Chi-hii-wahaaa

However he’d managed it, he had steered you out of the crowd without seeming to steer at all, folding your every attempt to flee into what now looked, to anyone watching, like nothing more than a respectable need for privacy. 

So you walked side by side down the gravel path, the noise of the picnic thinning behind you, laughter and the small clink of porcelain going soft at your back as the soft thuds of his sword swung at his thigh overtook it. Your daughter remained, frustratingly, in his arms.

You had a great deal to say and no clean way to say any of it, because how did you reason with a man who had taken none of your earlier words seriously? 

He’d come to you in a moment of weakness to demand an answer, and done it in front of enough people that refusing him would have been social suicide. You supposed that if you had truly committed to flee the city, you should have had the audacity to refuse him anyway.

But you didn't know where to find such courage, or how even to begin, so you let Lisette fill the silence instead. She did so enthusiastically and without shame.

“Do you go to the lower world a lot? Is it dangerous? Is there a lot of water? Rosette said her dad said there’s places where it rains all the time and never stops and the—”

Lisette had years of commentary saved up for her future father, enough to tip well past charming and into a headache. But Shamrock Figarland both carried her and listened, answering each question with short, even replies that gave away nothing but interest. She perched on his shoulders, one small hand fisted in his pretty red hair for balance, and showed him off like this was the proudest afternoon of her short life.

You didn’t like how easily he’d befriended your daughter. You liked even less how happy he looked carrying her; her tiny weight settled on his shoulder as if it belonged there. What right did he have to your little girl? What right did he have to make you break her heart? 

Anger brewed inside you—No gentleman should be this conniving. There had to be some answer to shoo this man from your family, but nothing came. Instead, Lisette’s oration hit a lull, and Shamrock tilted his head toward you.

“You’re very quiet, Saintess.” He said it lightly, as though remarking on the weather, though he did not look away from you when he said it. Above him, Lisette had discovered a loose thread at his collar and was prying it free with great concentration. “I am still anxious to hear your response.”

Damn stubborn man.

“I have a great deal to say to you.” You kept your voice low, mindful of the child. “None of it is fit for present company.”

“Ah.” The corner of his mouth moved. “Then I’ll take it later. In full.”

His presumption of a future where you fully unleashed your ire, and he took it happily, landed somewhere beneath your ribs and sat there, burning hot. He spoke of later as though the two of you had a great many of them stretched out ahead, an agreement already signed over. As though the picnic, the magnolias, the word engagement let fall so carelessly among the saintesses, had settled your future rather than detonated it.

“There won’t be a later,” you said sharply, but he merely hummed.

“Water!” Lisette announced, abandoning the thread in favor of once again pestering the man. She had circled back, as she often did, to whatever had lodged in her mind. “You didn’t say if there’s a lot of water. Down there.”

“There’s a great deal of water,” Shamrock told her, grave as a man delivering testimony from firsthand experience. “More than you and all of Mary Geoise could drink in a hundred years.”

“A hundred?” She gasped, and you sighed. “All of us?!?”

“At least.”

She considered this with the seriousness it deserved, and you watched your daughter’s face open with wonder at a man you meant to cut out of both your lives before the week was through, and felt the anger cool into something worse.

By the time you reached the estate, you were so uncomfortable you were nearly twitching; every step up the walk wound tighter than the last. Beth opened the door and was startled at your quick return. Then her mouth dropped open further still at the sight of your company, at the Commander of the Holy Knights standing on the step with your daughter perched on his shoulders like a small conquering general.

You thought, briefly and seriously, about blocking the door. A gentleman would have stopped at the threshold. A gentleman would have lowered Lisette to the ground, offered some final courtesy, and removed himself and his shadow from your house.

A townhouse so small and so feminine it should surely offend him, and remind him that you were an old woman, dry as a cactus and just as welcoming to his advances.

But Shamrock Figarland followed you right in. Only then did he set Lisette down, and she scampered off to find the dozens of toys she’d already described to him in such exhausting detail.

For a moment, you stood there, hoping he’d turn and leave. You had no such luck. Even when your staff appeared, each one was startled by your early return and then struck dumb at the sight of your guest. Shamrock merely nodded to them, polite as a prince, and waited for an invitation to sit.

You did not offer one, as you were barely managing to ensure your expression didn’t turn downright thunderous.

The Commander waited anyway, entirely at ease in the small bright hall, the low ceilings and the pale papered walls doing nothing to diminish him. If anything, the smallness of the room only underlined the enormous size of him, the way an adult plate looks larger laid across a child’s table. The lace doilies and your little chairs, the vase of dried lavender on the side table, the framed sampler Lisette’s grandmother had stitched. None of it cowed him. He stood among your soft feminine things and didn’t look a dash uncomfortable.

He seemed, instead, to find real interest in them. His gaze moved slowly across the mantel and the side tables, unhurried, taking inventory, and settled longest on the pictures that featured you and your daughter. A miniature of Lisette as a fat, furious infant. You in profile at some function years past, younger, your late husband’s hand just visible at the edge of the frame where the crop had failed to remove him. Shamrock studied each one as though it were being explained to him, as though he were a guest at a gallery and not a man who had forced his way past your door.

You wanted, badly, to turn each frame face down.

He seemed perfectly content to outwait you, to pry into your life at his leisure. So it seemed it was time to set the record straight.

You cleared your throat, taking a deep breath, and he turned politely at the sound. You walked into the parlor, and he followed, and behind him, the staff warily followed too.

Bless your staff. With great intuition, Beth had gone after Lisette to ensure she’d not interrupt. Ness, Antony and Arnold hovered in the doorway to the servants’ hall, but at one wave they closed it behind them, and to their credit were almost certainly listening at the door.

You weren’t entirely sure there was a single question that could hold every grievance you meant to level at Shamrock Figarland, but you tried.

“Commander Figarland—” You said it as politely as possible, which was not polite at all. A pause. A truly monumental act of reining in a great many swearwords and coming out the other side intact. “—just what do you want with my daughter and me?”

You’d kept yourself mostly turned away, for your own nerves, one hand still resting on the back of a chair as though you might need it. But to punctuate the question you made yourself turn and stare at the Commander. Stared up, with some difficulty, given his height. You had to lift your chin to do it, and hated that you had to, hated the small concession of the movement. He was tall enough to nearly brush the low ceiling of your parlor, close enough that the plaster seemed to catch at his hair. 

He met your stare without any of the discomfort you’d hoped to provoke. He nodded, slowly, with an air of understanding, as though this were a casual disagreement between reasonable parties and he needed only impart some standard courtesy to smooth it over. 

“In our initial proposal, I presented several reasons for such a union.” His voice was pitched low and filled the small room and wrapped around your senses like mist. “Upon reflection, I realized these proved an inadequate case with which to persuade you. As you have not yet answered my letter, I wish to remedy my previous misstep.”

“A misstep?”

“Indeed.” He nodded. “I have realized that in my haste to secure this exceptional match, I nearly entirely failed to rightly convince you. If you have doubts about my affections, rest assured, there is little I wish for more than to make you happy. I have found myself genuinely affectionate toward you.”

If you could have fainted out of pure shock, this would have been a fine time for it. Was Shamrock Figarland attempting to convince you that he was enamored with you?

How was that even possible?

“You don’t even know me, Saint Figarland,” you said sharply. “And I barely know you. It is out of line for you to so forwardly create a public scene as you did.”

He didn’t seem chastised, but he did look tolerant, like a seasoned pet owner tolerant of a small dog barking at his boot. His hand rested on his sword, but more out of habit than threat, a thumb running down its side thoughtfully.

He was quick to answer.

“My lady, we may not have spent much time together, but the late Saint Marcus was an acquaintance of mine.” Shamrock said reasonably, “I often watched you from a distance, and the way you carry yourself with a grace and composure few others possess, and I knew that you were singularly the woman I wished to marry.”

You grasped your chair harder, fingers flexing into the upholstery. The mention of Sheamus landed like a cold hand at the back of your neck. Yes, you knew that your husband had been schoolmates with him, but was this some sort of joke? You wouldn’t say they were friends by any means! 

And so what, you just happened to catch his eye? That Shamrock Figarland, the most desired bachelor of Mary Geoise, had been at the fringes of your life all along, admiring you, was preposterous.

Or entirely unnerving. If he had been watching, how much would he know? 

You searched his face for it and found nothing you could use. He gave away only what he intended to give.

Shamrock paused, and his gaze moved over you, and while his face remained solemn as it was at rest, his eyes were unusually… soft. “I won’t pretend or insult your intelligence. I have earned your ire thrice-fold—but—.” A beat, then, he continued lower. “—But I do not wish to watch you marry another in an uncomfortable bid just to ensure Lisette’s safety. In fact, I will go through a great many undignified things to ensure the rest of your lives proceed with the utmost happiness.”

The words settled over the little parlor and stayed there. Utmost Happiness. You turned the phrase over, hunting the edges of it. Saint Figarland had not looked away from you once while saying it, and you could not tell whether that was tenderness or the man wanting you to know precisely how much he had seen.

What did that even mean, to be happy? To unquestioningly marry someone who insistently demanded it? And while thanks to doing such a thing, you’d never lacked materially, were you ever happy? 

Not married to Sheamus.

And you didn’t want to risk it again. Before you was a man who, like your first husband, knew all the right words to use. And even more, he probably knew even better where to strike and was much more powerful. Your first husband had tired so quickly of you, and harassed the maids, had an ever-changing litany of slaves, who started leering younger and younger—! 

What would a man like Shamrock Figarland do when you inevitably became wearisome to him? 

No matter how intoxicating Saint Figarland was, how well he smelled, how tall and broad, how tightly the uniform fit across him, how could you dare let a potentially dangerous man into Lisette’s life? You had failed so horribly once already. Your daughter's hopes were too great, her affection too broad and too freely given, for this man you didn’t know.

Steadily, you went to the desk in the parlor, the one containing the marriage charter given a week ago. If Shamrock Figarland was insistent on being here, you could at least give it back. A stubborn showcase of your seriousness.

You pulled out the papers, carefully ensuring they did not bend. Then, turning, you set them before him on a side table. He glanced at the papers and then at you.

You pressed your lips together. “My answer to your proposal was not out of spite or shyness, Commander. And I am… flattered by your most generous offer, but it was not my intention to make a fool of you by ignoring it. I simply felt it a bit… odd. Especially after I declined your first proposition.” You made yourself hold his gaze. “I do not aim to play coy. I was serious when I refused you, not angling for more attention or a finer proposal. You have put me into an uncomfortable position.”

