by Bec McMaster
By the time she'd found her seat again, Bishop had regained his composure and clearly didn't want to speak anymore on the topic. Verity took pity on him. "Goodness," she muttered, tapping her nails on the carriage door. "Could we be going any slower?"
Bishop arched a brow, his arms crossed. "Impatient little chit, aren't you?"
"Well, technically you're the one slowing me down. I could be halfway there already."
Bishop's arms sprawled along the back of the seat. "Am I?" he drawled. "I assume you can simply hop across the city, and catch our erstwhile necromancer before I have time to scratch my nose?"
"I could, but it can be dangerous. I don't like making blind leaps. So I'd have to move from place to place."
"Blind leaps?"
She dragged her sleeve off her shoulder, revealing the scar there. Bishop's brown eyes locked on it. "This happened when I was younger. Took a blind jump into a White Rabbits warehouse and skewered myself on a hook. It's best if I can see the area first to prepare myself for a landing. I prefer at least knowing the layout." Memory resurfaced. "Trapped myself in a wall once too." And hadn't that been humiliating?
"Younger?" he asked. "It looks like it's barely faded."
"Oh, all right, I was sixteen, so only a couple of years ago."
That tightened the line of his mouth.
"My age bothers you, doesn't it?" she asked innocently.
"I don't see why it should," Bishop replied, but he looked away.
Verity examined him, then bit her lip with a smile. A second later she was perched on his knee, and Bishop's arms wrapped around her in surprise as she re-formed.
"Jesus." He stiffened.
"I'm a grown woman, Adrian," she whispered, stroking a finger down his collar. The hard flex of his chest filled out his coat quite nicely. "One doesn't maintain their innocence very long in Seven Dials, and besides that, I'll be all of twenty in a month. And look...." She cupped her breasts, the fabric and her hands molding to the soft flesh. "I think this means that I'm definitely a woman."
"Verity!" He caught her wrists, drawing them away from her breasts, his nostrils flaring. "Verity, we're in public."
"A closed carriage is hardly public," she whispered in his ear, earning another flinch from him. Her fingers went to the buttons on his coat. "In fact it's very, very private indeed. I wonder just what we could do to pass the time?"
"I think we could talk. About what happened last night."
Verity stilled, shooting him a look. "That was a low blow. I was embarrassed. That's why I fled."
"I think it's more than that."
"And I think that you are wearing entirely too many clothes." She shook off his attempts to make this deeper than it was. A good night's sleep had assuaged the doubt she'd felt last night. She liked him, and she liked his company. She didn't have to fall for him though. She was far too clever for that. Biting her lip, Verity slid his coat off his shoulders. "That's better."
Bishop captured her wrists. Interest flared in his eyes, but he shook his head. "No."
Verity groaned in frustration. "I'm not an innocent, Bishop! And I'm not a little girl! If you wanted to do some naughty, wicked things to me, I truly wouldn't mind. And I know you're not averse either." She could feel the press of his blatant enthusiasm all too well beneath her bottom.
"It's not your age that bothers me," he replied, still trying to hold her still, though he'd given up on her wrists by now.
"Oh?" Verity cupped his jaw with her hand, her thumb stroking the rasp of his stubble. Touching him like this meant that he couldn't look away from her. "We've already ascertained that you like kissing me. So if it's not my age, and it's not me, then what is it?"
The carriage rolled to a halt. "Which way, sir?" bellowed the coach driver.
"Left!" Verity called, then lowered her voice. "We're nearly there. Tick, tock, Bishop...."
"It's not you," he blurted, straightening his coat, and setting her aside. "I can't be with a woman."
A suspicion began to gnaw at her. Verity straightened, her eyes widening in pure shock as memories intruded upon her: the hesitant way he'd kissed her that first time, the somewhat fumbling attempts to caress her. She'd thought his hesitation was due to her. But.... "Bishop, are you trying to tell me that you've never been with a woman?"
