by Shana Abe
But it had been necessary. It had to be done.
Rue now had shawls for every occasion of every day. Silver-threaded gossamer, heavenly cashmere, Irish lace painstakingly knotted by the most pious of nuns; every stitch and shimmer fit for a princess. But none ever seemed as valuable to her as that plain rose poplin had been, warming her shoulders beneath the brand-new sky.
She crouched on the balls of her feet in the grit of an abandoned bell tower, sweeping her hand through dust and the soft curling underfeathers of pigeons until she located the hollow knothole in the floor. Rue hooked a finger into it and jerked at the plank; it came free with a wooden squeal. And her bag was still there, wedged tight into the crawl space, layered in grime but still buckled closed. She reached for it with unsteady hands.
It had been years since she had felt fear like that. It had been years since she had last looked into Christoff Langford's eyes, and the same strange confusion of pain and hope and wary pride had come back to her the instant he had touched her. She'd made a mistake in going to the museum. She'd grown too confident, too certain in her disguises and abilities.
Now she knew better. She wasn't infallible. Damn him.
She opened the bag, shook out the gown and apron and petticoats she'd once neatly folded away. Plain worsted wool, drab as the dust, it was clothing designed to render her invisible in the London streets, a housemaid's second best, perhaps. There was also a pinner for her hair, stockings, shoes, a spare key for her house, and coin for a coach. She had bags like this scattered throughout the city, tucked away in the skeleton tips of dilapidated buildings, steeples, empty attics—wherever common people feared to tread. So far not even one had been discovered, except by the occasional family of mice.
She dressed as the sun vanished into a wedge against a line of blood-red rooftops. The maid's gown flushed to pink with the very last of the light. It would be dark soon.
They would hunt for her in the dark.
She wished now she'd thought to pack a looking glass. The tower was filthy with neglect; her fingers were smudged with dirt. Rue stared out at the looming night and tried to remember if she had touched her face since she'd arrived, but could not.
She should remember that. She should be more careful.
She wiped her hands on the apron, then crammed the bag back into the hole and reset the plank. In all the time she had known of this place, no one had ever bothered to haul away the cracked chapel bell, not even for scrap. It gaped above her like a wide-open mouth, waiting to swallow.
“Don't be a fool,” she whispered to herself. She scuffed her feet across the floor, rescattering feathers, then lifted the latch to the trapdoor and crept down the stairs. It would be hours yet until she could go home. She'd wait in the vestry, where at least the air didn't carry the metallic odor of bronze and doom.
“She must be secured.”
They sat in a grim circle around his father's table, the twelve members of the council and all the others Christoff had brought to London too, blank-faced men standing with their arms crossed behind the high empty chairs, motionless in the shrouded dusk of the dining hall.
The standing men were his guard; they would not sit. Not within the council circle, and not without his invitation. Kit was not, at the moment, much inclined to grant it.
He'd had the sconces lit but not the hearth. Their flames threw smoky gold against the jade-silk walls, flashing color that managed to hide more than it revealed. But he did not want too much light. He did not want them to see his face. He could only imagine what they might find there.
The sun was setting; he felt it, as they all did. Their time was rushing close, an anticipation for the night that roiled like noiseless thunder through the chamber. The air felt warm and thick, as though there were a storm brewing, though Christoff knew that there was not.
If she were a man, they would be bound this night to kill her. But a woman . . .
“Secured,” Kit murmured, from his seat at the table head. “Captured, you mean.”
“Of course it is what I mean,” hissed Parrish Grady, still insufferable after all these years. “She must be found at once! She must be brought to heel!”
“She took the diamond,” said another man, affronted, and a chorus of grumbled disbelief followed his words.
The diamond. No one had yet said aloud what they were actually thinking: that Christoff, their brash, uncivilized marquess, had brought it here; that Christoff, with his constant indifference to their God-almighty rules, had lost it. He should be considering ways to assuage them, to convince them this was all but part of his plan. But ringing his thoughts, around and round, were a pair of cat-dark eyes and that smile, sweetly mocking.