He gave a thoughtful hum, low in his chest, weighing your testimony. It was like he was genuinely puzzled at your rejection. A single finger of his tapped the top of the paper as if to check it.

“I see,” he acknowledged, nodding respectfully, as if a bit startled by your bold refusal. “I was merely attempting to smooth over such a negative first impression, but admittedly my approaches have carried more enthusiasm than thought. I confess I find the distinction rather embarrassing.”

He gave a brief chuckle, a surprisingly warm thing for his cool demeanor, directed at himself. Like he finally had realized how insane this had all been. Your brows pulled up, and you fought to keep your mouth from quirking into a smile. Whatever else might be said about Shamrock Figarland, there was an almost awkward stiffness to him, a real shyness under all that bearing. For all his regal composure, he seemed, at least in this moment, genuinely rueful about the force of his own approach, a large man who had knocked over a vase reaching for a teacup and only now noticed the pieces.

Then, he straightened, and the bashful modesty folded neatly away, as though it had only ever been a courtesy he’d extended to hoodwink your better judgment.

“Still, my lady, I must insist on your signature.” He slid the cream paper back to you, making your brows raise. “It truly is the only way this matter can be settled properly.”

“Only.” The word came out of you like a splinter. “Saint Figarland, this is preposterous. I have just informed you of why I will not!!”

He wasn’t moved.

“Consider the current optics of what has happened.” He turned the paper a quarter so it faced you, squaring the document to be signed. “I declared us as good as promised at the picnic. Before the most talkative of the saintesses, all who carry news faster than any Den Den Mushi. By supper, you will be considered engaged with or without an agreement.”

The floor tilted strangely beneath you as the realization of the trap set in.

“Which means the fact of what already exists,” he went on, and there was no cruelty in it, which was the cruelty of it. “The only question left open is whether the paper agrees with the city or contradicts it. A lady contradicted by her own city cannot hold a good reputation. The talk feeds on you, and on Lisette after you, and will treat you with disdain. Your signature closes the gap and ensures your safety. My offer is not a leash, Saintess, like the others. It is a roof. A home for you.”

“You built the storm, and now you offer me shelter from it.” Your voice shook as you raised a finger in rebuttal. “Do you imagine I can’t see the deceit of your tactic? This hardly endears or inspires me to do so!”

"I imagine you can see it perfectly." He inclined his head, as though you had paid him a compliment. "I have never once mistaken you for a fool. I am only asking you to be wise enough to sign in spite of seeing it—a proper roof keeps the rain off whether or not you admire the man who raised it."

How audacious, how vexing, how horrible. And for some worse reason, how could it be so utterly intoxicating that a man so handsome, so esteemed, would do something this ridiculous and this final for you? It was terrifying. It was grossly, mortifyingly romantic.

You wanted to throw the inkstand at him. You wanted, with a heat that appalled you, to close the distance instead—and that second wanting was the one you could not forgive, because it was the very instinct that had ruined you the first time.

And there was, once again, no real choice in it. Unless you fled the city and gambled Lisette on the road, there was no escaping the backlash of refusing. Your friends would fall silent. Your own family would edge away. Lisette would be isolated and whispered about for the whole of her childhood. One did not refuse a Holy Knight—much less a Figarland who commanded them, son of the Supreme Commander himself—and walk away unscathed by the city. The order of power was plain, and Shamrock had pressed only an inch of it against you to secure your compliance. Only an inch, and it had been more than enough.

But an inch of power still answered nothing of the question underneath.

"I fail to see just why—" You steadied it, barely. "What could possibly be so important about me that you would pass over a whole city of women who'd faint to be your bride? Men do not do this without a reason. They do not want a used widow with another man's child and a temper unless there is something they mean to take—"

"There is." Shamrock cut the accusation clean off, and the surety of it stopped you soundly.

He came round the table. Not quickly, but you had already backed yourself to the chair, and there was nowhere left to go. He stopped only when he was near enough that you had to tip your chin to hold his eyes, near enough to catch the clean starch of him and the leather and warm cologne beneath it, near enough that your own pulse turned renegade in your throat. And when he bent, one arm coming down to the chairback to cage you there, it turned thunderous.

"You ask what a man can want with a used widow. Used is an unfitting word. What I see before me is an experienced woman—one who has not been used, but whose use has been entirely ignored. I see a fine mother, a careful mistress of a house, a wife whose whole potential was left to waste on a useless husband. I see a woman I want as a companion and friend, whose competence and judgment I trust, whom I know I can trust. There are a great many useless, used-up people in this city, dear Lettie. I mean to ensure you are never counted among them."

Your mouth pressed into a straight line. You hated that such a speech could move you—but then, who could have blamed you?

And even so, how on earth were you meant to match a fervor like that?

"I don't trust you," you said simply, and braced for the frown, for the temper to surface at last. “Nor do I like you. Much less love you.”

You had expected to offended him.

How it surprised you when it didn't. Instead, he smiled, and your stomach jolted clean over, because he was very handsome indeed when he smiled and meant it.

"I did not expect you would, so soon. But I mean to attain your regard through honest means." He pitched it low, meant for the space between you and no further. "I am aware I have not earned it yet. I am aware I am extracting your name by force of circumstance, and that a better man might be ashamed of it. I find I am not. I would sooner have you unwilling and safe than admired from a distance and handed off to some other."

Your right hand found your left arm without your leave. Your fingers closed on the place just above the sleeve—the place made for a grip, for a wrench, for a bruise a long glove could hide.

He looked at your hand. His fingers flexed, as though he might lift it to comfort you. Instead, they curled into a fist and held.

He said nothing of it. He simply looked, and then raised his eyes back to yours, and you understood that he had known before you ever touched it—had perhaps known for years—how thin the farce hiding your situation had always been.

The humiliation took your legs, buckling them, though they didn't collapse entirely. Your vision went hot and blurred, and you turned your face away, because you would not, you would not, give this stranger the sight of it.

You heard leather and cloth stretch, and it made you glance back. Shamrock had gone to one knee—though it hardly made him short enough—and a pristine white handkerchief waited in his outstretched hand.

You took it because the alternative was to weep in front of him, bare-faced. You used it without dignity. You filled it with gunk and disgrace and frustration and resignation.

The crack in your composure finally let the bitter reality seep through. You had to marry Shamrock Figarland.

You did not trust him. You weren't certain you trusted any man—or, worse, that you trusted the part of yourself that had wanted so desperately, once, to be a good wife and mother, and would reach for the chance again if you let it. But the arithmetic of his logic was clean. Unless you meant, in earnest, to leave Mary Geoise: To leave your family, to sever Lisette from every opportunity she might ever have, to risk the disdain of the lower world and slave away the rest of your days beneath a collar—there was no other sum that balanced.

Above you, Lisette shrieked with laughter, and the sound went through you like a needle drawn through cloth.

You would do it, then.

For her. Only ever for her.

You left the white handkerchief on the desk, refusing to meet your suitor's eyes, and reached past him for the inkwell. At some point, Shamrock rose again.

His hand closed over yours before it reached the inkstand, folding your fingers still.

"Consider it all first," he said, and he had risen with you, so that this was said close—close enough that his breath stirred the loose hair at your temple, warm against the shell of your ear, and a shiver you could not command traced down the back of your neck. "I will not have you say later that I hurried your hand. Compare every line. Be certain I have not cheated you. Add any concession you require."

"I—cannot—" The pen had stopped mattering. His thumb moved once across your knuckles, slow, unhurried, tracing the ridge of bone there, and every ordered thought went out of you like candles in a draft. Did he imagine you could think at all while he touched you like this? The leather of his glove was warm and supple against your cold fingers, worn soft with use, and beneath it you could feel the sheer size of his hand swallowing yours, the restrained strength in a grip that had chosen, deliberately, to be gentle.

It had been years since your husband had touched you. Before Lisette was born, even. Longer still since a touch had meant anything but a warning. This was neither. This was warmth traveling up your wrist and into your arm and pooling somewhere beneath your sternum. It was discombobulating to say the least—and though you flinched at the first of it, some animal part of you, starved and disloyal, unfurled toward the heat of him almost before you'd decided to allow it. You caught the scent of him again this near: clean starch and warm skin, leather, the faint iron of the sword, and under all of it the cologne, cedar, and a darker scent that seemed to settle low in your belly and stay.

"Cannot what?" Shamrock tilted his head down toward you, and the shyness from before was nowhere in it now; this was a man who knew exactly how intoxicating he looked bent this close over a flustered woman, and had decided to weaponize every inch of it. His gaze dropped from your eyes to your mouth and rose again, slow enough that you felt it like a touch of its own, cataloging the heat climbing your throat, the breath you couldn't quite recover, the way your lips had parted without your leave. "You have gone very quiet, Saintess."

"There's… a great deal to consider," you whispered—a lie so obvious, so threadbare, that the corner of his mouth curved, and the shame of being caught in it only sent the warmth higher into your face.

The corner of his mouth moved. He continued to hold your hand closed over the pen, and he had no intention, you understood, of releasing it until you gave him leverage more damning than a signature: the admission written all over your traitor face.

"More money. More servants. More tutors for Lisette, more anything." His thumb stroked slowly across your fingers again, and the small drag of the leather sent heat racing up your arm. "Be greedy for me."

You should have torn free. You should have summoned the memory of Sheamus like cold water and let it douse you. You even reached for him, but the relief would not come. There was only the near heat of Shamrock Figarland pressing into the small space between you, and the mortifying truth that some starved animal part of you had turned its face up to him and would not be whistled back to heel.

Damn him. Damn him, that he'd found the one lever your dead husband never had. That you'd believed yourself proof against a handsome man precisely because the last handsome man had cured you of the taste, and here you stood, flushed to the ears, your hand gone soft under his, undone not by his threats but by his gentleness.

"That's enough," you managed, and it came out with none of the iron you'd meant. Breathless instead, nearer a plea, and you watched him hear exactly that, watched the low flicker of satisfaction move behind his eyes. "The contract is enough."

"As you say." He guided your hand the last inch to the paper, so gently it could not be called force, and pressed the pen firmly between your fingers, and released you into a perfectly correct distance. The air rushed cool into the space he'd left. "Your name, Saintess. That is all I came for."

The nib caught once on the downstroke and then ran smoothly, and it was done. Your name lay neat beside his, the ink black and gleaming and final. And you could not for your life have said, in that moment, whether it was yourself that moved your hand or the certainty that if you waited a breath longer, he would close the distance and kiss you and ruin you entirely.

Once it was done, he drew the inky pen from your fingers and set it back in its home. The sudden cool where he had stood felt like a slap you'd somehow asked for, but it was short-lived. Because he turned back to you then, eyes gone half-lidded, that terrible calm warmed through with something darker.

