as he palmed it, as though at some secret joke shared just between the two of them. "What say you?"
I slipped my hand back into his and smiled and squinted up at him as the evening sun shone into my eyes and filled the street with shades of buttery gold. "Let's be adventurous."
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