None of them saw who actually made off with the stone. Everyone had been concentrating on Clarissa, on closing off access to the balcony, when the glass case was shattered andHerte snatched. The lady had been, Kit was forced to acknowledge, a most effective distraction.
It meant she had an accomplice, a mortal. Most of the spectators had scattered with the gunshots, but those who remained described a hooded man rushing to the podium. Some claimed it was more like a boy.
Either way, she was in concert with another male. The very thought of it sent a spear of irritation through his gut.
She had known thedrákon would be expecting her, so she had sent her emissary instead, one who wouldn't smell of them, wouldn't be suspected by them. And then . . .
“She can Turn,” said Kit quietly, and all the councilmen stilled. He looked up at them, picked them out with narrowed eyes, one by one. “Our Smoke Thief. She'sdrákon , the only female we've got who can Turn. I would like to know . . . how she escaped us until this moment.”
And to a man, the councillors glanced away, their gazes slipping from his to the mute green shadows.
“I remember it,” said a voice at last, well behind the others. The standing guard began to spread apart, shifting through the dull colored light to reveal one man alone, older than the rest, caught against the wall between two massively framed oils. It was a captain, a veteran, one of the few Christoff had inherited from his father.
“I remember,” said the captain again, heavily. “Antonia's daughter. Aye. I was there when they found the girl's things.”
Kit, regrettably, was not. He'd done the math and realized that when Clarissa Hawthorne had staged her own death he must have been down at Cambridge, ostensibly acquiring those connections of theton his father had so desired. She'd disappeared in the March of his final year; he had occasion to remember that. There'd been a Frost Faire that month, because even so late into winter the River Cam held thick with ice. He'd escorted Miss Helen Shimbleton to the Faire, because she had ebony ringlets and notoriously free hands.
He remembered, quite clearly, how her cheeks went bright with the cold. How he'd given her his overcoat, and she'd given him a kiss.
And back home in winter-held Darkfrith, young Clarissa had been tearing apart her own clothing, leaving it to the scrub and muddy snow.
She must have been cold too.
He supposed he'd been given an accounting of it all at some point, but he couldn't recall even that. He had forgotten all about her, that mousy brown-haired child. Just as had everyone else.
He thought of her now from the museum, of her face and voice and that soft lily scent, and felt the wake of something deep and primitive slide through him, darkly erotic . . . an echo of her. Of what was to come.
“Bitter morning, it was,” offered the captain. He held rigid against the wall, so flatly austere he might have been lifted from one of the paintings. “Antonia was right worked up.”
Kit felt a flicker of interest. “You knew the mother?”
The man hesitated, then shrugged. “She was comely. A widow.” Another shrug; he dropped his gaze to his boots. “Didn't live long after that, anyhow.”
“How many men searched for her?” Christoff turned back to the council. “A halfling girl. How many men?”
&nbs
p; Parrish Grady curled his fist upon the table. “A score.”
“More like a dozen,” corrected George, with a hard look at Grady.
“No matter,” snapped Grady, “if she wasn't there to find.”
“But you didn't know—”
“No one knew! By damn, why are we even discussing it?” He jerked around to glare at Kit. “She's here now, she has the diamond, and she can Turn. We'll find her and return her to Darkfrith, where she belongs. She is a danger. Shemust be contained.” He leaned forward in his chair, his wig cast yellow, his mouth wrinkled to an evil pucker in the light. His eyes were small and burning. “You know it as well as I, my lord. As well as I.”
Kit tilted his head, studying him.
“Sun's down,” muttered one of the guardsmen by the windows.
“Then it's time.” Grady made to push away from the table, and the rest began to follow.
“No,” said Kit.
Grady paused with his palm pressed flat against the tabletop; all the other men froze. “What?”
“No,” Kit said once more, very polite. “Be seated. All of you.”
“Why are we wasting—”
“Beseated .”
