Catherine alone remained above the foam, her smile frozen. In her head, she was sequestered away in a sea cave somewhere. In her mind, it was Jest grinning at her, his dimples carved deep into his cheeks. He beckoned to her, and she went.
She knew, in that moment, that she would go to him, if only he asked. She would be his, if he wanted her.
“Oh no,” she murmured, her smile thawing, falling, carried away with the undeniable, inevitable, impossible truth of it.
She was falling in love with him.
CHAPTER 27
THE AUDIENCE WAS FIERCE with applause as Catherine set her hand on top of the King’s and they walked together up the beach. The King was soaking wet and a strand of seaweed was caught on the heel of his shoes and he could not have sounded any more delighted than if the entire festival had been a surprise unbirthday party thrown in his honor.
Catherine, her thoughts in turmoil, did her best to keep her eyes locked on the white overhanging cliffs so she wouldn’t be tempted to seek out Jest in the crowd. She was sure that with one look at her, he would know the depth of her thoughts.
The orchestra leaped into a waltz and Catherine could feel the King gathering his courage to ask for another dance, and so she thanked him exuberantly for the quadrille and escaped into the crowd before he could find the words.
All around her, the festival’s guests began to divide into couples and line up for the next dance. Cath avoided meeting anyone’s eye, unwilling to be drawn into a conversation or another dance, to be captured in the endless turns and figures and trivial chatter until the festival ended and they all dispersed, afraid to be caught in the dark now that a monster was on the prowl.
She snapped from her thoughts to the sound of her own name roaring in her ears. The crowd had pushed in toward her. A dozen women were chattering about the rumors of her courtship, a dozen men were inquiring after her dance card and then backing away jokingly, pretending that they didn’t want the King to take offense. Hands brushed her sleeves and smiles hovered Cheshire-like before her face. “Lady Catherine, how lovely you looked during the quadrille.” “Quite the favorite with the King these days, aren’t you, Lady Pinkerton?” “You looked beautiful out there—positively regal!” “Catherine—” “Catherine—” “Catherine—”
Lowering her head, she tried to shove her way through, begging to be allowed to pass. Her mind was spinning, tumbling, as the crowd thickened with congratulations and compliments and twittering praise. The grins of strangers who were too blind to see the frustration behind her pretty face and pretty clothes and pretty life—
A cloud of white smoke burst at her feet, filling the air around her with startled gasps. Catherine froze. Within moments the smoke was so thick she couldn’t see her own hands outstretched before her.
Then there was a gloved hand in hers, fingers entwined, tugging her forward. Jest.
She followed without question, disconcerted at the press of confused bodies.
The smoke thinned as she was pulled up an embankment of craggly white stones, a narrow path tucked into an alcove beneath the cliffs. Jest glanced back to check that she was all right, before guiding them behind a wall of fallen boulders. Their surfaces sparkled with bits of quartz.
It was not as private as a sea cave, but it was serene and they were alone, at least for a time. Catherine, panting, was warm from her brow to her toes, but the shaded spot was comfortable and already her breaths were coming easier.
“Are you all right?” Jest said, cupping her hand and looking at her with the same concern he’d had when she’d awoken in the gardens.
She nodded. “Better already, thank you.”
“I thought you were going to faint again. Have you eaten anything today?”
She gulped. “Y-yes. A meat pie, when I arrived this morning.”
His mouth quirked. “Excellent choice.”
The past few minutes faded away and once again Cath was standing on the surf, staring out into the sea, and realizing with sudden certainty that she was losing her heart to this fool.
She pulled her hand away and turned to peer through a crack in the rocks. On the beach, the smoke was clearing fast, leaving a fine mist over the baffled onlookers. The orchestra was still playing, though, and the confusion was giving way to another dance.
Jest brushed a lock of hair off her shoulder. “You don’t enjoy dancing?”
She shut her eyes. His fingertips lingered on the bare skin of her neck and she couldn’t resist leaning into them. “We can’t all be great performers.”
“Yet you are a lovely dancer.” He was so close she could feel the heat coming from him, cutting through the chill of the wind. “Beside you, even the King looked half respectable. It’s easy to see why he wants you for his queen.”
Her stomach dropped. There was no bitterness in his tone. She wondered why. Surely, if their roles were reversed and Jest was in the midst of courting another girl, it would have been shredding her to bits. Her emotions would have been lemon peel dragged across a grater.
She stepped away and opened her eyes, keeping her hands anchored to the glittering white stone. “You shouldn’t touch me,” she said, her voice strained around the rapid beating of her heart.
Jest leaned against the stone. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” She couldn’t tell if he meant it.
Her heart tugged toward him. She wished that she hadn’t pulled back. She wished that he had pulled her closer.
“Tell me, Sir Rook, did you behave this way with all the ladies in Chess too?”
“Which behavior are you referring to? My good manners, my charming witticisms, my beguiling charisma—”
“I was referring to your determination to make me blush, for no other purpose than to laugh at me later.”
He blanched, then took a step closer. Cath could hear the creak of his leather boots. “I assure you that when I replay this conversation in my head later, it will not be in laughter.”
