The Hidden Route Picked the Friend novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Stay

He came back through her window at one in the morning, and he did not say where he had been.

Briony was sitting up in bed with the candle lit.

She had been sitting that way for an hour, with her hands in her lap and her stomach in a knot.

"You're alive," she said.

"I'm always alive."

"The Regent sent for you."

"She asked about the girl who fetched the tea."

"What did you tell her?"

"That you were nobody."

He climbed in over the sill and stood by her bed with his shoulders square.

His face was the empty plate again.

It was the face from the hall, and Briony hated it more than she had hated anything in a long time.

"Come here," she said.

"I should go."

"You should come here."

He did not move.

She got out of bed in her nightgown, crossed the room barefoot, and stood in front of him.

She took hold of his black cravat and pulled.

He bent his head.

"Stop doing that," she said.

"Doing what?"

"Putting the plate on."

"I don't know what that means."

"It means I know what's under it.

I've seen it.

You don't have to wear it with me."

His breath caught.

She felt it against her mouth.

Then he reached up with his good hand and closed it around her wrist, and something under the plate cracked straight across.

"I don't know how to be anything else," he said, low.

"Then I'll show you.

Lie down."

"Briony."

"On the bed.

On your back.

Now."

She had never used that voice before.

It came out of her.

He looked at her for a long moment.

Then he sat on the edge of the narrow mattress, lay back slowly, and stared up at the ceiling.

His hands lay open at his sides.

The cravat was still in her fist.

It was a long strip of black silk, and it smelled like him.

"Give me your hands," she said.

He lifted them.

She knelt over him on the bed and drew his wrists up above his head, one over the other.

The headboard was iron, two thin bars.

She looped the cravat around both wrists, and then around a bar, and tied it.

It was a bad knot.

He could have slipped it with one twist.

He didn't.

"You're not going to move," she said.

"I could."

"I know.

Don't."

His pupils swallowed the grey.

She sat back on his thighs and looked at him laid out under her.

He was long and lean, his shirt half open and his arms stretched above his head, and his chest rose and fell too fast.

"Stay," Briony said.

"Just stay.

Just there.

Let me."

A shudder went through him from head to foot.

"Nobody's ever said that to me," he said.

"What?"

"Stay."

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