by Shana Abe
The moment she’d glimpsed the red silk in the bowfront window of the mercer’s that rainy evening in Edinburgh, she’d thought, This one.
And the hair powder, from the Parisian salon: Yes, this.
The music, a Viennese piece still new enough to stir a scandal at the school when one of the girls picked it out on the pianoforte: That refrain.
The bottle of scent, a gift from her sisters.
The lace fan.
The city.
The hotel.
His face, because that was unchanging: carved and wary, glorious in the way a feral predator could be glorious, too far beyond human touch to be tamed, severe and beautiful even in its ferocity. His skin was marked with candlelight. His eyes burned animal bright.
He wore ebony when everyone else was done up in pastel flowers. His wig was a simple tye when all the other men sported curls upon curls. He was the only male nearby who wasn’t even attempting to ogle her chest.
That was Zane. That was his expression as she glanced up at him, and it was so familiar to her that for a moment she only sat there, admiring him, forgetting all that he was and all that she had done to get them both to this strange and exquisite place. For that instant he was only Zane, the very dark man of her dreams. And because he was there with her, her heart expanded with bittersweet pleasure.
Stupid.
He was still Zane. She should have known he’d be an ass.
He watched the corners of her mouth lift. Part of him-the part that was still dazed by her magic, by the shape of her eyes and the contrast of the crimson silk against her milky chest and arms, and the swan’s curve of her neck, and the mass of smoky-thick locks that fell to her shoulders, half pinned, half not, like she’d just tumbled out of some very soft bed-part of him only stood there and stared, as dumb and dazzled as all the other fools encircling her.
But the other part of him was still a bastard outlaw in a room full of unknown risks. It was this part that snapped his jaw closed and sent the blood back into his heart. He leaned forward without a word to anyone, took her hand, and yanked her to her feet.
The dandies fell back, agog. A few of the younger men began to protest, but Zane only offered a nod to the woman she’d called Marie and pulled Amalia with him to a small, un-crowded space by a side table laden with plated raspberries and crystal bowls shining with punch.
He glanced around to ensure they were alone, then glared down at her.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
She’d made no protest to his forced march across the ballroom; when she answered him, her voice was calm. “The same as you, I imagine.”
“You’re supposed to be in school!”
She tipped her head and smiled-another shock, because it was definitely a woman’s smile, both sensual and faintly amused. “It was finishing school.” She freed her hand from his and slid it slowly down the cinched curve of her waist. “Well…I’m finished.”
“Good God,” he said at last, for lack of anything better.
“Merci,” she murmured. “C’est très gentil.”
A maidservant approached the table, bobbed a curtsy at them before beginning to ladle the punch into cups. Zane took Lia by the elbow and turned her away again.
“Was it you who sent the invitation?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
“Then who is this Comte du Abony?”
“He is the gentleman hosting this very fine ball. I’m having such a splendid time.” Her smile widened, just a little. “We never have balls at home. I can’t imagine why.”
“Well, you can bloody well ask them yourself when you get back there. Let’s go.”
“No,” she said, still very calm, and put a step between them. “I’m afraid I’m not leaving yet. Not the ball, and not the country. And if you wish to be so imprudent as to force the issue, Zane, you’ll discover I’ve made quite a few friends in my time here. Do release my arm. People are starting to gawk.”
He felt it without looking up, the pockets of whispers beginning to rise around them, the many eyes. He dropped his hand, returning her smile with a razored one of his own, and at least had the satisfaction of seeing her confidence falter, a swift lowering of her lashes before she gazed back at him again.
“I want you to understand something,” he said, his lips barely moving. “I don’t know why you’re here. I don’t care. I’m not going to be responsible for a chit of a girl who takes it in her head to run off whenever the moon is blue, or the stars align, or whatever your reason this time may be. I’ve come for a very specific purpose, and I don’t like surprises. I find your presence here-offensive.”
“I’m not a chit of a girl,” she said, her smug expression vanished. “Not any longer.”
“No, you’re a lady now, clearly,” he sneered, with a deliberate glance at her décolletage.
The pink of her cheeks began to darken. He pressed his advantage.
“So now, if you don’t mind, we’ll be departing. We will return to wherever you are staying and pack your things. In the morning you can start home.”
“Actually,” she took another step away from him, “I do mind. I’m not going home.”
He regarded her for a long, tense moment, just long enough so that her blush deepened another shade and the pulse in her throat began to quicken. By the dim light of the ballroom she was truly beyond lovely, ruby and snow and those amazing dark eyes. Five years had passed since he’d last seen her, five years and a world of experience, it seemed. She looked like her mother and her father and no one else on earth, a being of clouds and stone-cold sorcery, poured into a very tight gown.
Against his will he caught the scent of her: not perfume but something more subtle, the air and the sun and winter roses.
“Fine,” he said brusquely, and moved away. The musicians were playing something new, a jig. Amid the jangle of strings and festive bells, he went back to the punch table-because it was nearby, because it was where his feet took him-and allowed the maidservant to hand him a brimming cup. Beneath her starched cap she was young and homely. When he nodded to her, she smiled shyly back.
