“Yes.”
“How did you break it then?”
“Read another object. Something potent.”
“Have you tried that here?”
“Yes.”
Her thoughts spun. How long could a man’s mind withstand being consumed by a slow and stinking decay? How much of this could he take?
She had to stay calm, no matter how much his state alarmed her.
“It didn’t work.”
“No.”
“So you need something more potent.”
“The inkwell. The paintings. I keep things here . . . in case something like this recurs. Things with powerful histories.”
Things. The word struck her oddly. She looked around the room, her eyes dancing over the art on the walls, a brass letter opener, a battered pewter inkwell.
Objects. Inanimate, lifeless.
“Have you tried something living?”
“I don’t read the living.”
The words were delivered with iron finality, clearly intended to close the door on that line of inquiry. Lily ignored them.
“Wouldn’t living beings be more potent than objects?”
He bristled.
“That is not an option.”
“You’re stuck on a reading of something dead. If your pipe or china teacup won’t shift it, perhaps you need a subject that still has a beating heart.”
“You don’t understand,” he snapped.
“Then explain it to me,” she shot back, her own frustration rising. She met his stare steadily, though the tumult in his dark eyes unsettled her more than she would have liked to admit.
“I can’t control what I see. Whoever I read might as well be stripped naked in front of me. Who should I use like that?”
The harshness of his words hit her like a blow, shaking her growing resolve. She forced herself to hold firm.
“What about an animal?”
“I don’t keep pets.”
“Your horse?”
“Stabled on the heath.”
He was pale as a ghost, bare hands gripping the scarred wood of the arms of the chair like a line to a lifeboat. The wood would not save him. She could see how precariously he was hanging on, willing Sylvia Durst’s death not to swallow him.
There was no time to debate options. Something had to be done now.
The solution was as obvious as it was fitting.
She tugged off her gloves, setting them on the table.
“Then it will have to be me.”
He stood. The movement was sudden enough to startle her. His hands were clenched and shaking at his sides.
“You need to go.”
She rose as well, a quick anger at his stubbornness flaring through her.
“It was my suggestion that brought you to this. It’s only fair I be the one to set it right.”
“I said no.”
“This will drive you mad,” she snapped back, stepping closer to confront him. “Do you expect me to accept that, knowing it was my notion that brought it about? Set your blasted principles aside for a moment and take what I am offering you.”
He stared back at her, his dark eyes hollow.
“I will learn truths about you that you wouldn’t share with your closest friend. And I am a man you barely know. Is that what you want?”
The words gave her pause.
Her past was far from spotless. It would be particularly so in the eyes of someone who had been raised as a nobleman, whose standards for female behavior had been set by dowager aunts and society matrons.
She thought of what he had nearly discovered about her simply from touching her powder compact.
It didn’t matter. The stakes were greater than his opinion of her. She needed to conceal any hint of fear or unease and convince him to do this before the darkness he was trapped in swallowed him whole.
“As you say, you are a man I barely know. Why should I care what you think of me?”
She met his gaze steadily. Through the horror and pain, something else became visible to her—a shattering vulnerability.
This wasn’t just about her. It was about Annalise Boyden, about the secrets he had pulled from countless others who didn’t matter until he learned the truth about those that did. How many times had a brush of the fingers lead to disappointment, to the crumbling of trust or respect? There was a reason he had turned to the gloves, smothering his talent in something he could control, something safe.
How long had it been since he had touched another human being?
The notion made what she was doing even more terrifying. It didn’t matter. She owed this to him, whatever it cost them both. The knowledge made her next words something more than a request. They were a vow.
“Let me help you.”
He closed his eyes and let out a long, shuddering breath. When he opened them again, that bristling defensiveness was gone, leaving the fear even more obvious than before.
He lifted his hands. They were shaking. He stopped, holding them just shy of her skin.
“Are you certain?” His voice was hoarse.
Fear fluttered at her. She refused it admittance and met his gaze evenly.
“Yes.”
His touch was light—first tentative, then delicate. His fingertips grazed over her cheek, dancing along the line of her hair, his palms just brushing against her jaw.
It electrified her senses, sent goosebumps shivering down her arms, her spine. The slightest movement of his hands on her skin was a nexus of feeling magnified far out of any just proportion.
His breath caught. His eyes lost their focus, going distant. He took a deep, even breath. When he exhaled again, she could see the change—how the stiffness fell from his shoulders, the color slowly blooming back into his face.
His hands began to move, subtle changes in pressure and texture. The slide of his thumb across her cheek, fingers drifting into her hair. It was a slow, elegant dance playing out across her skin. She felt it on a level that went beyond nerve and tissue into a deeper sense she possessed, the same one that opened unwelcome doors into knowledge she had tried for years to wish away. It responded to Strangford’s touch, waking up inside of her and humming in sudden, alert response as though sensing the presence of a kindred energy.
