His hands made quick work of it, telling Rune how practiced he was. She couldn’t help comparing those hands to his brother’s. Alex had the hands of a musician: wide palms, slender fingers. Elegant and beautiful as a song.
Gideon’s hands were strong and rough and calloused. Hands that could hold a gun as competently as they could haul a witch into a prison cell—or take a girl’s measurements, evidently.
He never fumbled or brushed her skin. As if he were trying very hard not to touch her more than necessary.
To distract them both while he measured her bust, Rune said, “I wish Alex had told me you were an accomplished tailor. If your finished garments look anything like your sketches, I would have employed you years ago.”
“Cress would never have let me work for you.”
The way he said the young queen’s name—Cress, not Cressida—made Rune feel funny.
“She wouldn’t have let me talk to you.” Gideon retreated to write the number in his notebook. “I did serve you and your friends tea once, though you didn’t notice me.” He returned to Rune, looping the tape around the smallest part of her waist this time. “It was at Thornwood Hall, during one of Cress’s parties.”
Unable to recall it, she glanced up to find Gideon’s face mere inches from hers, his attention fixed on the measuring tape. “If you were her tailor, why were you serving tea at her party?”
The tape went slack, but he didn’t move on to the next measurement.
“I was living at Thornwood Hall by then. Cress moved me there from the palace to … better fulfill her needs. The night of that party, I was being punished.” He ran a hand roughly through his hair. “For neglecting my duties.”
Rune frowned harder, about to ask him what he meant, when he cut her off.
“Hips are next.”
He didn’t want to elaborate, clearly. While the tape encircled Rune’s hips, pulling her closer into his warmth, she tried to remember it: a younger version of Gideon Sharpe, refilling her cup while she gossiped with her friends.
But she couldn’t remember him, and the guilt of it twisted in her belly.
But why should I remember him?
Her mind wandered back to that nickname. Cress. Was he the only one who called the queen that?
When Gideon left to write Rune’s hip measurement down, she asked, “I didn’t know Cressida very well. What was she like?”
He stayed bent over that book, not writing or answering for a long time. “She was … beautiful,” he finally said. “And alluring.” He seemed half-lost in a dream. “And powerful.”
Rune suddenly remembered the rumors about Cressida and her lowborn lover. Rumors she’d dismissed as silly gossip. She wondered now if there might be some truth to them.
Gideon had said he’d lived at Cressida’s summer home, and he was certainly easy on the eyes.
If dark, brooding, and brutal are your type, she thought with a scowl.
The way Gideon talked about the youngest Roseblood sister was so informal. Not at all like someone who had served her. More like someone who’d known her well.
Or been intimate with her.
Rune shifted. An uncomfortable feeling snaked through her at the thought of him sharing Cressida’s bed. If he’d been a witch queen’s lover, Rune would need to be much more careful. He would pick up on the smallest of cues.
“Are you familiar with the pitcher plants that grow in the island’s bogs?”
Though he’d turned around to face her, there were several paces between them. Rune stood in the lamp’s glow, still in her lace underwear. Gideon was in the shadows outside it, fully clothed. And yet, in this moment, he seemed to be the vulnerable one.
“Those deep purple flowers that trap and eat bugs?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Cress was like that: pretty from a distance, tempting you closer. Like a fool, you were happy to approach.” He was staring at the space over Rune’s shoulder, his expression haunted. “It was only after she’d reeled you in that she revealed her true nature. But by then, it was too late.”
He met Rune’s gaze.
“She was already eating you alive.”
NINETEEN
GIDEON
IN THE BEGINNING, THE attraction had been mutual. The first time he met Cressida Roseblood, he’d traveled to the palace with his mother to deliver a dress. While his mother spoke privately with the two eldest witch queens, Gideon waited in the hall, knowing how much rested on this moment. If the sisters liked his parents’ work, Analise and Elowyn would employ the Sharpe Duet full-time to be their dressmakers.