“That was very instructive,” she said, her calm voice at odds with her flushed face and rumpled dress. “Thank you, James.”
He let his head fall back against the headboard with a thump. He was still dizzy, blood slamming through his veins. His body ached with unexpressed desire. “Daisy—”
“You should sleep.” She was already gathering up Cortana, already sitting back down in the chair by his bed. “You must, in fact, or we will never know.”
He struggled to regulate his breathing. Bloody hell. If she were anyone else, he’d have said she’d intended this as revenge: his body felt ravaged by wanting her. But she had settled herself calmly in her chair, her sword across her lap. Only the slight disarrangement of her hair, the red marks on her throat where his lips had been, showed that anything had happened.
“Oh,” she said, as if just recalling an item of shopping she’d forgotten. “Did you need your other wrist tied as well?”
“No,” James managed. He was not about to explain why further proximity to Cordelia seemed like a bad idea. “This is—fine.”
“Do you want me to read to you?” she said, picking up a novel from the nightstand.
He nodded very slightly. He was desperate for a distraction. “What book?”
“Dickens,” she said primly, opened the volume, and began to read.
* * *
Thomas was buttoning his coat as he crossed the kitchen—dark, now, as midnight had come and the place was blissfully free of domestic staff. He had crept out of the drawing room without the others noticing, caught up as they were in their chatter and card games. Even Christopher, on watch by the door, hadn’t noticed as Thomas had gathered up his gear jacket and bolas and crept down the hall.
Feeling rather proud of himself, he soundlessly unlatched the back door to the garden and threw it open. He had just slipped outside into the chilly darkness when a light flared in front of him. The burning tip of a match illuminated a pair of sharp blue eyes.
“Close the door behind you,” Anna said.
Thomas did as requested, silently cursing himself. He could have sworn that ten minutes ago Anna had been asleep in a chair. “How did you know?”
“That you’d be sneaking out?” She lit the tip of her cheroot and tossed the match. “Honestly, Thomas, I’ve been waiting for you so long out here I was afraid my waistcoat would go out of style.”
“I just wanted some air—”
“No, you didn’t,” she said, puffing white smoke into the frigid air. “You had that look in your eye. You’re going to go out and patrol alone again. Cousin, don’t be foolish.”
“I have to do what I can, and I’m of better use out there than I am in the drawing room,” Thomas said. “James doesn’t need five of us to make sure he doesn’t leave the house.”
“Thomas, look at me,” she said, and he did. Her blue gaze was steady. His cousin Anna: he remembered when she had worn petticoats and dresses, her hair long and braided into plaits. And always in her eyes a look of discomfort, of sadness. He remembered, too, when she had emerged like a butterfly from a cocoon, transforming into what she was now—a vision in gleaming cuff links and starched collars. She lived her life so boldly, so unapologetically, that sometimes it made Thomas’s stomach hurt a little, just to look at her.
She laid a gloved hand on his cheek. “We are special, unusual, unique people. That means that we must be bold and proud, but also careful. Don’t think you have so much to prove that it makes you foolish. If you must patrol, go to the Institute and ask to be assigned a partner. If I discover that you are out on your own, I will be very angry.”
“All right.” Thomas kissed the palm of Anna’s gloved hand and returned it to her gently.
She watched him with troubled eyes as he scrambled over the back garden wall.
He had, of course, no intention of seeking a patrol partner. He disliked misleading Anna—but this madness of James’s had to end. James was one of the best, kindest, and bravest people Thomas had ever known, and for James to doubt himself like this was painful—for if James could doubt himself like this, what did it mean for those like Thomas, who already doubted themselves so much?
He was determined to put a stop to it, he thought, as he strode out onto Curzon Street, deserted under the moon. He would find the real killer if it was the last thing he ever did.
“？After I had turned the worst point of my illness, I began to notice that while all its other features changed, this one consistent feature did not change. Whoever came about me, still settled down into Joe. I opened my eyes in the night, and I saw in the great chair at the bedside, Joe. I opened my eyes in the day, and, sitting on the window-seat, smoking his pipe in the shaded open window, still I saw Joe. I asked for cooling drink, and the dear hand that gave it me was Joe’s. I sank back on my pillow after drinking, and the face that looked so hopefully and tenderly upon me was the face of Joe.”