Page 78 of Salt Kiss
Still, I feel that warm tone of voice like a hand spread between my shoulder blades, firm and wonderful.
“I want to make sure everything is going well so far,” he says. “ThePhiltreis good? Isolde is comfortable?”
“I only saw Isolde at dinner last night, but I presume she is,” I say. I open the wardrobe where I’d unpacked my clothes and stare at the collection of suits I brought.
“I want you to make sure of it,” says Mark. “She’s very driven—to a fault—and I don’t think she’s accustomed to relaxing. She’ll need your help.”
I stare at the neat row of jackets in my wardrobe. “I don’t know that I’m good at relaxing either, sir.”
A noise, fond and low. Like a laugh. I don’t hear anything around him, so I surmise that he’s alone in his apartment.
Oh God, I hope he’s alone.
“Then do it for my sake. For Isolde’s. She won’t enjoy the ship unless you make her, and you’ll only be able to make her by enjoying it yourself. Just pretend to be me.”
Yes, because you’re so relaxed, Mr. Ripped My Own Stitches Disobeying My Doctor, I want to say. But I wisely stay silent.
“I mean it. Make her relax. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir,” I say, and then I almost ask him about—no, no, I shouldn’t. It’s not my business, no matter how much it feels like it.
Except Mark knows, somehow, that I was about to say something, because he says, “Yes, Tristan?”
“It’s not my business, sir.”
“If it involves Isolde, it’smybusiness, which then makes it your business because you are my proxy. What is it?”
I hesitate and then forge ahead. “Just...last night at dinner, Isolde didn’t know that you’d been stabbed, sir.”
A pause. “Is there a question in there?”
I don’t know.
I don’t know what I want to ask, what I want to make sure of. And anyway, it’s not my business.
“No, sir,” I say finally.
“We’re both very busy people. I didn’t want to bother her with something I’m already handling.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And we’re not in the habit of talking frequently,” he says. “It’s been about two years since I’ve seen her.”
Two years?
I’m glad that he can’t see my face because I’m sure I’m not disguising my shock right now. Even deployed soldiers see their sweethearts more often than that.
There’s another pause, and then Mark asks—slowly, almost as if he’s willing himself not to, “What’s she like now?”
I think of clear, sea-colored eyes, a slender throat. An expression composed enough to rival Mark’s at his most reserved. The feeling of a winter sunrise over the snow-covered forest, untouchable sweetness.
“She’s lovely,” I say. And then the inside of my skin tingles with a hot rush, realizing what that sounded like. “I mean, she seems like a lovely person. A little solitary, maybe, but we just met.”
If Mark found mylovelycomment strange, he doesn’t remark on it. “She’s rather solitary by nature,” he says. “Her mother died when she was young, and her father was more concerned with decorum than with affection.”
“Oh,” I say. It’s almost involuntary when I add, “Like me.”
“Which is why I think if anyone can coax her into letting her guard down, it’s you. And if that fails, just pretend to be me.”
