Storm and Silence(198)

‘Mister Linton… I…’

‘You can call me Lilly, if you want,’ I offered, not managing to keep a grin off my face. Funny. I didn’t usually smile this much. ‘But if you did, you’d admit I’m a girl, which you don't want. So maybe Victor? No, I have it!’ A giggle escaped me. ‘Call me Ifrit!’

I heard a strange noise. A noise I would have never expected to hear in this place. Was it really…? Was that a chuckle? From him? Had Mr Ambrose, Mr Rikkard Don’t-waste-time-with-idle-frivolities Ambrose actually laughed? Or had it been one of the yellow piggies?

‘My little Ifrit,’ he murmured almost inaudibly, tightening his grip around me. I could feel the reverberations of the chuckle through my whole body. It felt really nice, being held by him like this. I felt safe and warm and, for once, not at war with the rest of the world.

‘Yes, I’m an Ifrit,’ I confessed to him in a whisper. ‘You were quite right. I didn’t really believe you in the beginning, but now, well… you can see for yourself.’

‘See what?’ For some reason, he sounded confused.

‘Why, my huge fiery wings of course! Aren’t they beautiful? So sparkly and pretty.’

I pointed up to where my wings almost brushed the ceiling. They were a marvel to behold. It was nearly incomprehensible that I hadn’t noticed them before tonight. Maybe it was because I had never much been interested in how I looked before. But tonight, alone in this room with him, I was suddenly glad there was something undeniably beautiful about me, even if I remembered vaguely that a pair of huge fiery wings wasn’t exactly a traditional sign of female beauty.

‘Don’t you think they’re pretty, Sir?’ I sighed.

‘Um, well… yes, of course. Very pretty.’

He thought my wings were pretty! He actually thought my wings were pretty!

‘I should jump off the roof to see if I can fly with them,’ I suggested eagerly. ‘Wouldn’t you like to see me fly?’

Abruptly, his grip around my waist became tight as a vice.

‘Err… maybe not right now. You’re surely tired from being up the entire night. How about tomorrow, if you still feel like jumping off the roof then?’

I pouted. ‘But I want to do it now! It'll be fun!’

‘Personally, I’m not quite sure about that. Would you sleep on it? Please?’

There was that word again… that word that Mr Ambrose never used.

‘All right.’ Sighing contentedly, I wrapped my arms and also my huge fiery wings around him. The little piggies in the corner had started to dance tango. ‘I’ll do anything for you.’

‘Ehem… I am gratified to hear it. Now… how about sitting down?’

‘If you want…’

He led me to the middle of the room, to where the visitor chair stood in front of the desk. As I moved closer to the desk, the light of the lamp fell on me, and Mr Ambrose’s eyes widened.

‘Wait just a minute,’ he exclaimed. ‘Don’t sit down just yet. Your coat…’

But he had already let go of me, and my legs somehow were unable to support my own weight. I was about to fall into the chair when his hands shot out and held me back.

‘Are you insane?’ He hissed. ‘I said wait! Look at yourself! You can’t sit down like this! Take your tailcoat off, first. It is spattered with blood and street dirt. Have you got any idea how much it costs to clean the upholstery on a chair like this?’

I blinked up at him, confused. ‘Not really, no.’

‘Too much for me to be willing to pay it.’

‘That doesn't say much,’ I pointed out.

‘My point, Mr Linton, is that if you try to sit down on that chair again, I will bring you back outside into the hallway and dump you on the floor, just like you asked me to earlier.’

So he felt more concern for the upholstery of his office chair than for me. It was nice to see he hadn’t changed that much.

I realized that in stopping me from sitting down, Mr Ambrose had grabbed onto me a lot more generously than before. He had both arms around me now and was pressing me to his chest with the fervour of a man determined to avoid a large bill from the cleaner's.

He must have been really anxious to avoid that bill, because instead of letting go of me when my legs had steadied a bit, he pulled me even tighter against him. Though my vision was slightly blurred, I could see the hard lines of his face perfectly well. His jaw was taut, which only accentuated the noble harshness of his features. His eyes were boring down into mine, full of dark intensity.

‘Do not sit down.’ His voice was actually hoarse. Dear me, cleaning the upholstery of a chair had to be more expensive than I thought if he could get this worked up about it. He didn’t let go.