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Chapter Twenty-Four Don’t bring it all the way undone.

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Gwen had had to drop Isobelle’s hand to sidle single file past a cart making its way late to the festival.

Her impulse had

been to reach for Isobelle again, but she’d hesitated.

Taking her hand in the first place had been a gesture to tell Isobelle

to trust her.

Keeping gentle custody of it afterward could easily be dismissed as absent-mindedness.

To take it again now would be to reveal that Gwen simply wanted to hold her hand.

For the last hour, as they made their way down from the castle, Gwen had tormented herself in a limbo between reaching out

and turning away.

Her palm burned where it had rested against Isobelle’s.

Inexplicable tension sang between them like a taut

wire, and knowing she was the only one feeling it made it all the more terrible for Gwen to bear.

The few miles separating

her home from the castle had never felt so vast. By the time the glow of the village bonfire shone through the branches bowing

low over the road, she was ready to scream.

Rather than head toward the village center, Gwen turned and led Isobelle around toward the smithy via the garden path.

The scent of the lavender filling the garden beds was ghostly on the evening air, the aromatic oils heated by the afternoon sun almost gone now.

Isobelle, unfamiliar with the terrain, took a step off the packed path and into the softer soil, releasing a waft of perfume as her skirts brushed a cluster of dusky purple blooms.

For the love of god, Gwen, FOCUS.

You are here on a mission.

Gwen eased the latch of the back door open.

Light spilled onto the path, and when Gwen glanced back, she could see it falling

on Isobelle’s face.

After so long walking together in utter darkness, interpreting every step and breath, to see her expression

so clearly felt like being blinded by a sudden glare of sunlight.

Gwen just blinked at her, dazzled.

“Are we sneaking in?” Isobelle whispered, her eyebrows rising.

Gwen commanded herself to get a grip.

Isobelle’s manner was easy and calm, and utterly oblivious to the tension that had seized Gwen the

entire walk here from the castle.

“If we can. Come on, up the back steps.”

The steps were more ladder than staircase, and while Gwen had been climbing them in full skirts all her life, Isobelle wouldn’t

be used to them.

She was trying to figure out which would be easier—to have Isobelle climb first, so Gwen could follow and

break her fall should she slip, or to go up herself and offer a hand down to assist—when a voice shattered the quiet.

“Gwen, is that you?”

Her father’s voice was slow and rough, suggesting that he’d been dozing before the hearth.

Her heart ached guiltily—she’d

been longing to find the time to sneak back to Ellsdale and catch up with her father, but this was certainly not that time.

“Dad, hi,” she called, glancing at Isobelle and putting a finger to her lips before gesturing to the steps up to the loft.

“I’m just changing my clothes and then I’m going to catch the rest of the bonfire.”

“How’s the internship?” His chair creaked as he shifted, but it didn’t groan as it did when he stood up.

“Fine so far. I’ll come back for a proper visit in a few days and tell you all about it. I don’t want to miss old Bertin tonight.”

There was a pause from the next room as Gwen held her breath.

Somehow, the silence had an unnervingly knowing quality to it,

as if her father had heard more than one set of footsteps creep into the house.

When he replied, however, all he said was, “Have a good time at the bonfire, Gwen.”

Gwen followed Isobelle up the steps and into the loft, pausing at the threshold to her room and listening intently for sounds

from below, but all was quiet.

She eased into her room and slid the makeshift door closed.

“You told him you have an internship at the castle?” Isobelle said softly, amusement in her tone.

“Well, what was I supposed to tell him?” Gwen replied tartly, going to the window to open her shutters and let in the light

from the bonfire in the village square.

“Hey, Dad, I’m using a mysteriously acquired amount of wealth to hire an apprentice

from the next town over to help you while I prance around in armor, pretending to be a knight?”

Isobelle let out a soft laugh and drifted closer to the wall.

It was covered in sketches Gwen had made—some more recent, detailing

her plans for the armor she’d made, and others older, less designs and more imaginings.

Gwen had brought her here so they could change out of their fancy clothes and draw less attention from the villagers.

She hadn’t considered that bringing Isobelle into this tiny corner Gwen called her own would allow the other girl to inspect each detail of her life with such naked curiosity.

Covering her confusion, Gwen went to the chest at the foot of the bed and began rummaging through it.

“Here,” she said finally, pulling out an old charcoal-gray dress.