All of her suspicions were confirmed by the look in his eyes. Verity gaped. "You're a virgin?" she blurted. "But how?"
"I'm going to sit up top," he replied, his cheeks red.
Then Bishop slipped out of the door and vanished, leaving her sitting on the spring seat with her skirts awry and her mouth gaping open.
Of all the reasons for him to push her away, she had never, ever expected this one.
* * *
"Why are you a virgin?"
"Can we concentrate on the matter at hand?" Bishop growled, eyeing the white brick building ahead of them and ignoring her. "If Horroway's inside that house, then this might be dangerous."
Verity shot him a long, slow look. "I will temporarily refrain from this line of conversation, but don't think it's over."
It was definitely over. He didn't want to think about his reasons, or how explaining them to Verity would make him feel. He liked the way she looked at him, her flirtatious attempts to seduce him. He didn't want to see her smile fade off her face when she learned the truth of what type of man he was.
You're no killer, are you?
God. If only she knew.
He swallowed hard and pushed aside those thoughts. Horroway was close, Verity was certain of it. And that meant the Chalice might be at hand.
Bishop focused on the house.
"Something's not right," he murmured, his hard body held defensively in front of her. "This place looks like a well-to-do nabob owns it. Not a shabby necromancer without a shilling to his name. Last time I saw him he could barely even afford a bloody coat."
"Maybe someone's paying him?" Verity murmured.
Tremayne. "That bodes ill," Bishop muttered, striding along the pavement beside the garden walls. "I'd prefer a single target, not an entire conspiracy of allies."
Though it would mean this could be all done and dusted within the hour.
It also meant more potential danger that he was pushing Verity into. Bishop scowled.
The gardens surrounding the home were lush and sprawling, ringed by a black wrought-iron fence. A flock of crows fluffed themselves on the front lawn, eyeing the pair of them with beady black eyes, and he had the uncomfortable feeling someone else was watching them. Verity tucked her hand through the crook of his arm as he slowly led her past. They might look like any other couple out for a stroll, if not for the fact that nobody would mistake him for simply a well-to-do gentleman.
"It's well warded," he noted quietly, seeing the shimmering traces of ward work stretched over the gardens. "Exceptionally well warded."
"Which means someone's trying to stop others from getting inside. I wonder...." Verity peered at the top floor, where a shadow flitted past a window. "I could translocate inside, get a closer look—"
"Not on your life," Bishop replied, and trapped her against the fence. He towered over her, a knot of hard worry choking him. "You're too rash and careless with yourself."
"I was stealing when I was thirteen, Bishop, from dangerous people who wouldn't have thought twice about cutting my throat. If you think I cannot handle myself—"
That wasn't it, at all. "I know you can handle yourself, but Elijah Horroway is a powerful and dangerous necromancer, and we don't know if he's allied himself with anyone else. You're not invincible, Verity. And Horroway could do things to you—horrible, horrible things—that you might never escape from."
"You almost sound as if you care," she whispered, glancing up, and Bishop wavered.
* * *
"Of course I care, Verity," he told her, his expression turning to stone again. "I'm not completely heartless. Just don't mistake compassion for something else. This... us... nothing will come of
it. Nothing can come of it." He said the words firmly, as if trying to convince her. Or perhaps it was himself who wavered.
We'll see. This man, with his heart of stone, was so fascinating to her. A temptation indeed, and sometimes she didn't know if it were just the passion that flared between them she wanted to explore, or... something more. Something like what she'd felt last night, when he held her in his arms.
That thought startled her.
Life in Seven Dials wasn't the sort of rosy existence where one dreamed of love. The type of relationships she'd seen existed of power exchanges between pimps and their whores, or even Murphy and his mistress, Betsy, who didn't seem to have shed any tears following his death. She couldn't think of one marriage that had been happy.
So what did this yearning inside her mean? Why did she want him to kiss her so much? It was just a kiss. Just a romp in the sheets. Wasn't it?
