She smacked into a woman clutching a wicker cage crammed with chickens.
Chapter Eight
He remained with her through the city streets, stealing along from window to window, and at times—once the sun grew higher and the day began to warm—following her through the flat smooth puddles dotting the roads. She was easy to find. It was growing easier and easier to find her, to think of her colors, her light. And there she'd be.
Right now she was crossing a busy intersection with a hand pressed to her hat, her skirts lifted to show a flash of ankles and silver-buckled shoes as she hurried along, dodging mules and carts and another carriage, this one drawn by a team in blinders that snorted and scrambled by her with only inches to spare. Her purple dress was pulled nearly sideways with their passage.
It about stopped his heart. If he'd still had one, that is. Bloody foreigners. He'd never seen such abominable driving, and he himself had come to his skills strictly by way of the inebriated mercies of the ostlers at Cambridge, none of whom had proven amiss to a bribe of guineas, no matter how the cattle protested.
She'd reached the other side of the intersection. He found a new set of windows fronting a tooth-puller's shop scribbled in florid red paint—
The symphony hounded him much as he hounded Zoe, slinking ever closer to his heels with its alluring siren call. The best he could do was to outrun it, or push it to the edges of his awareness. When he stilled it hovered, sometimes softer, sometimes aggressively forte, and always so spellbinding that if he devoted even a thread of himself to the flow of the notes, he was lost.
He was back in the assembly hall in Soho, or stranded on that gray little street.
But Zoe helped keep it at bay. Naked or dressed, she was his beacon. He didn't know why, and he didn't care. She kept the music away. That was enough.
It was a strange sort of death. There was no pain, no joy, no bright pleasure but what she brought him, and even that was more Rhys savoring her than Zoe attempting to bring him any manner of relief.
It had been so long since he had allowed himself truly to look at her. It was odd to realize that. They'd known each other forever, had been friends once, and then a little more than that. He imagined he knew her face and figure nearly like he knew his own. He knew her walk—gads, how many times had he watched her walk away from him back home? That sultry sashay, that swish of her skirts with her heels clicking like Spanish castanets against paving stones.
How many times had he spotted the radiance of her hair in a crowd of darker blondes, heard her laughter in the village tavern above all others, silvery and bright? How many times had he caught himself staring at her from across a room—common places, amicable places, the library or the tea shop or confectionary—simply absorbed in the complexity of her expressions? The way her lashes lowered when she was pensive and thinking. The pink curve of her lips when she was pleased, or pretending to be pleased. The flex of her fingers when a suitor bowed over them: ladylike, relaxed, not quite bent enough to be a true grasp in return. Not quite stiff enough to dash all hopes, either.
He'd grown up watching her yet keeping apart. In a way, this was no different. And so Rhys supposed if this was to be his eternity, he could have done far worse.
Except for the nudity. That bit was rather more hellish than not.
It seemed she truly was invisible, at least to human eyes. He couldn't imagine any other reason for a gorgeous, unclad woman to be publicly ignored, even in France. And it made sense that if she wished to remain unseen, she would have to undress. Indeed, now that he thought about it, it reflected a certain lovely symmetry with the whole notion of the Turn, that to fully accept the wonders of this Gift, human things would be perforce left behind.
But she was not invisible to him. She was gloriously, achingly in sight.
He could not count the number of dreams he'd had about her over the years. Certainly he couldn't count the daydreams, the hot fevered adolescent fantasies of her. They usually involved him and her and Fire Lake at home, the cool shady part of the lake. Swimming. The blue-green waters and the two of them splashing, and then there would be sun between them on the waves, a little blinding, and she would magically be without clothes, without the grave and unsmiling inhibitions that had kept him at arm's length for so long . and they would come together with slippery arms and legs, and kiss .
Never in those dreams had he seen her as he did today. Unabashed. And—ah, God, his throat closed just evoking the details—
It aroused him. It frightened him. It left him nearly dizzy with agitation.
Invisibility. Of all the damned Gifts . It figured that Zoe Lane would get the one that left her unclothed and vulnerable, without even the ability to lift from the earth as smoke to escape their enemies.
Invisibility—and him: a ghost without freedom, the memory of a man. So not just one Gift, he realized, but two. With all the simmering power of their sires and dams, with all their generations of deliberate breeding to hone their skills, Zoe had these two.
Something had to be her shield, then. Something had to protect her.
Somehow.
He was tied to her for a reason. He could feel it.
Hell, it wasn't as if he had anything more pressing to do.
Slipping into Tuileries by day was slightly more tricky than at night. Usually she managed it by waiting until the streets were a little more clear, and the shadows of the trees sent a pattern of dark confusion across the walk and walls. But the day was warming rapidly, without a cloud across the scrubbed blue sky. She simply had to brazen it out; the fact was, she wanted back in her rooms. She needed peace and calm, far from people and trembling animals, to think about what to do next.
If anyone saw her slip through the gate with the broken lock, no one said anything. Metal met metal with only small, musical chimes, and then she was gone to the trees.
She knew this place by now. She knew where to find the walks without gravel, when to remain behind tree trunks or overgrown hedges. The gardens themselves were vast and eerily haunting; it was easy to imagine kings and queens taking their leisure here, once upon a time. There were massive Egyptian statues of black basalt tucked away in overgrown arbors, ponds with lily pads and algae spreading green across once-polished pink alabaster. The lawns were still weeded but the fountains and jets bubbled with water no more; their pumps were frozen shut.
There was even a labyrinth of hawthorn hedges with shoots that had poked out and blossomed untrimmed. She'd memorized the path from her room, then tried it one night, just because. In its center she'd discovered a bronze sculpture of Venus, a magnificent web of moonlight and dew fanning from her ear to her shoulder, the spider a dark round dot by the loop of her earring.
Barring the occasional bored soldier walking about, the royal gardens of Tuileries remained deserted. But for today.
Far off in the distance she could make out the blue-and-gold coats of an army company, a huge group clustered by the central entrance to the palace. It startled her enough that she withdrew behind a chestnut and remained there, watching.
One of the soldiers was standing on a box and speaking to the rest, his words nearly loud enough to make out. At a barked command the mass of men fell into order, their stamped boots echoing across the air.
Zoe sighed and began once again to remove her coat and the lavender gown. At least it wasn't as chilly as this morning.
When she stepped out of the trees the sunlight felt like welcome on her back. She'd tucked her clothing beneath a bench so forgotten by the groundskeepers it was more moss and lichen than iron filigree.
Her feet had picked up more filth. It was the only sure way to follow her, the strangely inverted soles of grime that pressed into the grass and rocks. Perhaps no one would notice.
