“Why don’t you leave the palace? Instead of doing what you’re doing?” he asks, turning it right back around to me in that uncomfortable way he has.
“I can’t,” I answer defensively. “I’m still a minor; my mother won’t let me, and since all I have is a Sonoman-Versailles passport, I can’t go anywhere without her permission until I’m eighteen. And even if I were eighteen, where could I go? Do you think the Princess of England could just up and leave? Besides which, I have no—”
“Shhh,” Saber says with a finger to my lips, cutting me off. “What you’re saying is that you have no choice, oui?”
“Exactly,” I say, still a little bristly.
“Neither do I.”
“But—”
“No choice,” Saber says, cutting me off again.
I lay my head on his shoulder and try to understand his words. To understand how he could be trapped. But I don’t dare ask and risk disturbing the peace we’ve somehow found.
“Do you know what I thought the first time I saw you?” Saber asks.
I let out quite an unladylike snicker. “That I was desperate and insane?”
“I guess technically the first time I saw you was in the catacombs. But I meant in the car. In Paris. The first time we met.”
“Oh, that time. Hmmm,” I say, tapping my chin as though thinking quite hard. “You thought…that I was an evil, crazed witch?”
Saber laughs, and when I hear the sound roll around in his chest, nothing seems half as awful as it did a few hours ago. “No,” he says. “You were incredible. I—I couldn’t breathe. No lie,” he adds when I make a sound of disbelief. “You were so beautiful and determined and—I was supposed to cajole you. Speak fancy to you and convince you I was Reginald, so you wouldn’t have to see his face.” He runs his fingers along my shoulder, and I have the urge to curl up and purr like a kitten. “But you made me speechless, and by the time I gathered myself together, you’d already figured out I wasn’t who you wanted to see.”
“It wasn’t an insult,” I say, burrowing closer.
“I know.” He turns his head and kisses my brow. “I’ve wanted to be near you ever since, and I fought it so hard because…” His voice trails off, and for a while I think he won’t finish. “Because I hate what you do.”
“Does it help if I hate it too?” I ask, although a part of me wonders if that’s entirely true. I’ve been nurturing a burgeoning sense of pride at having built such a profitable business from nothing. And though I’d perish before admitting it aloud, the gleam of addiction I saw in Duchess Darzi’s eye the other night sent a thrill of success coursing through my veins.
“Some,” Saber says, then yawns. “But you don’t hate it enough.”
OPENING THIS NEW door with Saber has filled me with fresh resolve. I will meet Reginald’s price. In three weeks’ time, I will leave Sonoman-Versailles forever.
And I’m going to take Saber with me. Take him away from Reginald.
There’s much to do. As I look over my coded report of Glitter orders from Lady Ebele, I realize that my suggestion to Duchess Darzi—that she pawn her unwanted jewels to fund her habit—resulted not only in a surge of new orders, but an increase in demand from my existing clientèle.
“They were probably being careful,” Saber says when I ask him. “Scrimping, I guess. Tossing cash around, even going through the exchange process at the bank here in the palace, gets noticed.”
“So they were buying as little as possible, and now that they’ve realized there’s a black market for cash, they’re…stocking up?”
“You’ve given them a way to buy greater quantities secretly.” He glances my way and then averts his eyes. “They’ve got to realize they need more now.”
I sober, my shoulders slumping a bit. I’m sitting atop my father’s enormous desk, gown hiked up and wrapped around my hips like a silky nest. With the doors closed in case my mother wanders by, the hot plate Saber is using to mix product imparts a bit more warmth to the room than M.A.R.I.E. ordinarily permits.
I swallow hard and answer his query. “Yes, I assume some of them must be catching on. But I haven’t heard any discussion on the matter.”
“That’s because they assume you’re using as well,” Saber says, gesturing vaguely toward my glittering eye shadow. “They think you’re all sharing the secret.”