“I’m busy,” Chloe told him. “I’m horrifically busy. I haven’t time for anything! Not even you! And have you learned nothing? You don’t talk about that in public like this. You’re lucky I’m not actually involved or I’d have to stuff you headfirst into a barrel.”
His smile tilted. “I can’t believe you’ll talk about kissing aloud, but you won’t mention…” He trailed off, twirling a finger, not mentioning the thing she wasn’t mentioning.
The Trials were, on their face, quite simple. The village of Wedgeford was divided into three where the Wedge met the Wyton. If you lived in Wedgeford, your allegiance was set by the place where you lived. If you came to Wedgeford from outside for the Trials, you were assigned a team on your arrival.
The teams spent a week furtively hiding their tokens, followed by a day frantically searching for tokens from the other teams. Why this was called the Trials—why they even did it—nobody knew. But it had been happening in Wedgeford for as long as history in Wedgeford had been recorded.
“I won’t say it then,” Jeremy said. And he winked at her.
Jeremy had been assigned to be a Reeler—Chloe’s team—when he first arrived. Chloe, at the age of fourteen, had been told to teach him the rules, to make sure he didn’t cause any problems. It was how they had become acquainted.
Chloe did not say that participating in the Trials reminded her of him, that it had been easier to say no this year and thus avoid the memories that came with it.
“I’m busy,” Chloe told him. “I’m far too busy. I have so much to do.” She glared down at the board on her knee.
Jeremy licked his lips. “I can help.”
“You will hinder.”
“No, think it through. Do you need things carried to and fro? I can carry to. I can even carry fro.”
“You?” She gave him a suspicious look. “Do manual labor? Do you even know how?”
He ignored this practical inquiry. “I can save you an hour, maybe three.”
“If you spend all your time around me instead of just a handful of minutes while we hash out your list, everyone will talk.” Everyone had already been talking about them before.
“I don’t mind.”
“They’ll think I’m a fool.” Chloe looked away.
“No. They’ll think I’m a lucky man.”
Her temper flared. “Oh yes. They’ll think you have excellent luck indeed. They’ll suspect you of lucking me all night long.”
She’d just said it. Right out. The thing she shouldn’t think about but did. She should be ashamed of imagining the heat of his skin, the exchange of their breath—
She set her jaw and glared at him, but she could feel her wants under her skin, and it wasn’t his fault, no matter what she told herself.
“Chloe, my dear.” His voice was gentle. She didn’t want gentle. “I’ll luck you anytime you wish. But I don’t think anyone who has ever known you would imagine you to be so easily won. You’re not easy. You never have been.”
She exhaled. “No.” A good reminder.
“You have always been worth the effort.”
Her throat felt suddenly hoarse. This was unfair. It was one thing to feel a mere physical attraction. To have him talk outright about kissing and intercourse… That, she could slot in its proper box: lust. To be managed.
But this talk about her as a person? It made her feel. She found herself yearning for things she could not have, not ever. Not with him. Because he didn’t mean it. He was him. What did he know of value, throwing around tens of pounds as if they were nothing? If she was worth so much, why had he been gone for three years?
Enough of this indulgence. She took her pencil out from behind her ear and smoothed out the paper of her list. “Very well. Let’s start with that then. You wanted a list of my characteristics so you can find a woman to marry.” She must not let herself forget that. “You’ve now listed several. I am hard. I am prickly. I am intimidating.” She glared at him. “That is what you want me to put down, yes? The qualities you want in a wife.”
“Mmm. I must quibble. You’re not hard. You’re determined.”
Chloe’s pencil pressed painfully against her fingers where she gripped it. “I see little difference.”
He ignored that. “And you’re not prickly. You’re decided. You’re the last thing from hard and prickly; you’re the most thoughtful person I know.”
Her eyes stung for a moment. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He wasn’t supposed to take her worst qualities and turn them upside down in this way.
“You’ve said nothing about intimidating,” she said. “I see you don’t dispute that.”
“Not in the slightest.” He looked into her eyes. “I want my wife to intimidate me. I want to know that her enemies will all fall before her. That’s the kind of woman I want by my side. She had better be intimidating.”
He didn’t look away, and electricity fluttered through her stomach. She had thought that his list would be disembodied characteristics, things that she could think about rationally. Things like “I prefer brunettes” or “spectacles are nice.” He wasn’t supposed to engage her heart like this.
“That’s…” She swallowed. “That’s…”
“Put that on the list,” he told her.
She stared down at the blank page in front of her. It was waiting to be filled with the description of a woman who could not—absolutely could not—be her. For the first time, the white expanse of the empty page felt almost ominous.
“Very well.” She nodded. “Let’s get this over with.”
Jeremy Yu, she wrote at the top, because he had never actually disclosed his real name. List of spousal characteristics.
Dry. All she had to do was make this dry enough and it wouldn’t bother her in the slightest.
“One,” she intoned as she scribed the first item onto the page. “Intimidating.”
5
Chloe had often planned theoretically perfect days. As long as every task took its expected time, down to the minute, she could manage everything. In practice, this had never actually worked, for the primary reason that Chloe was not perfect, and for the secondary reason that she wished she were. She wished it so hard that she made all her lists as if perfection were a given.
Today of all days, when she needed to focus, she was distracted. She sat at a counter in the inn’s kitchens, poking at a dish in front of her and trying not to let her distraction show. After all, if anyone was going to notice something was wrong, it was Naomi Kwan.
“You don’t like it,” Naomi said.
Wedgeford had once been on a minor stage route, and the kitchens—built to feed a horde of guests starving after hours of rattling around the roads—were so spacious that their capacity was only taxed these days during the Trials. Today she and Naomi were alone in that wide space.
Chloe looked at the dish before her—rice and a cutlet of pork, over which a brown sauce had been ladled, served in a simple earthenware bowl.
She had put pieces of the pork in her mouth. She had scarcely tasted a thing, chewing and swallowing with her mind elsewhere.