"Verity?" His palm settled on her waist, his thumb rasping against the material there. For a moment he looked down, as if distracted by the sensation of her dress beneath his hand. "Penny for your thoughts?"
She wasn't that brave. Verity wet her lips and glanced to the side. They were momentarily shielded from the house. "How would you care to play it then, my lord?"
A small silence.
"A little surveillance, before we think of breaking and entering. Take my arm. Consider us just out for a stroll in the gloomy afternoon."
She slipped her hand through the crook of his elbow and he rested his gloved hand upon it, his beaver hat pulled low over his face. Suddenly, he wasn't some prowling assassin, but a jaunty young fellow out for a walk with his woman. Everything about his posture and stance shifted.
"You do that very well," she whispered.
"Years of practice." He shot her a glance beneath the brim of his hat. "This way. Pretend I'm saying terribly witty things, and laugh a little. The best way to go about subterfuge is to pretend you're not really hiding at all, I've found."
She patted his arm and laughed, leaning against him. "How's this?"
"Excellent. Anyone would think you’re used to covert operations."
"I did pluck the hair right from your head," she pointed out. "You didn't even notice me."
Bishop's gaze dipped briefly to her mouth. "I cannot quite figure out how. You're not the type of woman one doesn't notice."
Her heart gave a little flutter.
"Here," he murmured, pulling her into the small park across the street from the back garden of the mansion they were watching and putting his back to the house. He positioned her against a tree, watching over his shoulder. "Still feel that pull?"
"It's stronger now," she admitted, feeling the tense knot in her core jerk her toward the house. A glimpse of red caught her eyes through the French doors at the back of the house. "I think Horroway's about to come out into the garden."
Bishop reached past her to press his palm against the trunk, capturing her hand lightly in his other hand as if he were courting. "Tell me what you see."
"He's... he's...." Her brows drew together. "A woman. How does that work?"
A woman in a wheeled chair pushed herself out onto the back terrace, wearing a fetching gown of pure scarlet. Her hair was dark—or had been—but now streaks of gray marred it.
"Oh, hell," she whispered, looking down at the ring. "I haven't brought us to Horroway at all. I've bought us to the woman to whom he tried to give the ring." Verity frowned, trying to taste the ring again. "There is no other corresponding imprint."
"I'm an idiot. Of course not." Bishop cursed under his breath. "You're trying to find a man, but rumor says that Elijah Horroway is neither dead, nor alive, but caught in some state in-between. Would that affect your attempts at finding him?"
"Significantly," she said, pocketing the ring.
"Damn it." He shot a glance over his shoulder toward the house. "All of that for nothing."
"Well," she said with a sigh. "Perhaps we can go back to your map table? Track him by magic."
Bishop wasn't paying her the slightest bit of attention. His gaze locked on the woman in the garden and stillness slid through him, the muscle of his arm tensing beneath her touch.
"Bishop?" she asked. "What's wrong?"
"Verity, do you know that woman?"
Verity examined the woman again, darting her glance between them. "Well... no. I don't think I've ever seen her before, why?"
Every inch of him was still. He had that "hunting" expression on his face, and tension etched his muscles. "Because that's Morgana de Wynter, my father's ex-wife. I'm certain of it."
Verity's voice dropped. "I thought she was dead."
"So did I," he breathed, fading back into the bushes in the park, drawing her with him. "Don't move. Don't make a sound. And don't use your sorcery, or she'll sense it."
Pressed against him from breast to thigh, Verity caught hold of his coat, the screen of overgrown shrubbery enveloping them. His wariness was contagious. Her lungs tightened. "What are you going to do?" She caught his sleeve as he shifted minutely. She'd never seen that sort of intensity in his dark eyes. They looked almost black in the shadows. "Bishop. You can't kill her. Not here."
He finally looked at her, and she saw how much he wanted to. "Everything that has been done to my father can be laid at that woman's feet. Everything."
"Who knows what is in that house," she pointed out. "And if she survived what you threw at her last month, then what tricks does she have up her sleeve?"
