Sinner's Heart

Splendid attire. Her words drifted through his thoughts, laced with slight hints of admiration. Not suitable, I think, for a quiet evening at home.

I haven’t spent a quiet evening at home since I was fifteen, he answered. Tonight won’t see me break that tradition.

Where will you go?

Anywhere I can have female company.

He felt her sardonic smile. But you’ll have an audience.

Don’t sodding care.

Fighting at the fencing academy had done nothing to quell the restless, dark energy burning within him. Only one thing offered him any kind of respite. He needed the gentle voices and soft hands of women, their beguiling smiles and silken sighs. The peace he achieved never lasted long enough, but he’d take whatever he could get. A parched man would rather have a drop of water upon his tongue than nothing at all.

If the world was truly going to hell, as Livia claimed, then he would seize his pleasure wherever and whenever he could.

He expected Livia to object to his plan for the night, yet when he turned to leave, she only drifted beside him.

If you must go out tonight, she said as they made their way down the corridor, be careful. It gets worse after dark. I remember that, as well.

This sword isn’t merely decorative.

Use it if you have to.

He stopped walking, then said aloud, “That’s not what you said this afternoon.”

A nearby footman glanced toward Bram. “My lord?”

Bram was about to snap that servants weren’t supposed to intrude upon the master’s private conversations, before realizing that, to the footman’s eyes, Bram was alone, conversing with no one. He walked quickly on. The servants would talk about the master’s strange behavior, but this was the least of Bram’s concerns.

You were about to kill an unarmed man who presented no threat to you, Livia continued. That’s not the same as protecting yourself in a dangerous situation.

I know the difference.

This afternoon you didn’t.

He had no riposte, and her words sunk into him like a blade. Again he thought of a London clutched in the frenzy of bloodlust, hundreds of thousands transformed into riotous beasts. No safety. No peace. Only chaos and death.

It will come, she said, seeming to know his thoughts. It’s already here.

You’re wrong. He had to believe that.

Reaching the foyer, a footman handed him his tricorn hat and cloak, then opened the door once he’d donned them. The carriage waited, ready to speed him off into the night and his ceaseless quest for pleasure.

Go then, she said coldly. Go and see.

Everything appeared exactly as it ought. Hundreds of expensive beeswax candles threw blazing light from atop massive crystal chandeliers. The parquet floors gleamed. Musicians stationed in the corner filled the chamber with the very latest from the Continent. Talk and jewels packed the room, both sharp and calculated to dazzle. Footmen circulated with trays bearing glasses of wine. Someone had organized a card game in an adjoining chamber, and shouts of the players mingled with the music and voices.

By most standards, the assembly at Lord Millom’s would be considered a success.

But something was wrong.

Standing in the doorway, with an invisible Livia beside him, Bram surveyed the chamber. He knew most of these men—aristocrats and nobly born gentlemen, and a handful of wealthy burghers who had bought their way into the ranks of the elite. And they knew him, offering him polite bows or nods as his gaze moved past them. Distracted, he barely returned the gesture.

Despite the smiles, the attempts at cheer and insistently ebullient music, a wrongness hovered over the assembly like an invisible pestilence.

Then he understood.

He snared the arm of the Marquess of Lapley, affecting a careless stroll past him.

“Where are the ladies?” Bram demanded.

Lapley grimaced. “Damned strange, ain’t it? Aside from Lady Millom”—he nodded toward the woman in question, a tense middle-aged lady laced tightly into yellow satin—“there ain’t another female here. No one’s dancing.”

The space normally occupied by dancers going through their intricate steps stood empty, a lacuna of parquetry. No bright silk or fluttering fans circled the chamber. The low drone of masculine voices was unrelieved by female chatter. Not a giggle or trill. Gallants awaited the arrival of fair maidens, eager to prove themselves by fetching glasses of negus or offer up sparkling compliments in the continuous ritual of courtship.

Every man at the assembly wore a baffled smile as false as pasteboard marble.

“It’s like someone’s blotted out the stars,” Bram muttered.

Lapley snorted. “Aye. What’s the use of coming to these bloody assemblies if there ain’t no ladies to flirt with?”

“Your wife isn’t here.” Bram looked pointedly at the empty space beside Lapley.

“Wouldn’t come. Said she felt nervous and out of sorts. With all the peculiarity going on around town, I was glad of her choice. Ain’t been safe after dark. Last night, five different gentlemen were almost shot in their own carriages. Covingham barely escaped with his life.”

All this was news to Bram, but without Whit and Leo to meet him at the coffee house for the day’s intelligence, he hadn’t gone and heard the latest reports.

“What of the other ladies?” Bram pressed. The Season was at its height. No woman of social standing missed an assembly. At the least, they needed to parade their daughters before eligible bachelors.

Lapley shrugged. “The same, I’d wager. Makes for a sodding dull assembly. Unless,” he added, brightening, “you brought some females with you.”

I don’t believe I count, Livia said, her voice wry in Bram’s mind.

“I’m alone,” Bram answered.

With a disappointed mutter about wasted opportunity, Lapley drifted away.

Bram continued to stand in the doorway, surveying the assembly that was not truly an assembly. The men in the chamber continued to circulate and affect conversation, but it felt like a sham. Or there had been a Biblical purge, and instead of slaying first born sons, the Angel of Death had killed every last woman, save one.

Citizens’ wives wouldn’t come out after dark, Livia said. They hid in their homes, cowering in corners with their arms around their children. Only female slaves forced to venture out of doors did so. I walked the streets disguised so no one knew my sex.

Powerful witch like you, he retorted. You’ve nothing to fear.

All women share the same fear, magic or no magic. And their fear is well-founded. I saw what happened when the mobs caught women out after sunset.

He felt her shudder, and his own blood iced.

It isn’t like that now.

You’ve looked out the window of your carriage. You’ve seen.

Maybe he hadn’t wanted to see, for, at the time, it made no impression on him. But thinking on it now, he remembered the protectively hunched forms of women scurrying inside. Only the women forced to earn their livings on the street remained—whores, orange sellers, beggars—and their eyes had been wide with fear.

In the span of a single night, the world had changed. He felt the whole of society, both high and low, clinging to a precipice, the rocks crumbling beneath their fingers. Soon the whole cliff would collapse. All that remained was the fall into darkness.