Page 84 of A Rare Find

Agnes stilled her fingers, blushing. “Thank you.”

“I should go down to—”

Before they finished speaking, she began to play. “This one is called ‘I Have Not Forgot—Has She?’ ”

“Bravo,” they said weakly. “Bravo.”

“Thank you. This one is called…”

“Would you tell me how to get to the blue room?” they interrupted.

“This one is called ‘How to Get to the Blue Room.’ ” The plaintive strains of the lute once again drifted through the tower room. The melody sounded a great deal like “Beatrice.”

Agnes turned to the window, and Georgie backed slowly toward the stairs.

Eventually, they found the blue room. Furniture lined the hall outside, and through the open door, they could see blue walls, and then Elf, dragging an elaborately carved oak armchair across the checkerboard floor.

“What are you doing?” they asked, although it quickly became obvious, what with all the wet rags mounded about. Elf had been mopping. Mopping and moving furniture out of the way of…

They looked at the ceiling. “That’s not good. Will it stay up like that?”

Thunk.

Elf had let the legs of the chair bang down. She stood beside it, gazing at them with those bottomless eyes, seemingly at a loss for words.

Because of all that had passed between them last night?

Her brows met. “You’re wearing Grandpapa’s druidic vestment.”

Ah. That.

“Yes.” They flapped the heavy folds of roughly textured fabric, which flowed over their arms like ungainly wings. “Druids wore pink?”

“Pliny the Elder said they wore white. Something went awry with the laundry.” Her smile flashed at them, the smile they’d glimpsed more frequently over these past weeks and wanted to spend forever summoning forth.

Not that they were thinking in those terms. Forever.

The smile had already vanished. “Papa wouldn’t want anyone wearing it.”

“I’m not just anyone.” They stood tall. “I am Georginion, the archdruid, keeper of the sacred oak chair.” Her smile returned as they flung their aching body into said sacred chair, pulling her onto their lap, and a moment later, that smile was pressed to their mouth, as her arms circled their neck. She was kissing them through her smile, kissing and kissing them. All at once, Georgie’s heart burst. There was pressure in their chest, a sudden release, and they laughed. What had they been afraid of? Too-big feelings sweeping them away. But why fight it? Why not tumble and explode? Elf’s kisses were remaking them anyhow. If they weren’t smothered in an absurdly voluminous robe, and she weren’t buttoned up to the neck in a wool pelisse, and the door wasn’t open to the hall, they’d be slotting their mouth over other regions of her body, the very thought of which made them light in the head and heavy between the thighs.

They tilted her face up and kissed her harder. She made the most encouraging sound—a gasping, surprised, excited sort of moan—and their glee was as uncontainable as the other emotions swirling and swelling within. They softened their mouth, moved their tongue with slow, languorous strokes, and felt their heart burst again as she whimpered. They fanned their fingers over her cheekbones and jaw and eased her back. Her eyes were heavy lidded, and her lips were swollen, and she was still smiling—no, newly smiling. It was a smile they’d never seen before. Lovely and debauched.

“Just wait,” they murmured darkly, without realizing they’d spoken aloud, and watched a blush tinge the crests of her cheeks, and a hint of uncertainty creep into her gaze.

“So.” They cleared their throat. “Next task. Should I mop?”

They mopped. They mopped, moved furniture, and helped Elf empty the bookcase. They noted poetry volumes and novels mixed in with the lethally dull atlases and histories.

“Grandmama’s,” explained Elf. “This was her favorite room.” She turned a circle, frowning at its gutted and precarious state. “This is where she wrote, and read, and took her tea. I don’t think she felt welcome in the library. Grandpapa made it his domain, and then Papa. Her desk was right there.”

“You miss her,” they observed, hands tucked into the gaping sleeves of the robe.

“Many years have gone by.” Elf looked down, but not before they glimpsed the tears in her eyes. She took a few steps. “The sofa was here. She encouraged me to sit beside her and read too, even though I always interrupted with questions. Sometimes she’d read aloud, or we’d play Game of the Goose. Just us, the two of us.” She glanced at Georgie, then back at where the sofa wasn’t. “My mother kept to her bedchamber. And I kept away from it. Noise disturbed her.”

That Mrs. Marsden had been, for over a decade before she died, afflicted with ill health was a fact bruited about the neighborhood.

“It was rheumatic fever?” they asked carefully.