"Well done, my Lettie." He said it smoothly, low in his chest, and his hand settled at your waist, broad and warm and certain through the fabric, the heat of his palm bleeding straight through to your skin, and you very nearly fainted on the spot.

You should have stepped back. You should have struck the hand away and reminded him of every inch of propriety he had spent the whole afternoon so calmly ignoring. Instead, you stood rooted, your breath gone shallow, aware to the point of pain of the five points of pressure where his fingers curved against your side, of how easily that single hand spanned you, of the fact that he had not pulled you in and that somehow the restraint was worse than if he had. His thumb shifted, the smallest stroke along your ribs, and a fresh wave of heat climbed your throat.

"I'll speak to your father," he murmured, near enough now that you felt the words as much as heard them, warm against your temple. "Then arrange a meeting with mine. After that, we'll publish the banns and be married."

You lifted your face to answer, though what you meant to say you never learned, because his gaze had dropped to your mouth again. The whole small parlor seemed to draw tight around the two of you, the lace and the lavender and the ticking clock all falling away, and for one appalling breath, you were certain he would lean the last handspan and simply take what your turncoat body had been tipping toward all afternoon.

You had lifted your freed hand to your own hot cheek, the pen still bleeding a small blot onto the blotter, when the front door banged open in the hall, and three voices came in on the draft at once.

You jumped. Shamrock didn't even twitch.

"—told you the letter bore the Figarland crest, I have eyes—"

"—she isn't even receiving! We ought to have sent ahead—"

"—bullshit, we have every right. After those last rumors, we should have made her see us—"

"—Lettie? Lettie, what is going on—"

The parlor door swung open before you could so much as flinch. Arianne, Margaret, and Fanny, the three loudest of the six of you, were halfway in before they froze.

They saw the tableau you had not arranged and could not now rearrange: you flushed to the hairline with your hand at your own cheek, a signed page still wet on the table, Shamrock Figarland only a half-step off, close enough that the air between you had not yet cooled.

To three women arriving cold off the street, it read as one thing only. Arianne made a sound like a kettle. Fanny, the youngest, clapped both hands to her mouth. Margaret, in the middle, said into the ringing silence, with the delight of a woman watching a wager pay out, "Oh. Oh. We are interrupting."

"Not at all." Shamrock had already stepped clean back, the flush and the closeness sealed away behind that faultless composure as though you'd imagined every second of it. He took up the signed contract from the table and folded it once into his coat, collected his handkerchief beside it, and inclined his head to the three of them with a courtesy that made the small room feel briefly like a court. "The fault is mine entirely. I have stayed well past my welcome." His gaze moved once across the doorway, unhurried, taking in all four of you together, and something almost friendly surfaced under the formality. "Though I see now, I should not be surprised that the hour ran away from me with such great fortune. The resemblance is remarkable. I had thought my Lettie the loveliest woman in Mary Geoise. I find her family means to make an argument of it."

Arianne flushed a deep rose, very like the color climbing your own face. Fanny pressed her knuckles harder to her lips, a small strangled sound escaping anyway. That he should call them lovely, the Bavette sisters, breeder stock hauled in from distant cousins and slave lines to thicken the blood of better houses, technically a tier beneath every saintess they curtsied to until they'd bred enough sons to earn the standing. Arianne had six—Margaret, eight, and complaining of a ninth. Even sweet foolish Fanny had five before she was five-and-twenty. They wore their fertility like medals because it was the only rank the family had been granted, and a Figarland had just called them beautiful in your parlor.

"Saintesses." He bowed, the folded contract now safe against his chest, and the parlor seemed to give him back a foot of its ceiling as he moved for the door. "You'll forgive me. Your sister and I have a great deal newly settled between us, and I expect she would sooner tell you of it herself. I have a registrar to see before the office closes." A last glance found you, your burning face, your name drying somewhere against his heart, and the corner of his mouth moved, just once, only for you. "My lady. I'll send word this evening."

Then he was gone into the hall, the front door drawing shut behind him with a soft, final click, the contract gone with him to be entered and witnessed and made real by nightfall.

The three of them rounded on you at once.

"LETTIE."

"His Lettie? SHAMROCK FIGARLAND'S Lettie??" Fanny had both hands fisted in her own skirts, bouncing on her toes like one of her toddlers. "Did you hear him, did you hear what he called us—"

"Never mind what he called us, you goose." Arianne shoved past her to seize your wrists, her rings cold against your still-hot skin. "Lettie. Lettie, look at me. The Commander of the Holy Knights was standing in your ugly little parlor with his hand practically still warm on you, and he has just walked off with a contract in his coat, and you are going to tell your sisters every last word before I perish where I stand."

Margaret had drifted to the table only to find it bare, the blotter still bearing its small wet ghost of a blot where the page had lain. She pressed a hand flat to her chest, over the ninth child she was forever announcing.

"Oh, he's frightfully handsome up close," she breathed, scandalized and thrilled in equal measure. "Terribly. Edwina will die. Elinor will die twice." She turned, eyes enormous. "Does Father know? Does his father know? Lettie, that man's father is—"

"—the Supreme Commander, yes, thank you, Margaret. I am aware of who I have apparently agreed to marry into."

You said it faintly, sinking into the nearest chair, and none of them heard the tremor under it, because none of them ever had. They had not heard it across all the years of Sheamus, either. They had disliked him, said so freely at every dinner, and still not one of them had lifted a finger, because a Bavette girl with a single daughter and no sons had no standing to be spared, and a husband's temper was a private weather no sister interrupted. You had learned that early, and you had stopped expecting otherwise.

A Figarland changed everything, though, and they knew it, and so they were kind now, giddy and grasping and kind, and you let them be, because it was easier than explaining the difference between the two.

Then your words landed in the little parlor and stopped all three of them dead.

"Marry," Arianne repeated.

"Marry." Margaret sat down without checking for a chair and was fortunate that one caught her. "Not—Lettie. We thought—when we saw the two of you, and his hand, and your face all—we thought he'd made you an offer. The other sort of offer. A house, an allowance, a discreet arrangement."

"We had a whole speech," Fanny wailed, "about how it's nothing to be ashamed of, and half the loveliest women in Mary Geoise are somebody's dear friend, and we wouldn't breathe a word to Mother—"

"—and now you tell us he means to wed you." Arianne's voice climbed to a register only dogs and offended saintesses could hear. "You. A widow. With the one child. He could have any unbled girl in the Holy City, any of them, and he walked into this doily-riddled little box of a house and put his name beside yours?"

There it was, a flicker under the joy, quick and unbecoming and instantly smothered. Because between them, the three had nineteen children and not one husband a fraction so grand, so tall, so ruinously handsome, so ranked. They had done everything asked of Bavette daughters, bred and bred. They climbed the ladder rung by dutiful rung, and their spinsterish little sister with her single daughter and her disgraceful lack of sons had just leapt the whole of it in an afternoon, straight into the highest house in Mary Geoise.

But they loved you, in their loud graceless way, and the jealousy passed through them like a shiver and was gone, and then they were simply beside themselves.

"His father will be your father." Fanny had both hands pressed to her cheeks. "The Supreme Commander. Oh, imagine the christenings—"

"Imagine the dress, Fanny, do keep up—"

"Was he as—" Margaret leaned in, dropping her voice to the register reserved for the truly important questions. "Up close, Lettie. Is he as handsome up close? He looked incredibly handsome from the doorway, but doorways are forgiving. Tell us honestly."

"Frightfully," you heard yourself echo, faint, and all three of them shrieked as though you'd confessed a filthy secret. You let the sound wash over you, and did not tell them that up close was precisely the reason you were in this circumstance.

Arianne looked like she still couldn't believe it.

"I can't believe the gossips actually got it right. Or that you accepted. What on earth will you tell Father? Since you're his favorite, he's going to be unhappy all over again. He was delighted when Sheamus got chucked off that horse. And you know he wanted you back under his roof."

Good lord. You hadn't even considered what you would say to Father.

Mother would be no trouble; Mother wanted only to see you married, and married again would suit her perfectly well. One husband was much like another to her, a station a daughter occupied, and she had never troubled herself over which man filled it so long as some man did. A Figarland would please her the way a fine hat pleased her, briefly and loudly and without any deeper thought.

Father was the difficulty. Father, who had wanted you home, and whom you had gently, carefully declined, because a new concubine was arriving before the season turned. You had no wish to raise Lisette in a house rearranging itself around that arrival. You had not said as much, because it was not uncommon and he’d done his duty, and no matter how wrong it felt, there was no fighting against it. You had let him believe it was grief that kept you in your own small townhouse. Better that than admit you would sooner remarry than watch him take a woman younger than you to bed.

He called you his favorite. He had said it since you were small, that you were nearly as sharp as a boy, the cleverest of all his daughters, as though intelligence in a girl were a charming defect he'd decided to enjoy rather than correct. And it was because he prized that cleverness that he had loathed Sheamus with a quiet, permanent loathing, had never forgiven the man for taking his brightest daughter and dulling her down to being bruised and quiet at his dinner table. 

And now you would have to look him in the eye and tell him you had handed yourself, and your wit, and Lisette, to the most powerful unwed bachelor in Mary Geoise, in an afternoon.

He was not going to take it well at all.

But all the talk ended the moment Lisette came flying down the stairs, Beth's protests trailing uselessly behind her. She burst into the parlor at a dead run and flung herself into the tangle of her aunts, who caught her up and cooed and passed her between them like a parcel, exclaiming over how she'd grown, how like her mother she was, how clever.

Then she wriggled free of Fanny's arms and planted herself at the center of the room, breathless with the importance of what she carried.

"MARGI! FANNY! ARI!" She rounded on them one by one. "Did you know there's more water down below the Red Line than everybody in the whole world could drink? Even if we drank for a hundred years!" She held up all five fingers, then, dissatisfied with their number, produced the other five as well. "That's a lot of water. Wait—where'd Daddy Shamrock go?"

The word dropped into the parlor and detonated.

Three heads snapped toward you at once. Arianne's mouth fell open. Fanny made a sound like a punctured balloon. Margaret's hand went back to her chest, over the ninth child, as though the shock might bring it on early.

"Daddy Shamrock," Arianne breathed, reverent as a woman at prayer.

"Oh my."

"He said that, did he? Well, he would know, darling." Margaret shot you a look over the top of your daughter's head, sly and delighted and altogether too knowing. "He's supposedly been down there." A beat. "Daddy. Is that your little name for him, Lettie?"

"It is a great deal of water, darling," you said to Lisette, ignoring Margaret entirely, then turned and gave her a short glare. "And it is Commander Figarland. Or Saint Figarland. To all of us."

