Chương 23: 1.22. Fond Old Fool

The next lady in line nearly bumped into Lisa's brawny arm.

"What gives?" Seth stepped back and spun Lisa out from the interchange.

"Next guy," he said. The woman huffed and paired up with the next man in line, who was busily clearing his throat to hide his disappointment.

"Well, now." Lisa rested her hands on him.

"Hello again, Mr. i'Lynnok."

"Hello again, Miss i'Lynnok."" Miss, hmm? So many marriages and none of them stuck?"

"Not yet, I don't think. Elizabeth must have halitosis or something."

"Better take a deep breath, then, young Seth." Her hips swayed back as she leaned forward to his ear.

"Because when I want to dance with a boy, I dance with him." He felt young and untested and very brave.

"Then dance with me."

"Shall I lead, then, or will you?" His hand couched at the small of her back, right above the outward curve where muscle gave way to softness. He pulled her in, and she let out a quiet, delighted gasp, and they twirled and two-stepped across the floor. And Seth forgot all the formalities and tips that the pretty young dancers taught him. This was a woman who would not stumble when he yanked like a yokel. He danced with Lisa like it was some spontaneous imperative. Like they were inventing it.

Lisa did not look at him like he was a pauper in a cheap suit. And he realized, with some surprise, that her barely disguised desire felt different from Rumia's. In that girl's grip, he had felt like a choice cut of meat. In Lisa's, he felt like a man.

"One second," she whispered, halting her feet and breaking the spell.

"Incoming." Her touch solidified at his shoulder into a surely held tether. She turned him round toward that Marston customer, who was approaching with an imperious woman in a silver sheath dress. He'd danced with her, he recalled. Not well. By the look on her face she didn't treasure the memory either.

"Elizabeth." Marston bent a knee and planted a kiss on Lisa's gloved knuckle.

"I don't mean to interrupt you and your gentleman, but I thought I might extend that invitation formally."

"Of course." Lisa's voice tuned itself a semitone higher.

"This is Marston il Molacq. That magnate I was telling you about. And Marston, this is Seth i'Lynnok, the nephew I was telling you about."

"Magnate." Marston clucked his tongue fondly.

"You flatterer."

"That's nothing," Seth said.

"She called me a nephew." Marston delivered a confused chuckle.

"I can't let the men get all the prettiest words in, can I?" Lisa said.

"And who is this vision in silver?"

"Luka," the unsmiling woman said.

"Marston's wife." The woman's obvious disapproval for this tall, tawny siren, and the oomph with which wife was consequently delivered, glanced harmlessly off Lisa as if she were in steel, not silk.

"Luka," she said.

"Such a lovely name. So, Seth. Marston was telling me he'd just love to host us—" That syllable us knocked a hole in Marston's practiced joviality, and it began to take on water.

"—for lunch tomorrow, at his home. It's in the garden district, you know. Very chic. Beautiful water features." By the time Lisa turned back around on that pronouncement, Marston had bailed himself back to smiling seaworthiness.

"I would be delighted indeed," he said.

"As would Luka." There were several words one could use for Luka's expression, unambiguous as it was. Delighted was not one of them.

"A generous offer," Seth said.

"How can I turn it down?"

"Splendid." Marston chuckled paternally.

"Your aunt was telling me all about you, you know." If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. Seth gave Lisa a look.

"Oh yes?"

"All good things, my boy. All good things." Marston squeezed his shoulder.

"Studying for the officers' exam, eh?"

"Yep," Seth said.

"Up at the Necropolis Academy. I'm just itching to get out there beyond the dome and scythe some seraphs." Marston's ebullient laugh turned a head or two along the promenade.

"There's the spirit. Keeping the walls, minding the mages, sallying forth in the Winter War to harvest the feathered fiends' hexis. Earning yourself a commission, eh? Turn that il into an al."

"If it'll make my dear old auntie proud," Seth said.

"She could use a win." Lisa's toe prodded his. Marston's attention had drifted to Luka. There was an element of desperation to his burgundy elbow nudging her thin arm.

"Hear that, Luka? This boy's got pluck, eh? A red-blooded warrior of the United Territories."

"Perhaps he'll find a soulless seductress up at the Necropolis," his venomous wife said.

"Who can turn that red to black, before a seraph does." Marston's smile tightened.

"Go cheerful, Luka, go cheerful. It's a lovely night."

"Oh, yes." Luka's eyes were fixed on the serenely smiling Lisa.

"Lovely."

"In fact, my boy," Marston said.

