Page 24

Eight

The cavalry came the next day.

Sensibility “Sybil” Cooper, matriarch of the Cooper clan and a dominant who could put even old King Emile in his place, arrived outside the House of Onyx in the family carriage shortly after dawn.

Pearl, Yves’ younger sister, sat on the driver’s bench with Harriet while Tony clambered down to approach the front door.

The sturdy carriage horses eyed the House of Onyx with a casual disdain that his family rarely allowed themselves to show in public.

Yves slipped down the stairs just in time to meet Tony at the entrance.

The last thing he wanted was to have half the House awake to watch his family raise a fuss in the foyer.

He barely felt like checking with Laurent to see if the invitations to the next contest had been sent out, let alone like facing his mother at the crack of dawn, but it seemed that fate was determined to spit on him.

“What?” Yves asked. Tony glanced over his shoulder, and a curtain in the carriage window twitched.

“Ma says she won’t meet you here,” Tony said.

“All right,” Yves said, tired beyond all reckoning. “Tell her that’s nice of her and to have a safe trip home.”

“Darling! Cooper!” Yves winced. He hadn’t felt his mother’s particular brand of dominance in years, and it was like a firm thumb and forefinger twisting his ears until they burned. “Get in the carriage this instant!”

“I’m too busy whoring, Mother,” Yves called. Harriet snorted, and Tony pulled his cap down over his eyes. “I’m tired from being fucked by my prospective suitors all night. Come back tomorrow.”

The curtain twitched again. “Darling Cooper.”

“It’s Yves,” Harriet said, before Yves could open his mouth. She winked at him.

The carriage door swung open, and Yves stared into his own face in twenty years—beautiful and fierce, curly hair going gray at the temples, with freckles merging into splotches over her cheeks and nose.

“That’s enough,” his mother said. “We’ll meet you at the Grouse and Bee.”

“Will you?” Yves asked. “Because I don’t know how you’re going to make me come.”

Go on, he thought, glaring at his mother. Did you think I was a brat in my teens? Because I’ve been a professional for years.

His mother gave him the same sharp glare.

“The two of you,” Tony muttered, disappearing into his hat. “It’s like watching someone fight their own reflection.”

“Don’t butt in, Tony,” Yves said.

“Don’t mutter, Tony,” Sybil said. She and Yves resumed glaring at each other. “Darling. Make yourself presentable and meet us in half an hour. It’s the least you can do.”

“The least I can do after what?” Yves asked. “Escaping you?”

“Why do you do this?” Pearl cried, throwing the reins down. “She’s never like this with anyone else!”

“She’s like this because I’m the eldest,” Yves said.

“She’s like this because you’re like this,” Tony mumbled. Yves and Sybil turned their glares to him, and Tony hunched his shoulders. “But it’s my fault for saying it, sure.”

Yves was about to tell his mother to go back home and worry about the rest of her children when he remembered what Charon had said the last time Yves received a summons. He didn’t need to meet her at a place of her choosing, but he didn’t have to outright reject her, either.

“I’ll see you at the Honeybee Court in half an hour,” Yves said. “It’s a cafe in the Crescent Garden. Don’t worry, I’ll cover the bill.”

“For everyone?” Harriet asked. Pearl smacked her on the arm, but Harriet looked unaffected.

“Of course,” Yves said. “I can afford it.” He smiled sweetly at his mother. “Whoring is lucrative.”

“We can cover our own costs,” his mother said. “We aren’t destitute.”

“Did I say you were?”

“Not again,” Tony groaned. He slumped back toward their mother, and Yves kept smiling brightly until Pearl and Harriet urged the horses forward. He didn’t drop his expression until they’d disappeared behind the line of pleasure houses, then immediately scrambled upstairs to change.

Charon met him in the hall between their rooms. He looked slightly disheveled, and his black hair curled in his face as though he hadn’t yet had the time to brush it and tie it back.

“Yves.” There was an odd sense of urgency in his voice, but Yves barely noticed it, too preoccupied with the imminent threat of tea with his mother.

“Sorry, Charon, I’m meeting the general for war talks.” He opened his door and started digging through his closet. “What is it?”

“War talks?” Charon stood in the doorway, frowning.

“Meeting my mother at the Honeybee,” Yves said. He pulled out a shirt and wriggled into it. “She’s probably dragging along whatever husband candidate she chose to bring me to heel. And anyone who will join her on a trip to intimidate me into clipping my own wings has to be an ass.”

“Do you need someone to come with you?” Charon asked.

Yves snorted. “Absolutely. But I don’t want to subject you to my mother.” He stepped into some trousers—tight ones, just a touch too flashy to be respectable. “And here I’d had such a lovely night.”