Arianne caught your eye and, with great deliberation, mouthed Daddy, purely to watch you suffer.

"Commander Figarland had to leave," you told Lisette, evenly, because Lisette required evenness above all things and because you could not, would not, look at your sisters just now. "He'll send word. And my darling, you cannot go about calling him your father. Not yet."

But Lisette fixed you with the flat, relentless logic of a five-year-old who has caught the grown-ups contradicting themselves.

"But he said I could call him Daddy." She pointed at Arianne, then swung the accusing finger back to you. "And she just said, Daddy. But you said I can't call him Daddy yet." A pause, while the whole towering unfairness of the adult world assembled itself behind her eyes. "Why?"

You opened your mouth. Nothing adequate came out. There was no version of it! Because the arrangement is not yet announced, and your grandfather does not yet know, and your mother has not yet decided how she intends to survive it, that would fit inside the head of a child who counted to ten on her fingers and believed a hundred years to be the largest number in the world.

"Because," you began, and got no further, because your three sisters were watching you flounder with open glee, and Lisette's chin had begun the ominous crumple that preceded either tears or a scene—-

"Why don't you help Beth fetch some treats for your aunties?" you said, with the desperate brightness of a woman changing the subject before it changed her. "I'm sure Fanny is simply starved."

Lisette perked up at once, the injustice forgotten as thoroughly as if it had never been.

"Can I have a biscuit with honey?"

"Yes."

"Two?"

"One. Go."

You sent her off to the kitchen with Beth, and the instant the small footsteps faded, all three of your sisters rounded on you a second time, louder than before. And this time, there was no signed contract to whisk away, no Commander to bow himself out, no small daughter to shield you. Nowhere left at all to look.

Because you knew the moment you tried, the very instant your gaze so much as drifted toward the safety of the window or the wallpaper or your own folded hands, all three of them would turn as one and mouth Daddy at you.

For weeks after the Red Force sailed away, you stayed close to Luffy without anyone needing to tell you. You slept lighter. You checked every crowded street twice.

But time had a way of making fear feel foolish.

Six months was long enough for you to start thinking maybe he had only been passing through your life after all.

So when the Sunny came within half a day of your home island, you asked to visit.

“My family lives near here,” you said. “I haven’t seen them in a while.”

Luffy looked up from where he was sitting cross-legged on the deck.

“You should visit,” he said simply.

You blinked. “Just like that?”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “They’ll be happy to see you.”

Nami gave you enough money to make you roll your eyes. Chopper packed medicine you did not need. Usopp told you to bring back local sweets.

For the first few days, the visit went well.

Your aunt cried when she saw you and then scolded you for looking thinner. Your uncle hugged you hard enough to lift you off your feet.

Your grandmother sat in her chair by the front window, blanket over her lap, and held your face between both hands.

“Still too pretty for sense,” she said.

You laughed before you could stop yourself.

The house had not changed much. The kitchen still smelled like bread. The hallway floor still creaked in the same place.

It felt good.

Too good, maybe.

You helped wash dishes. You swept the porch. You ran errands when your aunt tried to pretend she did not need anything.

On the fourth morning, you went alone.

The market was crowded but familiar. People called your name. You bought more than you meant to.

Fresh bread. Apples. A small packet of sweets for Usopp. Tea for your aunt.

By the time you started back, the basket was heavy against your arm.

You were halfway up the road when you heard hammering.

At first, you thought nothing of it.

Then you turned the corner and stopped. There were men outside your grandmother’s house.

Red Hair pirates.

Yasopp was halfway up a ladder, prying away a warped strip of siding. Limejuice stood below him, holding fresh boards under one arm. Two more crewmates were clearing old wood from the yard.

Your basket slipped in your grip.

Someone laughed.

A big, warm laugh from the porch.

Lucky Roux.

He was sitting on the front step with a hammer in one hand and what looked like half of your aunt’s fresh bread in the other.

Your uncle saw you first.

“There you are!” he called. “You didn’t tell us you had friends with carpentry skills.”

Your mouth went dry.

Lucky looked over.

His face brightened.

“Morning.”

You could not answer.

The front door opened behind him, and your aunt stepped out.

“Oh, good, you’re back!”

You stood in the yard, staring.

Your aunt followed your gaze to the ladder, then smiled like this was the most pleasant surprise in the world.

“Isn’t it kind of them?” she said. “Your grandmother mentioned the siding once, and Captain Shanks had his men out here before I could even offer lunch.”

Captain Shanks.

The name moved through you like cold water.

No.

Your body moved before your thoughts did.

You stepped past her, across the porch, through the open front door.

Your grandmother’s voice reached you first.

“Well, aren’t you charming?”

Then his laugh.

Low. Warm. Familiar enough to make your stomach twist.

You stopped in the doorway to the sitting room.

Shanks was there.

He sat in your uncle’s chair like he belonged there, a cup of coffee resting in his hand.

Your grandmother sat across from him, smiling.

Shanks looked up.

For half a second, nothing about his expression changed. He only looked at you over the rim of his cup, calm and pleased, as if he had been waiting for this exact moment.

Then he smiled.

“There you are,” your grandmother said, turning toward you. “You never told me you knew such a polite young man.”

You could not move.

Shanks stood.

Slowly. Respectfully.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” he said.

Your aunt came in behind you, basket still in hand.

“Well isn’t that sweet,” she said softly.

Your throat tightened.

Your grandmother looked between you and him with open interest.

“You’ve been holding out on us,” she said. “A captain like this turns up at my door asking after you, and I’m supposed to believe you never thought to mention him?”

“He knows Luffy,” you said.

Shanks’s eyes stayed on you.

“I do.”

The answer was harmless. The way he said it was not.

Your aunt smiled from beside the doorway. “Well, he speaks very highly of you.”

Your stomach tightened.

Shanks lifted his cup.

“Hard not to.”

Your uncle appeared in the hallway behind you, dust on his sleeves and suspicion nowhere on his face.

“They’re doing a fine job out there,” he said.

Your aunt set the basket on the small table by the door and touched your arm.

“Come help me put these away.”

You followed her into the kitchen.

The moment you were out of the sitting room, your aunt turned to you with a look you knew too well.

“He’s lovely,” she whispered.

Your stomach dropped.

“Auntie.”

“What?” she whispered. “He’s handsome, polite, and your grandmother already adores him.”

“He shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” She brushed your hair back like she had when you were younger. “A man comes all this way, fixes your grandmother’s siding, and looks at you like that?”

Your fingers curled against your palms.

“You deserve to be treated well,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

In the sitting room, Shanks laughed at something your grandmother said.

Your aunt glanced toward the sound with a smile and squeezed your arm.

“You should go catch up! He came all this way.”

You looked toward the sitting room.

Shanks was standing, his coffee set aside. Your grandmother was still talking, but his eyes were on the kitchen doorway.

On you.

Waiting.

Your mouth went dry.

—————————

Your aunt sent you to show Shanks the back garden.

That was the excuse, at least.

Shanks followed you without comment.

The garden was half-wild, herbs growing thick near the fence, flowers leaning into one another where your grandmother could no longer keep them trimmed.

You stopped near the old stone path, far enough from the windows that your family could not hear every word.

Shanks stopped behind you.

“You shouldn’t be here,” you said.

“That’s not a very nice way to greet an old friend.”

You turned to face him.

“We’re not friends.”

“No,” he said, stepping closer. “We’re not.”

Your back went stiff.

His voice dropped.

“Six months,” he said. “You made me wait a long time, sweetheart.”

Your fingers curled at your sides. “How did you find me?”

Shanks tilted his head, like the question amused him.

“I never lost you,” he said.

The garden seemed to quiet around you.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I was waiting for the right time to visit.”

Your stomach turned cold. He said it gently. That made it worse.

“You look good,” he said.

The shift made your pulse trip.

You hated him for that too. For knowing exactly when to pull back. For dressing the threat in sweetness.

“You always did,” he continued, eyes lowering briefly before returning to your face. “But here? In the place that raised you?” His voice softened. “I understand you better now.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know enough.”

“You know what you watched.”

“That’s more than most people see.”

The words hit closer than you wanted.

You looked away.

Shanks stepped closer, and this time you did not have room to move back.

“You should have stayed closer to Luffy,” he said.

Your stomach tightened.

“That was a threat.”

“No,” Shanks said softly. “That was your warning.”

“Shanks.”

He smiled at the sound of his name.

“I missed that.”

You took a breath and hated that it shook. “I have a crew.”

“I know.”

“I’m going back to them.”

Shanks looked at you. His smile stayed easy, but something behind it cooled.

“I’ve been patient with you,” he said. “Let me stay charming a little longer.”

Then his hand lifted, slow enough that you saw it coming. His fingers brushed a loose piece of hair away from your cheek.

You sucked in a breath before you could stop it.

His eyes dropped to your mouth.

“You don’t need to be scared of me,” he said.

“That would be easier to believe if you hadn’t followed me home.”

That made him laugh. The sound moved through you before you could guard against it.

His hand slipped to the side of your neck. Not gripping. Just resting there, his fingers warm against your skin.

“I missed you,” he said.

“You don’t know me well enough to miss me.”

“I know how long six months felt.” His fingers settled more securely at your neck. “And I know I like you better within reach.”

Your eyes dropped to his mouth before you could stop them.

“You have to stop,” you said.

“Do you want me to?”

You opened your mouth.

Nothing came out.

His smile did not widen. That would have been easier. Instead, his face softened, like he was fond of your silence.

Like your hesitation pleased him more than any answer.

He leaned closer, voice lowering until it was only for you.

“You keep acting like coming with me would be the worst thing that could happen to you.”

Someone laughed. Your uncle called for another board. The house was close enough that you could hear every word.

Your family was right there.

That should have protected you.

Instead, it only reminded you that he knew exactly where they lived.

Shanks’s gaze flicked briefly toward the house.

“You have a good family,” he said.

Your stomach dropped.

“Don’t.”

His eyes returned to yours.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t talk about them.”

“I’m complimenting them.”

“You’re warning me.”

Shanks looked at you for a long moment. Then his smile came back again.

“I’m telling you I understand why you came back.”

He stepped closer, and this time your back touched the garden fence.

“I’m also telling you,” he said, “that wherever you go, I’ll know how to find you.”

He lifted his hand from your neck and touched your cheek with the back of his fingers, almost tender.

“So you can make this hard,” he said, “or you can let me be good to you.”

“You’re trying to confuse me,” you whispered.

“No,” Shanks said. “I’m trying to give you time to choose the easier answer.”

