A Study in Silks

“How little you understand me,” he said with another flash of teeth. “I was not whisked away by a long-lost and eminently respectable grandmamma. Perhaps my memory can afford to be longer.”

“Why are you here?”

“I asked for you at every stop the traveling show made, from Scotland to Dover.”

“No.” She had to deny it. She couldn’t bear the idea of him suffering anything like what she had felt. But then Nick, for all his faults—including the foolhardy bravery that had brought him there tonight—had always been loyal.

“It’s true.” He reached across the distance between them, his fingertips barely brushing her cheek. They were rough, but she didn’t flinch away. Instead, she felt turned to stone, mesmerized by his plain, almost coarse accent. No Mayfair polish here.

“Stop,” she whispered.

“I knew you would grow into a beauty. Skin like the moon and hair like a starless night, as the old song goes.” His voice was husky. “We were close once. Are you so far above me now? I suppose you are.”

As long as no one burst in and found them together. At the very least, that would send her plunging back to the mud as fast as the laws of gravity allowed. She had to make him leave.

Still, Evelina wanted to know everything. Where he’d been. If he still devoured any and every book that fell into his hands. If he had found another girl to follow him around like a worshipful duckling. She had run away to find him once, when her courage failed at the beginning of their life apart. Her Grandmamma Holmes had locked her in the cellar.

The questions jammed up, tangling her tongue. “Are you still with the show?” she managed.

He dropped his hand, a mix of irony and pride flickering over his features. “Where else would I be? I’m the Indomitable Niccolo, supreme knife man and best trick rider in all Italia.”

“You’ve never been farther south than Kent,” she said in caustic tones. And she suspected his parents had been more Romany than Italian, but no one actually knew. He’d been a foundling who knew his first name and nothing else.

“Italia plays better with the crowd. Besides, it’s no more a sham than you playing at gentlewoman. Your father was one of us.”

There it was, the betrayal. She’d left Nick behind.

“But this,” Evelina gestured at the elegant room, “was my mother’s world.” And she was caught between, half gentry and half vagabond, two halves that never knit properly together.

Nick’s gaze roved over the bedchamber, lingering long on the silver candlesticks. Instinctively, she moved to screen his view of the box. “Why are you here?” she repeated. “What are you doing in London? Ploughman’s never wintered here.” It wasn’t one of the big, famous shows. She remembered when all the performers had taken a cut in wages so the show could afford to buy the lions.

“We’ve been here since November.”

That meant they were moving up in the hierarchy of the circus world. That should have been good news, but Evelina’s throat tightened at the thought of her Gran, of Nick, of all the circus folk she’d grown up with being in the same city and never knowing it.

“I’ve been watching the house, wondering what was the best time to come see you, if you might be happy to see me. But then I saw you climbing a tree tonight, and I knew that at least part of you was still the same girl I knew. What were you doing, little Evie?”

The old endearment stung, reducing her back to the barefoot girl picking up pennies the crowds threw for her elders. “It’s none of your business anymore.”

His face went solemn. “Perhaps. But I saw you two days ago. In the street. I had given up hope of ever finding you. But a little silver to your groom and a gardener let me know where you sleep.”

The look Nick gave her was far too soft. She felt blood mount to her cheeks. How she had wished he would look at her like that, once upon a time. How it had finally started to happen when it was time for her to leave him. Now it was too late. “You know it’s madness for us to be together.”

“I do. I’m not stupid, Evie, but knowing you’re safe is worth the risk.”

She bit her lip. He didn’t have the right to choose that risk for her. “Are you so certain about that?”

He blinked, his face falling back to his insouciant expression. “I don’t expect you to come home with me. I just needed to know that you are happy. Is that so wrong?”

She took a breath, held it, and tried to find the right answer. “No. Are you? Happy, I mean.”

He shrugged. “You know me. I am content as long as I am the best.” He looked around the room again, as if trying to memorize it. “So what do you do with yourself now? Have tea parties? Look for a husband?”

It was a good question, and one Evelina asked herself daily. She was caught between her circus past, with its hidden magic and its poverty, and her present, with schooling and science and enough to eat. She’d thought long and hard about another option, a place where she might find a brand-new path. “I want to go to university. There are colleges for women.”

His gaze came back to her, wide with surprise. “Why do you want that?” Probably no one in his acquaintance had set foot inside a proper schoolroom, much less a lecture hall.

“I’m good at learning. I want to see how far I can go. Maybe I’ll figure out … things.”

“What for?” Nick asked practically. “What don’t you already know?”

How to be whole. In her daydreams, she had fabricated a place where she would finally fit in. There would be women like her who loved a book of chemistry more than a new ball gown, and who didn’t care where she grew up. She could study with the finest scholars. Maybe, with their help, she could crack the code to why magic worked and how it meshed with science. She could finally solve the puzzle of her own nature.

At last, she would know where she belonged. And maybe that mattered more than anything else.

The look on Nick’s face was hard to read, so she changed the subject. “I’m glad you came.”

One corner of his mouth curled up. “Is that the truth?”

“It is.” But she couldn’t tell. She felt suffocated by an emotion that was not guilt or loneliness or irritation, but a painful mix of all three. It’s not my fault that I couldn’t stay with you.

Nick watched her with eyes that missed nothing. His mouth was a flat line, with the deliberate neutrality of someone hiding pain.

Please go. She wanted to say it, but that would sever everything between them. She didn’t want that, either. Instead, she grasped his hand. It was warm and hard with calluses and the slow, languorous pulse of his power. It tingled up her arm, a sensual temptation to throw caution to the wind. It was hard to be the only one with Blood. Falling into Nick’s arms would put an end to isolation—but also an end to both their lives. “We’ll find a way to talk later, but now you should leave before you’re caught. And don’t go through the corridor this time. It’s late, but there’s a maid about.”

Nick had been staring at her hand clasping his, but now he looked up in confusion. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I climbed the wall and came in that window. I wasn’t in the corridor.”

Downstairs, a woman shrieked—a long, chilling wail of terror.

Evelina locked eyes with Nick. “Somebody was, and I think we know which way they went.”

Chapter Three

She gave Nick a shove toward the window, but he just leaned into the gesture, grabbing her wrist.

“Go!” she said, exasperation turning the word to a hiss.

“You think I’m leaving?” he growled. “What the blazes is going on out there?”

“Whatever it is won’t improve if you’re found.” Her words came out short and tight, urgency vibrating in her veins. She planted her free hand on his chest and pushed again. “And I’ll be sent packing right along with you.”

He bared his teeth. “Would that be so terrible?”

“Do you wish me ruined?” Her chances for school turned to dust?

They held each other’s glare. Evelina had to know what the scream was about, and there was no time for