“This will do. It’s a bit small on me anyway.”

Isobelle had obviously figured out why Gwen had brought her here, coming to the same conclusion that she probably shouldn’t

waltz into Gwen’s village center wearing a multilayered dress of violet-blue silk.

She startled when Gwen spoke—she’d been

gazing rather intently at the wall of sketches, though Gwen couldn’t tell which one had captured her attention—and turned.

Gwen laid the charcoal dress on the bed and turned her gaze down again, the only privacy she could offer the other girl in

her tiny, cramped room.

She’d already located the dress she intended to change into herself, but she pretended to be searching

for it as Isobelle turned away and began fiddling with the laces at her back.

“I suppose an internship is as good a story as any,” Isobelle mused with a sigh, returning to their earlier conversation with

ease, not the slightest hint of concern at getting undressed in Gwen’s room.

Gwen wished she knew whether that was because

of Isobelle’s absolute mastery of body language and vocal control, or because it simply didn’t occur to her to be flustered.

“The stories never talk about what to do regarding your commitments at home while you’re off slaying dragons and rescuing

damsels,” Gwen managed, keeping her tone dry.

A soft huff of frustration made Gwen look up, in spite of her resolution to stare at the gloom inside the chest while Isobelle changed.

The laces behind Isobelle’s back were getting tangled, and the other girl was struggling to contort her arms enough to deal with them.

“Do you...” Gwen began.

“Uh... you normally have Olivia, don’t you? Do you need...?” Gwen could only hope that Isobelle

could fill in the gaps.

For some reason, the sentence “Would you like me to help you undress?” couldn’t make it past Gwen’s lips.

Isobelle laughed, unbothered by this display of helplessness, and turned to grin at Gwen over her shoulder.

“I do normally

have Olivia. Both to help me with my dress, and to handle my responsibilities when I run off on an adventure.” She stepped

closer to Gwen and then turned to present her back, the violet fabric tinged with the peaches and reds of the bonfire outside,

like an inky sunset.

Gwen abandoned the clothes chest and stood inspecting the tangled ruin of laces before her with some chagrin.

At least there

was a problem to focus on, instead of the curve of Isobelle’s neck or that the fabric, as she touched it, was warm from her

skin.

Gwen put a hand on Isobelle’s arm to reposition her slightly and have better light to see the laces, and Isobelle moved swiftly

and easily under her hand.

Isobelle swallowed, cleared her throat, and sighed.

“You know why the stories never talk about how to handle your home when

you’re off to, I don’t know, find a missing thing hid high atop the mountain, that sort of business?”

Gwen’s fingers began to work the lacings free, even as she struggled to keep her mind on the task.

The conversation was a

welcome distraction.

“Well, of course. But I don’t have a wife to leave at home to take care of everything while I go adventuring.”

“The more I think on it, the more questions I have about that system.” Isobelle’s head bowed—in amusement, perhaps, or perhaps to give Gwen more room to work as she pulled free a trailing end that Isobelle had somehow jammed inside her neckline.

“Don’t bring it all the way undone, or it’s tricky to put back together again.”

“The system, or the laces?” Gwen huffed a tiny laugh as she finished untangling the ends.

“Both, I guess.” Isobelle shivered, a light, tiny movement, and swallowed audibly again.

Gwen ought to have continued their casual conversation, but that little shiver of Isobelle’s had captured her attention as

singularly as a stray spark flying from a hot forge toward a pile of hay.

Scarcely daring to acknowledge the experiment to

herself, she breathed out again, a soft laugh, stirring the curls of escaped hair at the nape of Isobelle’s neck.

Isobelle shivered again, a light ripple of movement that made her sway, just the tiniest bit, into Gwen’s hands.

Gwen’s thoughts, which had been crowding round her like customers all jostling to be served first, fled.

She started where

the lacings were already loose at Isobelle’s shoulder blades, and began to pull them out, one at a time, until just the ends

were still tucked through the eyelets.

Each shift and tug elicited a response from Isobelle’s body, a swaying rhythm that

began to feel like a dance as the firelight outside flickered a slow, accompanying tempo.

Gwen laid a hand against Isobelle’s rib cage, and the other girl leaned into her, instantly recognizing the support for what

it was.

