She opened Viri’s bedroom door next. Viri was the one who got sick all the time, probably because he was always putting his books and his game pieces—and his clothes, and his fingers—in his mouth, as if he was hungry, or needed the comfort of chewing on something. He was ashamed of it, because he got yelled at for it, but he did it anyway.
He wasn’t in his bed, which confirmed what Lovisa already knew.
Slipping out, she paused in the corridor when she thought she heard a scampering noise. She turned in circles, looked under a nearby table, but no fox was in sight.
Deciding not to risk waking Erita, who was seven, Lovisa retraced her path. She needed a reason to be in the attic so that Viri wouldn’t get in trouble if she was discovered. She was sneaking down the back staircase again when an excuse appeared on the steps below: the youngest house guard, the one with the broad chest, the close-cropped hair, the northern lilt to his speech, and the beardless face. She couldn’t remember his name, only that his sister was also one of the Cavenda guards, and that he smiled at her sometimes, with a gleam she thought she recognized. A gleam she didn’t think her parents would like, if they saw it.
An idea appeared in her head, fully formed.
“Hello,” she said lightly.
“Hello, miss,” he responded, a tiny smile softening his lips.
She stopped on the step above his, so that their heights were more even. His brown eyes contained flecks of amber and he smelled like a wood fire. “Don’t tell on me,” she said, nodding toward the upstairs. “Please?”
“Tell on you for what, miss?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Were you?” he said, after the slightest, surprised hesitation. “Is there something I can do for you, miss?”
Now she hesitated. “I don’t know. You might not like it.”
His eyes touched her face. “I doubt that,” he said quietly.
He understood what she’d intended him to understand, and Lovisa was a little alarmed with herself. She’d done this before, with boys and girls at the academy, generally out of curiosity, to know what her friends were talking about when they talked about sex. This was more calculated, which made it different.
“Would you meet me in the attic at one o’clock?” she said. “I’ll show you then.”
“Of course, miss.”
And she continued down the stairs, planning to get to the attic early to visit Viri. Then the guard would arrive, so that if her mother or the fox arrived too, she could pretend she was there to meet him. Ferla wouldn’t like it, but Viri wouldn’t be punished for it.
* * *
—
Fifteen minutes before one o’clock, Lovisa crept out of her bedroom with a lamp.
She took the back stairs and passed through the nursery wing again, then the house staff’s wing, shining her light under every table and chair, into every corner, looking for the fox. Not finding him. She left the door to the attic stairs open, then ascended to the door above, steeling herself against the eeriness of the attic, always strange at night with its high ceilings and exposed beams. She left that door open for the guard as well. As she stepped into the attic, she swept her light around, still looking for the fox.
“Viri?” she said, crossing the floor, then crouching down at the door to the punishment room. She tried the latch once, just to be thorough, but of course it was locked. She knocked lightly, then waited, surprised when there was no responding scuttle. No high-pitched voice saying her name, no tears. She pressed her ear to the wood. “Viri?”
She heard a strange sound then: a muffled, metallic screech, followed by a thud. “Viri?” she repeated, confused.
Then, at the sound of scampering paws, she sprang to her feet, and two things happened at once. First, she heard boots on the stairs. Second, her mother’s fox appeared out of nowhere, standing braced before her, his glimmering eyes catching the light of her lamp. She had the strange sense that he’d fallen from the sky.
That was it, then. Now Lovisa was going to have to make a show of her liaison with the guard, and just hope the fox hadn’t seen her trying to get into that room. Crossing to the stairs, she turned out her light. “Pervert,” she whispered savagely at the little creature, a pointless jab, because foxes didn’t understand language and could only read the mind of the person to whom they were bonded. But she knew he’d be able to see this next part well enough, even in the dark.
“What did you say, miss?” whispered the guard as he stepped into the attic.
She pressed herself against him. They both had unlit lamps that clattered together; they put them down clumsily, kissing and touching each other. Lovisa’s main objective was to give the fox the right kind of show, exactly the misbehavior that would convince her mother that she’d come to the attic for this very purpose. She thought they should probably stay there, kissing, for a little while, but that they needn’t do much more. The guard didn’t try to press her; he was much less grabby than she was used to. But she felt him grow hard, and she heard the soft, desiring noises he made. His hands were gentle. Wishful, but cautious. It was different from anyone else she’d kissed. His restraint gave her room to feel something. When she’d estimated that they’d kissed for the right amount of time, it was actually hard to stop.
“That’s enough for now,” she said.
“Yes, miss,” he said breathlessly. “Of course, miss.”
She picked up her lamp and handed him his, motioning for him to descend the steps. Then, after he’d gone, she lit her lamp again briefly, to verify that the fox was still in the room. Once she’d spotted him under a table, his eyes flashing up at her, she stepped onto the stairs and shut the door on him tightly. At the bottom of the stairs, she shut that door too.
Then she scurried after the disappearing guard, caught his hand, and, hardly recognizing herself, pulled him along the corridor, past the house staff’s wing to the schoolroom, which had a door that could lock and a thick, soft rug.
She knelt, pulling him down beside her. He was surprised. “Are you sure?”
She reached for his hand and put it inside her robe, moving it against her breast, a technique that had worked on everyone before him. It worked this time too, but this time was different, because his hand was shaking and his breath was catching. Something about the way he sounded, or smelled, or just was as he touched her, excited her. She understood now what some of her friends meant when they talked about sex as if it was something they badly wanted. She had wondered if they were lying, to make everyone else envious. She still suspected some of them were lying. But she understood the wanting now.
Afterward, they whispered to each other about doing it again sometime soon, and Lovisa meant it. She returned to her bedroom, tired, then unable to sleep, nagged by an unsettled feeling she tried to ignore. She tossed and turned. Then she sat up, remembering the tea she needed to drink to guard against pregnancy.