Four days after Osric’s ill-fated arrival upon Radia and Rosbert’s doorstep, it was the night of the party. The back garden was turned into a green and gold arbour lit up with free-floating lamps. Fairhrim friends and relatives showed up en masse and ate, and drank, and danced. Over it all lay the scent of greenhouse blooms and the glamour of a perfect June evening.
Osric watched the goings-on from the shadows of the balcony. Fairhrim’s parents had invited him to attend, but she had flashed him a look that said Don’t you dare, and Osric had declined. They sent Tartiflette up with bites of food from the party, as well as a pity bottle of Scotch. Fairhrim had flashed Osric a second look, and warned him that he could have two drinks, and not more. It was a miracle that he hadn’t gone blind from all these flashes of hers. She was a bloody heliograph.
It was a tranquil way to pass an evening, anyway: eyeballing the jewels on the hands of various aunts, watching Fairhrim, counting how many drinks Uncle Pilheard downed, watching Fairhrim, assessing the string quartet, watching Fairhrim…
Why was he watching Fairhrim? Oh, many reasons. Because it was interesting to see her outside the usual context of dusty clinics. Because she danced unexpectedly well. Because there was nothing better to do. Because he actually had brain damage from the Syndrome.
If it wasn’t for the fact that it was Fairhrim whom he was observing so attentively, he could almost think he fancied her. What a joke that would be. What a celestial irony.
It was clear, from Fairhrim’s spinning about the garden in the arms of others, and kissing cheeks, and laughing, that she was well liked, even well loved.
Fairhrim bestowed swift smiles on all who asked her to dance (point of interest: she never bestowed swift smiles on Osric) and left behind her a trail of discarded adorers as she moved from one to the next. They were all underbred youngbloods with nothing to recommend them; Osric was far more handsome. And richer.
Poor Tartiflette kept coming upstairs with offerings for Osric. This time she joined him on the balcony with oblong brown things on a plate, like some sort of poo sommelier.
“Thank you,” said Osric.
The brown things were chocolates. Tartiflette gurgled in an agony of lovestruck shyness and left again.
Osric watched Fairhrim release the chinless wonder she was dancing with and move on to another. This one was tall. Admittedly good-looking. Love-light in his eyes. Presently dancing with Fairhrim for a third time. Osric was taken over by a savage jealousy.
It was the Season of Betrayal.
No. One couldn’t get possessive over a thing that wasn’t one’s to begin with—and that one had no desire to possess anyway. That would be ridiculous. Osric went back to watching the aunts to decide if anything was worth stealing, due to a sudden, unrelated-to-Fairhrim, urge to join the party. A solid gold torc caught his eye, as did a jewelled lorgnette.
He stress-ate chocolate.
Where had Fairhrim got to?
There she was—at the door of the bedroom, rapping her distinct knock.
Osric had known, of course, having watched her below, that she was wearing a lovely champagne gown, and had gathered her dark hair in a crown braid with orchids tucked into it, but it didn’t lessen the shock when she came in looking not at all like the Haelan and looking, instead, fresh, sylphidine, and very much beautiful.
Not beautiful. Just pretty.
Just pretty.
Osric did not want Fairhrim to be beautiful. He was susceptible to beauty. He was an Appreciator of beautiful things. He wanted to acquire them. He wanted them to be his. Now, as Fairhrim neared, he fought a momentary panic that his beauty-loving heart would want Fairhrim in any way, that her loveliness tonight would trigger some latent kleptomaniac urge.
He hated Fairhrim. Ergo, she was not beautiful. This was the only solution; the cognitive dissonance would be unbearable otherwise.
He conceded a vast prettiness that took her to the very edge of beauty. Besides, this was temporary. Soon the night would be over, and Fairhrim would return to the choke of her high-necked dress and her usual froideur, and be the Haelan again. This was a moment as ephemeral as the orchids in her hair.
Also—also—he wouldn’t be attracted to her because she wasn’t attracted to him. One-sided attraction was a power differential he used to his advantage, and he did not wish to be on the receiving end of any such thing from Fairhrim.
There was a totter in Fairhrim’s step. She was loose limbed from a few drinks. The flush of the dance was on her cheeks. (Most certainly the dance, and not the influence of the Tall Good-Looking Other Man.)