Your eyes burned.

“My crew will come back for me.”

“I know.”

“Luffy will come back for me.”

At that, something changed.

Small.

A flicker through his eyes. A brief tightening at the corner of his mouth.

Then it was gone.

“I know,” he said again.

He leaned in.

You turned your face slightly, but not enough.

His mouth brushed the side of your neck, just beneath your ear.

You went still.

The kiss he gave you was sweet.

Too sweet.

Soft enough that anyone watching from the window might have thought it gentle. Harmless. Affectionate.

But his lips lingered there for one extra second, warm against your pulse, and his voice touched your skin when he spoke.

“Then we should talk before he does.”

Shamrock Figarland was not a man any such room could contain, nor his intentions. He overran the narrow twin bed and its prim white lace, the matronly quilt stitched with its embroidered little kittens, all of it absurd beneath you both now. His pants strained, the white material stretched thin over thigh muscle, every divot and swell revealed. His shirt hung open, loose at the shoulders, and what it revealed was a chest worked hard, covered in fine red hair, with just enough softness over the muscle to hold on to. One thick leg spilled past the edge of the frame, bracing the scene. The rest of him did the labor, his pelvis rocking the entirety of the bed, reminding you without a single word who it was that held the upper hand here. Whom it was that made the decisions. 

His burgundy hair, the part of it usually tied back so neatly, had rolled loose, falling in a curtain that closed the two of you in and shut the rest of the room out. His claret eyes stayed half-lidded, almost cold, giving you nothing but that laser focus that made even the mightiest of Mary Geoise step down. But the small huffs of his breath gave him away, and you took them as the truth his glower contained.

You may keep your pretty little life, your sweet cushions and quietness, but he would be there. 

As if to settle the matter, his volume rose just as your eyes rolled back, the first sparks flooding your head to toe. And there, when he had you, the most devastating, dashing smirk began to break across his face.

And just as you reached it, that sacred place you had only ever reached alone—

“MOOOMMMMMMYYYYYYYY!”

You woke with a gasp, drenched and tangled in the sheets, the pretty white sheets torn clean away.

You lay there a moment, heart still going, the last of the dream burning off like fog. The quilt was twisted around your legs. The window was shut. The room was, in fact, sweltering, which was the only detail the dream had gotten right.

“MOMMY.” The door banged open against the wall. Lisette stood in the gap, nightgown askew, hair a small storm, with an outrage only a child woken too early can summon. “I have been calling and calling and calling.”

“I heard you,” you managed, tugging at your nightgown, to get air.

“You did not. I called eight times.” She climbed onto the bed without invitation, planting herself squarely in the center of it, the frame making not a sound. “There is a noise. In the wall. Or under the floor. It goes scritch.”

This was a common complaint from Lisette. She hadn’t enjoyed moving to the smaller house.

“These houses settle at night.”

“It is not settling. It is scratching.” She folded her arms, unconvinced, a small magistrate ruling against you. Then, peering closer with merciless attention: “Why are you all gross? Are you sick?”

“It is warm,” you said.

“It is coldddd.”

“It's a grown-up thing. When women get older, they sweat even when it’s cold.”

She accepted this the way she accepted most adult nonsense, with a narrow look that filed it away for later use. But she burrowed in against your side anyway, scritch and indignation both forgotten the instant she had what she had actually come for. Within a minute, her breathing had gone slow and heavy, one small fist closed in the fabric of your nightdress as though she meant to anchor you there for the duration.

You stared at the ceiling and did not sleep.

It had been nearly a week since you had not answered Shamrock Figarland, and while things had quieted down, most people were content to assume the whole engagement rumor had been some manner of joke. 

You had played along as gracefully as you could manage. Because it had to be a joke, surely, only a fool would believe Commander Figarland had proposed to an aged widow. 

You knew the men of this place far too well not to recognize a trap when it was laid before you, even one as elegant and prettily constructed as his. Even one with a contract. 

But the unfortunate truth was that your own psyche had not received the memo.

Because Shamrock Figarland was handsome to a degree that ought to have been illegal—and your very repressed and very poorly disciplined desires had decided, without consulting you in the slightest, that he made excellent raw material for their nightly productions. You had granted them no permission. They had not thought to ask. For the better part of a week now, they had been staging their little operas, unbidden and uncommonly well-cast, and they always ended the same way: badly, and at the worst conceivable moment, undone by a small voice hollering down the hall.

You pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes until you saw colors.

Across the city, you had no doubt, the man himself slept untroubled, composed even in unconsciousness, his hair no doubt still in perfect order. The injustice of it was almost enough to make you furious with him, which would at least have been a simpler thing to feel than what you actually did.

He could have no notion that he was being conscripted, night after night, into the service of a widow’s least governable impulses. The intentions of the accused were clean. Mostly. And who, after all, could fault a widow for dreaming, when her waking hours were so hard and drawn along such sharp lines of propriety? If she found a quiet moment, alone, to ease a little of that pressure with the thought of a handsome Commander, she would hardly be the first woman in this place to do so and say nothing of it after.

Lisette stirred, murmured something stern to whatever she was scolding in her sleep, and went still again. She had not forgotten the Commander’s promise. But it was losing its force the longer he stayed absent from your lives. At first, you had thought you might have to leave Mary Geoise entirely, should he return to press his scheme. Instead, he seemed to understand that silence was its own reply, and a boundary besides.

You eased your arm from beneath her by slow degrees, as she had only just consented to sleep, and lay listening to the house settle around you both. No scritch. Perhaps Lisette had imagined it, but it was more likely, like most nights, she felt lonely since the death of her father. 

But there was only her breathing now, soft and untroubled, and beneath it, fainter, the small treacherous part of you that had already begun, against every instinct you had cultivated and trusted, to wonder why your mind could not be persuaded to surrender the image of the commander’s tight white trousers.

It was a discipline problem, you decided. Nothing more.

Every Holy Knight seemed to take a certain pleasure in clothing that bucked tradition and allowed them to actually work. The Celestial Dragon regalia were notoriously poor for the swinging of swords. But the Commander’s whites bordered on a public lapse in judgment. They were acceptable, technically, right up until he twisted, or knelt, or did anything at all that required the cooperation of his thighs stretching fabric.

Far too much time was spent, in the better gossip circles, debating just how genuine the packaged goods of each Holy Knight truly were. It was a serious science, conducted over tea, au rigor of nobles who had nothing else to fill their free time with. Shamrock Figarland, however, required no debate and was convicted of no controversy. Barring specialized padding, which the assembled experts agreed only Sommers Shepherd would stoop to (a verdict reached through liaisons no one would name aloud, but everyone seemed to possess, the conclusion was beyond dispute). The man was, by every available measure, generously and comprehensively endowed with the full inventory of masculine virtue.

Your own departed husband had brought rather less to the table, and you had often wondered, lying obediently still while he saw to himself, whether something of greater proportion would have answered the ache in you or simply made a fresh argument against it. A question now safely beyond resolution, Sheamus having taken the experiment to his grave.

Pleasure was never the point for women such as yourself, bred to ensure the bloodlines continued their stately march into the future. Most women of your acquaintance agreed that the whole unsavory business was a matter of procreation and posture, and that any further attention a husband required could be foisted onto the slaves, who were, after all, for exactly such inconveniences. Only a stubborn few ever troubled themselves to argue that the act might be made as agreeable for the wife as the husband.

What poppycock.

Still, if those few wished to volunteer for the labor of keeping a husband’s wandering interest, you wished them every success and a strong constitution. It was honest work, you supposed. It simply was not yours.

The only glory in such elevated marriages lay in the optics, since no experienced woman in Mary Geoise seriously entertained the notion that her husband might remain faithful. Faithfulness was for ballads and the newlywed. And once a woman had discharged her duty and produced the requisite proof of it, she was free to stray in her own turn, provided she was pragmatic enough to leave no inconvenient heirs in her wake.

Commander Figarland would surely find some other woman soon enough, one willing to fulfill his wishes and even feign delight in his considerable assets. The position would not stay vacant long. Men of his particular endowment rarely advertised twice.

Your own thoughts, you told yourself firmly, would be reined in by morning.

They had simply gotten above themselves, the way servants did when left too long without supervision. A good night’s sleep would put them back in their place. You closed your eyes and arranged yourself for it, certain of your discipline, and did not think about white trousers at all, except to note, in passing, how very firmly you were not thinking about them.

The man who owned those white trousers, and the assets beneath them, was in fact getting even less rest than you. And much like you, he had been driven to more unorthodox methods of relieving the strain.

A fist met the marble wall of the shower. Not hard enough to crack the tile (the masons of Mary Geoise built for the occasional tantrum), but hard enough to brace himself against the punishing cold of the water. He had set it to freezing on purpose, to attempt to cool the tempestuous anger that had been plaguing his blood.

It was, he was beginning to understand, accomplishing nothing whatsoever beyond making him cold and furious in equal measure. This left the man twice as wounded as before and now also shivering. 

Thick red hair clung to his face and the broad plane of his back as he braced there, jaw set, permitting himself only the smallest and most grudging of sounds, as though noise itself were a concession he refused to grant the situation.

And unlike his prospective bride, Shamrock had abandoned even the pretense of pretending he was not thinking of you beneath him as he wrung himself dry.

He had tried, briefly, like checking whether a door is locked before giving up and climbing through the window. The whole effort had lasted perhaps a minute. 

Now he simply gripped himself, set his forehead to the cold marble, and thought of you with a grim, single-minded focus he usually reserved for matters of life and death, which this had begun, alarmingly, to resemble.

It had been a week. A week of him growing steadily more morose and short-tempered, snapping at his butler Destin over nothing, pettily finding fault with his breakfast, the light, the angle of the sun as it had the gall to rise on yet another morning that brought no word from you. He had waited. He had been, by his own estimation, monumentally patient, a man practically canonizable for the restraint he had shown, and you had sent him nothing. Not a refusal. Not an acceptance. Not so much as a line of cool courtesy to acknowledge that the offer had been made at all.

And somewhere in the long silence of the past few days, he had finally been forced to the conclusion he had been outrunning all week: you were not simply going to reply at all.

That, more than the cold water, was what had driven him into the shower at this hour. The offer had been generous. The offer had been, if he said so himself, rather elegantly composed. And you had received it with all the urgency a conman might reply to a tradesman’s invoice.