Even his old nemesis knew to obey that tone. It sliced across the room slick as steel, resounding into silence. The guard at the window let fall the drapery, a soft stir of cloth that barely touched the air.
He could almost feel his father's ghost, watching, waiting.
Christoff remained silent until they were done, until the last of them had sunk into nervous attention, staring at him through the gloom.
“I claim her,” he said. “I will hunt her alone.”
Grady twitched. “But—”
“I claim her,” he repeated, silkier and more deadly than before. “She is mine. And if you have issue with that—any of you—I invite you to tell me now. We'll settle it here. I will not abide insubordination.”
Reckless, red-faced, Grady shot back to his feet. Kit was on his own in half a heartbeat, his arm slashing out, a streak of metal flashing across the table.
The stiletto struck deep into the wall mere inches behind the other man's head, the hilt of carnelian and worked gold an ominous blur against the silk.
Silently, weightlessly, the outermost curl of Parrish Grady's wig drifted down to the dining table, settling feather-light against the dark wood.
No one else moved; no one spoke.
“I beg your pardon,” said Kit cordially into the hush. “Was there something you wished to say?”
Grady looked down at the severed lock, then back up at Kit. His throat worked, though no sound came out. Slowly, in awkward motion, he resumed his seat.
“Excellent.” Christoff sent a cold smile around the room. “Anyone else?”
It had been the right thing to do; he knew that. The discovery of Clarissa Hawthorne had ignited what would soon become an inferno if he didn't act to control it now. By her Gifts, by her very existence, she became the Alpha female, and thus his. But her beauty, her daring, her life beyond the tribe—when he took her back to Darkfrith she'd be no less extraordinary than the sun rising through the night. Every man in the shire would sense her, covet her. Parrish Grady had been an inconvenient beginning to the challenges. In Darkfrith there were any number of hotheaded men he could think of who might move against him, if Clarissa was the prize.
Thedrákon did not woo and wed as the Others did; their dance was more primal, the outcome more fixed. Driven by instinct as well as passion, when mates were chosen, it was for the course of a lifetime. Young lovers were permitted a leniency that husbands and wives did not share; any attempt to disrupt a marriage of the shire was considered a mortal offense. Once Clarissa was taken, she would be taken forever.
He'd been right to start here, this night, to show them what was to be. He was Alpha. And shewas his. He felt it to the marrow of his bones.
Christoff stepped alone out of the mansion, breathing deep the damp dark air, smelling horses, and sewage, and the sugar-sweet nectar of the jasmine that hedged the stone walk. He moved out of the glow of the candle lantern nearby and paused to close his eyes, concentrating, stretching his senses.
The animal in him, always so close to his skin, instantly awoke: bright-eyed, predatory, sinking tooth and talon into his heart. He felt its black hunger rising, glittering through his blood, and welcomed the power that flooded him.
Clarissa.
He alone had the strength for this. He alone knew her like this, had her imprinted upon him from just the bare minute they had spent together in the museum, pressed so close.
He brought her back to him. He summoned her face, the feel of her waist against his arm. Her words upon his cheek.
Kit filled his lungs again.
Tobacco, charred cotton from the light. Roasting meat, desperate beggars, gin from a tavern. The Thames. Cattle, garbage. Vermin, feral dogs. People and people and people and mind-clogging people—and then—
Lilies. Oh so distant, intangible, a faerie scent buried in the choked London air. Lilies, and her.
Christoff opened his eyes, faced the western wind, where she was.
Behind him, inside Far Perch, the council and the guard waited.
He'd have her soon. All he had to do . . . was breathe.
It was a plain house, deceptively so, set back from the street by a small green stamp of grass and a crabapple sapling in a wooden pot by the door. He eyed the sapling—and the door—for quite a while from his hidden location in the alley across the street, letting hackneys with their swaying lanterns rattle by, examining lone riders on cobs and servant girls with baskets over their arms hurrying home through the night before the doors were locked against them.
