It took me a moment to find my voice, and when I did, all I could say was: “Why?”

In later years, I would come to understand that this would, under ordinary circumstances, have been a devastating thing to ask a young lady. The ‘correct’ response—or so I have been informed—would have been some variation on What a delightful proposition! Let us kiss at once! Sadly, I was twelve, and utterly artless.

But I was the beneficiary of some very unexpected fortune. Rather than bursting into tears or flouncing out in a huff, Francesca rolled her eyes and sighed, “Because they want me to stop kissing girls.”

I was now completely lost. “Who?”

“Grandmama. Also the teachers at Annie’s. And the headmistress.”

When I finally found my words again, I stuttered, “H-how many girls have you kissed?”

“Fourteen,” Francesca replied. “Fifteen if you count Maria, but I don’t think that should count because she chickened out of the dare and turned her head so it was just a peck on the cheek. I don’t think that should count, do you?”

“I, uh…” I was struggling mightily. “N-no? No, I guess not.” I coughed, and couldn’t stop myself before adding, incredulously, “You’ve kissed fourteen girls?”

“Yes.”

My brain was no longer providing verbal filtration services. “I haven’t even kissed one,” I mused aloud.

“Well,” Francesca pointed out logically, “I am around girls a lot more than you are. I have much more opportunity.” I got the vague sense that she was, at least partially, parroting the words of somebody else.

“That’s true.” I tried to rally. “So. Um. You’re supposed to kiss me now?”

“Yes.”

“Is that going to… help?”

Francesca shrugged. “I’ve never kissed a boy. Grandmama says I need to quit playing around. She thinks a real kiss will make me realize it’s better.” The sardonic emphasis on real was unmistakable.

I had had it so thoroughly drilled into me that casually kissing girls was an unbecoming activity for a young gentleman that I was at a total loss as to how I ought to proceed.

I coughed again. “Do, uh… Do you want to kiss?”

She regarded me for a moment with a critical eye. I waited in silence, and watched the last of the whirligig’s spin send flecks of light drifting slowly across her face. Her eyes were thoughtful and kind.

It was therefore quite an unexpected blow when she replied, very frankly, “Not especially, no.”

My insult didn’t even have time to show on my face before she added, “But I think we ought to anyway. So I can say we did. I don’t like lying.”

“Um.” The room was incredibly hot. Who had decided to stoke the hearthfire into such an inferno? “All right.”

We both stared at each other. The fire crackled.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” Francesca asked impatiently, after an excruciating silence.

“Oh! Do I…?”

“Yes, stupid. I can’t very well be the one to kiss you, can I?”

I had no idea what was going on anymore. I gave up on words and lunged forward into the most awkward kiss in recorded history. Her chin nearly left a bruise on my cheekbone; I was approaching from below. Then I staggered back again.

“Goodness,” Francesca said, fingers on her mashed lips. “That was terrible.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

It was objectively terrible, but now my temper flared. “Well you show me, then,” I snarled, “if you’re so good at it, after all your practice.”

“Fine. I will.” And with no further warning than that, Francesca closed the distance between us in two strides, grabbed me by the lapels, and pulled me into a deep, lingering kiss.

When at last she broke it, I was lightheaded. She tasted like the tiramisu we’d had for dessert.

“There,” she said firmly. “That’s how you kiss properly.”

I looked up at her, heart thundering, terrified that she’d do it again, hoping for it anyway with all my heart. But she stepped away, back to the whirligig; duty discharged. She fingered one of the baubles on the end of its chain. “What did this used to be?” she asked.

“Was it better?” I blurted.

“Was what better?”

“The kiss.” I swallowed. “Like your grandm—like the Duchess said.”

She turned to face me, the pity in her eyes clear but not cruel. “No,” she said, kindly. “But I wouldn’t worry about that. You just haven’t had any practice, is all.”

“Should we practice some m—”

“No thank you.”

I stood there, defeated and flummoxed, hands hanging limply at my sides, while she concluded the rest of her examination of my whirligig to an inane stream of commentary. She finally concluded with, “...and you have an armory here, right?”

