Gwen (3)

Seeing that Damian had made up his mind, Mila stopped saying that Gwen's background was unknown.

She turned and sat on Damian's thigh, lifting the foot that had been kicked out of its shoe and giving it a little shake.

Barlow dropped to one knee before Mila.

His left hand supported Mila's ankle while his right slipped the shoe back on.

Then he stood, bracing one hand against the sofa back, and said to Damian, "Let's have lunch together at noon. I'll find a restaurant. Big brother, bring her too. We haven't officially met yet."

Barlow drew a clear line between "together" and "her." He made that distinction so lightly and quickly that Roy did not catch it, nor did Mila notice.

Only Damian heard it. He glanced at Barlow and nodded.

"It's time we took this step," Damian said.

Mila sprang from Damian's lap, and her heel clicked sharply against the floor when she landed.

She walked to the door and looked back at Roy.

Roy immediately pushed himself off the sofa back and followed her in three strides.

The two left the office one after the other, leaving the door slightly ajar, with a gap two fingers wide.

Damian rose from the sofa and headed for the door, intending to find Gwen.

When he pulled the door open, Mila and Roy had already reached the stairs.

Their shoulders brushed as they walked. Mila tilted her head toward Roy's ear when she spoke; Roy nodded after listening. Then Mila said something else, and Roy laughed—a low laugh, but Damian could tell what kind it was: the laugh someone gave just before doing something bad.

The two of them were on the same side again.

Damian leaned against the doorframe, watching their backs disappear around the stairwell corner.

He stood there for a while.

If Gwen could not get past the hurdle of her own family, there was nothing he could do.

He liked her. Over the past three months, he had confirmed it more than once—from the moment she waved at him on the dock, to the days on White Wax Island when she talked shipbuilding with Marcus until late at night, to after they returned, when he stood beneath the small inn where she stayed for six nights before finally going up to knock on her door.

Every confirmation made that answer more certain.

But that did not mean he could bypass her family.

The Uchiha did not bypass family. That was carved into their bones.

Damian pulled the door shut and went downstairs.

Koldo and Rosa were no longer in the reception room.

The copyists in the first-floor hall were still working. Outside, sunlight from the high windows had shifted to the third row of long tables.

He left the Trading Company through the side door and stepped onto the stone-paved streets of Orange Town.

Gwen was not at the inn now.

She was in a clothing shop.

The shop was called Needle and Sail. It stood in an alley between the market and the docks. The storefront was small, and three dress forms stood in the display window, one of them wearing an unfinished beige dress.

The owner was an old woman in her sixties. In her youth, she had sailed on merchant ships and altered formalwear for Goa Kingdom nobles. In old age, she returned to Orange Town and opened this shop.

She was now seated at the cutting table, needle and thread flying through her hands, her glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose.

Gwen stood beside the cutting table, holding a copy of last summer's East Blue Fashion Catalog.

She turned a page, paused, and pointed at an image for the old woman. "Can this collar be widened by an inch on both sides?"

The old woman glanced over the top of her glasses. "It can, but widening it will restrict shoulder movement."

"That's enough. The wind at the docks is strong. If the collar is too open, wind gets in."

She had a habit of tilting her head slightly while speaking. Her golden hair slid over her shoulder, and she would tuck it behind her ear with her left hand. The motion was completely natural, as though she had done it ten thousand times.

That hair no longer resembled the dry grass it had been when she was first rescued from an unflagged little boat three months ago.

"You've been coming to look through the catalog a lot lately." The old woman set down her needle and thread.

"It's not like I have anything else to do."

"When have you ever been the sort to sit idle?" The old woman chuckled.

Gwen did not answer.

She closed the catalog and put it back on the shelf, then walked to the shop entrance and stood with her back to the sunlight for a while.

Someone pushed a handcart down the street, stacked with crates of citrus freshly unloaded from the docks.

The one pushing it was a young sailor. Seeing her standing in the doorway, he slowed for half a beat and looked at her twice.

Gwen did not look at him. She was looking toward the Trading Company.

A figure emerged from the Trading Company's side door, wearing a dark brown coat, his hair casually tied back, walking this way.

Gwen let down the hair tucked behind her ear, then tucked it back again.

Damian reached the shop entrance and greeted the old woman first.

"Oh, Damian." The old woman looked at him, then at Gwen, over the top of her glasses.

"Here to see your wife again?" The term rolled easily off her tongue. She had been calling Gwen that since the second month.

Damian gave a hum and turned to Gwen. "Are you free at noon?"

"Yes."

"Barlow booked a restaurant. We're having a meal together, officially."

Gwen paused, as if processing the word "officially."

Her eyebrows moved slightly, then she nodded. "All right. How many people?"

"The four of us, plus you."

"Your younger brother and sister are both coming?"

"They are."

Gwen did not ask, "Are they coming to inspect me?"

She reached out and pushed the clothing rack by the entrance aside to make room for Damian to come in, then asked, "What color does Mila like?"

"Dark blue."

"What does Barlow like to eat?"

"He isn't picky."

"Is he not picky, or have you just never noticed?" Gwen tilted her head at him.

Damian fell silent for a second. Gwen laughed, softly and briefly.

In the three months she had been with Damian, she had laughed more often than in all the time before.

She turned back into the shop, picked up the catalog, then put it down again. Walking to the cutting table, she told the old woman, "Auntie, is that dark blue one from last time finished?"

"Just needs the edges sewn."

"Can I pick it up before noon today?"

The old woman removed her glasses, looked at Gwen, then Damian, and grinned. "You can. Don't worry. Go wash your face and change clothes, then come pick it up at noon."

Gwen nodded, then turned to Damian. "Let's go."

The two walked side by side along Orange Town's main street. Gwen's strides were shorter than Damian's, but she was no slower than him.

Her flat cloth shoes made no sound on the stone road, and her shoulder occasionally brushed his arm.

An old man selling dried fish called out to them from the street. "Mr. Damian, Miss Gwen."

Gwen waved to him and called him by name. "Uncle Moore, are today's dried sea bream fully sun-dried?"

"Thoroughly!" The old man cheerfully patted the bamboo tray on his stall.

As Damian walked, he suddenly asked, "Aren't you nervous?"

Gwen did not deny it.

"I've met many people." She brushed aside a loose strand blown before her eyes by the sea wind.

"I haven't met your younger brother and sister, but I've met the ones you told me about."

They returned to the small inn.

"At noon, at the new restaurant in the dock district," he said.

"Barlow booked it. It's called Sail."

"All right," Gwen said.

"You don't need to..."

Before Damian could finish, Gwen raised a finger and pressed it to his lips.

"I know." She withdrew her finger, but the tip lingered against his lips for half a second.

"You don't need to remind me again. I know what to do."

She turned and walked through the inn's front doors. The wooden door closed behind her with a soft, crisp click.

Meanwhile, in the third-floor office of the Uchiha Trading Company, Barlow stood alone before the floor-to-ceiling window.

He held the closed folder in his hand, his fingertips lightly tapping the corner of the papers in a steady rhythm, like a pendulum.