Page 33 of Seducing the Sorcerer
Fenn woke as the palace clock struck seven. Seven! He was late for dinner. With Morgrim. His heart gave a lurch of anticipation. Or apprehension. Or most likely a bit of both. Because if Morgrim was going to make an approach, it was very like to come during dinner. Or after.
And if it did come, what would Fenn do? Go along with it? Make a polite excuse and run like hell?
How would a man like Morgrim take a rejection?
And anyway, did Fenn want to refuse?
He scrambled up, brushed himself off and splashed his face in the bucket of water that the horse still hadn’t touched. Strangely, there were still no pink silk droppings in the hay either, but there was no time to ponder the horse’s digestive peculiarities just now.
Fenn clipped the lead rope to the horse’s halter and jogged across the stable yard through the rain, the horse pulling and tugging and trying to get in front of him as usual. He opened the courtyard door just as Jasper let two palace guards in through the postern door of the gatehouse. Each guard carried a tray loaded with silver domes.
Fenn stopped, instinctively pushing the horse back out of sight with his elbow and half closing the door. He hovered in the shadows as the guards crossed the courtyard, knocked on the tower door and vanished inside to deliver the trays. They wouldn’t laugh at the horse aloud, probably. Not on duty and not at a guest of Morgrim’s. But their stares and their bemusement would be almost as bad.
Odd, that all the meals here seemed to be delivered by soldiers. Perhaps the usual staff didn’t dare serve at the tower?
The guards came out, empty-handed, and left the way they’d come. Fenn gave them a moment, then went and knocked on the tower door himself.
Morgrim opened it and ushered Fenn in.
The sorcerer wore one of his floor-length black robes again. Perhaps they weren’t robes of state. Perhaps he liked them. They certainly lent him distinction, made him appear tall and lissom and generally dead impressive. Fenn looked around the room and his stomach twisted with excitement because it seemed they were having dinner alone. Very chummy. That definitely meant something.
Or were they alone? Fenn glanced over at the skeleton screen. But it was impossible to see behind it from this angle.
“Please, do sit down.” Morgrim indicated the chair at the head of the long table.
Fenn took his seat, laying the horse’s lead rope over his knee so it couldn’t stray and he’d notice if it started chewing anything.
Morgrim began lighting candles, taking knives and forks from the tray and putting them in their places, followed by napkins and wine glasses and all the other things fancy folk needed to eat dinner. Fenn eyed him sideways, trying not to stare.
Morgrim the sorcerer was setting the table.
Of course, he was, because there were no servants and it seemed the guards hadn’t done it, but nonetheless, if he’d done it with magic, putting the cutlery to dance and the glasses to fly, Fenn would have been less astonished. Because it just didn’t seem the sort of thing a man like Morgrim would do. It was so ordinary. So domestic.
Fenn realised he’d been thinking of Morgrim as a fairy-tale character, a bright assemblage of traits and deeds, a symbol of power and mystery and desire, and probably of evil and treachery too.
And he might still be all those things, but he was also a man, who sometimes set his table.
Fenn decided he liked it.
He liked it a lot.
He liked Morgrim’s slender hands, very clean and soft-looking with neat trimmed fingernails carefully painted black. Why Morgrim would paint his fingernails, Fenn couldn’t guess. Perhaps there was some sort of magical reason, or maybe he just liked them like that. Anyway, it suited him. It made him look finished, somehow.
Every movement Morgrim made was so gentle and precise. There was barely a sound as he put things down. He managed the flowing sleeve of his robe with ease, holding it back so it couldn’t knock anything over. He seemed to be estimating distances and angles: the wine glasses just so in relation to the knives, the candelabra just there and not an inch to the left. He wore a serious expression, as if making everything right for Fenn’s convenience was the most important thing in the world.
Such painstaking preparation and fierce attention to detail was—well—it was almost arousing. Morgrim was transforming a plain act of service into an art. How might he perform other, more intimate, services?
It looked very fine when he’d finished, all the silverware shining and the plates gleaming in the candlelight.
And no servants watching. No Jasper. No blank-eyed footman with his arse to the wall, soaking up everything to report back to the kitchen. Just Fenn and the sorcerer. And the horse.
Morgrim sat to Fenn’s right, just across the corner of the table, and served. Fenn had half expected to be overwhelmed by a whole lot of unfamiliar fancy food, but it was ordinary enough: lentils and peas, carrots with almond flakes, courgettes fried with garlic, and a baked fish, bright with a red crust of spices.
There was also wine; an innocent-looking white. Fenn, who hadn’t thought of his mother in years, had a sudden vision of her, lips pursed, eyes fierce, hands on her hips. “Best behaviour, Fennrik Todd. You hear? Don’t you show me up.” She was right. It wouldn’t do to gulp everything down as if he were alone. He must remember where he was. That meant eating slowly. Using cutlery. Not drinking too much.
A surge of some emotion made him sit a little straighter. It wasn’t quite self-preservation. Not quite pride. Perhaps it was because of the way Morgrim was treating him and how nice everything was. Even if later Morgrim wanted him to act the service beast, Fenn could do his best now to prove that he was more than that. If he was going to be treated like a guest, he would act like one. That meant conversation. Asking about his host, discussing the matters of the day, that sort of thing.
Morgrim was pouring himself a glass of wine, brows lowered in concentration, and it struck Fenn that the sorcerer’s fearsome frown lines might as easily have been etched on his face by the troubles that came with his position as with a severe and disapproving disposition.
