Page 48 of Peculiar Engagements

“What?” Yves looked at the suit. It sparkled with gold and white, with diamonds on the lapels and boots with gold plating on the heels. “Oh. Yes. It’s nice.”

“Show a little enthusiasm, honey,” Percy whispered.

The tailor, a small, excitable man named Silver, frowned from Yves’ feet. He finished pinning the hem of Yves’ trousers and stood, but he was examining Yves like an unfinished cake sagging on the counter.

“No,” Silver said. “I don’t think I can do anything about that.”

“About what?” Yves asked, twisting to check his suit for tears.

“Your energy,” Silver said.

Percy groaned softly. “For fuck’s sake.”

If Silver heard, he didn’t react. He just sighed, the image of an artist with a flawed canvas. “I’m sorry. I can try, but my clothes are supposed to match you, and…” He shrugged a shoulder. “If you need to return it, I understand.”

“Why on earth would he return it?” Percy asked. “He’s marrying the richest man on Iperios!”

Yves squinted his eyes shut. Days passed in a haze. He moved through them as though in a dream, and when he found himself hiring a carriage to his parents’ farm, he barely thought to wonder why.

The Cooper farm wasn’t the same as it had been when Yves left. They’d moved to what used to be the Chastain lands, taking up the fertile land there for wheat, barley, and too many root vegetables to count. They fed half of Duciel, and they could afford a bigger house at the edge of the farm, one with large bay windows and a painted roof for good luck.

Yves stepped out of his hired carriage and watched Pearl open the front door with a look of shock on her small, round face.

“This was a mistake,” Yves whispered. He hadn’t meant to do it. Sabre had come back from whatever task the king needed him for, but Laurent was still gone, and Yves couldn’t mope around Raul’s house without feeling acutely guilty. So he’d paid for a carriage and directed them out of Duciel, and now he was…here,feeling lost and young, back to the boy he’d been when he’d left home in a huff.

“I’ll get Dad,” Pearl called, and disappeared into the house.

“No,” Yves said, but his voice was too soft to carry. He stood frozen on the grass while the driver tended to the horses, and when the door opened again, he half wanted to get back in and flee for Duciel.

His father had aged since Yves had seen him last, and his sun-bleached hair lay thin under his cap, but he’d always walked with a limp. He leaned heavily on a cane as he approached, and Yves forced himself forward.Don’t make your father walk to you,a familiar voice said in his mind. It was the same voice that had enforced all the rules Yves’ had followed to keep his siblings from going feral all over the countryside, and he listened to it automatically, intercepting his father before he reached the horses.

“Darling.” His father nodded and took Yves’ arm. “I hear you’re getting married. Card arrived in the mail. Don’t reckon I have the clothes for it, but the card looked nice.”

“Well, I’m marrying a submissive,” Yves said, “so it doesn’t really matter.”

His father gave him a hard look, but his expression shifted, his brows coming together. “Hm. Doesn’t matter? No marriage doesn’t matter, Yves, unless it ain’t a marriage.”

“Dad.”

“Just saying. Just saying. Hm. Hm.” His cane slipped on a clod of earth, and Yves grabbed his arm tight to keep him steady. “Harriet says you had a friend. Big man. Not from here.”

Yves silently cursed Harriet and her loose tongue. “Not that kind of friend, Dad. And he’d been in Staria for a while. It doesn’t matter where he came from before.”

“Hm. Hm. Doesn’t matter. Don’t wear that face, Sybil, our son’s come to visit.”

Yves sighed when he saw his mother’s silhouette in the dark behind the front door. She emerged into the sunlight, dressed in worn working clothes with her hair pinned back with a scarf.

“Hey, Ma.”

She didn’t answer.

Yves helped his father in the front door in time to spot Pearl, Sunny, Tony, and Peter staring at him at the end of the hallway. They didn’t bother hiding themselves as Yves was ushered into the kitchen, where his mother sat him down at a new oak table and poured him a glass of water infused with cucumber and lime slices.

“Something tells me you aren’t here to apologize,” his mother said.

Yves closed his eyes.

His mother tapped his knuckles.

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