Page 34 of The Tainted and the Tamed
“Have you eaten yet?” he asked her, a spark of eagerness in his dark eyes when she cut her own up at him, watching him from beneath her lashes. “I should get something, if you’d—that is—why don’t we both go?”
Murasaki was taken aback by his sudden awkwardness. Washenervous, too?
Did he know that she knew?Oh, this is hopeless.
Shifting her weight onto the slanted front of her geta, Murasaki rose almost to her tiptoes so that her mouth hovered near his shoulder, his ear still out of reach. As understanding dawned across his features, he bent a little—a little more than necessary, she thought.
“I know who you really are,” Murasaki tried to whisper, hoping she wouldn’t have to say it twice over the din. “You can stop pretending, sir, if you please.”
She expected his eyes to widen. Instead, he gripped her arms, pushing her to the side. Too late, she realized someone was passing through with a cart. As she lost her balance, she yelped as if she’d been struck.
Yet she did not fall. She was suspended in the chairman’s careful grasp, her body angled backward between two spectators.
The last time I was in this position, I was being kissed, she thought wistfully.
It was over in a moment. Chairman Asami returned her to her geta, a thorough blush on his cheeks and neck. “Are you alright?”
“I am—thanks to you, sir.”
He shook his head vehemently. “No, not here. Don’t speak so formally to me. Please.”
Were they to keep trading blushes all night? Murasaki touched her cheek. “I don’t think I can do that, sir. It’s been hard enough as it is. I didn’t want to embarrass you, or speak out of place.”
“Let’s walk,” he said urgently, his hand reaching out.
Did he intend to take her by the hand or wrist, or only to make some room for her to escape the press of bodies? She questioned the gesture all too late. Her hand was already settling into his palm, as if he led her onto the floor of a ballroom. They probably didn’t even have western ballrooms here in Fusae—or even in this prefecture.
Murasaki’s face was completely flushed by then, sweat beading around her hairline. Who was she to touch a chairman?
But his hand closed around hers, light as a feather. Ever so gently, Chairman Asami guided her through the crowd, lifting her arm as a child darted between them. Murasaki laughed loudly, grateful for a release from the tension she felt.
When she stole another glance at Chairman Asami, there was mirth in his eyes and a smile on his lips.
Murasaki was thunderstruck.
In the times she had encountered him before, she’d never seen him truly smile like this.
He had a beautiful smile, and a dimple on his right cheek. It only emphasized the shapeliness of his lips.
What a silly woman you are, to have such thoughts of a chairman. You’re just a servant in his household. You’re past that point in your life. This is a season of endings, not of new beginnings,she warned herself.
Yet as they emerged from the crowd, she gripped his hand tighter.
After all, what more did she have to lose?
Chapter 17
Haruki
Haruki polished the pinkish apple on his sleeve before handing it to her. Mukai Murasaki took it gingerly, both her hands cupping it as if it might break into pieces.
“It’s so late in the season.” She looked from the crowded stall he’d emerged from and back to the apple, as though she thought it poisoned. “Are these from the north?”
“The north?” He hoped his replying snort sounded good-natured. “We grow these right here in Asano Prefecture. The central lake is ringed by orchards. That keeps the temperatures warmer for longer, even at night. It’s almost a completely different climate from the rest of the prefecture.”
Even to his own ears, he sounded as though he’d explained this a thousand times. All those meetings with merchants and landowners—maybe he had.
Am I boring? Does she look as though she finds me dry as the summer sand?Nervous, he turned his own apple in his hand, then tossed it lightly. He’d practiced this for an entire autumn when he was newly turned. He’d tried to make a game of catching an apple without crushing it.