“I heard,” Charon said, and Yves hesitated in the middle of tugging on his boots.

Did Charon know that he’d kissed one of the dancers?

Not that it mattered, of course. Yves could kiss anyone he wanted to.

It was only that the kiss the night before had felt right in a way Yves still couldn’t name, and when he lingered on it too long, he started to feel that low, deep ache in his chest again.

“It was eventful,” Yves said. “It was a shame that you couldn’t make it.”

“Yves,” Charon said, as Yves smoothed down his hair. “About the ball last night…”

“I’m so sorry.” Yves shoved a ruby ring on his index finger. “I really do want to talk about it, Charon, but I have to get to war right now.” He stopped to get on his tiptoes, brushing a lock of hair out of Charon’s eyes. “Let me get that. You look nice with your hair down, you know.”

“You always look—” Charon started to say, but Yves was already turning to the stairs. He stopped and twisted around.

“Sorry? Did you say something?”

“I’ll tell you when you return,” Charon said, “unless you’d rather have someone there with you.”

“I’d need an army,” Yves said, and ran back down the rest of the stairs.

He took a hansom cab to the Honeybee. The cafe was mostly outdoors, with a small kitchen in a brightly painted shed and tables set around the garden.

Most of Yves’ family was waiting for him when he arrived, seated in a half-circle of tables with Yves’ mother and a tall, squirrely older fellow next to her in the middle.

“Yves!” Yves took a step back as Sunny bolted out of his seat. He was big for his age, about thirteen and already towering over the rest of his siblings. He grabbed Yves in an embrace that almost cracked his ribs.

“Ma’s about to explode,” Sunny whispered. “I asked her to take me to an opera yesterday and she looked like I was asking to join you in the House of Onyx.”

“I’ll take you instead,” Yves said. Sunny claimed he couldn’t hold a tune to save his life, but he was always asking Yves to describe operas for him in his letters.

Out of all of Yves’ siblings, Sunny was the one who loved city life the most, and he’d said more than once that he’d like to follow in Yves’ footsteps one day.

“You’ll have to sneak me out.” Sunny took Yves’ hand—just like he had when he was young, even though most people his age would have been mortified to be seen holding their brother’s hand in public—and led him to the center table.

“Leave us here to talk, Sunshine,” Yves’ mother said. Her dominance was oppressive as usual. Sunny instinctively looked down, but he didn’t let go of Yves’ hand.

“He hasn’t seen me in ages, Mother. Let him be.

” Yves sat down, and it struck him that Sunny might have held his hand out of an instinctive bid for comfort.

Growing up as a submissive in the Cooper house wasn’t the easiest experience, especially without Yves to take the brunt of his mother’s displeasure.

Yves felt a pang of guilt, which quickly turned into the familiar outrage that he had to be the one to protect them in their own home.

“Darling.” Sybil gestured to the man sitting next to her. “I’d like to introduce you to Lester Hatfeld.”

Yves smiled at the man. He was at least thirty years older than him, which wasn’t a problem in theory, but it bothered Yves that his mother thought that no one younger would be interested.

He was looking at Yves like someone about to pick through a tart at a breakfast table—which was, again, not technically a problem, or it wouldn’t have been before yesterday.

But Yves couldn’t get the dance at the ball out of his mind, the surety of being held by someone who wanted him as more than a bauble to put on a shelf and fuck occasionally.

“So we’ve met,” Yves said. He turned back to his mother. “He isn’t on my approved list.”

“Here, now,” Lester said. His voice had a reedy, thin dominance to it, and Yves felt like a cat having his fur brushed the wrong way. “A submissive should greet their dominant on his knees, with his head bowed.”

“Good thing you’re not my dominant,” Yves said. Sunny let go of Yves’ hand and covered his mouth. “Mother. I already have a plan for my future. Admit that I’m a lost cause and move on.”

“I can’t simply move on,” Sybil said. “People in the village are starting to talk.”

“They’ve been talking since the dawn of time.”

“That is no way to speak to a dominant, let alone your mother,” Lester said.

“Lester.” Yves didn’t bother to put on a polite smile anymore. “The first rule of working with a courtesan in Duciel—don’t insert yourself where you’re not wanted.”

Lester’s face went dangerously pink. “You’d have the back of my hand for that.”

“No, he will not,” Sybil said sharply, and Lester drew back, cowed.

“You’re the one who picked him for me,” Yves said. “That’s a reflection on you and your taste.”

“I have never,” Lester said, rising to his feet, “been more insulted in my life.”