And worse, far worse, his father had been correct about it, as his father was correct about most things, a quality that did not become more endearing with repetition. Garling had said as much discreetly, with that maddening secrecy of his, the kind of man who delivered a prophecy and then declined to elaborate, leaving you to discover its accuracy at your leisure and entirely alone. Because Shamrock’s own mother had not accepted his father’s love until she was properly tied down, and even then she had made the man work for every inch of ground he gained, and even then—

No. He pushed the thought off before it could finish. His sweet Lettie had none of whatever poorly-set wildness that had manifested in Shamrock himself (and moreso in his brother). But you had been raised properly, with grace, schooled into a refinement that had somehow survived years yoked to a bore who plainly hadn’t deserved a moment of it.

You had every advantage of breeding and temperament his mother had lacked, everything that ought to have made for a solid, opportune marriage agreed upon between suitable people.

And still you hadn’t said yes.

It seemed, he thought darkly, his head braced against the cool stone, the water still hammering its useless cold protest against his back, that the patient approach had run its course. He had tried courtesy. He had tried a generous offer, elegantly composed, and the dignified silence of a man content to wait for a sensible woman to reach a sensible conclusion. It had earned him a week of nothing and a shower that would not fix the problem at hand, no matter how long he stood in it. Or a cock that would not cooperate unless he should have you under him.

It was time, he decided, to take a more assertive stance.

Patience was clearly wasted on a woman of such overdeveloped modesty. You simply required a man on your doorstep, in person, declining to leave until you gave him an answer he could live with. Perhaps it was time to let loose that wilder, stalking thing in him, the part his lineage demanded, that greed his training had spent years teaching him to keep leashed and well-mannered and politely out of view.

It was not, he conceded, the most refined strategy ever devised. But he had exhausted refinement, and pointless refinement had exhausted him. There was a great deal to be said for the kind of plan that ended with him standing over you, both of you naked, rather than him dripping and alone in his own bathroom, losing an argument with the plumbing.

And this must be right, for the idea of having you right where he wanted you, finally, was just enough to push him over the edge and out the other side of it, into something far more productive: resolve. He braced his hand flat to the marble and let the last of the tension leave him in one long breath, and when it had gone, it took the indecision with it.

He shut off the water for good this time and watched the evidence of his conflict swirl pale down the drain.

Joanna had braced herself for another tense and uncomfortable morning, a sort of new routine for the bachelor household of the Commander of the Holy Knights.

Away from the Figarland Estate and the prying eyes of his father, Shamrock had elected to live within the depths of Mary Geoise itself, and in relative simplicity, all things considered, given the wealth and titles attached to his name. None but the staff and the Master himself were permitted into the townhome, and most of Mary Geoise hadn’t the faintest notion of who owned it, so quiet was he in his comings and goings.

He was a quiet sort of person, most of the time. Save for when his temper flared.

And it had been very hot that week.

Seven days of the Master moving through his own house like a stormfront that had not yet decided where to make landfall, and the whole staff adjusting their barometers accordingly. The footmen had taken to walking quietly. The cook had stopped attempting anything ambitious, on the sound reasoning that a simple egg gave a displeased man less to find fault with than a complicated one, and had still, somehow, been informed that the egg was wrong. Joanna had served this family long enough to know that a house takes its temper from the man at the top of it, and the man at the top of this one had spent a week being thoroughly, magnificently impossible. The only silver lining was that Shamrock disliked switching staff frequently, and disliked blood on his things even more, two preferences that had combined, over the years, into something the household had quietly learned to regard as job security.

She found Destin already at his post in the corridor outside the breakfast room, standing with studied muteness. Joanna had known him long enough to read the set of his shoulders.

“Another bad night,” she said. It was not a question.

“The Master,” Destin said, with delicacy as the butler had spent nearly a week being snapped at over the angle of the sun, “has been somewhat out of sorts over the… Saintess Mar—Miss Bavette.”

Joanna had overseen Shamrock Figarland grow from a boy to a man. She had seen him sulk over lessons and brood over slights and stand at windows pretending he was not watching for a mother who did not come. She folded her hands and considered the closed door. “He’s waited a long while for his lady,” she said. “Miss Bavette is a modest sort and restrained in her wants. I suspect she’s grown suspicious over such a quick declaration. Her husband’s not been six months in the ground.”

“Perhaps he should leverage his status a touch more,” Destin muttered, glancing about first. “No need to negotiate, at his level.”

Joanna paused a touch. It was the sort of remark that made sense only to a man who had never watched the boy refuse to take anything he could not earn outright, and who had certainly never met the late Lady Figarland, who would sooner have married a fencepost than a man who reminded her, even once, of her own usefulness to him.

But how could a simple butler understand the entirety of the Figarland history of wives with just a mere five years serving only one? Destin was promising, but the previous butlers of House Figarland had been as well. These days, the Supreme Commander didn't even bother with a valet; he found them so useless.

“That,” she corrected, “would not be wise. The Master could have had any number of women by leveraging his status. He doesn’t want any number of women.” She smoothed her apron, the matter settled in her mind if nowhere else. “Take care of your opinions.”

Destin quirked a brow.

“Come now, Jo. Give me more than that. Was the Supreme Commander like this with his lady?”

Joanna’s wrinkled mouth puckered at the corner, and she glanced around the empty foyer. While Master Shamrock had been generous in commandeering her from his father, and in elevating her to housekeeper, there would always be a red line between a slave and a master, however softly the household chose to step around it. A thing did not stop being true for going unmentioned. She was getting old, she thought, to be so loose with her tongue at this hour.

But the foyer was empty, and the Master was still in his rooms, and some stories were too good to take all the way to the grave.

“The late Lady Figarland made the Supreme Commander quite cross, you know. And she was very pleased with herself the entire time.” She nodded at the door, the gesture carrying a whole genealogy of stubbornness within it. “It runs in the women the Figarlands choose as much as the men who chase them. They enjoy that sort of chase—”

“That’s quite opinionated, housekeeper.” Ice crawled up Joanna’s back. “Do all the staff talk this much about their poor masters?”

Shamrock appeared from the nearby office, not from the stairs. He was already dressed, dry, and entirely civil.

Damnation. 

She and Destin bowed swiftly to the ground.

“Apologies, Commander.” No excuses. She knew better. Excuses were for staff who imagined the offense might be argued away, and Joanna had served this family far too long to insult him with the attempt. She kept her head down and waited for whatever was coming, and beside her, she could feel Destin doing the same, both of them braced for the temper that had ruled the house all week.

So both she and Destin were greatly surprised when Shamrock merely motioned them up.

“Learn some discretion,” he said, and shockingly, there was no heat in it. “I am to have a shy wife soon, and I’ll not have her insulted by gossiping staff before she’s even through the door.” He paused, and something in his manner eased a degree, the closest thing to good humor the house had seen in seven days. “Joanna. It’s time to open the spare rooms. The children’s rooms as well. See to it today.”

It took Joanna a moment to understand the size of what he’d said. The spare rooms had stood shut and shrouded for the six years he had had the house, dust sheets going dusty over furniture no guest had ever used, because the Master kept no guests. She had always wondered why he bothered with more than a flat most days, but it seems he had a long-term plan.

Master Shamrock then went to breakfast as though nothing of consequence had occurred. He took in the spread laid out for him and found, against all precedent, nothing whatsoever wrong with it. He ate quickly, and when he rose, he even thanked a slave for the coffee, as though the past week had been an unfortunate rumor concerning some other gentleman entirely.

Then he left. Alone, on foot, with his cloak and no indication whatsoever of what he was about. Joanna and Destin stood in the wake of him and listened to the front door close.

“Well,” said Destin flatly. “That was odd, but fortunate. I’ll keep our conversations to the kitchen next time.”

Joanna just stared at the shut door. A slow understanding was arranging itself in her mind, piece by piece, like a puzzle she had watched assembled once before, a long time ago, by another Figarland, in a vastly different setting.

A man of Shamrock’s wealth could have lived anywhere he pleased, and he had chosen here: this quiet and unremarkable townhome tucked into a quarter no one would think to look for him. Away from the immense Figarland estate. Away from where his father could hen over him and offer advice he had not asked for, and women he detested. A place just a touch too large for a single bachelor. 

Joanna had always thought the Master was simply being private because he was inclined to introversion. He was a lonely sort, after all, and she had never seen cause to look past that. But the obvious, she saw now, had been a screen he designed to misdirect anyone who might think too hard about him. And Joanna realized she may have spent the better part of the last couple of years declining to think too hard, because she had been enjoying no longer living under Garling Figarland’s glare. 

Was it as she guessed?

For there were two places within an easy walk of this door.

The first was the children’s elementary school, a large building she often passed without a second glance, the sort a man might find himself strolling past quite naturally each morning on his way down to Shangara, and again each evening on his way back, should he happen to keep such a route. Should he happen to want to.

The second was the Saintess Bavette’s new home, only a few blocks off, near enough that a man could stand at his own upper windows of an evening and tell himself he was merely taking the air. From the top floor, she suspected, one might very well make out the widow’s front porch.

Joanna realized she had been wrong. Shamrock hadn’t left the Figarland Estate because he wanted privacy. He had wanted proximity and dressed it up as privacy, and let them all believe whatever spared them the trouble of noticing.

He had seemed to know, somehow, just which house the lady might end up in, should she ever find herself a widow. And he had taken up his vantage point well in advance of her needing one, which was a thought Joanna found she did not wish to follow any further down the path, it was so plainly inviting her to walk.

Joanna let out a long, slow breath through her nose.

Let it be no longer upon her to carry such suspicions. The first Figarland marriage had been eventful enough for one lifetime, and she had the grey hairs to show for every chapter of it. Perhaps it was time, at long last, to buy out her contract and go somewhere below. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere green, with no marble and no Holy Knights and no widows being courted from upper windows by patient men who arranged their whole lives around a porch.

Somewhere far, far away from Mary Geoise. Far from the Figarlands and their doomed wives. 

You hadn’t gone to many of your usual spots while the gossip of the city was busy circling you. Still, with no engagement announced and no proof to be had, most of your neighbors had eventually come round to treating the whole affair as another rumor gone feral, the truth of it grossly misunderstood somewhere in the retelling.

They were wrong, but you weren’t about to be the one to correct them.

So, as the next mothers and daughters picnic came around, and Lisette begged, with the shameless commitment of a five-year-old, you relented. You had kept her home from school the better part of the week, vaguely and without good reason beyond your own jangled nerves, and the guilt of it had been quietly accumulating. A picnic was a small enough penance to pay it down.

The lawns set aside for such gatherings sat under a sky scrubbed obscenely blue, the kind of weather that felt personally disrespectful to a woman determined to brood. Linens had been laid in their tasteful rows. Baskets had been unpacked by hands that did not belong to the women unpacking them. The daughters ran in shrieking loops across the grass while the mothers arranged themselves in their accustomed constellations. The whole event proceeded with a serene, well-oiled certainty that Mary Geoise had been perfecting for generations: the business of appearing entirely at leisure while watching one another’s mistakes with the focus of border guards.