She joined Osric at the railing and, with unlooked-for familiarity, put a hand on his arm to hold herself up as she took off her shoes.
It struck him; it threw him off-kilter; it made him daring; it made him stupid.
He found himself torn between saying things ugly and beautiful, between lies and truth.
“You look—you look—” he began.
“Not objectionable?” came the breezy suggestion.
“Yes.”
“I saw you lurking up here,” said Fairhrim, her voice still warm with whatever she had been smiling about with the Tall Other Man. “Pleased you’ve been able to stand for so long. How are you feeling?”
“Lonely.”
“Lonely? You? You hate everyone.”
“Do I?”
“Don’t you?”
“You’re right—I do.”
Fairhrim adjusted long gloves that went past her elbows. “I suppose we look like we’re having too much fun. You can come down if you wish, only promise you won’t exert yourself—and keep the bloody tācn covered.”
Osric, however, had no reason to go down, now that Fairhrim was up here. “Who was your overly handsome partner?”
“Which?” Fairhrim looked over the balcony. “Oh—Aedan?”
“Is it?”
“Sweet Aedan,” said Fairhrim. She propped her elbows upon the railing. “My mother’s still not forgiven me for not marrying him; he’s caring, and wealthy, and an Ingenaut.”
Osric made some calculations and concluded that he hit a solid one out of three on Fairhrim’s mum’s marking scheme for desirable husbands. Not that he had any wish to be a desirable husband; it was simply good to know where one stood.
Tartiflette’s timorous knock rang and she brought in a single trembling flute of champagne. Osric, still working on his Scotch, declined. Fairhrim took the flute with a pitying look at Tartiflette as she left.
“If only she knew what you are,” said Fairhrim.
“Wouldn’t matter,” said Osric. “I’m irresistible.”
Fairhrim, with offensive tranquillity, said, “Load of rot.”
She watched Sweet Aedan below with a gaze that was remote. At least when she looked at Osric, there was a spark of something there—vast irritation, usually, but still, something. This detachment would kill him.
“Sweet Aedan looks as though he still carries a flame for you,” said Osric.
“I’ve told him I have a new Friend—a Friend at this very party. And yet…”
“I suppose this is but a small sample of your prospects,” said Osric with a gesture to the adorers.
“There are no prospects,” said Fairhrim. “I loved once. It was a mistake. It will never happen again.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“I won’t tell you what orifice to stuff your intrigue into,” said Fairhrim. “Stop prying, or I shall pry at you in return.”
“I haven’t anything to hide,” said Osric.
“No? No tales of past heartbreaks?”
“No heart to break,” said Osric. “I’m safe.”
Fairhrim sipped at her drink. She touched her neck, tense jawed. “Wise of you.”
“What happened between you and Perfect Aedan?” asked Osric. Before Fairhrim could snarl at him for his continued curiosity, he made a sweeping invitational gesture towards himself. “And yes—you may pry at me in return. You may even go first.”
“May I? So kind.”
“Ask me whatever you’d like.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
Fairhrim pondered her question, one finger running up and down the stem of her champagne flute. Osric prepared to discuss the details of his most lurid affairs in such a way as to spotlight his prowess as a lover.
Then Fairhrim asked: “Why did you kill your father?”
Which was not at all where Osric had wanted this to go.
“I had hoped,” said Osric, “that we could confine the conversation to our lovers.”
“You said anything,” pointed out Fairhrim, as though Osric weren’t suddenly and acutely aware of his strategic misstep. “But we needn’t see this through. We can withdraw our pryings by mutual agreement.”
“My father was a bastard,” said Osric.
“In which sense of the term?” enquired Fairhrim.
“Metaphorical. I, however, am a bastard in the literal sense.”
Fairhrim was strong; he offered her an overture to indicate that she thought he fit both definitions quite neatly, but she made no comment.
“My father, of the great Mordaunt line, refused to marry my mother when she fell pregnant. Said I wasn’t his. Her family—minor nobility, Wessexian—disowned her. We lived in absolute poverty while father had thirty rooms at Rosefell in which he got drunk every night. His lowliest under-housemaid ate more in a day than we did in a week. The housekeeper snuck food to us on her off days.”
“Mrs. Parson?” asked Fairhrim.
