Page 46 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

“Very well. I’ll give you a half day to move your things, but I will expect you in the office in the afternoon.”

“Yes, Ms. Gordon,” Nore said, scarcely believing she’d made it through the conversation without slipping.

The following week, Nore loaded her two trunks into a carriage and took it into town, across the harbor, and into the district beyond. She tipped the driver for helping her carry her trunks off the street because she couldn’t manage both at once, and if she left one there, it would surely be stolen.

Nore climbed the flights of stairs, dragging one of her trunks the whole way. The key was burning in her pocket. Her hands shook as she unlocked the door, as it creaked open. The apartment was small, a riot of colors and crates and a mishmash of furniture. Across the room, Cas was precariously perched on a ladder, coffee in one hand and paintbrush in the other as he painted the wall over the fireplace deep terracotta. He glanced over his shoulder. When he saw her, his smile caught and held.

He launched himself off the ladder, setting his coffee on one of the boxes and dropping the paintbrush back in the can; before she could process the movements his body took to get to her, he’d swept her into his arms, spun her thrice, and pinned her with her back against one of the unpainted walls with his hands on her hips. Nore wrapped her legs around his waist and threaded her hands in his hair.

“You have paint,” she said, breathless as his mouth traveled up her neck, “all over you.”

He leaned back just enough to see her face. “You’re really here,” he said, his voice caught between disbelief and wonder. She shifted her hand, tracing the curve of his cheekbone with her fingertips. “We’re really doing this.”

She understood his feelings perfectly. They’d talked about it for months, almost a year, from the very first night she snuck away from the big house when Edith was away and spent the night in the narrow bed of his miniscule room at the theater. She had to move somewhere at eighteen, and the theater wouldn’t be able to house him forever. Combining her meager resources with Cas’s felt like a sound decision.

When they first discussed sharing rooms together, it had felt like no more than a dream, a fantasy. But then, a month before, Cas had found this place up for rent, with the possibility of buying in the future: it was shabby and in a rough neighborhood, but it had been kept up well enough, and it was bigger than the tiny attic room Cas had had before.

And—when she allowed herself to think of it, to imagine the reality of coming home to him every night, of having a place together where she didn’t have to hide… the decision was obvious. It helped that it didn’t eat too much into the wages Edith paid her, that she could have some money to save for the future.

Nore wriggled against him, seeking the floor. He dropped her easily. “Show me around,” she said, grasping his hand, lacing their fingers together.

He complied. They walked through the lounge, crowded with boxes, to the tiny rectangle of the kitchen; through the bathroom, with its rickety pipes and overlarge bathtub; to the bedroom, with windows that looked toward the smoky harbor and a brass-framed bed. It was not much, really; between her possessions, mostly clothes, and his secondhand furniture, they had just enough to make the place livable. But it wasn’t soulless wealth, like the house she lived in with Edith. It was comfortable. It felt like home.

Nore leaned back. Caspian caught her, his arms wrapping around her middle. She drew his hand up to her lips and kissed his knuckles.

“I want to spend time with you,” she said, “but half of my things are still downstairs, and Edith is expecting me at noon.”

He laughed, and she felt the rumble of it against her back. “We have all the time in the world, Finch.”

Nore soon learned to balance two very different lives. In the morning, she woke with the first rays of sunshine, entwined with Cas. He made her coffee and toast while she bathed and dressed; she ate while he prepared to teach morning classes or stretched for rehearsal. Nore became the picture of poise and elegance when she arrived at Miller & Sons every morning, and hosted clients at Edith’s side at formal lunches all over the city. She ran Celestine’s little errands and tipped the whispers back into the duchess’s ear when requested, barely knowing why she was doing it. Soon enough, she was maintaining her own client list alongside Edith’s, under her aunt’s careful supervision. At night, when she wasn’t at dinners and Cas wasn’t working shifts at the pub or performing, they spent their hours tangled together or reading or laughing over recounted stories. Two years passed in this way, and Nore did not try to catch the time as it raced away from her.

She did not often take trips out of town to meet clients, but when she did, she returned to find small gifts from Cas: a bouquet of flowers tucked into her bag, or a small vial of perfume on her dresser, or a pair of earrings on the mantel. Once, she came back to find a half-feral kitten and Cas covered in scratches and bite marks, absolutely besotted with the creature.

She couldn’t make him get rid of the cat, even though it started every morning and finished every night by biting Nore.

It was easy to allow herself to feel the permanence of their new situation: the two of them, forever—plus Cas’s evil cat. Like she could live forever in happiness in these hours between sunset and daybreak, desperately content in the time before she put on her fine clothes and her other life. It was easy to convince herself this could be a permanent arrangement—that she could hold this in her hands and keep it.

She was deeply in this perfect denial when she woke one night to a loud thud, then swearing. Nore frowned, lit a taper, and sleepily made her way to the other room.

“Cas?” she called.

“Finch—don’t,” he said from the bathing room, the door ajar. “Just—can you keep the cat out?”

Her frown deepened. Nore crossed the room on socked feet and pushed open the door. He’d lit at least three lamps, and the light flared briefly against Nore’s tired eyes. She winced—and then gasped as she realized what she was looking at.

Caspian sat on the wide sill of the window, surrounded by lamps, with a small mirror and a bowl next to him. Another bowl sat nearby, the water pink, the cloth inside speckled with blood. He was stripped to his shorts, his discarded clothes on the floor by the bath, bloody and bruised.

“Cas,” she said, setting her own lamp aside. “What happened?”

“Don’t come in,” he said, his voice weary and hoarse. “There’s glass.”

Nore ignored him. She went into the other room and found a pair of thick-soled boots she wore to the warehouses. She knew how ridiculous she looked, wearing only Cas’s shirt and her boots, but there were more important matters at hand. She shut Grimsby into the bedroom—whenever Caspian was involved, the cat wanted to be there—before she joined him back in the other room.

“Stop that,” Nore said, realizing he was artlessly digging for bits of glass in his skin with tweezers. She sat next to him, shifting his various pieces over, and took the tweezers. His hands were slick with blood. Nore wiped the metal, then grabbed his hand to stretch his arm and set to work. “What happened?” she asked again. “You look like you jumped through a window.”

He’d sat back when she took over, leaning his head against the wall, his eyes slipping shut. The side of his face looked bruised, too, but she couldn’t tell yet. He snorted, a small, self-deprecating noise. “Why would I do a thing like that?”

Nore frowned at him, then went back to removing shards of glass from his arm, each one plinking quietly into the bowl between them. The damage was mostly on his right arm, as if he’d landed on his shoulder, but there looked to be some on his thigh, too.