Page 7 of Centerpiece (Infinite Grace #2)

“I....” The blanket tumbled onto Agreeable’s lap, giving him something to hold to as he looked up.

Part of Holburn’s chest was visible where his chemise’s laces were open.

He was pale, as one might expect from someone who had never tilled a field.

His chest hair was dark. Agreeable forced his gaze up.

“I will try. But if it seems safe, I’ll go. I don’t want to trouble you more.”

“And I think that’s foolish, but short of tying you to the chair or the bed, I have no way to stop you.” Holburn turned away, his chemise very thin in the firelight, and Agreeable was left dry-mouthed and breathless as Holburn returned to the bed to get beneath the remaining blankets.

He sat with his back to the headboard instead of lying down, but arranged the blankets and closed his eyes.

“Will you sleep sitting up like that?” Agreeable wondered in disbelief.

“Will you?” Holburn returned without even cracking an eye. “Are you wrinkling your adorable nose at me?”

Agreeable reached up to still his nose, just in case he had been, then poked the end. Adorable ?

“I am exhausted from riding most of the day,” Holburn went on, keeping his eyes shut despite the thief in the room with him.

“But I’m not quite ready for sleep. Tell me, if you don’t mind, how long have you lived as you do?

Wait.” He blinked his eyes open. “How old are you? I’ve been guessing no more than nineteen. ”

“Twenty-one years,” Agreeable corrected him, not offended. He wasn’t small but he was a light-boned thing, rather like a bird. “And it’s been near five years, I think.”

“What about winters?” Holburn pressed, then tossed his head. “It’s probably better if you don’t tell me now. I’ll never sleep.”

“You’re a strange one, Holburn,” Agreeable told him, fond and not hiding it.

“The Church has a roof.” Holburn was stern. “They should be allowing parishioners in need to sleep under it. Someone ought to remind them.”

“Unless you are a bishop, I don’t see how you can ensure that.”

“I can know a bishop,” Holburn grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. Agreeable must have heard him wrong.

He gave Holburn a long study but Holburn only glared back.

“I can also say that the nobles who own the lands here are supposed to grant you care as well. That was the bargain made centuries ago.”

“Was it?” Agreeable wondered, attempting to be polite so Holburn might calm and eventually sleep. “Perhaps they have forgotten or cannot read where it was written. Do all nobles need to read?”

“Are you teasing me?” Holburn didn’t uncross his arms. His lower lip looked to be inching out, making him seem a touch sulky. It was no wonder his Aliette thought he needed to be told no now and then.

“Are you going to challenge the Church, the Count, and every local lord?” Agreeable smiled, no less fond to learn more of Holburn’s strange stubbornness.

“Exhaust yourself for no reason? Small kindnesses in the face of that are enough, I think. They’re all anyone could do. More than most would bother with.”

“Teasing.” Holburn slouched into the pillows between him and the headboard.

“I suppose I am.” Agreeable considered it. That would be daring, or foolish, with anyone else. But the sulking jewel in the bed did not feel like a threat. “You should speak of other things if you want to get any rest. You could answer my questions. I want to know more about your capital parties.”

A silence fell between them, with only the crackling fire to break it until Holburn exhaled long and slow. “Yes, there were some like you there.”

Agreeable jerked with surprise at having his question guessed before he could voice it, then yanked the blanket up to his chest. “What do you mean?”

“Some who are very agreeable.”

The sudden tightness in Agreeable’s throat didn’t go away as he grew hot. “In all finery? Among tables laden with meat and fruit? On beds as nice as that one?”

“Nicer.” Holburn was back to holding Agreeable still with his attention alone. “Larger as well. Is that a dream of yours? To be a centerpiece at such a party?”

Agreeable wasn’t quite certain what a centerpiece was but center told him something. “I don’t know. Maybe. Or....” He would have bitten his tongue with anyone else. “It’s more the idea of it. I’ve no notion what that might truly be like. It’s hardly the lads by the fire, is it?”

Holburn made a hoarse noise, then cleared his throat. “And I’ve no notion what the lads by the fire are like, although I can make some guesses.”

He undoubtedly could. If his guesses were ‘rough and sometimes regrettably quick,’ then they were right. Nothing said the wealthy would do any better, though their beds might be softer.

“Is that all you like?” Holburn carried on, as if this was more restful talk to him than the Church’s failings.