"Perhaps you and your aunt may like to retire from all this smoke and sweat, and find a spot for a drink. If she'll permit."

"In the middle of the final dance, sir?" Lisa's sequined hand laid on her chest.

"I could never."

"So eager to dance with your nephew?"

"I've been waiting all night, in fact." Lisa's finger tapped the band's rhythm against Seth's arm.

"We'll find one another after and hammer out the specifics." Marston chuckled.

"Suit yourself. How your feet don't ache by now is beyond me."

"The trick, monseigneur, is dancing anyway." Lisa winked at the man, which bounced another ridiculous little pebble of jealousy off Seth's edifice. Then the Verdugo swept him nearly off his feet, back into the crowd, and any thought of envy for any other man flowed away with the rhythm.

"That guy's a piece of work," he said, as they merged with the music and the swaying scene.

"Just another tick on the Legion's belly," she said.

"Such a relief you'll come with me tomorrow. You can set my hair on fire if his bloviations lull me to sleep."

"We'll call that plan C," he says.

"What do you reckon? You distract him, I find his books?"

"We'll figure something out."

"I'm not sure how big the man's house is, but—""Seth." A smiling, tender reprimand on her face.

"I wonder if, just for this one song, you could just be here now, okay? Be here with me."

"Oh," he said, and the hard maple beneath his feet felt as brittle as new morning lake ice.

"Okay."

"I don't want to be a Verdugo and her thief on a mission." She got close, close enough he smelled the sweet wine on her breath.

"I want to be a woman, dancing with a good-looking man. It's been a very, very long time."

"Really?"

"Really, really." She laughed drily.

"It's been years." Seth hadn't felt particularly drunk tonight, even with the wine swimming through his blood. But suddenly the bubbly tinge of the Sektorbrav Red was pressing softly into the folds of his brain.

"I know you're here in my employ," she murmured.

"And I know I'm old enough to be your mother—or aunt, as the case may be. But would you indulge a fond old fool in her brief fantasy?"

"You're the boss," he said. She winked. At him, this time.

"And don't forget it, mister." Deeper into the dance. Longer and louder, the music, until the conversation at its edges faded. Until everything faded, the looks and luxury around them. Until it was a woman dancing with a man. And that was all. And somewhere in the instinctual movement, Seth's hand had found its way to the smooth, exposed skin of Lisa's back. And Lisa's had found its way to his hip, where its thumb tucked lightly into the loop of his belt.

"Careful, Seth." Her voice was a husky murmur, barely audible in the music.

"I may not be gray at the moment, but I'm still unlit."

"I know, I know," he muttered. He knew, he knew. Her long gloves, her scintillating gown. The sun-honeyed skin beneath them was a lie, was actually pale as paper. It would slowly siphon his soul away if he touched it. But it hadn't yet, had it? And their bare skin had touched before already, a few times. How much faster could a kiss really be? He had to step back. But he couldn't.

Her brows lowered as if in concentration, and her smile changed, faded on the edges, into an expression he didn't understand, until she shifted again and he realized: He was hard. Hard enough to shorten his breath. Hard enough, against her, that she felt it. And she did not look disgusted, or surprised, and she did not create distance from him. And when he began to lean back, her grip tightened on him. And he relaxed into it. Close again. Surely she'd stop this, if it went too far. Her chin tilted downwards.

His tilted up. Her eyes danced across his face. Her thick, dark lips parted. Surely it was just talk between them, just playful banter. His hold tightened on her back. The muscle beneath the velvety skin. Her core flexed and firmed on the next turn, as she pressed her broad hips tightly against his. Surely she wasn't thinking what he was thinking. Surely a woman like her wouldn't, with a boy like him. Surely she didn't feel what he felt. A thin sheen of sweat on her chest as it rose and fell.

The exhale was ragged on the edges, like she'd been running, not dancing. It tingled his skin. Humid and heavy and warm. Surely it would blow their cover. Surely she'd pull back before he did. Surely they had to think about the mission. Her dark eyelids lowered. She stared at his lips. Her fingers curled possessively into his skin. Surely. Applause and whistles bounced Seth from his state of libidinous hypnosis. He hadn't even noticed the song was reaching its end, but now here it was.

He forced himself out of their dancing embrace, treating the song's cessation like a bucket of freezing water over whatever they'd just kindled, hands off the Verdugo and clapping with the crowd. And there on her new face, for just a second, was an old expression, one he'd seen before. She looked like the loneliest woman in the world. Then her beautiful smile was back on and she applauded with him as the underpaid musicians in their borrowed black stood, bowed, and took the gorgeous night away with them.