Gwen slipped her fingers beneath the crisscrossing laces, and bit her lip as she registered the warmth of Isobelle’s

skin, the thin chemise she wore beneath the dress no more substantial than a cobweb.

The hand at Isobelle’s ribs slid to her waist as Gwen’s fingers—moving entirely without direction from her mind—worked down into the dip at the small of Isobelle’s back.

Isobelle made a soft sound, like a gulp for air, and then said in a nearly inaudible rush, “I, uh, I like your quilt.”

Gwen’s awareness flickered toward the bed in the room, but she refocused her attention on her task before the rush of desperate

thoughts could overwhelm her again.

Or ask herself why Isobelle might be staring at her bed.

“My mother made it for me,” she

said, noting with a kind of strange wonder the way Isobelle’s head turned a fraction at the sound of her voice, like a flower

seeking the light.

“It’s one of my most treasured possessions. I’m glad you like it.”

“I wish I could have met your mother,” Isobelle said softly.

“She would have loved you.” She’d reached the end of the lacings where they sat at the base of Isobelle’s spine.

The temptation

to let her fingers continue their work was so overwhelming that Gwen had to bite her lip, hard.

Instead, she ran her fingertips

lightly over the edges of the dress back up to the shoulders, to tug at the fabric and test whether it was loose enough to

let Isobelle slip free.

Had she leaned back into Gwen’s fingertips?

Gwen could not make her touch any less of a caress than it was—the most she could

hope for was that it had not occurred to Isobelle that behind Gwen’s careful movements was a tempest begging to be set loose.

That every gentle touch was a deeper impulse restrained and packed carefully away.

“My own mother would be mortified by me, I feel sure,” Isobelle said dryly, with a sigh that made her shoulders rise into

Gwen’s hands and fall again.

“Sometimes I think most mortification is just envy in disguise.” Gwen’s voice was low, intimate.

“We’re embarrassed by those who are more free than we are because secretly we wish we could be so free, too.”

Gwen’s hand moved again, this time to trail across the back of Isobelle’s shoulder to rest against the ties at the top of

Isobelle’s chemise.

The firelight outside limned the edges of everything in rose gold, including the curve of her neck, the

fine velvet hairs on her skin, each shift and movement of the delicate muscles in her throat as she swallowed.

Isobelle’s head turned a little, her features lit in profile, giving her skin a flushed, heated quality.

If only Gwen dared

to touch that cheek, the parted lips, and discover how much of that fire was hers, and how much came from the light filtering

in through the open shutters.

“Gwen,” Isobelle said, her voice low, a strange note in it cutting straight to Gwen’s core and making her pulse quicken.

“I...”

A sudden burst of raucous laughter from outside interrupted her and made them both startle and leap apart, like lovers caught

embracing.

Distantly, Gwen recognized the voice of Lambton, the potter and farmer who lived on the north edge of the village.

He’d be telling one of his raunchy jokes, full of double meanings that the little kids never got but the older ones did.

Gwen turned away, too scattered by the shattering of that moment, the loss of that sight of Isobelle all lit by firelight,

dress falling off one shoulder, lips parting to say her name.

.. Gwen cleared her throat roughly, trying to bring herself

back to reality.

Don’t do this, Gwen.

But the admonishment she’d intended for herself sounded weak, more like a desperate plea than a command.

Don’t risk what you have with her.

Too much is at stake for you to be so foolish.

“You should be good from there,” she said aloud in a brisk tone, turning back toward the chest to retrieve her own dress.

Isobelle hadn’t moved, and she stood clutching the loosened dress to herself like Aphrodite gathering seafoam around her naked

form.

“Will you need help with yours?” she asked, her voice carrying a quiver that gave it an uncharacteristically nervous

quality.

Gwen grinned a cheerful grin.

She might not be getting better at most ladylike endeavors, but she was certainly learning how

to copy Isobelle’s public smile.

“Olivia was clever and knew I might be needing to make quick changes of clothing, given my

many identities in our deception. She’s put the lacings down the side on all my dresses, so I can do it easily by myself.”

Isobelle made a soft “ah” and turned away.

Though Gwen kept her eyes averted, she could hear the rustle of fabric as Isobelle

pulled the beautiful violet dress off over her head and began wriggling into the plainer, coarser fabric of Gwen’s old gray

one.

Gwen ducked her head and got to work on her own cleverly designed laces that she could undo all by herself. Damn you, Olivia.