Cath lowered her lashes, her insides fluttering. “I should get back. My parents will worry.” She turned away.
“Wait?”
It was a question, not a demand, and so she waited. Stupid hope coursed through her veins.
“It isn’t my place, of course…”
Gulping, she turned back. Jest had removed his gloves and was busy choking them in his fists. Though his expression was calm, his hands said otherwise.
“The King…,” he started, and Cath flinched, glad that Jest was too busy inspecting the gloves to notice. “He truly cares for you. I think he honestly means to make you happy.”
She expected him to go on, but silence fell, and that seemed to be all he meant to say.
“Are you telling me to accept him?”
“No,” he stammered. “I’m saying that if you did accept him, I would understand. I would be happy for you.”
She clenched her fists. “How comforting that at least one of us would be.”
Jest looked up at her again, his brow tight. “Something happened, down on the beach,” he said, dropping the gloves onto a rock. “You came back from the quadrille looking like you’d seen a ghost.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She folded her arms protectively over her chest. “I entered a cake into the baking contest. I suppose I’m nervous about it.”
A weak smile slipped over his features. “I can’t believe that.”
“What would you know about it? I can be nervous if I want to be.”
He shrugged. “We both know you’re going to win the contest.”
“I do not either know it.” She stood straighter. “I assume that I will win, yes, but that isn’t the same thing. And I’ll have you know that wasn’t much of a compliment.”
“It wasn’t meant to be, but if it’s a compliment you want…” His gaze softened. “You are stunning in that absurd hat. Absolutely, undeniably stunning. I trust that was Hatta’s goal, but he can’t know how well he accomplished it, else he would have deemed it improper to let you leav
e his hat shop so adorned.” He hesitated and cleared his throat, looking almost shy. “That’s what I wanted to say before.”
She scoffed, but it was coupled with a quickened heartbeat. “You’re infuriating.”
“You’re not the first to mention it.” His momentary bashfulness turned to another maddening smile.
She squeezed her arms in tighter, still shielding herself, or perhaps in an effort to keep from reaching out to him. “You act as though you know me, but you don’t, not really. You don’t know what I like, or what I want, or what I dream about…”
“You dream about me, if I’m not mistaken.”
“I never should have told you that.”
His eyes glinted.
“And all I know about you is that you sneak into girls’ bedrooms in the middle of the night and you take their corset laces when they’re unconscious and you seem to want me to accept the King but then you call me stunning or touch me when you shouldn’t. And you’re always laughing at me and you’re on some secret mission from the White Queen but I haven’t the faintest idea what that means and I can’t tell what’s real or what’s an illusion and I—I have to get back.” She pivoted away from him. “Thank you for rescuing me from that crowd, but I do have to get back.”
“I can’t stop thinking about you, either, Lady Pinkerton.”
Without having gone a single step, she felt her feet digging into the sand. This time, she didn’t dare turn around. She didn’t have to. A moment later he slipped in front of her, not touching her this time, but close enough that he could have.
The look he gave her was already peeling back her layers of fortitude. How dare he look as though he were nervous or afraid, when she was the one with a gavel thumping inside her chest?
“That’s not what I said at all,” she breathed.
“I know, but I’m hoping it’s what you meant.” He licked his lips—a small, cruel movement that made her own lips tingle. “I can’t stop thinking about you, Lady Catherine Pinkerton of Rock Turtle Cove. I’ve been trying, but it’s useless. You’ve had me mesmerized from the first moment I saw you in that red dress, and I don’t know what to do about it, other than to use every skill at my disposal to try and mesmerize you back.”
The wind whistled through the rocks, the waves whispered on the beach, and Catherine had no response.
He let his attention drop to the ground, and she was able to almost-breathe again. Jest reached up to scratch his temple, but seemed surprised to find his three-pointed hat there, so he whisked it off and the bells jingled and his hair was matted and messy and when he wasn’t looking directly at her he could pass as timid, though she found it hard to fathom.
Timid or arrogant, charming or infuriating, and Catherine was falling, falling, falling.
“His Majesty keeps coming to me for advice.” He looked up again, misery in his expression. “He seems to think I’m an expert on how best to court you. What to say, what gifts to send.” He hesitated. “Of course I help him, because … well, I have to. But also, I sometimes pretend that it’s me, instead of him. I suggest he do the things that I would do, if I were … deserving of you.”
Her heart drummed. “You mean, if you were nobility.”
“I mean.” He tried to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, that there can be no more nights like … like the tea party. And you’re right. I was a terrible cad to sneak you around like that, and I know the harm that could be done. Not only because of the Jabberwock, but … the dangers to your reputation, and your courtship, and … it was selfish of me.”
“I hope you’re not taking all the credit.” Her voice held little of the fire she wanted it to. “I made the choice as well as you did.”
“I accede your point.”