“Yes. My mother brought me to my father every few years to ask him to recognise me as his son—he never did, even as I grew into his spitting image—and to get a few thrymsas out of him. He gave us beatings along with the thrymsas. The very last time he tried to beat us, I had begun to apprentice with Tristane. He didn’t know. Neither did my mother, for that matter. I hadn’t yet earned my blaecblade or my tācn, but I had learned to handle a knife. He had just thrown my mother into a wall. He went for my throat; I went for his. Mother never woke up. Father died by my hand. I was fourteen years old.”
Fairhrim studied Osric for a long time in silence. “I suppose I didn’t expect it to be a happy story.”
“Does the tragedy of it all absolve me of my sins?”
“An explanation isn’t an excuse.”
Classic Fairhrim rationalism. “It is a happy story, anyway,” continued Osric. “I’m happy now.”
“Your poor mother.”
“Avenged and not forgotten.”
“This explains why some of your scars are so old,” said Fairhrim. “Old enough to precede your career, I mean.”
“He did have a knack for decorating us both,” said Osric.
“How did you end up with Rosefell Hall if you were a bastard?”
“Terrorised father’s legal man into forging documents legitimising my birth. Killed him later to be safe. Hired tutors and masters to learn how to be a nobleman’s son—whatever my mother hadn’t been able to teach me. Father had pissed away most of the family fortune; I’ve been rebuilding it ever since. Until you. Now I’m basically destitute.”
Fairhrim was not as pity struck as he would have hoped. She served him a look tinctured with criticism rather than sympathy. “You’re far from destitute.”
“I’m far from as rich as I was, too.”
“Sell your collections.”
“Unmerciful creature,” said Osric.
“I’ll buy the De humani off you.”
“You couldn’t afford it,” said Osric.
“Try me.”
“Another time. It’s your turn now. You must tell me what happened between you and Sweet Aedan.”
“Between me and Sweet Aedan,” repeated Fairhrim, with a look towards the man in question, who danced below. “Nothing happened. That was, perhaps, the problem. There was no quarrel; there was no explosion. Aedan is too perfect. He has no faults to love him by.”
“You require faults in your lovers?”
“One or two, judiciously chosen.”
“Hah,” said Osric, who had many to choose from. Not that he wished to be her lover; it was simply a fact.
An enquiring eyebrow curved Osric’s way over a bare shoulder.
“Never mind,” said Osric. “A joke that was funnier in my head.”
“I think they’re all funnier in your head, but thank you for showing restraint.” Fairhrim was still looking at Too-Perfect Aedan. “It doesn’t matter. We’re still friends. At least, I’m friends with him.”
“One of your many Friends, I’m given to understand.”
A measure of Fairhrim’s usual rigidity returned to her neck. “And who would’ve told you that?”
“The last source I shared with you wound up dead, so I shan’t disclose,” said Osric. “I suppose you haven’t quite found the balance of desirable faults.”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but—yes, the correct ratio is difficult to achieve. And, of course, they must find my faults palatable.” To Osric’s annoyance, she preempted him and added, “I’ve got a few.”
“Name them,” said Osric.
“Low tolerance for Fyren continuing to pry about my personal life,” said Fairhrim.
“I’ll constrain my prying to your professional affairs.”
Fairhrim shifted into a sweeping contrapposto. “Constrain it, full stop.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Annoyance accumulated on Fairhrim like a patina—the pinched nostrils, the tightened jaw, the majestic drawing upwards as she prepared to unleash some trenchant remark.
Then she saw his smirk.
“You’re winding me up,” said Fairhrim.
“You really are delicious.”
Fairhrim never troubled to flirt with him, but her dark look, the amused press of her lips, and the brush of her elbow against his all had much the same effect on Osric; all mingled with the drink, was more potent than the drink, warmed his blood, threatened to heat his face. He thought forbidden thoughts about her lips again, what they had done in his imaginings, what he would like to do to them.
She was a thing between desire and impossibility.
Was he becoming one of those pathetic men who found a woman more desirable in direct proportion to how unattainable she was?
She held up her glass and said, “Well done.”
Thank you, and I would like to die suffocated by your thighs did not seem an appropriate response at this time.
Osric said, “I serve at your pleasure,” and held up his glass to hers.
She pressed her flute of champagne to his Scotch with a smile hidden in the corner of her mouth.
No, there was nothing worth stealing at the party below. But up here?
It occurred to him that he would like to steal a dance.