Time hung suspended like the space between breaths. Seconds, minutes, an hour—she couldn’t know how long it lasted.
His expression changed, flashing through emotions like a shuffle of cards. A line of grief formed, then quickly faded, from between his brow. Confusion tugged at the corners of his eyes and then a laugh spilled out of him, a sound of pure delight.
It was her memories that were doing that, evoking those quick, intense reactions. They were a reflection of his shared experience of her own history, playing out across his face.
It should have been uncanny, but in that moment, with his electric touch dancing across her skin, nothing in the world felt more natural.
Then came another change, accompanied by a sharp intake of breath, a subtle tremor in his fingers on her skin. His lips parted, more color rising into his face.
She was suddenly, overwhelmingly aware of him.
The closeness of his body. The shape of it, lines of bone and muscle and skin. His scent. His heat. How perfectly he fit her, eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder. The sensation crashed over her with the power of a tidal wave, a desire unlike anything she’d experienced in her life.
Less than half a step and she would be pressed against him, molded to his form. Her hands tangling in that dark hair, tasting him.
He shifted, raising his head. His gazed sharpened, gaining focus.
He was looking at her—here, in the present—and Lily was entirely certain that he knew exactly what she had just been feeling.
The moment suspended, balanced on a pin.
Then he pulled his hands away and stepped back.
He turned to the window, his back to her. She saw his grip tighten on the sash, knuckles white.
Her body burned, surpris
ed by unexpected need.
She snapped to awareness. This was madness. A step from disaster.
He was a baron. She was a bastard. She could never be anything to him but his lover. Another mistress, like her mother, left waiting like some doll on a shelf. A thing to be taken down and played with at his leisure until he had to return to other obligations—like a legitimate family.
No. Never. She would not be the source of another woman’s betrayal, would not allow herself to love a man who could never be completely hers.
She would never leave herself open to the pain of the inevitable day he was forced to choose between two lives.
She brushed at some invisible dust on her skirt.
“Did it work?”
She was glad her voice came out with more steadiness than she could rightfully have expected.
“Yes. It worked.”
He moved to the desk. His coat hung from the back of the chair. He reached into the pocket and pulled out his gloves, slipping them back on.
He had not looked at her.
Her heart lurched. She thought of everything he might have seen. Working on her knees like a charwoman, a scrub brush in her chapped hands. Her face painted like a whore’s, body wrapped in a chorus girl’s sequins, serving cocktails to men who helped themselves to parts of her she had no desire to offer.
Perhaps he had experienced the lives she had failed to save, over and over again.
She would not ask. What she told him before was true. She barely knew him. He was nothing more than a convenient partner in this endeavor she was entangled in.
That, and the only human being in the world who might understand what it was like to be inside her skin.
She picked up her own gloves.
“I should leave you to recover. I’m sure you need rest.”
He turned back from the window, facing her.
“Why did you come?”
Did he want to know what brought her to Bayswater? Or what had driven her to kick through his garden gate and invade his study?
She chose the simpler question to answer.
“I had a visit from my father this morning.”
“From Lord Torrington.”
“Yes,” she replied shortly. “He informed me that Lord Deveral will receive us whenever we wish to call upon him again.”
Strangford picked up his coat.
“We’ll go now.”
“But you must be exhausted.” She couldn’t keep the shock from her voice.
“You told me this killer will strike again. That means we are trying to stop a murder. Do we have time for rest?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.
“I would rather not give the viscount time to decide to defy your father.”
“You at least need a bath.” The point brought an unwelcome blush to her cheeks, but it had to be made.
He paused, looking down at himself.
“I suppose I do.”
He rang the bell.
“I’ll collect you . . .” He glanced at the clock, frowned. “It will have to be around seven thirty.”
“That’s a rather unfashionable hour for paying a call.”
“We’re not calling. We’re interrogating. And I doubt he has any other engagements.”
“Isn’t his residence in Bayswater, not Bloomsbury? Why don’t I just meet you here?”
“Because despite appearances, I am still a gentleman. And gentlemen do not ask ladies to travel unaccompanied for their own convenience.”
The awkward footman entered. His eyes widened at the sight of his master’s disarray, his jaw dropping in concert when he noticed Lily standing in the room.
“Roderick, fetch us a carriage, please. I need to see Miss Albright back to Bloomsbury.”
“You will not,” Lily retorted. “I will see myself.”
“I just told you—”
“That gentlemen do not ask ladies to travel unaccompanied, I know. But you’ve better things to do than ride around London for no good reason.” Like sleeping, she thought, looking at the dark circles under his eyes. “If you must insist on it, then send your footman with me.”
She saw him waver and turned to the wide-eyed young man beside her.
“Roderick, would you be so kind as to escort me back to Bloomsbury?”
“Of course, m’lady. I mean miss,” he corrected himself quickly, cheeks flushing. “Of course.”
