The Wrong Groom on My Wedding Night novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Terrace

On the terrace Crispin lies about the Redfern gate, and his hand on her shoulder mark answers what he won't. Leon sees his face and drops his glass.

"Air," Crispin said. "You said you needed air."

I had not said it to him.

I had said it to Pat, across half the hall.

I looked at him, and he looked at the floor.

"You have good hearing," I said.

"Ridge wolves do. It's cold up there."

He pushed open the terrace door with his shoulder and held it for me.

I went through because my feet did.

The terrace was empty, swept clean, with snow banked along the railing.

The cold hit my face and I took a long breath of it.

Behind me the door shut, and the noise of the banquet dropped to a hum.

Crispin stood three steps away, hands in his coat pockets.

"You're shaking," he said.

"It's cold."

He took off the canvas coat and held it out without coming closer.

It smelled of cedar smoke, and my eyes stung.

I put it on anyway.

It was warm all the way through.

"You look like my husband," I said.

"I've heard that." His voice stayed even. "Never met him."

"Have you ever been through the Redfern gate?"

"Never."

He said it flat, and his jaw went tight on the last syllable.

My shoulder gave one slow throb under his coat.

The second pulse, the one that wasn't mine, jumped.

He was lying, and my own body had just told me so.

"That's a strange thing to be afraid of," I said.

"I'm not afraid."

"Then why is your hand shaking?"

He took it out of his pocket and looked at it.

It was shaking.

He closed it into a fist.

"Luna," he said. "Lena. Whatever you think I did, I would tell you if I could."

"Could."

"Yes."

"That means somebody's stopped you."

"It means I don't know enough yet to say it right."

He took a step toward me.

I should have gone back inside.

I didn't.

He lifted his hand slowly, giving me every chance to stop him, and laid it over my left shoulder, on top of the coat.

On top of the scar.

Nobody had touched it in four years.

Leon had never even looked at it.

Heat ran down my arm and straight through my chest, and I made a sound I'd never made in front of a stranger.

Crispin's eyes closed.

"There it is," he said, under his breath.

"There what is?"

He didn't answer.

His thumb pressed once, right where the bite had healed, and the pulse under my skin matched the pulse under his palm, beat for beat.

I put my hand on his wrist to push him away.

I did not push.

We stood there and neither of us moved.

My hand was still on his wrist when the terrace door opened behind us.

"Lena? There you are. I brought you a shawl."

Dinah's voice, light and kind, with the sound of her slippers on the stone.

I let go of Crispin's wrist so fast it hurt.

Dinah came around the pillar with a grey wool shawl over her arm.

She saw the coat on my shoulders and the man in his shirtsleeves, and she smiled politely, without a flicker of suspicion.

"Oh, you've found a friend," she said. "I'm Dinah. I live at the house."

"Crispin Rooke, from the Ridge," he said.

"You poor thing, you're in your shirt. Take mine." She tried to hand him the shawl.

"Keep it," he said. "She'll need it."

Dinah laughed, a little puzzled.

She looked at his face again, properly, and her smile slowed.

"You look so familiar," she said. "Have we met?"

"No," Crispin said.

Behind her, the terrace door swung open on its hinges.

Leon stood in the light with a glass of wine in his hand.

He was looking for his wife, or for Dinah.

Then he saw the man in the shirtsleeves.

I watched Leon see his own face on a stranger.

All the color went out of him.

The glass slipped out of his fingers, hit the stone, and burst, and red wine ran toward my feet.

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