Perhaps it was. Agreeable was the one bunching the blanket in his lap as he considered Holburn watching as Agreeable was had multiple times, in the woods or anywhere else, and then deciding that, should such a dream ever come to pass, Holburn should be the first and last to touch him.

“It’s all I’m like to get,” Agreeable informed him huskily. “No one has ever hinted for anything else.”

“Asses,” Holburn declared, certain. “Do you even like being called Agreeable?”

Agreeable opened his mouth. “No,” slipped out before he could think on it. “But, Holburn, you’ve got to stop sticking up for me. I don’t know what to do with that.”

“All the more reason to keep doing it,” Holburn informed him with his nose in the air, and oh, Agreeable had a moment of sympathy for the lovely Aliette. It would take someone smart and beautiful to keep Holburn out of trouble if he was always like this.

“They aren’t so bad, the lads,” Agreeable tried again. “You have an odd view of them, that’s all.”

“Do they steal with use of force as well? Or is it only nicking coin and spices from market stalls and priests?”

Once again, Agreeable found himself about to speak and then saying something he hadn’t intended to. “Not yet.” He clenched his hands. “That is, they can be rough-like with drink in them, at times. But bashing travelers is not their way.”

“ Yet ,” Holburn added.

Whether or not the action was adorable, Agreeable wrinkled his nose. “Surely the fault lies with the Count and the Church, then, if what you say is true.”

“Clever girl.” Holburn uncrossed his arms to point at Agreeable. “They won’t see it that way.”

“No.” Agreeable briefly worried his bottom lip. “Since you asked, how old are you ?”

Holburn gestured loosely, the movement impossibly graceful. “Too young to many. Eight and twenty if it please you. Shortly to be nine and twenty, but still too young for what I....” He stopped there. “Does it matter?”

“My ma says men don’t grow out of their foolishness until they have some grey in their hair. But she says that about most lasses too.” Agreeable was forced to admit that to be fair to the absent Aliette. “But I suspect you’d be a danger at any age.”

“A danger?” Holburn scoffed, half turned away, then glanced back. “I’m just a man.”

Agreeable doubted that very much. A man comfortable enough to speak as he did must occupy a strange but powerful place in the world.

If Agreeable were in a folk tale, Holburn would be a king in disguise.

But even a disguised king would have guards, and certainly wouldn’t have fed Agreeable in exchange for information.

A king wouldn’t have needed to exchange anything.

He would have demanded. At least, based on what Agreeable had seen of other lords, a king would.

Agreeable kept his thoughts of fairy stories to himself, but then spoke foolishly anyway. “If you are a just a man, and I draw the eye, then why didn’t you take me up on my offer of payment?”

He nearly bit his tongue, although he was certain now that Holburn had read Agreeable’s desires and had chosen to ignore them. Holburn was too clever to have missed them. But embarrassment made Agreeable glance away before their eyes could meet.

“That wouldn’t have been payment.” Holburn was quiet.

“It would have been extortion.” He blew out a vexed breath and then spoke again before Agreeable had looked back at him.

“It would have been taken through force, even if it didn’t seem so.

” He explained extortion , but still didn’t make any sense, which might have been why he went on.

“Your choice was a beating, losing a hand, or hanging, or allowing me to use you. Do you see?”

Agreeable had wanted to be used, but couldn’t manage to get the argument out with hanging still in the air. “I suppose it was,” he allowed, “as you say. This extortion .” He tripped only a little over the word.

Holburn swept onward like winds before a storm, as seemed to be his way. “And your friends, your lads. Would you be welcome among them if you were not so agreeable?”

“You don’t want to approve of them,” Agreeable grumbled under his breath. “They all are.... If I were a better thief, or a better hunter, certainly I’d be welcome. Probably even without that.”

“ Probably .” Holburn was dry as dust.

“I see what you’re saying,” Agreeable informed him, because he did and he was full of feelings with no name that he knew. “But I really don’t mind.”

“ I mind.” Agreeable’s stubborn jewel insisted. “I’d rather not have someone merely agreeable . Or, if I did hire someone, I’d want it to be an exchange done honestly and not done out of fear of pain or death.”

He was frustrating . He either made sense or he could convince Agreeable of anything.

“Not exactly flattering, is it?” Agreeable would grant him that much. “To be only a choice slightly better than death?”

“No.” Holburn eased back against his pillow. “So you understand now? No insult was intended.”