Chapter 8: Sailcloth

He came in, and Perrine shut the door behind him and dropped the bar.

The loft was dark except for the one lamp on the bench.

Canvas hung from the rafters in pale sheets that stirred with the draft, and the rain was loud on the slates.

Lucan stood in the middle of the floor with water running off his coat onto the boards.

"One night," Perrine said.

He turned.

"That's what this is. One night. Nobody knows, not Garance, not the guard, not Aurelie."

"And tomorrow you go back to her, and I go on being the woman who ruins her teas."

"Is that what you want?" Lucan asked.

"It's what I'm offering."

His jaw worked.

"And if I say I don't want it that way?"

"Then you can go back out in the rain."

He looked at her for a long moment, the lamp throwing shadows across the scar in his eyebrow.

"One night," Lucan said.

"Say it like you mean it."

"One night, Perrine," Lucan said.

"Good."

She crossed the floor, took his wet lapels in both hands, and pulled his mouth down to hers.

He made a low sound in his throat and his arms came round her.

The cold of his soaked coat went straight through her thin dress.

She didn't care.

She worked at the buttons with numb fingers, and he shrugged out of the coat and let it drop with a wet slap.

She pushed the shirt up his chest and over his head.

He was lean and scarred and hard-muscled, with a long white seam across his ribs.

His skin was cold and then, under her palms, burning.

"You're freezing," she said.

"Warm me."

His hands went to her back and found the laces of her dress and pulled.

They tore.

He swore, and laughed against her mouth, and she laughed too.

The dress slid off her shoulders and down her hips and she stepped out of it in her thin shift.

He stopped laughing.

He stood and looked at her, at the lamplight through the linen, at her nipples hard against the cloth.

His throat moved.

"Look at you," he said.

"You've looked."

"I haven't. I've never looked at you once in six years. God help me."

He drew the shift over her head.

The air was cold on her skin and she didn't feel it.

He dropped to one knee on the floor, among the rolls of canvas, and put his mouth on her belly.

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