Midnight Soul (20 page)

“Really, Lady…I mean, Franka?” she breathed,
her mouth now working, but her eyes had again gone wide.

“If I didn’t mean it, I wouldn’t say it,” I
retorted.

“I would…would…would…” she finally spit it
out, nearly bouncing in her seat, “
adore
that.”

“I change my mind,” I stated and her face
fell. “We’ll go together. I want to make certain you don’t do
anything frugal out of habit. Once my brother has arrived and I’ve
greeted him, he’ll want to settle his family and probably rest.
We’ll go out after he arrives.”

Bright-eyed again, Josette replied, “That
would be most lovely, erm, Franka.”

“Indeed it would,” I agreed, regarding her
thoughtfully. “With your coloring, I think greens. Perhaps pinks.
You’ve excellent skin, roses and creams, pink would suit you.” I
tipped my head to the side. “I do believe red would also become
you, but we’ll have to see.”

She sniffled and I stopped scrutinizing her
and looked in her eyes.

They were wet.

“Josette,” I chided softly. “You really
cannot rush from the room under the threat of tears every time I
show a kindness.”

“My Lady,” she said in a choked voice.

“I thought we dispensed with that,” I
reminded her gently.

“No,” she stated. Lifting her hand and
coughing delicately behind it, she dropped it and straightened in
her chair. “That’s the last time I’ll say it, I promise. But I just
want you to know, you’re My Lady.”

These words made me blink rapidly three
times, feeling the sting hit my eyes.

I then straightened in my own chair and
declared, “It would vex me greatly if our growing relationship
meant we degenerated into simpering ninnies, weeping at every
pleasantry that passed between us.”

“I’ll endeavor to be more hardened, Franka,”
she promised.

“See to that,” I ordered smartly.

She fought it. I watched it. But she couldn’t
control the strangled giggle that passed her lips.

I smiled at her indulgently.

I did not berate myself on doing this or
doing it indulgently.

I was getting used to it.

It Was Gone

Franka

I was abed with my breakfast tray the next
morning when there came a rap on the door.

I turned my head that way only to see said
door open and Noc stroll through.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

Truly.

The nerve.

I wasn’t even out of bed yet!

“I’m having my breakfast,” I snapped.

“Good morning to you too,” he replied, not
hiding his amusement in the face of my frustration and sauntering
across the room but not coming to my bedside.

No.

He walked across the foot of the bed to the
other, vacant side, and I watched in stunned silence as he put his
arse to it, twisted, put his
whole body
to it, stretched out
and settled on his side but with his body up on his forearm, facing
me.

Noc in those bloody
trousers
and a
blue shirt that did nice things to his eyes, stretched out in bed
beside me.

He was
impossible
.

Once settled, he then reached out and
selected a cantaloupe ball from my crystal bowl of fruit and popped
it into his mouth.

“That’s my melon,” I kept snapping.

“Chill, baby,” he murmured, grinning at
me.

“Chill?” I asked, knowing this was his-world
slang, just not able to fathom what it meant.

“Relax,” he explained.

Oh.

Hmm.

That was actually quite clever, considering
my ire was heated.

I didn’t relay this sentiment to him.

I declared, “I’ll relax when you get
out
of my bed,
leave
my room and allow me to eat my
breakfast in
peace
.”

“I’ll do that when you tell me how you’re
doin’ this morning and what’s up for your day,” he returned.

I turned slightly his way and queried, “Has
it occurred to you how irritating it is that you consistently
ignore my wishes?”

“Has it occurred to you that I know your act
is bullshit so I’m gonna keep ignoring the bullshit and get on with
things?” he retorted, but he wasn’t quite finished. “You like me.
You like spending time with me. Stop pretending that you
don’t.”

He was correct, of course. He was excellent
company. Engaged. Amusing. Affectionate. Attentive. Thoughtful.
Caring. And very much not hard to look at.

I was not about to share those sentiments
with him either.