“Yes?” I said, so startled to suddenly be addressed directly again it came out as a question.

“Excellent! Let’s go.” And without waiting for me, she skipped to the door, opened it, and disappeared down the stairwell. I hurried to follow.

The armory was dark when we got there, of course. I lit some tapers and we carried them in our hands, two specks of light in the gloom, barely reflecting from steel so dull with dust it was practically matte. When we reached the epée rack, Francesca crowed once again and began making a complex knot of her skirt between her legs, heedless of the damage to the silk, and threw the practice padding on over, urging me to do the same. I hastily lit more tapers in the sconces by piste and joined her.

Here, I thought, I might redeem myself.

I almost did. The local sot had not been a particularly good fencing teacher, but I had been an apt pupil nevertheless. I was not strong, but I was quick. This did not carry me to victory against a taller opponent—one who had clearly had the benefit of significantly more routine instruction, at that—but it was at least a tie, in a simultaneous fifth touch.

We were discovered shortly thereafter, grinning and drenched in our own sweat, by a slightly scandalized contingent of servants who had spent the last half hour searching for us. It was late. The Duchess was tiring, and wished to depart.

The old woman’s eyebrows shot up as she watched us traipse back into the dining hall, denuded of our padding but still flushed with exertion and shining with sweat. Francesca’s coiffure had come thoroughly undone; blond hair ran straggling over her shoulders. Sweaty tendrils stuck to her brow and neck.

“Grandmama,” she cried, “we must come back soon! They have a magnificent piste downstairs, all gloomy and dark! I am certain duels to the death have been fought down there. It’s probably very haunted. May we come back soon, please? Leo is a very good fencer.”

“It would be our honor, Your Grace,” Renella said at once, voice smooth as cream.

“I’m sure something can be arranged,” the Duchess replied, turning her eyes to me. “Did you enjoy yourself with my granddaughter, young man?”

The double entendre was not at all lost on me. I flushed bright red and muttered something so indistinct even I couldn’t make it out. The Duchess looked immensely satisfied, and nodded at Renella. “Let’s keep in touch.”

“Yes, let’s.”

I could practically see the marriage contract reflected in their pupils. I stayed only long enough to relay the most perfunctory of farewells before racing back to my room in a panic, nearly caroming off the walls of the stairwell in my haste.

I bolted the door and paced.

Never had I been so perturbed and confused and vaguely insulted. What kind of person did they think I was? What was I meant to have done? Refused the kiss? Initiated it on my own as soon as I saw we were unchaperoned? Was I really that bad at kissing? Had I fallen into a trap, or avoided it? Surely nobody would become affianced at twelve, not in this day and age? Was the entire encounter engineered in an attempt to shock Francesca and I out of our unsavory obsessions—kissing girls and building incomprehensible contraptions, respectively? Was I unusually bad at kissing for a first-timer? Should I practice? If so, with whom? Or, I thought somewhat miserably, what?

I looked at my whirligig. The kiss with Francesca had a lot to recommend it—the second one, at any rate—but the sentiment was clearly not mutual. I doubted, at a deep and abiding level beyond explanation, that there was enough kiss-practice in the world that would render my kisses palatable to Francesca. And the thought of any further such kisses—ones that elicited only pity and scorn, and were never initiated by anything more than a sense of obligation—left a cold, hollow lump within me that no over-stoked fire could warm.

I set my whirligig to spinning again, and felt my troubles begin to unwind upon it. It probably wasn’t even that bad a kiss, given the circumstances; it was simply unfair to pit a rookie against a champion like that. And I had no fear whatsoever that kissing would replace my passion for tinkering. It was physically impossible to kiss so much that there was no time left for crafting wonders. You’d run out of air.

Both Renella and the Duchess had failed in their aim.

Somewhere around the third spin of my whirligig, I realized I did want to see Francesca again, though. She didn’t care that I was a quarter Winged. She hadn’t asked me so much as one question about it, let alone a stupid one. And she was fun to fence with. We didn’t have to kiss at all.

Warmed by that thought, I banked my fire, climbed into bed, and slept soundly.

Until I was awakened by a soft noise at my window.