Page 64 of King Among the Dead

“They were my mother’s,” he said, his voice soft, painfully self-conscious. “My father used to give her jewelry for their anniversaries and Christmases. She always said it was gaudy and overdone – all the jewels – but then she’d turn around and have him fasten the clasp right there. And then go admire them in the mirror.”

Rose admired them now, in their box, not daring to touch them. Her hands were clean, but these felt too fine to soil with her fingers – the fingers of an orphan plucked from obscurity.

She lifted her head, finally, a protest forming on her lips, and caught sight of Beck’s expression. He stared at her with his heart shining in his eyes, a concerned groove pressed between his brows. He was worried how she’d take the gift. Worried she wouldn’t like it. He’d offered her all of his mother’s jewels, and he was hopeful, but he was braced for rejection, too.

I adore you, he’d told her their first night together. He’d meant it.

And she adored him in return.

I can’t, she’d meant to say, at first.This is too much. It’s too nice for me.

Instead, she said, “Which is your favorite?”

His brow smoothed, and his smile tugged upward in the softest of smiles. “Well.” He reached carefully into the box and nudged the chains and jewels to the side, searching for something. Finally, he withdrew a ring. “When I think of you, this seems like a good fit. If you like it,” he hurried to add. “All of it’s yours, now – all of it. You can wear whatever you like, whenever.”

Not whenever. Not on a hunt, she thought, but didn’t say, her own smile irrepressible in the face of his sweetness and uncertainty.

She studied the ring he’d picked. It was one of the more delicate ones, a narrow white-gold band set with a small, low-profile cluster of rubies and diamonds that looked like a bundle of flowers – of roses. There were even tiny thorns and leaves set with bits of emerald. By all rights, it should have been gaudy and ridiculous, but had been crafted with expert care and subtlety, so that it was impossible and lovely.

“It’s beautiful,” she told him, and saw his shoulders drop with relief. “You like roses, don’t you?”

“I love them.” He lifted her hand off the box – carefully, so she had time to balance it on her other palm – and slid the ring onto her finger. “A rose for a rose.”

She held her hand out to admire it. Her nails were unpainted, and there was a scrape on her knuckles, and she didn’t possess the elegant, manicured hands that his mother had no doubt possessed. But she didn’t drag the ring down; rather, it seemed to lift her up. It lookedrighton her, somehow. Because Beck had picked it for her.

“There’s a necklace, too.”

She handed him the box, and when he found it, he glanced, once, toward the mirror above his dressing table. He didn’t ask her, didn’t even suggest – but Rose walked that way, and heard him take in a quick breath behind her as he followed.

They weren’t dressed for the opera. No sequins, or sleek dinner jackets. She stood in her tank top, and his robe, the sleeves trying to slip over her hands, her hair tangled from the pillow. Behind her, Beck was bare-chested, and rumpled, still lovely, always though, but vulnerable, too. She watched in the mirror as he reached in front of her and laid a ruby-crusted rose against the V of exposed chin on her chest. Shivered when she felt the calluses on his fingertips as he fastened the clasp at the back of her neck, her hair brushed to the side. He slipped his arms around her waist, afterward, rested his face beside hers, their cheeks touching, his rough with morning stubble.

Rose wondered how other people would perceive them: how they would appear together. Unevenly matched? An unlikely pairing?

From the inside looking out, she saw the softness in his harsh features, and the steel hidden beneath her own.

He turned his head to kiss the corner of her mouth. “Perfect.”

Yes. Exactly.

~*~

For breakfast there were hash browns, and sausage, and sliced melon. Kay came down wearing a Santa hat that sent Rose into a rare fit of giggles that she couldn’t get under control. Beck spiked all their tea with brandy, and by the time the dishes were finally put away, he was sliding the marinated roast for dinner into the oven, and they trooped to the parlor to open presents.

Rose had her own credit card now, though she hadn’t dared to charge anything to it before Christmas. She watched now, nervous and excited, as Kay unwrapped her new bathrobe and slippers, silk and floral, and laced-edged. Kay exclaimed over them, and she felt her face heat.

Beck had been much harder to shop for. He could afford to buy anything he needed for himself, and was already fully-equipped with enough weaponry and training gear for three people. What did one buy their lover who was also their rescuer and their provider? With whom they killed on a regular basis?

She’d been gearing up to an actual anxiety attack about it before she’d stumbled across a website for a small, boutique secondhand bookshop. International shipping had been offered, but there wasn’t anything so convenient as an online catalogue available. She’d had to make a phone call, jangled nerves soothed by the smooth, accented tones of the London shopkeeper, and he’d been able to steer her toward three very old hardback books about King Arthur, complete with illustrations, which Beck unwrapped now.

The leather covers were embossed and gold-lettered; when she’d wrapped them, Rose had marveled at the wonderful way they smelled; at the yellowed edges of the pages, and, best of all, a handwritten inscription inside the covers. These books had been a gift before, more than a hundred years ago, to someone named Tom, Love, Elizabeth.

She bit her lip, tingling with fresh nerves, as Beck opened the cover and passed a hand across that inscription now, fingertip pressed to the little heart. Rose had added her own above it.For Arthur, Love, Rose.

He lifted his head, and caught her gaze, and his smile was the very best thing that had ever happened at Christmastime.

~*~

When she let slip that she’d never been party to a snowball fight, Beck insisted they rectify that immediately. Kay begged off. “I’m too old to be falling down in the snow.”

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