Chapter 17: The Coach

Nico

The leather straps of the carriage creak with every rut, a heavy, grease-dry groan, continuous since we left the harbor. We have been traveling for three days, a slow grind inland from the Italian coast toward the limestone plateau of Valderre. My road coat is dusty, the wool stiff with the grit of the highway. My tongue is dry. Only the two of us occupy the rocking wooden box, surrounded by the smell of old horsehair and leather.

Kahina sits opposite me, her head resting against the padded leather wall. Her gray linen dress is wrinkled from the miles, but she holds her spine straight, her hands folded in her lap. She has spent the morning looking out the small glass window at the dry, terraced hills rising toward the inland plateau.

“Your father has a grand estate,” she says, her tone flat against the gray light through the window. “He is a Duke. You will have a palace in Valderre.”

“My father does not build palaces,” I say, looking down at the dust on my boots. “He builds operating instructions. The rooms are where he stores the paperwork.”

“And the betrothal?”

“Geneviève is adequate,” I say. The word is flat, tasting of dust. “She fits the room he made for her. She plays the spinet, she knows which cousins to ignore at the weddings, and she will never ask why the accounts in Genoa do not balance. She has an immense name and little interest in what lies beneath it.”

“You stayed on the yacht for two years,” she says, her gaze turning to me. “You had the letters on your desk. You had the keys to the Seravalle apartments. But you lived on a boat with no room for a wardrobe.”

“The sailing was decent,” I say.

“You stayed because you wanted to see if anyone would notice you were gone,” she says, calm, totting up the contents of my chest like a ledger. “You wanted to know if you had any weight when you were not performing the Duke’s heir.”

I laugh, a short, dry sound, bouncing off the wooden ceiling.

“You are a poor audience, Mademoiselle,” I say.

“I am not an audience at all,” she says.

The truth is a clean cut. She has stripped the grand titles and the careless smiles off me and is looking at what is left. It pulls at me lower than the champagne we drank in Saverno did. I look at her dark eyes and the proud line of her mouth.

The carriage hits a deep rut, throwing her forward. I reach out, my hands catching her arms, and instead of letting her go, I pull her across the narrow space into my lap.

She does not fight me. She sits facing me, her knees on the leather seat on either side of my hips. My hands find the hem of her gray skirt, hiking the heavy linen up her thighs. Her skin is warm against my palms. I free myself from my breeches, my skin tight and thick, and she sinks down onto me.

I guide myself to her, sliding in slowly, met by her tight warmth. The entry is deep, the jolt and sway of the road driving her down. She gasps, her head tossing back against the carriage wall.

“Nico,” she says, her voice muffled against my shoulder.

The coachman sits three feet above us on the box, his boots tapping the roof. Every sound we make is a risk. I press my palm over her mouth, my fingers dry against her lips, muffling her breath as I thrust upward. She bites my palm, the sharp pinch of her teeth matching the tight pull of her body.

My mouth catches hers, my tongue sliding between her teeth, cutting off the gasps as the wheels rattle over the loose stones. The carriage sways, a violent heave, driving me deeper. She grips my shoulders, her fingernails digging through my shirt, her hips rolling with the motion of the springs.

Through the loosened linen of her bodice I palm her breast, the skin warm and full under my hand, her nipple hard against my thumb. The urgency is a physical weight; the next posting station is only two miles down the road, the horses already slowing on the rise. We move fast, the wood creaking around us, the wheels covering the sound of our breath.

She tightens around me, her hips locking against mine as her release breaks, a silent, shaking wave, her forehead pressed against my neck. I follow her, the heat releasing inside her, my own groan lost in the rattle of the iron tires on the gravel.

We sit folded together for a minute, the carriage swaying as the horses reach the flat. My hand is on her hip, tracking the slow rise and fall of her chest.

We right our clothes quickly, my fingers clumsy with the laces of her bodice, my breeches buttoned as the coach slows. The iron wheels grind on the stone courtyard of the posting inn, the horses stamping to a stop.

I look at the woman opposite me. Her hair is messy, a few pins loose on the collar of her coat, but her face is composed, her gray skirt smoothed over her knees.

Valderre is two hours away. The Duke is at the end of the road. But tonight, I refuse to look at it. I keep my arm tight around her, the smell of the sea and the hot pine of Saverno still on our skin.

Kahina

My head rests against Nico’s shoulder, the gray linen of my dress still unlaced at the collar. The heat of our skin is thick in the closed space, mixing with the smell of old horsehair and the road dust. Outside, the wheels rumble on the hard dirt, a steady vibration running through my spine. Nico's arm is heavy around my waist, his fingers idle on the hem of my chemise. We are half-dressed, sated, as the walls of the wooden box keep the world away for another hour.

He leans his head back against the padded leather wall, his eyes closed. His dark hair is messy, his road coat thrown on the floor between our boots.

“Tell me something real,” he says, his voice low under the rumble of the wheels.

“I am real,” I say.

“Something from before,” he says, his hand stopping on my hip. “A memory. Not a wound, Kahina. Only something you remember.”

I look at the dark leather padding of the door. Normally, my guard is up, and every word is weighed to hide the princess from the buyer. I have spent three years measuring my answers, hiding the names of my family and the details of my coast. But the warmth of his chest is solid under my cheek, and the carriage still rocks me against him with every turn of the wheels, the harbor behind us and the road ahead both shut out by the walls.

“My mother’s courtyard had white walls,” I say, the words coming slow. “The jasmine grew over the stone arches, the scent so thick it tasted of honey in the afternoon. In the summer, the light turned heavy and gold, burnishing the red roof tiles and the fountain water to metal. It was a still place. My sisters argued about the embroidery patterns on the gallery, their voices rising over the splash of the water.”

I do not tell him about the red sails clearing the harbor point three years ago, when the coastal kingdom fell. The smoke turning the light to ash, the sound of my sisters screaming as the iron collars closed, remains unspoken. I keep the garden white and bright, a clean place.

Questions of who lives in the courtyard now, or where the Berber captains carried my family, do not come. He simply holds me, his fingers tightening slightly on my hip, taking the jasmine without reaching for the scar behind it.

For three years, every man buying my time wanted to own the wreckage, peeling back the skin to see where the blood came from. Nico leaves the skin whole. My shoulders drop against him. The breath I have been holding for three years goes out of me, and I do not pull it back.

The carriage sways as the wheels hit the smooth gravel of the interior highway. The wild hills of the coast are gone, replaced by neat stone grids under a flat, gray sky. Valderre's fields stretch toward the horizon.

I slide off his lap, sitting on the opposite bench. The distance is a cold draft between us, but the road is widening, the posting inns turning into stone villas with tall chimneys.

“We are entering the estate,” I say, my fingers working the laces of my bodice. The dress is stiff against my fingers, my hands clumsy from the long hours of travel.

Nico buttons his shirt, his jaw set in a quiet line. He pulls his road coat over his shoulders, the easy, social smile returning to his face, a mask. The man sailing the Sans Souci is gone, replaced by the Duke’s heir returning to his father's house.

We slow, the horses turning onto a wide avenue lined with poplars. The tall iron gates of the Valderre estate swing open, the hinges groaning in the quiet afternoon. I smooth my skirt over my knees, my spine straight, as the carriage rolls through.