Nine o’clock in the morning.
By the time everything was over, two hours had passed.
The cooking, in the end, was done by my husband.
He couldn’t cook at all, so naturally the result was terrible. But my ability to taste anything seemed to have grown so blunted by sheer exhaustion that I ate my way through it and adapted.
After breakfast we returned to the bedroom to wash. I was dealt with again in the process.
Then came the window.
Then the vanity table.
There may have been other locations in between, but somewhere in the middle I had lost consciousness, and the details weren’t coming back to me clearly. I remembered being dragged to the bed last, and then nothing until I woke up in a heap.
“Mm.”
Something warm pressed against my cheek. When I raised my head, I found myself riding on my husband’s back.
“Oh.”
We were outside at last.
The late afternoon sky was clean and clear, not a cloud anywhere—brilliant sunlight pouring down on everything.
Waves rolled in with a soft, relentless crash, coming and going, drawing back and coming again, their crests breaking white against the shore.
“Shall we head in?”
“We are not heading in! I only just woke up!”
“We’ve been walking for two hours.”
“Then you should have woken me! What’s the point of a walk if I’m unconscious for it?”
I pounded his back with both fists and kicked until he let me down. He sighed—a sound conveying sincere reluctance—and set me gently on the ground.
“I intend to look at absolutely everything before we go in! We’ve been here for three days and I haven’t seen anything outside this villa!”
He ignored this and began smoothing out my wrinkled dress.
“You’re terrible, you know that. Two whole hours and you didn’t even wake me up!”
I stomped my foot at him by way of menacing threat. He went on tidying my hair.
“And you’re not even responding! ‘Again!'”
He unhooked the straw hat from where it dangled against my back and settled it firmly on my head.
“Oh—how did you know to bring this? Well—thank you, anyway!”
I adjusted the brim and smiled despite myself. Emily had tucked it in herself, insisting I’d need it—the island sun was fierce.
“One hour.”
“No! Two hours!”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Wait—all right—one hour! One hour!”
I was destined to lose every negotiation with this man for the rest of my life.
I sulked for approximately three seconds before the joy of being outdoors overtook me, and I was off—trotting this way and that, exploring everything I could find.
“Kael! Look at this! There’s a tiny crab! It must be a baby one! Hello!”
An extraordinarily small shore crab clacked its claws together and swaggered from side to side, as though greeting me. It held my gaze for a moment, sizing me up, then skittered sideways and went about its business.
‘Screee! Screee!’
“Kael! There are seagulls all over the sky! Do you think those are the same ones from the cruise? Hello up there!”
I had so little time. With only an hour of freedom granted to me, I couldn’t afford to waste a second—I wanted to see and touch everything.
We built a small sandcastle together from the soft, cool shore sand. I waded in up to my ankles when a wave came rolling in.
Kael said nothing, but he listened. He built the sandcastle alongside me. He stood in the shallows beside me.
After a while, he scooped me up without warning.
And then he held me out over the water as though about to drop me.
“AHHHH! You want to kill me, don’t you!”
“Give me a kiss and I’ll hold you properly.”
“You horrible person!”
He tipped me further.
‘Peck peck peck!’
I pressed quick, desperate kisses to his lips. He righted me at once and held me securely.
My husband in name was a full-blown street ruffian the moment he started threatening and intimidating people.
* * *
‘Tap.’
Kael crouched beside me, knees bent, and tapped my lips lightly.
“What are you doing? With your lips sticking out like that?”
“Stop it. I’m concentrating.”
‘Tap tap.’
He kept at it, prodding me the way a child prods something to get a reaction.
“Stop! What is your problem!”
“I asked what you’re doing.”
“I’m collecting shells, as you can plainly see! You’re watching—why are you asking?”
I was gathering shells to bring back as a gift for Emily. The pale pink ones and pearlescent white ones—if I strung them together into a necklace, they would be beautiful.
“Hmm.”
He studied my hands with a low, speculative sound. ‘What possible excuse to bother me this time.’
“Are those for me?”
“They’re for Emily.”
I was picking them up one by one and collecting them carefully in the skirt of my dress, when he reached over and shoved my straw hat down over my face. My vision went dark.
“‘Ugh’, truly! Not again! Why do you keep tormenting me? You barely gave me any time, and now you’re doing ‘this!'”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“String them prettily and make Emily a necklace.”
I pulled my hat straight and grumbled. I had just spotted another lovely pale pink one when he smashed the hat down over my face again.
“‘AH!'”