Strangford rubbed at his eyes. His exhaustion was clear in every line of his body.
“Fine,” he agreed. “Go on, then, Roddie.”
The footman bowed, then hurried away.
Strangford gestured for her to proceed him into the hall, then accompanied her to the front door.
There was an awkward pause as they waited.
He was still utterly disheveled, standing in his shirtsleeves, his hair awry, covered in filth, but he looked alive again. Dreadfully wrung-out, but alive.
“So,” he said at last. “Where might I need that latch?”
She felt a laugh tickle up her throat. It was harder to contain than it ought to have been.
“Perhaps you should check your garden gate,” she replied evenly.
She caught the flash of lightness in his eyes, the twitch at the corner of his mouth.
“What state, precisely, might I find it in?”
“It was hardly in fine fettle to begin with,” Lily countered neatly.
A carriage rolled to a stop at the curb. Roderick jumped down from the back.
“Miss Albright?” he called.
She turned to the man beside her and tried not to wonder whether the events of that afternoon had too deeply changed his opinion of her.
“Good afternoon, my lord.”
Strangford bowed, an incongruously formal gesture given his current state, but one he pulled off with aplomb.
“Miss Albright.” He rose, meeting her eyes. His expression deepened, becoming serious. His gaze lingered on her face.
That hitch in her chest announced itself again. Lily nodded, then turned and made her way as gracefully as possible to the carriage.
She climbed in, sinking back against the seat and closing her eyes.
Seven thirty.
She wondered if she had time for that bath.
FOURTEEN
LILY'S HANDS FUMBLED WITH the delicate fasteners of her dress. The small hooks along the silvery fabric of the bodice always gave her trouble, clearly designed for someone with nimbler fingers. She closed the last of them, then pulled on the matching jacket. It was lighter than her winter overcoat but suited the dress far better.
Given what she knew she was walking into, it felt important to look polished tonight. The armor of a respectable ensemble comforted her more than an extra layer against the chill in the air.
The knock on the door came at precisely 7:30, as Lily had known it would.
It took Mrs. Bramble a moment to reach it, enough time for Lily to descend to the landing outside Estelle’s flat. Strangford’s rich tenor rose up to her, speaking to her forbidding landlady with perfect courtesy.
“Good evening, madam. I am calling for Miss Albright.”
“I’m here,” Lily called.
His dress was neat and sober, absent any sign of the disarray in which she had found him earlier that afternoon. His dark hair was covered by a top hat, a black necktie neatly knotted at his throat. At the sound of her voice, his gaze rose to where she stood and locked there.
He seemed to catch himself, offering her a bow.
“Miss Albright. You look very fine this evening.”
A blush rose in response, as did an abrupt recollection of the feelings he had provoked in her when they stood together in his study earlier that afternoon. She forced both of them back, acknowledging the compliment with a curt nod.
He motioned her out. She moved past him down the steps, the cold air biting through the fabric of her jacket. He caught up to her at the bottom in time to open the door to the hackney. As
she moved to climb inside, his gloved hand touched her arm.
She looked to him, surprised. There was something both awkward and solemn in his expression.
“You don’t have to do this.”
The realization struck like a blow.
He knew.
He knew how much reason she had to dread this errand. How she felt about Deveral, about her father. How deeply it had hurt when he deserted her to schools and solicitors, managing her as he would any other bothersome obligation. Things no other living soul knew—things she would not have admitted even to herself. All of it had been laid open to him, read like a book, along with more she couldn’t even guess at.
“I could go alone. I would report all of it back to you.”
“It was me Torrington told him to admit. Not you.”
“Deveral must understand it amounts to the same thing.”
“No,” she countered evenly. “I am not at all sure he would choose to understand that.”
She did not wait for him to respond. She climbed into the carriage and sat down on the narrow bench. He followed, shutting the door behind him and closing them in together.
The sun had set, the darkness making the narrow confines of the carriage seem more close. Strangford smelled like soap and shaving oil mingling with something more raw and masculine.
Lily put down the window. The cool night air flooded in.
“Did you sleep?” she asked.
“I’m rested enough.”
She caught a glimpse of his face in the light of a passing street lamp. He looked far better than he had that afternoon, but there was still a deeper darkness than usual around his eyes. She chose not to challenge him, though she felt quite certain that his afternoon had been something other than restful.
“When we get there—assuming he actually lets us inside—what do we ask him?”
“He’ll let us in.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Your father is not a man lightly crossed.”
Lily had no response to that. She turned her gaze back to the window, letting the silence stretch. It was Strangford who broke it.
“I’m no more experienced with this sort of thing than you are, but I suppose we ask him to recount the events of the night of Mrs. Boyden’s death. Anything and everything he can recall. We won’t know what might be significant until we hear it.”
The Fire in the Glass Page 20