Lisette was gone the instant her shoes touched grass, folded into the shrieking knot of children without a backward glance, which left you precisely where you least wished to be.

Alone, visible, and available for conversation.

You found a place at the edge of one of the linens, near enough to the other mothers to satisfy form, far enough to discourage anyone from mistaking your presence for an invitation. It was a fine distinction. The women of Mary Geoise had been raised to read exactly such distinctions, and to ignore them at the worst moment possible.

“Saintess Marcus.” Saintess Corvin lowered herself onto the adjacent linen with slow ceremony, arranging her skirts as though laying out a board for a game. “We had quite given up on seeing you. You’ve been such a stranger lately. My little Rosette was quite distraught at not seeing Lisette.”

“I’ve been at home,” you said apologetically. “Lisette has had a cold.”

“Ah.” The single syllable carried a freight of meaning it had not earned. “Poor lamb. There’s been one going round, you know, half the nursery’s been sniffling. So glad she’s recovered.” It was said with real kindness; she was never unkind, only relentless, and she folded the two together so smoothly you could not have said where one ended. “And here we’d all assumed you were simply too… occupied to come out.” She hesitated, dainty and deliberate, set down like a teacup. “What with everything concerning the Commander?”

There it was. You let your gaze drift to the children, to the small head of your daughter somewhere in the scrum, and pondered the silence she had left so invitingly open.

“It’s a lovely day for it,” you said. “But I assure you, everything is normal with us. Unfounded gossip can be very wild with so little entertainment these days.”

Saintess Corvin smiled, recognizing the wall for what it was, and being far too well-bred to do anything but smile.

“It is,” she agreed warmly, as though the two of you were the dearest of conspirators and not a duelist and her chosen target. “Though I confess I’m surprised you wouldn’t at least play with the idea.” She reached for a grape, examined it, and ate it. “But then, you always were more mature than the rest of us. I’ve said so for years. Haven’t I always said so?”

You smiled as convincingly as possible.

“Unfounded.” The word arrived from across the linen like a dropped plate, and you did not need to look to know it was Saintess Vauclair. She had been a great beauty once and had never entirely forgiven the world for moving the conversation along. “Is that what we’re calling it. How interesting. Because I had it on very good authority that Commander Figarland sent word to your household personally. Through his own housekeeper, no less.” Her smile was lovely and cold as a window in winter. “But of course, if it’s unfounded, then the Commander is simply in the habit of sending personal letters to widows for no reason at all. How busy he must be.”

This entire statement was filled with venom. The rancor of a woman who had spent considerable effort being noticed by the Commander, and had not been, and had watched the attention potentially land instead on someone who had done nothing to earn it but exist within walking distance.

“Oh, leave her be, Vauny.” This from Saintess Nesta, who had settled herself at your other side some minutes ago with a plate of bread and an unbothered air, clearly having decided long ago that none of this was worth the energy it demanded. She was perhaps the only one present you would have called a friend, insofar as the word survived translation into Mary Geoise. “Are you really making such a petty accusation based on hearsay? A man writes a letter, and you’d have the poor woman tried for it. If receiving correspondence were a crime, half of us would be in irons, and you’d be serving a life sentence.”

A small, scandalized laugh went up from someone, quickly stifled.

“I’m only saying what everyone’s thinking,” said Vauclair stiffly.

“You’re the only one thinking it loudly,” Nesta returned pleasantly, and offered you the bread as though nothing had happened.

And then, because no gathering of this size was complete without her, Saintess Thessaly leaned in from two linens over, having tracked the scent of the lemons across the entire property. “Is it true, though?” she breathed, eyes bright, already composing the version she would carry home. “I heard, and I’m only repeating what I heard, mind, that Commander Figarland’s been seen about Mary Geoise very frequently these days.” She pressed a hand to her chest, delighted.

The world tilted, very slightly, beneath the linen. You closed your eyes and gave a pretty laugh, the best guard against such things.

“Goodness, what speculations.” You let the laugh settle into something rueful, a woman bowing to the inevitable. “I suppose I’ll have to reveal the embarrassing details, and you must all give me mercy. It’s hardly the romance you’re hoping for.” You let your gaze drop, just enough. “All that happened was that the poor Commander visited the school, as he occasionally does. And my poor Lisette, still so sore with grief over her father, asked him, in front of everyone, if he would be her new papa.” You shook your head with fond despair, the very picture of a mother undone by her child. “She’s grieving still, you understand. She’s only five. She doesn’t yet know that you can’t simply ask a man such a thing. The Commander, to his great credit, gave her some kind word out of pity, and that, I’m quite certain, is the whole of the engagement. A child’s question and a gentleman’s mercy, misheard down a very long line of very bored people.”

It was a good lie. Better than good. It had the shape of truth, which is the only quality a lie truly requires; it explained the Commander, it explained the talk, it cast Lisette as the innocent and you as the embarrassed, and it dared anyone present to be so unkind as to interrogate a grieving child’s longing for a father.

You watched it land. Saintess Corvin softened at once, one hand going to her heart. Nesta caught your eye with the faint approval of a fellow wit. Even Thessaly looked briefly deflated, a juicier story dying in her hands.

Only Vauclair was still watching you with that cool, unconvinced winter smile, and only Vauclair said, lightly, “And the missive? What of that?”

The group seemed to hold its breath. Beside you, Nesta went still over her bread. It was outright rude for her to demand such knowledge.

You did not let the break stretch long enough to be an indication of guilt. “The missive,” you repeated, with gentle puzzlement, as if you were trying very hard to follow. “You mean the Commander’s note? Saintess Vauclair, you wound me. A man writes to the mother of the child who accosted him in a schoolyard, to assure her there’s no offense taken and the little one needn’t be scolded, and you would make a courtship of it.” You let a thread of weariness into it, the put-upon air of someone forced to explain a kindness to people determined to misread it. “It was a courtesy. The sort any gentleman of breeding extends. I’d have thought you, of all people, would recognize one, given how often you must watch for them.”

A beat too late, you smiled, to take the edge off and leave only the sweetness, and let her decide which she had been handed.

It was a small cruelty, but a precise one, and the women around you registered it the way they registered everything, without a flicker, filing it away. Vauclair’s smile did not move. But something behind it cooled another degree, the smile of a woman who had not, to her own satisfaction, confirmed quite what she had come here to confirm.

“How fortunate Lisette is,” she said haltingly, cheeks going pink, “to have such a sharp mother.”

“Very sharp indeed, Saintess Vauclair.”

A masculine voice, behind you all. It dropped into the gathering like a stone into a pond, and the ripples went out in a cacophony of rustling skirts and indrawn breath. Flowers and a sweet green scent filled your senses all at once, and you jerked to look up.

For all its success, your performance had carried one fatal flaw. While you’d been busy spinning your silly little tale, holding the whole table rapt with the grieving child and the gentleman’s mercy, you had failed to notice the encroachment of a rare and catastrophic invader.

The picnic was closed to the insolent grown men of Mary Geoise. There were only a scarce handful of exceptions that had ever been permitted past its invisible wall.

Commander Figarland, it seemed, was one of them.

He was behind you, in person. He had come, more damningly, with flowers, a great fragrant armful of them, the source of the sweet scent now settling over the whole assembly. And he was holding them out to you. Publicly. In front of every watching, breathless, delighted mother on the grounds, in front of Vauclair’s pink cheeks and Thessaly’s shining eyes and Nesta’s slowly dawning grin, he was offering them to you.

Every remark you had just sworn to. Unfounded. A child’s misheard question. A courtesy, nothing more. And here came the courtesy itself, in tailored uniform, carrying magnolias.

You may as well have worn a sign reading liar across your forehead.

You turned where you sat, slowly, the way one turns toward a sound in the dark that one is praying not to have heard. He was looking down at you. There was no apology anywhere in him, no flicker of awareness that he had just walked through the careful fiction you’d spent the last quarter hour building and collapsed it like a tent. If anything, the set of his mouth suggested he knew precisely what he had done, had timed it to the syllable, and considered it a morning well spent.

“Saintess Marcus.” He inclined his head, grave and impeccable, as though the two of you were quite alone and not the sun around which the entire lawn now helplessly orbited. “Forgive the intrusion. I was told this was where I might find you.”

Told? By whom, you could not ask. Behind you, you could feel the silence of all the women leaning in as one, every last performance of indifference abandoned for the far greater pleasure of watching yours come apart.

Heat rose, your entire body going hot at the humiliation of the scene. What the hell was he doing? What could he possibly imagine he was accomplishing, beyond confirming every word out of Vauclair’s mouth and setting fire to every remark out of your own?

You took a breath of unimaginable composure, drawing it up from some reserve you had not known you possessed, and smiled stiffly.

“Commander. Gracious. How surprising.” The word came out admirably even, considering. “Is there something you needed?”

It was the right note. Cool, faintly puzzled, like he was a vague acquaintance who had wandered somewhere he oughtn’t and would surely realize it any moment now. A tone that said, for the benefit of every straining ear, that you had no notion why this man stood before you with an armful of flowers, and rather wished he would explain himself and move along.

He did not move along.

He looked down at you, and something flickered at the corner of his mouth, the faint, infuriating beginnings of amusement, as though your composure were a charming little performance staged entirely for him and he intended to enjoy it before dismantling it.

Then he kneeled.

Kneeled in his tight white trousers and let the entire yard see him dirtying his knee for you. 

“Needed?” he repeated, turning the word over as if testing it for soundness. “Indeed, I do.” He extended the magnolias another fraction, closing what little distance remained, leaving you the choice of taking them or letting them hang there in front of everyone. “I came to bring you these. And to ask, since I find I’ve grown too insistent on waiting on whether you’d do me the honor of a quick answer.” A pause, perfectly placed, perfectly merciless. “I eagerly await your approval of our engagement.”

A sound went through the gathered women. Not quite a gasp. Something softer and far more damning, the sound of a dozen stories being solidified at once.

You must be the heat of the sun. There was no other possibility. You could feel the heat of your own face, the absolute and total ruin of every careful word you had laid down not five minutes past, the verbal annihilation he was performing on your reputation. Our engagement. He had said it. Out loud. With witnesses. With the worst possible witnesses, hand-selected by fate to carry it to every corner of Mary Geoise before the magnolias had time to wilt.

Somewhere to your left, Thessaly made a small ecstatic noise, like a woman who had bitten into something far sweeter than she’d been promised.

Vauclair had gone white where she had been pink.

