Chapter Thirty-Three
We left Dorian’s establishment as we’d entered it: together, and utterly clueless.
Noé slumped against the alleyway wall. A few paces to his left, the hidden entrance we’d come through had closed again, the mean flare of the attendant’s eye the last thing I’d seen before the door had sealed over. Now my fiancé rubbed at the bridge of his nose, groaning.
“Dammit.” He cursed. “That was utterly useless. He gave us nothing.”
I leaned my shoulder against the brick beside him. Moisture crawled through the fabric of my capelet, making me shiver. “He gave us more than he realized.”
Noé arched a brow.
“The veils his girls wear,” I clarified, glancing over at him. “He swears they didn’t adopt their outfits until after the Vainglory had ended.”
“Yes,” Noé affirmed, drawing the word out. His expression was questioning, his body shifting to match mine so that we were positioned parallel to one another. “Which means what—he’s lying? That much seems obvious.”
I shook my head. “Which means he didn’t originate the disguise,” I corrected.
“Did you notice he asked for a description of the veil the woman was wearing? Almost as if he wished to compare it to another version he knew of. There could only be two reasons for him to pose that question. Either the veiled lady is one of Dorian’s silkwitches, which he denies, or—”
“The idea wasn’t his originally,” Noé finished. “He stole it from someone. Who?”
I shrugged. “I’ve no idea,” I said. “We can only hope, now that you’ve agreed to be his friend, he’ll write and tell us himself.” My mind was picking apart the interaction we’d just exited, only half of my focus on Noé. There was something else Dorian had said which had bothered me. What was it?
To my side, Noé’s eyes flashed. He looked so sleek in the darkness, so wolfish. He had the dreadful beauty of a figure half glimpsed through a window, before one’s mother whisks the curtains closed and cautions one to stay away. “Shall we go back in?” he asked. “Press him again?”
I snapped out of my haze. “No,” I replied. “I doubt we’ll be able to get anything more out of him tonight. Particularly not so long as we remain on his turf.” Sighing, I passed him Mireille’s monocle, which I still carried in my dress pocket. “Hold this, will you?”
He slipped it into his coat. When I went to pull my arm back, he took me by the wrist, his thumb nudging against the heel of my hand.
The gentle pressure was like a trigger—at once, I found myself pulled back to the pair of us just after our encounter with Henri Claudel, waiting for our ticket to be called.
The words he’d said to me then, which I’d yet to recover from.
I’ve decided to quit…My fiancée told me…I do hate to disappoint her.
I didn’t know what to do with the confession.
I had lectured him about his smoking habit—multiple times—and yet…
I’d never anticipated he would actually give up his vices because of me.
If anything, the flaw had been convenient—it had given me something to latch on to, a grievance to nurse, a tangible reminder of why I hated him.
Now he’d gone and gotten rid of it. What was I to do about that?
Noé cleared his throat. “I didn’t choose you because of Lear,” he murmured. “You do know that, don’t you?”
I blinked. Of all the remarks Dorian had made, that was the one he was fixated on? “Of course,” I answered, glad for the distraction. “You chose me because I was the best investment.”
I said it lightly. Still, my fiancé’s expression didn’t change. “I really dislike the way he speaks to you.”
His gaze was so intent—bladed, almost. Suddenly, I was unsure whom he was referring to. Was it Dorian who had his attention, or Eliot?
“Words do no harm,” I replied. “We should be going.”
Tugging my capelet more tightly around myself, I pushed off from the wall.
According to the instructions Noé had given him upon our arrival, our driver—Philippe—should be waiting for us at the mouth of the alleyway, where the passage joined up with the street.
I headed in that direction, picking my way over the slick cobblestones.
I’d only made it a few steps when a small strangled noise issued from behind me. I turned to look over my shoulder. Noé was standing several feet to my back, clutching at his heart. His expression was downcast—muddled, almost, as though he weren’t entirely sure why he’d called out.
My lips pulled in a frown. “What’s happened?”
At my voice, he glanced up. “Nothing,” Noé said, collecting himself. “I thought…” He hesitated, then shook his head. “Nothing.”
Odd. I debated questioning him further but decided against it.
The alleyway’s murk was beginning to wear on me—and honestly, I was frightened of being drawn into conversation with him again.
