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At first, it didn’t register where I was. There was something soft beneath me, but not thin-mattress-at-the-Slat soft. It was properly soft, worthy of a mercher…
Suddenly, I remembered. My eyes flew open and I sat up with a start, the quilt that had been draped over me sometime in the night falling to the floor as I looked around.
I was in the music room, on the settee. In the haze of combined euphoria and grief the night before, I’d stumbled into the room and fallen asleep. It was the place in this house that I felt safest, and I honestly wasn’t quite sure where else I belonged. My room was a nursery. The guest bedrooms were too… impersonal. And I certainly wasn’t going anywhere near my father’s room for a while yet.
I shook his head. The master bedroom. Not my father’s room.
Not anymore.
I swung my feet off of the settee, sitting up. I picked up the quilt I’d dropped and clumsily folded it, wincing at the untidiness of it. Yet another thing I was hopeless at.
Standing, I wandered out of the room. It was early yet, the watery gray sunlight of a Ketterdam sunrise just reaching the windows, and the only people around were the servants. I tried to avoid them. They were kind enough, but they had the tendency to stare for a bit too long. It made me uncomfortable.
I didn’t realize where I was going until I looked up and found myself at the door of the nursery. I sighed. Might as well get this over with.
I placed my hand on the doorknob, turned it, and stepped inside.
My breath caught.
It was just how I remembered it. The simple wooden dresser. The lovingly painted walls.
The crib.
Suddenly, it was all too much. I stepped back out the door, closed it, and leaned against the wall, breathing heavily.
“Wy?”
I looked up and saw Jesper, hair disheveled, face full of concern. He must’ve just gotten up. He still had on the outrageous Barrel flash that he’d been wearing yesterday, probably too tired to change.
I gave a shaky smile. “I’m fine,” I said. No need for him to think me any weaker than he already did.
He wasn’t put off, though. He moved closer and placed a hand on my arm.
“What’s wrong?” he asked gently.
I looked up into his face, and the concern there took my breath away. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had cared that much. Not really. There’d been nannies who were paid to care, and a few especially nice servants, but Jesper was looking at me like nothing else mattered. Like I was the only thing he was concerned with at the moment.
In the second unusually bold move for me in the past two days, I leaned up and kissed him.
His lips were warm and soft, comforting. He wrapped his arms around me, encasing me in them, and I felt truly safe for what felt like the first time in my life.
When we broke apart, Jesper didn’t let go of me, just rested his head against mine, the corners of his mouth tugging upward. God, that mouth.
“Hey there.”
I grinned a little. “Hi,” I said, suddenly shy. I felt a hot blush spread up my neck, and Jesper smiled properly, eyes dancing with mirth.
“Easy tiger,” he said, laughing. “I wouldn’t want you getting all hot and bothered over me.” Then he paused. “Actually,” he said, grinning, “I wouldn’t mind that too much.”
I snickered, earning a bright smile from Jesper.
I was glad he’d happened upon me. I didn’t want to be alone right now. However, I couldn’t keep my eyes from straying to the door of that horrible room. Jesper followed my gaze, and his smile dimmed a little.
“Are you okay?” he asked gently, nodding toward the door. “What’s in there?”
My mouth twisted. I hated that I’d ruined the moment. Like I ruined everything else. “My room,” I said quietly. “Well. It was my room.”
His eyebrows knit in confusion, and I motioned to the door. “Take a look.”
He reached out one hand to turn the handle, but to my great relief, his other arm stayed firmly around my waist as he glanced into the room.
I felt his breath hitch as he saw the crib, understood what it meant. I waited for the arm to retract, for him to realize that he’d saddled himself with a burden he didn’t want. Realize that if my own father didn’t want me, he certainly didn’t.
To my surprise, he suddenly turned to me and pulled me to him, wrapping me in both his arms again as he held me, face buried in my neck. After a moment, I returned the embrace, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my face to his chest, breathing in the smell of gunpowder and aftershave and something else, something unidentifiable and uniquely Jesper. I melted into his arms, my body beginning to shake. He held me tighter, pressed a small, reassuring kiss to my shoulder.
“I’m so, so sorry,” he whispered, face still buried.
“Why?” I asked, confused. He hadn’t done anything.
“Because that son of a bitch deserves so much worse than he’s getting.”
And before I could stop myself, before I could think about how highly inappropriate and weird it was, I started to laugh.
It shouldn’t have been funny. It should’ve been awful. It was awful. But hearing those words here, in this house, a rebellion, however small, against Jan Van Eck? A stand in the face of his cruelty? It was oddly freeing, and it gave me a warm, bubbly feeling in the pit of my stomach. How poetic. What was the saying? What goes around comes around?
It felt like the end of that part of my life. It felt like the beginning of something new. Something bigger, and better, and more wonderful than I ever could’ve imagined.
Something that would, with any luck, involve the handsome sharpshooter with his arms around me.
Jesper pulled back in worry, thinking I was crying, but when he saw my face, and the maniacal grin on it, he raised an eyebrow.
“You okay, Van Sunshine?” he asked, grinning slightly despite himself.
“Yeah,” I said, still laughing a little. “Yeah. Just…” I grinned up at Jes. “You’re amazing.”
The smile Jesper gave me could’ve outshined a thousand Ketterdam suns.