"You're right." He swore. "I'm not usually this careless."
"You're angry, and you're not thinking." Verity took a wary step backward. There was something about him in this moment that seemed quite dangerous. "Perhaps we should tell your father. I assume he would want to know?"
Bishop nodded. He looked back at the house just as a young man strolled out onto the back porch, his hands in his pockets and his hair neatly pomaded.
Verity's jaw dropped again. Oh, no.
"What?" Bishop breathed in her ear.
"That's Noah Guthrie."
Bishop froze. "Verity, I'm fairly certain that's not Noah anymore. I think we've just found the demon."
"What are we going to do?" she mouthed.
"We're not. You're going. I can move silently without you by my side, and I need to find out more."
"I'm not leaving you here alone," she pointed out.
"Someone needs to let Drake know." He took her chin firmly between his palms. "Verity, matters just took a turn for the worse. That woman wants to destroy my father, and the demon is her means of doing so. We need to know who else is in that house, and Drake and Ianthe need to be alerted." He shook her a little. "Promise me you'll go to Drake. Get as far away from here as possible."
"And you?" she asked in a small voice.
"It would take more than Morgana has to kill me," he said, turning his gaze toward the house. "Go on now, Ver. I'll catch up with you at my father's house."
Chapter 18
"Sorcery is but the manipulation of pure energy. There are two means of doing so: by training yourself to Harness your will, and force energy to comply, or by giving vent to heated emotion, that which we call Expression. The danger of Expression, however, is that if emotion drives your sorcery, then how can you prevent yourself from manipulating the world around you in the heat of the moment?"
* * *
–'Harnessing Your Will', by Sir Ian Blythe
* * *
VERITY TRANSLOCATED BACK to Bishop's house, where she picked up a book she'd seen in the library with a scrawled note from Drake in it to Bishop, and then punched across the city, using it to track Drake down.
Finally, she fetched up outside a manor on the outskirts of Kensington. The door opened the second she went to knock, and Verity started, staring at a young woman in a pale pink gown with a wealth of golden ringlets curling down her back.
The young woman blinked. She had the thickest, darkest lashes Verity had ever seen, and her eyes were so dark a brow
n that she almost looked as though she bore some faint resemblance to Bishop. "Oh," she said, clearly taking Verity's appraisal just as much as Verity took in the stranger's. "I knew something was coming—something momentous. I didn't realize it would be you."
Verity stood there rather stupidly, holding Drake's book. "Is, ah, the duke at home?"
The woman smiled, and her entire face softened. "Come in, come in," she said, gesturing her inside. "I've been expecting you."
Which was a rather strange thing to say. Verity glanced at her sidelong as the stranger closed the door behind her. "You were?"
"My thief," the stranger said proudly. "I'm so relieved to see you. This has been a horrendous week, but at least your appearance gives me hope." She saw Verity's expression and her cheeks flushed. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm babbling. My name is Cleo. I used to be the Cassandra."
"I see."
She didn't, at all.
"I Saw the future," Cleo added, accurately reading her. "I saw you," she corrected, "plucking the eyes from a blind crow in order to save a man dressed all in black who was being crucified."
A cane clicked on the marble floor and the duke appeared, wings of silver highlighting his dark hair. He looked nothing like his son, Bishop, except for the sensation of absolute power and competence that he exuded. His gaze dipped to the book in her hands, then back again. "Adrian?" Those knuckles tightened on the handle of his silver-topped cane.
"He's well." She knew Bishop was worried about his father, but the opposite appeared to be true as well. "He saw something he thought you needed to know, and he's investigating further. So he sent me to tell you about it."
Drake's gaze swept over the pair of them, then he gestured her inside, just as Lord Rathbourne appeared in the shadows, like a concerned wraith. "I'll send for some tea," Drake said. "Come. And tell me everything."
* * *
"You knew Morgana and Sebastian were still alive and you didn't tell me?” Bishop demanded ten minutes after he'd arrived at his father's house. "Why? Why would you do that?"