A Study in Silks

Still working by moonlight, she set the candlestick on the desk, then slid the box out of the bag and placed it carefully on the polished wood surface. The box was really a train case—one her Grandmamma Holmes had given her—covered in black leather and fitted with twin brass hasps.

The stern old lady would have an apoplexy if she knew what her gift concealed. Evelina studied the train case for a moment, her mind flicking from Imogen to her fright in the corridor. Tobias. It must have been him.

Sliding into her desk chair, she drew the candle closer, smelling the smoke from its extinguished wick. With gentle fingers, she touched the warm wax, noting the shape and texture of it, feeling the potential energy inside. She let her mind drift a moment, envisioning the bright veils of flame she desired. Come.

Light sprang back to the wick, flaring up a second before settling back to a normal flame. Evelina pushed the candle back, satisfied. Though the bloodlines that granted such magic were thin these days, she could call the essence of things: fire, water, perhaps the deva living in a stream or a tree.

And it was a power that could damn her. Science was the currency of the educated, monied, polite classes. With the rise of industry, magic—impossible to measure, regulate, or rule—was banned by Church and State, and especially by the steam barons who controlled so much with their vast wealth. Fortune-tellers and mediums were usually tolerated as amusing if immoral tricksters. Anyone claiming to use real power was subject to jail and probably execution or—if there was some suspicion they actually had the Blood—a trip to Her Majesty’s laboratories for testing.

The specter of the latter terrified her into nightmares at least as bad as her friend’s. When she’d read about the arrest of Nellie Reynolds, she had wept with fear. And yet, Reynolds was far from the first magic user put on trial even in the last twelve months. It was hard not to grow numb and, from there, resigned that someday it would be her standing in the dock.

Yet, dangerous or not, the power pushed at her as urgently as thirst or desire. It wasn’t something a person could just shut down. Plus, it was the strongest link to her childhood. Denying it would be like denying half her flesh.

She put her fingers on the hasps of the box, breathing hard. There was too much going on. She needed to calm herself. Everything’s going to be fine.

“Evelina.” Breath stirred the fine hairs at the nape of her neck.

Shock vaulted her out of her chair. The candlestick wobbled as she braced herself to wheel around, sending shadows lurching over the walls and ceiling. Before she had fully focused on the intruder’s face, Evelina was holding a paper knife inches from the speaker’s eyes.

He held her gaze, as if daring her to look. Evelina obliged, cataloguing what she saw: straight dark hair falling to his collar, dark eyes fanned in lashes any woman would have envied, and skin the color of milky coffee. Candlelight sculpted a face like a young falcon, lean and hook-nosed. A faint bruise fanned his cheekbone, as if he had caught a fist there, and a thin white scar tracked like a tear under one eye. His clothes, a curious mix of homespun and silks, were threadbare and wet with rain. Wisely, he held his hands away from his sides, showing them open and empty of weapons.

The knife hadn’t wavered from where she held it poised to strike. Evelina’s hand was perfectly steady, but her pulse thundered like the sea in a typhoon. Her mouth drifted open in astonishment.

Doubting, hoping, she flicked her attention back to those liquid brown eyes. Yes, she knew the face, or a version of it. Same gold hoops in his ears. Same quirk at the corners of his mouth. But the strong, muscled body smelling of saddle leather and adult male was entirely new.

“Nick?” she said in a choked whisper. “What are you doing here?”

“Is that how your fine governess taught you to welcome guests?” He smiled, teeth showing white in his swarthy face.

She lowered the impromptu weapon, stepping back until the edge of the table pressed into her skirts. So it had been Nick in the corridor, frightening her half to death. He had the Blood, too, but a different bloodline than the Coopers. Somehow it had given him an annoying ability to sneak up on other people with the silence of a falling shadow. Gran had said she’d never seen anything like it—but then Nick was one of a kind.

But knowing who it had been scarcely improved matters. She kept her fingers curled around the wooden handle of the knife, if only for the feeling of something solid to cling to. Her breath was coming in short, sharp pants, but she forced her voice to be crisp. Five years. She hadn’t seen him in five whole years. It felt like lifetime.

The moment stretched uncomfortably until she saw the flicker of doubt in his eyes. In that instant, her heart cracked. She dropped the knife onto the table and stepped into him, flinging her arms around his neck as she had when she was no more than a child. He closed the embrace carefully, his touch far more cautious than his bold words. A hot ache filled her throat, yearning and sorrow mixed with dread.

And anger—because there was nothing safe or good in this reunion. All the anxiety she had felt during her earlier adventure flooded back. She would be disgraced if the household found a strange man in her bedchamber—and just as bad, her past with the circus would be revealed. There would be no chance to explain, not with her history, and Nick would be arrested whether or not he was actually committing a crime. She couldn’t count on luck saving her this time. Surely she’d used up her store for the night.

Even more dangerous, she felt a familiar ripple of energy pass between them as Blood met Blood. A hot, heavy pressure stirred inside her, calling her own magic to the surface. As they had grown older, whatever it was that made Nick unique made her own talents almost impossible to hide when he was near. Now, after so many years, the pull was stronger than ever before. In the flickering candlelight, she could almost see a silvery glimmer where they touched. Power—raw and uncontrolled. Whenever they had called it, it had slipped its leash. That was the last thing they needed now.

Evelina shivered, and as Nick ran his hands down her arms in a time-honored gesture of comfort, magic tingled along her skin. Her throat constricted with unspoken pain. The very spark that made them who they were made it incredibly dangerous to be together.

Swallowing back a rush of sadness, she took a deep, steadying breath. It had taken so long to get over the loss of him that he couldn’t—he just couldn’t be there. The sight of him brought back too much pain. She pushed him away, wanting to stop the reunion before old wounds began to bleed. “You’re damp with rain.”

He pressed a hand over his heart. “That is enough to send me away? A little rain shouldn’t frighten you. We’ve slept together under the open stars.”

She crossed her arms, keeping her embraces to herself. “I was eleven, and it was disgustingly cold. And Old Ploughman was snoring a dozen feet away.”

“Your memory lacks romance.”

“I like accuracy.” She shot the words back before the sheer physical presence of this new, fully adult Nick could cloud her mind. Her gaze roved over him, taking in the lean hips and strong shoulders, the long, lithe legs of the horseman. There was nothing of the boy left in the hard muscles she’d felt under his shirt, or in the graceful power of his every gesture. Her skin felt hot and tight, as if she’d suddenly contracted a fever.

“You pierce my heart, fair lady.”

“Rot. Don’t waste your patter on me; you’re impervious to a mere comment. I’m willing to wager you have more knives on your person than Lady Bancroft has place settings.”

He shrugged—the gesture so familiar it brought a throb to her chest. Memories crashed in, stifling in their urgency. When they had parted, Nick had been seventeen years old; she had been not quite fourteen. If she had stayed with the travelers, they would eventually have wed as surely as summer followed spring.

But that hadn’t happened. She looked at him now, wondering what he would have been like as a husband. Wondering what secrets this older Nick had hidden behind his cautious smile and those silken rags. The thought of it left her empty and aching.

“What are you doing in my bedchamber?” she demanded.

“Do you think I am here to ravish you, after all this time?”

She allowed herself a smile. His showman’s persona never quite came off with the costume. “I doubt you’ve kept the image of my pigtails and pinafore etched on your soul.”