‘Clatter.’
The string of attacks knocked every shell I’d gathered out of my skirt and scattered them across the sand.
“Oh, ‘come on!’ Why do you keep doing this! I’m running out of time!”
“How come there isn’t one for me?”
“You don’t need things like this! You’re not even interested in shells!”
“Who told you that?”
“I—what?”
“I said anything you give me is something I want.”
He would torment me entirely without reason and then find a perfectly fitting justification for it after the fact. I bristled and squared my shoulders.
“‘Fine.’ Then I’ll make you one too—only the most beautiful ones. The very best!”
And I pointed a ferocious, trembling finger at him by way of a threat.
“You’d better wear it! If I catch you not wearing it, you will deeply regret it!”
The sky had softened as we talked—the brilliant blue fading into the first golds and ambers of sunset. The light turned warm and reddish, and the sun began its slow, unhurried descent toward the horizon.
I took his hand and climbed up onto a large, dark rock near the water.
Kael settled himself first, then drew me down onto his lap. I sank into the broad warmth of his arms, and he held me close.
“Thank you for the free time, Kael!”
I turned just enough to press a quick kiss to his cheek. He responded by pressing his lips to my cheek, my brow, all across my face in a series of light, fond stamps—and then the intensity began to quietly increase.
“Mm.”
He had moved from kisses to attempting to ‘siphon’ my cheek.
“Stop, stop! I am not food!”
I pushed him back firmly and turned away, but I kept hold of his hands where they wrapped around my waist.
The sky was burning now—layered with colors, the remaining blue mingling with the gold and rose of the evening light like paint slowly blending.
“Isn’t it breathtaking?”
I ran my thumb gently over the back of his hand, watching the sky change.
He pressed his lips to my cheek and rested his chin on my shoulder.
“Yes. Beautiful.”
Something soft and full swelled in my chest. I reached up and smoothed his hair, gently, and spoke.
“I’ll never forget this. I think I might love being a duchess.”
He tilted my chin toward him. Our eyes met—and I held his gaze, looking into those red irises lit with the last of the sunset, and drew his hair slowly through my fingers with all the tenderness I had.
Kael tilted his head and caught my lower lip between his. I let my eyes fall closed and let him kiss me—unhurried, warm.
His arms tightened around me. My fingers tightened in his hair.
* * *
Kael went to prepare dinner—Janes still had half a day’s rest remaining.
I had thought about asking to cook instead, but thought better of it. Last time I’d ended up bent over the counter before I’d made it through the vegetables.
With the kitchen keeping him occupied, I finally had a chance to wash on my own—properly, for once—and then faced my perennial problem.
“What am I going to do about underwear.”
Borrowing his could only carry me so far.
While he was occupied, I quietly dragged the brown bag into the bedroom.
“Surely. At least one of these has to be usable.”
If I alternated his pairs with something clean from here, it might work.
I dug through the sea of red boxes and pulled out three.
“Ugh—straight back into the mesh netting on the first try. Absolutely not.”
I opened the next box.
“‘Goodness.’ What even is ‘this?'”
A negligibly thin construction of fabric that would clearly cover nothing of consequence. This looked like the sort of thing that would disappear entirely between—
‘No. Next.’
The third box was the rabbit costume set.
Although—looking at it now—the headband really was cute.
A black hairband color-coordinated with the mesh fabric, with two small white rabbit ears perched at the top. They were undeniably adorable.
I had a weakness for adorable things, and a small, treacherous flicker of curiosity stirred.
“…Just to try it on for a second?”
I carried it to the vanity mirror and, with great bashfulness, settled the headband on my head.
‘It—it is kind of cute!’
I took out the rest of the set.
The mesh here was at least denser than the other options—fine enough that in dim light, it might not be entirely see-through.
“…Shall I just try it on?”
I put on the top and bottom—white rabbit-fur trim on both—and turned this way and that in the mirror, examining myself. Then I reached back and touched the small round puff of a tail at the seat of the underwear.
‘If I just cut off this tail, these might actually be wearable as normal underwear…’
That was when it happened.
A chill ran the full length of my spine. Goosebumps rose across my skin.
‘What… is this feeling… this terrible premonition…’
I spun around.
My husband was there—standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, ‘reading Dorothy’s note.’
“Rabbit and hunter?”
“…”
He ran his tongue slowly over his lips.
“The rabbit is right there.”
“…N—no. This—Dorothy ‘gave’ these to me—”
I scrambled backward in alarm.
* * *
