What were those feathers like when stroked against the skin—could you feel freedom in their touch? Did they carry the sensation of rising winds as easily as the winds carried their owner? Her hand stretched out, fingers open and trembling at the question and the desire that now tingled at their tips.
Straw crackled beneath her foot and the hawk’s head spun, its eyes widening and glinting, seeing her so close. With a shriek it leaped off the sill, plummeting. Jordan’s heart dropped into her stomach and she lurched forward the last few feet, hands wrapping around the bars as she pressed her face between them and watched the bird throw its wings open—the movement audible—and slowly, lazily loop over the crowd below before beating its wings and climbing, rising above the shop rooftops and up above the wall that hemmed in Holgate and kept it from the bridge, the lake, and the outside world.
From freedom.
The hawk soared over the wall and shrieked again as it headed out over the water and teased the treetops with its wing tips.
She sighed.
To have that freedom … She’d never had that. Society did not allow for a young lady to just … go anywhere or do anything on her own. Even her time with Rowen had been chaperoned.
Mostly.
She smiled and remembered.
Rowen had stolen her away one morning. It all seemed so innocent.
One moment they were seated in the parlor sipping tea and munching on delicately crafted watercress sandwiches and then Rowen (who delighted in balancing his cup and saucer on his knee) had broken them both, sending their chaperone scurrying for a mop. He stood then, grinned in that devilish way that was only Rowen’s, set her cup and saucer aside, and, grabbing her by the wrist, tugged her out the back door and into the glassed-in rooms where the thick-scented exotic plants thrived.
“Quickly now,” he urged, his smile so deep it dimpled. He took the lead, his hand slipping down her wrist to grasp her hand. “And quietly,” he added, giving her fingers a gentle squeeze.
What could she do but follow, her heart racing and the most insane smile stretching her lips?
Out the back of the glass and steel building they’d gone, Rowen tugging her along and only glancing back twice to make sure he wasn’t going too fast for a companion in heels and a tightly cinched corset.
But each time he looked back he’d snared her with those changeable eyes of his and she’d quickened her pace. Because wherever he was leading she wanted to go. In Jordan’s book, Rowen was synonymous with adventure.
They’d raced through the gardens dotting the Astraea estate’s back lawn and into the hedge-maze, Rowen guiding her through with such accuracy it seemed he’d often made the trip blindfolded. Or in the dead of night, like Jordan had several times when she had needed to clear her head.
Out the back of the hedge-maze they went, only pausing at the very edge of her family’s property—the edge with the walled lip that overlooked the Below so dramatically it made her clutch his arm and close her eyes a moment to quell her sense of vertigo.
The Astraea holdings had been built as high into the granite face of the Hill as anyone could get and was nicknamed “the Aerie” for more than one reason.
Rowen had grinned down at her, his eyes lingering on the way she held his arm so tightly before he slid his fingers under hers, pried them free, and wrapped them into his hand. He gave her hand a little squeeze and said something.
At the time she hadn’t heard what he said and for weeks after, when she remembered that moment, she tried to convince herself that the loss of his words meant nothing since she could read so much in his face. But now, her hand aching and her head pounding, she wanted nothing more than to know what words his lips had formed at that instance a heartbeat before he led her through a narrow break in the hedges at the wall’s edge and onto a set of stone steps she had never even known existed.
They stood on a winding slate stairway, above what suddenly seemed to be the rest of the world as all of the Below spread out in a rambling and colorful variety of houses and shops of different shapes and sizes. They were so far up it seemed the Below was nothing but a set of odd miniatures designed for a wealthy child’s dollhouse.
There was no banister to hold, no place to stop and rest during the long descent, and she hesitated there, looking back over her shoulder toward the safety and manicured simplicity of life on her family’s estate.
But his hand touched her face, turning her back to look at him. “Don’t look back,” he whispered. “Forward. Onward.” He seemed such the bold adventurer then, standing like a mountain king with the backdrop of an entire wild kingdom behind him.
She could do nothing but follow.
Down the stairs they went, her knees wobbling by the time they reached the bottom.
“Next time you must give me fair warning,” she had scolded, “so that I might wear more sensible shoes.”
“Next time?” he asked, one eyebrow arching rakishly. “You are already imagining a next time?”
She blushed so hard her face stung with heat. “I do own sensible shoes,” she said in answer.
“I’m sure you do,” he replied. “Here.” He tugged on her hand and drew her into the back of an alley.
She tripped after him and fell against him, her hands grabbing at him so that she kept her balance.
His arm wrapped around her instinctually, holding her close until she regained her balance.
But she never truly had regained it after being held so tightly against him.
There in the shade of the buildings stacked around them as awkwardly as toy blocks, Jordan first heard Rowen’s heart beat and felt the strength of him just beneath the comfort of his slightly soft frame. He became synonymous with adventure and safety all at once.
“My head is spinning,” she had whispered.
“We took the stairs too fast,” he apologized. “I did not want us to be spotted before you’d had a bit of an adventure…”
She drew back from him then and maintained a more respectable distance between them.
He smiled and said, “Come now. There are a few spots I would take you before we must make our ascent.”
“You have done this before?” It was a stupid question. Of course he had, how else would he know about the slate stairs?
But instead of saying anything sharp or hurtful, Rowen winked at her. “Here.” He grabbed her hand and wrapped it around his arm. “It will be safer if they believe we are officially together. There will be fewer questions asked. The Below is not the finest place for a woman unescorted.”
“Oh. Of course,” she agreed. She rested her other hand on the top of his forearm as she had seen her mother do with her father.
“Try to keep your eyes in your head,” he suggested. “Best to appear we are well versed in the neighborhood although we obviously do not belong to it.”
She nodded and made a conscious effort.
It was tremendously difficult not to gawk, though, especially when they stepped out of the alley and onto the main street. It was crowded with colorful shops, and windows were stuffed with displays of wares from different lands and painted with gilt and silver paint using words like
Tiny automatons puttered in circles in one shop window and wriggling puppies filled another. Hanging in the next were a variety of meats—smoked hams squeezed tight in netting, sausages in long skins, whole roasted ducks, chickens, and rabbits, dark, gutted, and strung up for display with a shelf of cheeses below them, waxed or wrapped in paper, with flesh white as the moon, yellow as the sun, and dark as tanned leather.
They paused at a flower shop, a young girl with a basket full of wildflowers standing before it to shout to passersby. Rowen pulled out a coin and gave it to the child, who did a dainty curtsy and passed a bundle of flowers to Jordan with a grin that surprised Jordan with the child’s lack of front teeth. The child giggled and began to bellow about her wares again.
Jordan sniffed at her gift and gave Rowen a smile before returning her hand to its place on his arm, now