I turned back to my tray, picked up a
triangle of buttered toast and my knife and started slathering
marmalade on it as I mumbled (me! mumbling!), “It’ll be good when
I’m away on a ship.”

“What?” Noc asked.

“Nothing,” I kept mumbling and continued
spreading as I raised my voice and answered his question. “I’m
quite all right this morning, Noc. As concerns my back, better than
yesterday. And I would imagine, just in case on the morrow you find
yourself curious about the same, it will be even better as healing
tends to go that way.”

“Glad to hear it, sweetheart,” he said
softly. “But I meant that gig with your folks yesterday and your
brother probably showin’ today.”

I turned my head his way, lifting my toast
and inquiring, “The
gig
with my parents, if I’m to
understand you, is done. Behind me. And my brother and I might not
have a close, loving relationship, but we’ve been through a good
deal together so I’m looking forward to his visit.”

I then put the toast between my lips, sunk my
teeth into it and munched.

“Big stuff like what happened yesterday can
mess with your head, Frannie. Feels like a relief at the time, then
the demons everyone fights in their heads start playing with you,”
he noted.

The demons
everyone
fights?

He had demons?

This I found surprising. And intriguing. He
seemed confident in all matters. The way he held and used his body.
The way he spoke. The way he communicated with others.

I suddenly felt hungry for something I’d
given up on doing.

This being gathering all the information I
could on a certain subject and not caring how I had to obtain that
information.

This time the subject was Noc.

Fortunately, after Kristian left, Josette and
I would be away so I couldn’t indulge in this pastime.

“There are no demons playing with my mind,” I
assured him. “I had some unease prior to yesterday’s visit but it
couldn’t have gone better if I’d planned every second prior to
entering that jail.”

“Good to hear that too,” he muttered,
reaching out and snatching more of my cantaloupe.

I sighed.

I then shared, “As you’ve spoken it
repeatedly, you know my name is pronounced Frahn-kah.”

His brows drew together, he swallowed
my
melon and he said, “Well…yeah.”

“So should I wish to have one, which I don’t,
the nickname Frannie is not only abhorrent, it doesn’t make sense.
It should be Frahnnie and that’s just ridiculous. Or more
ridiculous than Frannie.”

“Could call you Koko,” he remarked, and I
felt my lip curl. I then felt the bed slightly shake with his
chuckle as he said, “Okay, that’s out.”

“How about calling me Franka?” I
suggested.

“Can’t call you Kaka because that’s just
wrong,” he went on his own bent, as was his wont, completely
ignoring my suggestion because it went against what
he
wished to do.

But my curiosity got the better of me.

“Not that I desire you to call me Kaka
either, but why is that just wrong?”

“In my world that’s shit. As in it means
shit
, crap,
excrement
.”

The lip curl that earned was more
pronounced.

Noc exploded with laughter.

I sighed yet again and nibbled more
toast.

“So it’s Frannie,” he said when he was done
laughing.

“I suppose,” I murmured, finishing my toast
and going after my fork to spear some scrambled eggs.

“So you’re good with the visit to your folks
and you’re lookin’ forward to your brother showin’. What else is up
for your day?” Noc asked.

I chewed and swallowed eggs (it must be said,
the queen’s cook was superb, even the eggs were delicious), still
curious.

“May I ask why you wish to know?”

“Why wouldn’t I wish to know?” he answered my
question with a question.

Yet it was still an answer.

He was interested in me. Even the mundane
goings-on of my day. He came in first thing in the morning for no
reason whatsoever, except, it seemed, to be in my company.

I felt my throat start closing, cleared it
daintily and turned my attention back to my tray.

But I did this speaking.

“Josette and I are going to be making the
final selection of a new lady’s maid. After that and also after my
brother arrives, we’ll be sledding into town to order some clothing
for her. It’s time we start preparing for our journey and the
seamstresses who’ll be making her new attire will need to get to
work on it as soon as possible. I don’t suspect Kristian will wish
to stay long. He tends to prefer to be at home.”

“What journey?” Noc queried and I looked to
him.

“Pardon?”

“You said you’re preparing for a journey.
What journey?”

