“Cordelia?” he said, and there was genuine shock in his voice. “Has something happened? Is James in trouble?”
“No,” Cordelia whispered. “James is well, and—very happy, I think.”
Something in Matthew’s expression changed. His gaze flickered. He stood back, opening the door wider. “Come in.”
She stepped into a small square hall, an entryway of sorts, where one’s eye was drawn compulsively to the massive neoclassical vase standing in one corner. It was of the Greek sort, the kind a maiden would use to pour oil into a bath, though in this case that maiden would have to be twenty feet tall. It was painted all over with faux Greek figures engaged in either combat or passionate embrace, Cordelia could not tell.
“I see you’ve noticed my vase,” Matthew said.
“It would be difficult not to.”
Matthew wasn’t really looking at her, instead tugging nervously at the ends of the towel around his neck. “Let me give you the ha’penny tour, then. This is my vase, whom you’ve met, and that there is a potted palm, and a hatstand. Take off your wet shoes, and we’ll go through to the drawing room. Do you want tea? I can ring for tea. Or make some; I’ve become quite handy with a kettle. Or…”
Divested of her drenched shoes, Cordelia wandered into the drawing room. It was much nicer than the vase. She wanted to collapse immediately onto the soft pile of the Turkish rug but decided that was a little louche even for Matthew’s flat. But there was a warm, low fire crackling in the hearth, its tile surround glimmering like shards of gold, and a sofa with a velvet cover. She sank onto it as Matthew wrapped a blanket about her shoulders and arranged the throw pillows around her as a sort of protective fortress, like a child might.
Cordelia could only nod at the suggestion of tea. She had come here to unburden herself to Matthew, to someone, but now that she had arrived, she found she could not speak. Matthew cast a worried glance at her and vanished through a set of pocket doors, presumably on his way to the kitchen.
Chin up. Tell him the truth, Cordelia thought, gazing around at what she could see of the flat. What was most surprising was how well-kept it was. She might have expected something more like Anna’s place, with its mismatched patterns and clothes thrown about. Matthew, on the other hand, had furniture that looked like it had been ordered new when he took the flat, massive heavy oak pieces that must have been murder to get up to the third floor. In a stylish touch, he had hung his many colorful jackets on a row of hooks in the hallway. A steamer trunk bearing various stamps on its canvas surface was propped near the door. Oscar, wearing a bejeweled collar, was asleep by the fire, just beneath a framed drawing of several young men in a garden of plane trees—the Merry Thieves, Cordelia realized. She wondered who’d done the sketch.
She marveled again at the sheer freedom Matthew seemed to possess. Anna was her only other friend with the same kind of liberty, and she would always think of Anna as from an older set, more mature simply because she would always be years ahead of Cordelia. But Matthew was her own age and lived as he pleased. His family was wealthy, of course, much wealthier than hers or her other close friends here—he was the son of the Consul, after all—and surely that bought a certain level of freedom, but most of it was Matthew himself. Shadowhunters were a people bound to duty, but somehow he seemed unbound—to duty or anything else of earthly weight.
Matthew—who had found a shirt and thrown it on hastily—appeared with a silver tea tray and put it down on the side table. He poured and passed her a cup. “Have you thawed yet?” he asked, dragging a dark green velvet armchair close to the sofa. “If not, the tea should help.”
She sipped at it obediently as he flung himself into the armchair. She could taste nothing, but the liquid was hot and warmed her insides. “It does,” she said. “Matthew, I…”
“Go on,” he said, having poured himself a companionable cup of tea. “Tell me about James.”
Perhaps Matthew was right; perhaps tea was the solution to everything. Either way, something unlocked the words inside her. They came out all in a rush. “I had thought it might all work out, you see,” she said. “I knew when we agreed to marry that James didn’t feel for me what… I felt for him. But there were moments—not all the time, but moments—where I thought it was changing. That he cared for me. And the moments were becoming more frequent. More real. I thought. But it seems those were only moments that I was deluding myself. It was my delusions that were becoming more frequent.” She shook her head. “I knew, I knew how he felt about Grace—”