And the Commander remained poised before you in his tailored uniform with his flowers and waited, serene like he had already won and was merely observing the courtesy of letting you discover it.

You gaped.

And as if to perfect the humiliation, it was at that exact moment that Lisette saw him.

At the top of her considerable lungs, she came tearing across the green, small legs pumping, rumpling every pretty white sheet in her path and overturning at least one unattended cup of lemonade in her wake. She did not slow. She did not consider the crowd, the linens, the dozen watching mothers, or the careful and now thoroughly demolished fiction her own mother had constructed on her behalf. She saw only the one thing in the world that mattered to her, and she launched herself bodily into the Commander’s arms with total faith.

“DADDY IS HERE!”

The Commander caught her without so much as shifting his weight, one arm folding her up against his chest as though he had been catching her his whole life, the magnolias somehow surviving the collision intact. He settled her on his hip. She wound both arms around his neck and beamed out at the assembled women with a radiant, total triumph whose entire universe has just been confirmed correct in front of an audience.

The lawn detonated.

There was no other word for it. Whatever soft and dangerous sound had been building before was nothing to this. Thessaly actually clapped a hand over her mouth. Saintess Corvin’s eyes went enormous. Nesta put her face in her hands, though whether from secondhand horror or helpless humor you could not tell and would never ask. Even Vauclair seemed, for once in her life, to have run entirely out of things to say, which on any other day you might have savored.

You sat in the wreckage of every word you had spoken, sun-colored, speechless, your grieving and misheard and entirely innocent daughter perched in the arms of the man you had just sworn meant nothing to you whatsoever, calling him Daddy across the loudest, most attentive grounds in all of Mary Geoise.

He did not gloat. He had nowhere near the poor taste required for it, and in any case, the child had said it for him, more eloquently than he ever could. He merely held your gaze over the crown of Lisette’s head, that one infuriating corner of his mouth tilting, and let the flowers in your hands do the rest.

For these children were no idle indulgence. She who called herself Big Mom had big plans indeed. To raise an entire dynasty and spread it across the seas was a tall order, and yet one she was wholly confident of finishing well before the end of her childbearing years. From her throne on Whole Cake Island, she had grown her holdings from a single isle into an empire, one territory folded into the next like layers of a cake too grand to ever be finished in a single sitting.

And while Linlin was not displeased with the children she already had, she had always known, with the certainty of an artist, that her favorite was yet to come. For though her children arrived in a great many flavors, none born in those first years could ever be that flavor. The one whose perfection went undisputed, the staple at the heart of every sweet thing she had ever made.

For the perfect flavor, to her, was Vanilla.

Now, some might be surprised that a woman of so voracious an appetite, a woman who could swallow castles and call it a snack, should set her heart on something so plain. Vanilla, after all, is the flavor one chooses when one cannot think of another. It is the beige of the dessert world, the default, the dull cousin of chocolate and the wallflower beside strawberry. To call vanilla favorite seemed less a preference than an absence of one.

But Linlin would have laughed at such a notion, and the laugh would have shaken the windows out of their frames.

Because vanilla is no plain thing at all. The fool sees only its modesty and overlooks its complexity. The orchid that bears it blooms for a single day and must be coaxed by hand to fruit; the pod is cured for months, sweated and dried and turned again, until what began as a tasteless green sliver becomes the costliest spice the kitchens of the world will ever weigh out in grams. To love vanilla truly is to love patience itself: to love the slow to grow, and the rare and the painstaking.

And there was more to it than rarity. Vanilla is not a flavor that demands the stage; it is the flavor that makes the stage. It is the warmth beneath the chocolate, the depth under the cream, the quiet voice that lets every other taste sing louder than it could alone. Take it away, and the whole dessert collapses into something flat and stupid. It is not the decoration, but the foundation.

That was what Linlin wanted. Not a louder child, nor a stranger one, nor a child more monstrous than the last—she had those in abundance, a whole cabinet of curiosities and giants and oddities. What she wanted was the keystone. The pure thing. The child upon whom every other flavor of her sprawling family might rest, the one whose perfection would need no embellishment to be understood.

And so Big Mom waited, and planned, and watched the cradles of Whole Cake Island fill year upon year—confident, always confident, that one day the right pod would at last be pressed into her hands. That somewhere, sometime soon, her perfect flavor would be born.

From far and wide, she searched for the perfect suitor to sire her perfect Vanilla. From the north to the east to the south and west, she cast her gaze, and found there were few worthy men in all the world, and fewer still who might make a perfect father.

For the perfect Vanilla must be bred of the rarest of beings. And to Linlin, only one creature still eluded her grasp, the single ingredient her vast pantry had never managed to hold: a giant. Preferably one of ancient lineage, with blood that ran deep with the old strength of the warrior-kind, so that his strength might pass whole and undiluted into the child she dreamed of.

But here the world conspired against her. Elbaf would not tolerate her, not since that unfortunate business in her childhood, a wound the giants had neither forgotten nor forgiven. And the proud lineages allied to that land would sooner march to war than be charmed into her bed. Her honeyed words, all her methods of persuasion, which had melted kings and toppled the resolve of weaker men than these, found no purchase against a people who remembered. The giants of the Grand Line were closed to her, every door barred, every name struck from her list before the ink was dry.

And so Big Mom did what she had never once deigned to do for any other ingredient. She left. Far from her empire, far beyond the familiar waters where her name alone could buy obedience, she set her course out past the edges of the Grand Line itself, into seas where the giants had not yet learned to fear her, in search of one man worthy enough, ancient enough, and ignorant enough to give her the flavor she craved.

And she found one indeed. And while he was not so friendly, nor particularly ancient, he was foolish enough to be drugged and made drunken, and so, at long last, Linlin fell pregnant.

Back to Whole Cake, she returned triumphant. Casting aside the cares of her youngest children, she made the most unusual choice of settling in for the pregnancy proper, letting her eldest children take on more of the work of the empire while she rested. It was a tenderness she had never once shown those who came before (and never again after); she who had borne children the way other women drew breath, scarcely pausing in her conquests to do so. But this was different. This was Vanilla. And though she had rarely lost a pregnancy in all her long and fruitful years, she knew with grim certainty that she would not again have the chance at a giant’s child. 

And so, Vanilla Charlotte was born, the twenty-first daughter of Big Mom, and one of the very few children large enough to make her mother feel the bringing of her into the world. For Linlin, who had birthed giants of reputation and monsters of appetite, had seldom birthed a giant in truth, and the babe came into the world with all the heft her ancient hopes had promised. It was pain, real pain, the kind she had not tasted since girlhood, and rather than curse it she welcomed it. To her, it was proof. A flavor this rare could not come cheaply, and the agony was simply the price written plain upon her own flesh.

As Streusen lay the child in her arms, still red and squalling and larger already than infants twice her age, and Big Mom looked down upon her perfect Vanilla and, for the first time in a very long while, felt something close to satisfaction. It settled over her as warm icing poured slowly on carrot cake. Here at last was the keystone. Here was the pure thing. Here was the child upon whom the whole towering confection of her dynasty might one day rest.

She did not yet know what manner of person that child would grow to be. She did not, in that moment, much care. She had her favorite flavor. The rest, she was certain, would follow as sweetly as everything else always had. After all, this daughter was made of sugar, spice, and everything nice: an heir apparent and a triumph. 

And no one had the courtesy to warn the child. 

And so Vanilla Charlotte, princess of Totto Land, began her much-anticipated life. And while things at first seemed promising, soon the child would come to realize that being Vanilla wasn’t quite everything it was whipped up to be.

The problem with being born a long-awaited, brilliant baby is that everyone, sooner or later, feels entitled to one day witness your greatness.

From the very first day, Vanilla’s mother, numerous siblings, and underlings had expectations.

At first, those expectations were almost reasonable, the ordinary tariffs levied on any infant: Turn over. Make a noise. Look at me. And always, always, Eat More. 

These she could meet. These any child might meet these conditions, given time and milk enough.

But infancy is brief, and the appetites of a large family are not. Age one became age two became age five, and somewhere along the way, the requests shed their swaddling.

For Vanilla was half-giant, and up she shot. While her clothes remained as sweet as ever, all sugar-spun and frosted lace, Vanilla herself grew very, very large, in both senses of the word. At age five, she stood twice as tall as a grown man and four times as strong. Taller and taller, larger and larger, and with every inch she gained, the demands seemed to multiply to match. For it was hard to refuse an errand when you could not hide long enough to fetch a moment’s peace. Especially when her temperament was as soft as taffy.

To be capable in the Charlotte Family was not a gift but a sentence.

By five, she was no longer the youngest; even her siblings found the time to pester her, and the cleverer and stronger she proved, the more they found to ask. 

Beat this idiot for me, he keeps winning at cards, and I know he’s cheating. Settle this argument before Cracker and Daifuku break another wall. Which is bigger, this cake or that one? No, look properly. Remember where I hid it so Mama doesn’t find out. Tell me a number, any number, but make it a smart-sounding one. Hold this. Watch this. Don’t tell anyone about this. 

And of course, eternal as the tide and twice as relentless: Eat more sweets, Vanilla, Mama wants to see you grow.

There were endless mountains of food for Vanilla, as it was assumed the more she ate, the more she would grow.

And grow, grow, grow she did. As she grew to ever greater heights, the family came to know something the outside world had not yet the faintest inkling of. 

The Marines drew up no bounty for her. The newspapers printed no warnings. The other Emperors did not so much as whisper her name. But on Whole Cake Island, where it mattered, it grew quietly and unmistakably clear: the true heir of the Charlotte dynasty had arrived.

At only eight, Vanilla was crowned heir apparent, though Linlin found it expedient that her favorite remain out of sight until she had grown powerful enough to be worth revealing. Linlin knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that her clever daughter would one day be an Emperor of the Sea, if not the Pirate King herself.

The future was limitless as the sea itself. And things might well have remained upon that golden path, save for the damned day where everything would inevitably fall to shit.

But Big Mom had no way of knowing yet how very wrong and misplaced her optimism was. How her endless hunger would devour the very future she had dreamed of. Nor how much it would cost her to find out.

For if one does not take care to follow the recipe precisely, the perfect creation may yet curdle in the pan. And the finest ingredients in all the world will not save a dish from the cook who cannot properly handle them.

Vanilla may be the perfect flavor, but it is one that will turn the moment it is mishandled. Leave it too long over too high a heat, ask of it more than it was ever meant to give, and the very sweetness that made it precious sours into something bitter and strange. The most delicate things break in the cruelest ways. And no one, not even a mother, can take and take and take from such a flavor without one day discovering that there is nothing sweet left to give.