Chapter 5: Hands on the Edge

Ilarion had put a cold cloth on her wrist and sat her by the fire, and then he had said almost nothing for three hours.

He read the tower's one book, a dull treatise on drainage.

He ate the palace bread and left the palace wine.

When the guards brought supper he took the tray from them at the door and tasted every dish before she touched it.

"You think he'd poison me?" said Iseult.

"I think he'd like to try something."

"He's not that stupid."

"He's frightened. That's worse."

He set a plate of roast chicken in front of her and cut it into pieces without being asked.

She watched his scarred hands do it, big and careful.

"How did you know what was in his desk?" he said.

"Ask me on the third day."

"Why the third?"

"Because by the third day I might have courage."

He thought about that, slowly, and nodded.

"The third day, then," said Ilarion, and went back to his drainage.

She had expected him to push, and he didn't.

That was the thing that undid her.

By the time the candles burned low, her wrist had stopped throbbing and every other part of her had started.

She stood up from the fire, crossed to the table, and pushed the dishes to one side.

"Ilarion."

"Hm."

"I need you to tell me what to do."

He looked up from the page.

"I've decided everything for a day and a night," she said.

"I decided the ballroom, and the proposal, and the Emperor, and the teapot."

"I'm tired. I want somebody else to hold it for an hour."

"I'm not sure that's something I should be asked at the end of a bad day."

"It's the only thing I've asked you for that I'm certain about."

He put down the book.

He stood, and he was a long way up, and his eyes were steady.

"Take off your gown," he said.

She had to unfasten it herself, because the laces were at her back, and she turned and let him undo them.

His fingers were slow.

Each lace came free with a small sound, and with every one she felt his breath move across her shoulders.

The gown dropped, and then the petticoat and the chemise, and she stood in the firelight with her hair coming down.

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