Page 70 of Heart of Winter
She patted his arm. “Oh, but it is.”
Oliver bit back a sigh. “I suppose I don’t have a choice?”
“None at all, lamb.”
She led him past his own chamber to what he knew, based on Tessa’s vivid descriptions of it, was the heart of the royal apartments. He marveled, just as Tessa had, that he’d been brought into such a personal space.
A low stool stood in the center of a rug, and a pushed-aside table held bolts of cloth, and lengths of braided cord and twinkling accessories. Astrid stood at the ready with shears and measuring tape.
Revna led him up to the stool and he stepped on it obediently. Lifted his arm when Astrid stepped forward and prompted him to, measuring the length of it with her tape.
But he turned to Revna, desperate anxiety beginning to swell in his gut, and said, “You really don’t have to go to any trouble. The clothes you’ve given me already are fine.”
“Fine for meetings and walks,” she said. “But not for the Yuletide Feast.”
“No, really–”
Astrid’s fingers brushed his spine through his tunic as she measured down the length of it, and he fought not to shrink forward away from her.
“We’ve already got a dress all sorted for Tessa,” Revna said, “and we musn’t leave you out.” She turned her back on his protesting expression and fingered the trinkets laid out on the table. Turned back to him holding a long, slender silver bead between thumb and forefinger. She stepped close and held it up beside his face. “The silver, for sure, and the blue. Tessa’s wearing blue. It goes best with this fiery hair of yours.” She smiled, and reached, quickly, to finger one of his curls with her free hand – not with the careful, quiet softness with which Erik had petted him before, but in a brisk and evaluating way.
“It’s grown out since you arrived,” she observed. “Not long enough to truly braid, I don’t think. But I think we can thread some beads, don’t you, Astrid?”
“Yes, my lady? And the sapphires?”
“Oh, of course.”
“S-sapphires?” Oliver spluttered. “Revna, I can’t–”
“Tessa’s going to wear them,” Revna said, matter-of-fact.
His pulse leaped and pounded. “Tessa’s a highborn lady. While I’m a bastard.”
She folded her arms and sent him a stern look. “And no less our honored guest because of it. Iwillhave you dressed well.”
“In blue?”
“Yes.”
“Inyour family’scolors? Withsapphiresin my hair?” He could hear the desperate edge to his voice. How often had he noted the glint of blue gems in Erik’s braided hair? Set into his heavy silver rings?
Revna said, “Yes.”
“But I’m–”
“Let’s stop using the B-word, shall we?And why should Tessa be grandly dressed and you not?”
Panic blurred his vision at the edges; squeezed at his lungs and throat. “You can drape Tessa in all the finery you want,” he snapped. “She’s marrying your son!”
Revna’s expression remained sternly placid. She lifted her brows a fraction in quiet challenge.And what of you?her gaze asked.
Oliver fought to catch his breath a moment. It was unbearable, being caught like this: between his own feelings, and Erik’slooks, and everyone else’s increasingly less subtle nudges toward something he knew to be impossible. This was ridiculous, this couldn’t happen, and resentment swelled, because why was Revna so cruel as to even suggest that it could?
Or, perhaps he was so stupid and sensitive and reading those nudges where there were none; where there was only friendship and kindness and generosity, and nothing like illicit desire at play.
He blew out a deep breath as Astrid lifted his other arm to measure it. “I don’t want to make a fool of myself,” he murmured.
Her face softened, and she touched his cheek, an entirely sisterly gesture, with nothing of the tender hesitance of her brother’s touch. “Oh, lamb. Never worry on that account.”