He lifted the punch in salute and downed the entire thing. Sweet cloves and brandy, the fumes searing his nose. As he was accepting a second measure, a sweep of crimson skirts came into view.
“I don’t know how you found me at the hotel”-Zane acknowledged the maid once more before turning around-“but I won’t be there much longer. Pray do not trouble yourself to search for me again.”
Lady Amalia was quiet.
“I have no doubt there’s a pack of your kinsmen on your heels, and damned if I’m going to be the one who takes the blame for this.” He glanced at her coolly. “You’re on your own, my lady.”
“You need me.”
“Highly unlikely.”
“No, you do. You’re looking for Draumr. And I know where it is.”
He lowered the cup of punch, staring again.
Her lips pursed. She gazed down at her fan.
“Well?” he said.
“I’m not going to just tell you. You need to take me with you.”
“Dearest child. Get it out of your head. You’re not going anywhere with me.”
“I am not a child!”
“No,” he agreed, losing patience. “You’re really not, are you? You’re something far more ominous than that.” He set the cup upon the table behind him and leaned down to put his mouth to her ear. “I wonder how all these good people would feel if they knew a monster walked in their midst?”
Amalia stiffened. A powdered gray coil of hair trembled against his jaw. “We stand at the brink of the Carpathians,” she replied under her breath. “With woods and wolves and a thousand different legends. You’ll find monsters aplenty in these lands. None of these good people will thank you for naming them. For all their fashion and French wine, they’re a superstitious lot. And I will, of course, deny everything. You’ll be just a mad foreigner.”
She sent him a sidel
ong look, challenging; someone new came near. Zane was already pulling away, but Lia had turned and aimed a swift, glittery smile at the aristocratic couple now lingering before them. “Ah, Lord Miklós, Lady Eliz. Jó estét. Have you met my husband, Zane Langford?”
For the second time that evening, Zane-Black Shadow of Mayfair, dreaded Whip of St. Giles-was too astounded to speak.
“They will not miss me until after Christmas,” she said, twirling the quill in her fingers to draw slow, slow circles upon the paper on the hotel desk; the paper was thick and fine-grained, but her hand was never very good. The ink from the quill made blotches across the page. “They won’t be chasing after me, because they won’t know I’m gone until then.”
“And how did you manage that?” Zane was standing with his back braced against the door to his room, his arms crossed. Lia envisioned him turning the brass knob and simply stepping backward, vanishing instantly into the darkness of Óbuda.
It was late, very late. The east-facing windows of the room showed a faint green rising in the sky. She glanced up at Zane. For half a second she almost hoped he’d do it, just open the door and go. He’d been quizzing her the entire night, and all she truly wanted to do right now was sleep.
But sleep wouldn’t come, anyway. Or if it did, she’d wish it had not.
Her mantle and reticule were still draped along the foot of his bed where he had first tossed them, a jet-beaded glimmer against the patterned duvet. His own cloak had been flung over hers, careless, lamplight slipping along a thin flash of emerald satin from where the lining had flipped over. To anyone else in the room, it might truly appear they were man and wife, returned together from a long evening out.
But he’d only brought her here because she’d offered him no alternative. Lia was painfully aware that-right now-the man she’d called husband wanted nothing to do with her.
“I sent a letter to the headmistress from my parents, noting I would be absent this final quarter due to family concerns. I sent a letter to my parents from the headmistress, full of marvelous praise of my skills and diligence, and of how I had very graciously volunteered my last Christmas there to help tutor the parish girls.”
“My heavens. I had no idea they were teaching forgery at young ladies’ academies these days.”
She twirled the quill a little faster.
“And theft,” he went on. “I presume you did bother to steal the official stamp of the school.”
Lia lifted a shoulder. “It wouldn’t have been very convincing without it.”
“Quite. And the marquess’s seal?”
“I had a copy made Easter last.”
“Cunning.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re most welcome. It’s always a pleasure to acknowledge the talents of a fellow delinquent.”
She propped her cheek upon her fist. The quill was pheasant, she thought, striped and spotted. Perhaps quail. She frowned down at it, because it was easier to contemplate than Zane.
He’d also removed his wig and his elegant black coat. His waistcoat was silver brocade, a pattern of willow leaves and vines just barely visible in the weak early light. He’d raked his fingers absently through his hair until it fell into a sheen of tawny, sun-tipped gold; it was brown and blond and longer than she’d ever seen on any man, nearly half as long as her own.
She wondered that he’d never cut it shorter. She was glad that he never did.
He left the door to prop a foot up on the cushion of the armchair beside hers-shoe and all-and bent his head until his hair spilled forward again, sliding over one shoulder. Without looking at her, he began slowly to plait it.
“Expenses?”
“A saved allowance.”
“Papa is generous indeed.”
She let him think it. Until this month she hadn’t spent more than a guinea on herself in three years. Half of those nose-in-the-air ninnies at Wallence thought she herself was on the parish.
“And of course, Madame Langford, I am most curious as to which aspect of your former curriculum covered bald-faced lies. Everyone back home seems to be under the impression that you are a sad, sad case. Not a hint of any of the old family traits.”
