The Marshal Is My Mate novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Bond Night

The evening bell rang, and Ansel Corval delivered the cuff with a smile.

He set it in Garrick's hand himself, in front of three Bureau clerks.

"For my uncle-in-law," he said. "I hope the night is kind to you both."

Then he left.

Corin took the sealed box into the Marshal's anteroom and shut the door.

Lucan watched him pry up the cuff's inner plate with a butter knife.

Corin held up a thing no bigger than a grain of rice.

"A damper," he said. "It pushes the tide reading up toward calm for a few hours, and then it fades. By dawn the number would drop."

"They wanted it to read calm," Lucan said, "and then fail in the morning, when the Bureau came to check."

"Clever." Corin dropped the grain into a vial and capped it. "I'll keep this. Good luck, Consort. Please do not break the bed."

He closed the door behind him.

The bedroom was dark, and the sensor on the table gave a single red light.

Garrick stood by the window with his gloves in his hand and his back to the room.

"We can sit up all night with our hands touching," he said. "That counts as skin. The Director won't know the difference."

"The cuff will," Lucan said. "A real settling takes the whole body. You said so."

"I said it hurts you less."

"Does it?"

"Yes."

"Then I'm not sitting up."

Lucan took off his coat. He folded it and laid it on the chair.

Then his shirt.

The air in the room was warm, and the hum from the windows was low and steady.

Garrick had turned around.

His eyes went over Lucan's bare shoulders and chest once, and then stopped on his face.

"Rule two," Garrick said, and his voice came out rough.

"It's a storm."

"It isn't."

"Then it's a bet," Lucan said. "I'm winning it. Take your shirt off, Marshal."

Garrick's mouth moved.

He undid the buttons one at a time with deliberate fingers and let the shirt fall.

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