Not a single creature glanced his way, not even the panting terrier on a leash, galloping behind a bored footman. Kit knew how to blend into shadows, as stealthy as any bandit; he was a hunter, the best of his kind. And this was her home, he was certain of it.
The country mouse had indeed escaped to the city.
There was a lamp burning in the front hall; he could see its dim life past the curtains of the parlor. He could smell the pale, oily tang of its smoke. There was not a sliver of light, however, to be seen from the doorway itself, not even by a hair. And there was no movement from within. No human shades cast from that lamp. No footsteps, no voices.
Kit leaned his shoulder against the brick wall of the house—nearly identical to hers—that concealed him, and considered that. She might not be there. Or it might be a ruse, a clever artifice meant to throw off pursuit. . . .
But no. If he hadn't known it by the scent—nearly heady here, delicate flowers overlaid withher —then the lack of light through ordinary cracks and seams would have betrayed her just as readily, though admittedly not to the untrained eye. She knew her weaknesses, because she knew the tribe's. But still . . . perhaps his city mouse wasn't quite as thorough as she thought. . . .
It was a very dark evening, but not dark enough to eliminate all risk. Ordinarily he'd never take such an open chance, but he could hardly just walk up and knock on her door.
Kit slipped deeper into the shadows of the alley, shed his clothes, and Turned.
It was the Gift of thedrákon to hold this shape, to dissolve the human self and allow the beast to begin to win. He was transparent, rising, smoke that lifted and swept around her house, seeking, seeking—all he needed was one small crack, one forgotten hole—
Yet there was none. He went over it all twice, searching as swiftly as he dared before he was noticed, but she had outdone him here as well. The chimney, the red bricks, the cream-painted hinges of the windows, all tightly sealed. He was forced to give it up, to take his shape back in that dank alley across the way and stand there, staring, torn between frustration and admiration.
Very well. She desired convention. He would offer it to her.
In the end, the Marquess of Langford was reduced to strolling across the pebbled street and applying his knuckles to h
er door, after all.
Sidonie heard the first knock from the kitchen, where she was up to her elbows in dough for the Welsh pudding she was helping Cook prepare for supper. Madam tended to dine late, even by city hours, but the household staff had long ago adapted to her schedule. They were well fed, the three of them, they were well clothed; and as for the maid and the cook, they were amply paid. Sidonie had come from the workhouse before Madam Hilliard had hired her, and the corners of Fleet Street before that. She was not a woman inclined to question too closely the doings of her widowed mistress.
The knocking came again, more insistent.
“Curse that boy, where is he?” groused Cook, straightening from a stack of skinned onions and leeks. “Always underfoot when he should be out, never in when he might be of the least use—” She rolled her eyes at Sidonie. “Go on, then, before whoever it is starts a fuss.”
Sidonie wiped her hands on her apron, casting one final glance at her dough, then hurried out of the kitchen.
Perhaps it was a delivery; she'd have to direct them to the back. Perhaps it was Zane, forgotten—again!—of his key, who should also use the back entrance but seldom did. Or it might be fine young Thomas Fitzhugh, with his twinkling eyes and lingering glances, come from the icehouse—though it was too late for ice, surely. . . .
As soon as her feet hit the wood floors of the hall, the knocking ceased, but Sidonie rushed forward anyway, slapping out her skirts, pushing back a strand of red hair from her cheek just as she pulled open the heavy metal door.
Her hair sucked forward again, tickling threads escaping her cap as the night wind drew the heated air out from behind her.
It wasn't Zane, or Thomas. It was a nobleman, his gloves in hand, no hat, standing casually on the stairs before her with the barest glow from her lamp falling warm upon his features. Even a full step below he was taller than she, done up in a tailored russet greatcoat and brown gleaming boots, a leather bag at his feet. His hair was loose past his shoulders, thickly blond—long and unpowdered, as if he were a tinker, or a pirate—but there was no mistaking his aristocratic air, nor the cut of that coat.