“That part is true,” she said, pausing her circles with the quill.
“Then how is it you know the whereabouts of this fabulous diamond?” he inquired smoothly. “When no one else does?”
The quill made a series of scratchy dots across the page. “Mostly true.”
“Mostly. How awfully intriguing,” he said, in a tone that indicated it wasn’t. He abandoned the plait, nearly done, to prowl across the chamber, pausing at a decanter on the marble-topped secrétaire. From the corner of her eye, Lia watched him pour a glass of dark liquid. It was claret. She could smell the dry spice of it from here.
He held it between his palms, staring moodily at the surface. He did not offer her any.
“I don’t see how it concerns you how I got here,” she said, throwing down the quill. “All that matters is that I’m here to assist. I would think you might appreciate that. I don’t want any of the money for myself, you can have the whole pot. Any other thief in the world would be overjoyed to have a beautiful woman offer to show him the way to a valuable gemstone.”
“Alas. No lessons offered on modesty, I suppose.”
She made a motion with her hand. “I only meant-that is-” A sigh escaped her; she swiveled in the chair to see him. “I’m well aware of my face. It’s part of what happens to our kind. You were quite right.” She swallowed. “We are monsters. But…I could be the monster who helps you. At least in this.”
His eyes lifted to hers. They gazed at each other as the light behind him warmed to pearl. After a moment he set the claret back upon the secrétaire with a snap, untouched, and moved to the four-poster, tugging at his jabot until it fell into folds.
“Where are you staying?” he asked, his eyes averted again.
She only watched him. He shrugged out of the waistcoat, tossing it over a chair. The lawn of his shirt stretched taut over his shoulders as he moved; his braid ended in a silken fan down his back. He perched upon the edge of the bed and kicked off his fine buckled shoes, one at a time.
“Actually…”
“Not a chance, my heart.”
Lia rose from the desk with as much dignity as she could muster. “I am posing as your wife. It would be most bourgeois to share the same room with you.”
She swept to the bed for her things and then to the connecting door, oak-framed, modest amid all the glory of the rest of the chamber. The key was at the very bottom of her reticule.
“Lia,” Zane said softly, a perfect echo of her dreams. She glanced back. He had stretched out atop the covers, propped against the pillows, his fingers laced over the flat of his stomach and his ankles crossed. With his plait and the loosened shirt, he looked like nothing so much as a corsair, tanned and rough and perilously unknown. She was granted half a smile.
“How did you know which hotel I’d be in?”
“King’s View is by far the best in the city. It wasn’t hard to conjecture.”
“And the room?” he asked, softer still.
“I paid the clerk to put you here,” she lied. “Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t figure that out.”
His smile never changed. Lia busied herself with unlocking the door.
“Think twice about refusing my help,” she said, to cover his silence. “No matter what else you think of me, I do know how to get to the diamond. Since I’m not returning to Darkfrith without it, you need to consider the very real possibility that I will reach it before you do. Do you truly think you’ll get any reward from my people without handing them Draumr yourself?”
She closed the door quickly behind her, before he could ask her anything else.
Then she locked it again.
She’d already ensured that he wouldn’t have a key.
“Lia.”
“Yes?”
“Come to me.”
“Yes, Zane.”
His arms around her. His lips upon her cheek.
“Tell me of tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow the Duchess of Monfield will wear a brooch of pink rubies shaped as a rose on her kerchief. She’ll be alone in her garden picking lavender at ten.”
“Very tempting. But perhaps we might leave the duchess be for the moment. I want to know, my heart, about your kin.”
“They’re in the hills. They’re making plans.”
“What plans?”
“Plans to kill you. Plans to steal me. They’ll amass three days hence. It will be raining. No one will glimpse them in the sky.”
His breath drew into a sigh. She shifted in his arms; the diamond on the cord around his neck was a dark endless poem, a song that never ceased. His voice was an echo of it, low and unbearably sweet.
“What to do,” he murmured. “What to do…”
“Use Draumr,” Lia said to him. “They’ll hunt two by two. Set them to fight one another when they come. The papers will report it as footpads. No one need know the truth.”
“Hmmm.” She felt his lips again, a caress, slow and silken along her throat. “Clever girl. You’re full of plans yourself, aren’t you?”
“I am full of you,” she replied truthfully, and was rewarded with the pleasure of his kiss upon her mouth.
She came awake in a square of sunlight, hard and bright against her lids. For a moment Lia only blinked against it, her arms flung out, her fingers clenched in linen and the puffy down of the coverlet. The air smelled of feathers and river; she inhaled again and remembered where she was. And why.
She sat up in the bed, warm and tired and gritty-eyed, not even noticing the man seated by the door until he leaned forward in his chair, a slim metal blade twirling expertly between two fingers.
“Not even a challenge,” Zane announced, dropping the picklock back into the pocket of his vest. “Still, don’t do that again.” He stood, looking down at her with a particularly empty expression. His hair was tied back; the buttons on his cuffs shone pewter in the morning sun. “I don’t appreciate locked doors. And I won’t wait downstairs longer than twenty minutes.”