I took hold of a rasher of bacon, raised it
and answered, “Once Kristian leaves, Josette, the new maid we
select and I will be on our way to Sudvic to see about purchasing
passage across the Green Sea.”

“Come again?”

My bacon held aloft, I turned my attention
back to Noc.

“We’re sailing across the Green Sea,” I
repeated. “Not many people journey there so I imagine we’ll be in
Sudvic some time, waiting for a galleon that makes that journey to
return, or to prepare to make the journey, as I can imagine that
takes some doing as I hear it’s many weeks. In truth there may be
no galleons who sail the Green Sea that harbor in Sudvic. We may
need to find another port city, perhaps even travel to Hawkvale,
passage across the green waters is so unusual. But we’ll find our
way over,” I finished decidedly.

I crunched bacon, chewed, swallowed and
started mumbling again, this time mostly to myself.

“I hope we can make the island nation of
Mar-el, for Josette’s sake. But then I dearly wish to see
Airen.”

I finished my bacon, had eaten more egg and
was slathering marmalade on another corner of toast when I realized
Noc hadn’t said anything for some time.

I looked his way to see he had his gaze fixed
to my tray but his eyes were distant.

“Have you had breakfast?” I asked.

He said nothing.

“Noc,” I called, his head twitched and his
ice-blue eyes came to me.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “What?”

“Have you had breakfast?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you still hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Then will you explain why you’re staring at
my tray like you wish to nick my bacon?”

His mouth spread in a grin that for the first
time I didn’t believe was real.

“No one can have enough bacon,” he
quipped.

This was quite true, bacon was delicious.

However I had the uncomfortable feeling he
was lying and I didn’t like this. I’d lied and been lied to by many
people, starting from so far back I didn’t even remember when it
actually began.

But Noc, I knew instinctively, had never lied
to me.

And thinking that he was now, about bacon of
all things, troubled me far more than I’d care to admit.

“You can have my bacon,” I said quietly.

“Baby, I don’t want your bacon. Honest,” he
replied in my tone.

I studied him closely before asking, “Is all
well?”

“I just got something on my mind.”

I shouldn’t extend the invitation.

Nevertheless, I extended the invitation.

“Would you like to share it with me?”

His gaze on my face warmed and his words made
my chest do the same when he replied, “Yeah.”

I put my cutlery down, the wedge of toast,
and twisted to him to give him my full attention.

Even so, he carried on by saying, “Just not
now. Seems you have a full day. But can I ask that we end it
together?”

“End it together?”

“Yeah,” he gave me a genuine grin that time.
“You and me in a room somewhere with a bottle of whiskey.”

I wanted that very much, this something I
would never share.

Though I did agree to this assignation.

“We can do this, Noc.”

“Great, Frannie. Gotta go,” he declared and
immediately made a move to go, however, quick as a flash, his hand
darted out and he pinched my last rasher of bacon.

“Noc!” I snapped.

But he was out of bed, smiling at me cheekily
as he munched my bacon and sauntered around my bed toward the
door.

He arrived at it, eyes to me, swallowed a
bite of
my
bacon and said, “Later, babe.”

I rolled my eyes.

He kept smiling at me a moment before he
closed the door behind him.

* * * * *

Noc

“Hey,” Noc greeted Finnie as he walked into
the room one of the servants had told him she was in.

She was alone and looked like she was writing
letters, but she stopped doing this the minute she lifted her head
and saw him approach.

She set everything aside on the cushion of
the couch where she was sitting and replied, “Hey.”

“Don’t want to interrupt you—” he began.

She cut him off. “Interrupt me. Please.
People bring gifts to the Bitter Gales for Frey and me and I’m
writing thank you notes. I tried to share with the queen that doing
this was killing too many trees. She thought I was losing my mind,
told me so and also told me to stop procrastinating. A princess
writes thank you notes. And trees are a hell of a lot more
plentiful here than in my old world. So I really don’t have any
excuse not to do it,” her eyes lit, “except to talk to you.”