Her fingers itched to reach out to him, to touch him. She refrained. “I swear to you, I’m not meaning to be fickle. I don’t want to be in this courtship. It’s just…” She laughed, a dismal sound. “I didn’t think it would be so hard, but how does one reject a king? Not to mention my parents. My mother. Oh—” She groaned. “She wants it so much. She’s so happy when she talks about the courtship, and I can’t stand to think how disappointed she’ll be.” She squirmed and pulled her hands through her knotted hair, tugging it over her ears.
Disappointed did not begin to cover her parents’ reactions if she were to reject the King, especially once she told them that she’d fallen in love with the court joker instead.
“I want to make them proud,” she said, “but we have such different opinions on what my future should hold. It’s as though … if I love them enough, surely I could learn to love the King too. I know that’s how my mother sees it. She would think that I failed in this most simple of obligations. To be a good daughter who marries the King. Who makes them proud.”
“You talk as if love is doled out like prizes at a festival. Surely they just want you to be happy.”
“Of course they want me to be happy. They just think I’ll be happy with the King, but I know they’re wrong. I never could be. Which is why…” She squared her shoulders. “When he proposes, I won’t—I cannot accept him. You must believe that.”
He eyed her for a long, long moment, before he said, “I believe that you believe it.”
She frowned. It was not the confidence she’d hoped for, but she couldn’t blame him. Until now, she’d done little to dissuade the King’s advances. “I can tell when the gifts and the poems are from you and not him.”
He flashed a wry smile. “I should hope so.”
She looked away. “Jest…”
“Lady Pinkerton.”
She chewed the inside of her cheek, unable to find the words she wanted to tell him. Not sure that she was brave enough to tell him anything at all.
He edged closer. “I understand how much the King has to offer you, and how very little I have in comparison. I’ll understand should you accept him.”
“Jest—”
“Truly. He’s the better choice in every way.”
“Certainly not every way.”
“Please don’t give me false hope.” His voice chipped, forcing her to meet his gaze again. Her pulse thundered. “I can’t compete with a king, and I won’t compete with the man who’s given me employment, who’s offered me a place in his court when he had no need to. I don’t mean to make your choice more difficult than it already is. He’s a good man. I believe he would do his best to be a good husband.”
Catherine’s mouth ran dry. A crack was burrowing through her chest, threatening to break her open.
“But,” he said, his voice tender and low, “should you decide to refuse him…”
She blinked back the mist in her eyes.
“Then I hope it won’t cause offense if I were to…” Jest hesitated. There was a new tension in his shoulders, an unexpected self-consciousness to the set of his brow. “To call on you. Or … your father.”
“My father,” she whispered.
“Do you think … is there any hope at all that he would entertain my request to court you? With every good intention a poor joker like myself could possibly have.”
Her heart clamped. At the restrained hope in his voice. At the pleading in his eyes. At all the memories of her mother pushing her into the arms of the King.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Is Rook a very high rank in Chess?”
He pressed his lips and seemed to be considering the question. “Actually,” he said, “it’s on equal ranking to a marquess.”
She straightened, surprised at this answer.
And to think that all her parents would ever see when they looked at him was a lowly Joker.
“But,” Jest said, perhaps seeing too much hope in her expression, “we are not in Chess.”
“No, I know. If you asked to court me, I suppose my parents would be … well … they would probably be…”
“Mortified?” he suggested. “Insulted? Baffled that someone like me could be so bol
d as to think they would ever agree to such a match?”
Her breath shook as she inhaled. “Yes. All of that.”
Another silence hung between them. She could not stand to meet his eyes, because if she did, she might lie to him. She might tell him that yes, there was a chance her parents would agree to the courtship. There was hope that her parents would accept him.
Or worse—she might tell him it didn’t matter to her, when she knew that it did.
Jest sighed. “I figured as much. I suppose I’ll have to find another way to make this impossibility possible.” He chuckled, a rather hollow sound. “Perhaps I will enter the next pumpkin-eating contest and be knighted by the King.”
Her cheek fluttered. “I wish you luck with such a noble conquest, Sir Jest.”
“I sincerely hope you mean that, my lady.”
CHAPTER 28
CATH’S NERVES WERE STRETCHED TAFFY thin as she made her way back through the rows of snapping tents. This time, there was no excitement for the carnival food or pretty baubles. Her head was too full of Jest and the knowledge that she was a coward. Was she so afraid to disappoint her parents and the King, that she was willing to put their happiness before her own?
“Cath! There you are!” Mary Ann was rushing toward her, black skirt bunched up in both fists and hair tumbling from her blue-and-yellow bonnet. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
“What’s happened?” Cath glanced around and noticed, for the first time, how empty the beach felt.
“Nothing, yet. But the contest started ten minutes ago and they’re going to get to your cake any minute, but you have to be present if you’re to win!”
“Conte—? Oh! The contest!”
Mary Ann shot her a disgruntled look. “You forgot?”
“No, of course not, I was just … I…”
Mary Ann grabbed her wrist. “You best not have. I’ve been dreaming about those twenty gold crowns all morning, imagining all that we can do with them to bring the bakery to life.” Relaxing, she shot Cath a bright smile and pointed up at her bonnet. “I really do think there’s something about this hat. Is yours from the Marvelous Millinery too? It’s quite charming.”