Lately, all our talks seemed to end with me tied up in knots, uncertain of what I was thinking or feeling.
“All right,” I relented, facing forward.
I advanced another few paces, listening carefully this time for the echo of Noé’s footfalls behind me. His treads were heavier than usual, almost lurching, as if he were drunk.
Less than a minute later, there came a loud thud.
My pulse leapt. I whirled around. “Noé!”
He was lying in the middle of the cobblestones, one elbow braced weakly against the ground, the other gripping at the collar of his shirt. Even in the dimness, I could tell that his face had gone deathly pale. His neck muscles were strained, wire-taut.
I ran to him, kneeling on the cobblestones. “What is the matter with you?”
Though I didn’t mean it to, it came out more hostile than concerned. For a half second, Noé’s mouth crooked up in a smile; then another shudder passed over him, and his expression wiped clean. “I don’t…” he managed. “I’m fine.”
With effort, he pushed himself into a seated position. I grasped him by the shoulders, shoving him down as he attempted to stand. “You are evidently not fine,” I hissed. My voice was waspish—why wasn’t I better at this? Why couldn’t I sound sympathetic? “Are you sick?”
“Dammit, Tamerlane, I don’t know!”
Noé turned to look at me directly. Even that effort seemed to weaken him—my heart dropped as he swayed against me, his vision clouding.
His hand came over mine. “Get Philippe,” he gasped.
I didn’t need to be told twice. Easing him to the ground, I stood and sprinted the length of the alleyway, my chest constricting at the sound of him coughing behind me.
My thoughts were moving too quickly for me to keep up—dashing ahead like startled rabbits.
What was happening? We’d eaten nothing while with Dorian.
We’d drunk nothing. Had Noé been poisoned somehow? Wounded? Was he ill?
Each possibility was worse than the last. What if he was hurt—seriously hurt, because I’d forced him to accompany me on this mission tonight? What if—what if he—
A wave of relief crashed over me as I emerged onto the street and found Philippe waiting there, leaned up against our carriage, which was pulled to the side of the road. He startled when he saw me. “Miss—”
I shouted out to him. “Call a doctor!”
His eyes widened. He took off down the street before I could yell at him to use the carriage. Hands on my knees, I watched him go for a moment, panting—then turned and ran back to Noé.
He was curled where I’d left him, his knees tucked up by his stomach. His breaths were shallow—for a moment, I couldn’t make them out at all, and I wondered—but then he gasped, and shivered, and my body unclenched.
Gently, I maneuvered him upright. “We’ll lie you down in the coach,” I said lowly. His skin was tacky with sweat, though the night air was quite cold. “Can you walk?”
I took his wheezed exhale as a yes. Wrapping an arm around his waist, I threw his left one over my shoulder and hauled him to a standing position. He held himself up, but just barely. I couldn’t shake the impression that it was taking the fullness of his strength to keep himself from falling again.
Balancing him against me, I patted his hand. “You’re all right,” I whispered. My heart was beating very fast.
We made it to the side of the carriage before his knees buckled, sending us both to the ground. Between the two of us, we were making a good deal of noise, yet no one had emerged from Dorian’s to investigate. Did they care? Had Dorian been the one to do this somehow?
Noé reached for me. I couldn’t lift him into the carriage on my own, so I merely propped him up against its side, his head resting on the coach’s bottom lip. Hovering over him, I let him take my hand.
He swallowed. “I think…it may be…serious.”
I laid a palm on his cheek. “It isn’t,” I murmured. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Noé.”
Slipping my other hand from his, I placed it on the opposite side of his face, my thumb beneath his temple.
I’d never touched this part of him before.
His jawbone was sharp; I could feel the pounding of his blood, the bob of his throat as he swallowed, each motion rocking through me as if it were my own.
The sensation was so intimate that under any other circumstances, I would have been embarrassed to look at him.
I smoothed a curl of hair away from his brow. “Noé,” I repeated softly. “There is nothing wrong with you.”
He didn’t answer me. His lashes had fluttered mostly closed, his forehead clammy where my fingers brushed it. Beneath the thin cover of his eyelids, I could see his eyes rolling, as though he were lost in a dream.
Abruptly, they flew open. My thoughts stalled as Noé’s thumb came beneath my chin. Delicately, he lifted my head, tilting it upward until my gaze met his.