Chapter 9 A Kiss in the Dark
A KISS IN THE DARK
Defying convention had always felt like fireworks in Sybil’s veins—all color and excitement and a hint of danger. And nothing defied convention more than traveling the country with the sort of man mothers warned their daughters about.
The first time she’d ever seen him—in Hyde Park, surrounded by admirers—he’d been astride a horse and winking at a debutante.
Vain and chosen—a handsome, wealthy marquess with magic in his veins.
So she’d thought then. She’d not known—no one had—that his cousin had received the talent instead of him.
He was stripped bare now. No money, no title, no magic. Only his good looks, charming smile, and hard desire to be more than he was.
Which was stockingless, stretched out across one entire side of the coach, ankles crossed, hands folded behind his head, and his face scrunched into a wrinkled mass of concentration.
“If you think much harder,” Sybil said from her own position stretched out on the seat opposite his (stockings very much on, thank you, but boots long abandoned), “your brain might explode.”
“Perhaps then I might be able to find the constituents of brass splattered across the upholstery.”
She wrinkled her nose and wiggled her toes, which stuck out from the hem of her skirt. “I find I’ve lost my appetite.”
“Perhaps it can be restored with a bit of…” More face scrunching. Toe curling, too. “Copper and…” He squinted out of one eye at the roof of the coach. “Silver!”
“Wrong.”
“No!”
“It’s zinc.”
He sighed. “Zinc. Ah, well. I’ll remember next time.”
She sat upright and folded her hands primly in her lap. “I’m afraid you do not take the scholarly side of alchemy seriously enough.”
He sat up, too, contorting to put his stockings back on as he glanced out the window. “We’re close to Grantham. And I do too take it seriously. I’ll have you know I am a deep and philosophical thinker.”
She snorted.
“It is only that I did not learn the elements with my numbers and letters. One day, Miss Sybil,” he drawled out her name, making it longer than it was, making it sound somehow like a cat stretching in the sunlight, “you will learn as I have had to that what is considered easy and what is considered difficult is entirely different in East and West London.”
“Are you calling me na?ve?” Outside the coach, buildings began to be clustered more closely together than before. She snatched her boots up and slipped them on.
“I never insult a lady.”
“Only try to kill them.” She ended the tease with a little laugh.
He did not echo it. She looked up from her feet to find his lips compressed into a grim line.
The air felt heavy between them, and the grooves of his face, between his brows, the brackets around his mouth, seemed to deepen.
In the thickening silence, she said, “Why did you do that? To Diana?” She’d spoken softly, but her words seemed deafeningly loud.
She shouldn’t ask it, but she needed to know.
She was traveling with him. And he’d rescued her, and he was offering her something no one else would, and he seemed, oh, not like a murderer at all.
His hands and gaze on his shoes, both absolutely still, he finally said, “I cannot explain it. Is it”—his throat bobbed—“enough to know I would not do it again? If I could go back—” He snapped his lips closed.
His eyes, too. And a muscle in his jaw twitched.
Slowly, so slowly it seemed as if his muscles worked through some sort of pain—his lips found a smile and he opened his eyes.
They were blank, his face a mask of merriment.
“Are you worried I’ll cut you up in your sleep, princess? ”
“No.” Unbelievably, she was not. She had what he wanted, and he would keep her safe in his clutches until he got it.
One corner of his mouth hitched higher—a smirk that was born and died in the same moment. Then he looked out the window. “We’re here.” He curved his back forward, stretching it, then fell into the cushioned corner of the conveyance, his attention still out the window, his arms limp at his sides.
Sybil was struck by his fingernails. They were well kept, and he lacked the calluses of many of her set, the ones that her brother seemed to have had from birth.
His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow, and he had removed his jacket long ago.
His forearms were nice. Terribly nice. She’d never seen Stone’s forearms, oddly enough, but she imagined that Apollo‘s were less bulky.
Certainly he lacked muscle when compared with her brothers, but that did not make him—or his forearms—less… nice.
“Nice?” he drawled.
“Pardon?” she asked, her attention shooting up to his face.
“You just said the word nice. You cannot be talking to me. I am certainly not nice.”
True. And even when she tried to apply the word to a very acceptable part of his body, his forearms, his fingers, his hands with those big warm palms, nice still did not quite do. Not at all.
“I… I do not know what I was saying.” Each word snapped against the last. “I mean, I don’t know what I was thinking.” Now they mumbled along in a trudging line, barely audible. “Never mind.”
She’d felt odd since last night. Since she’d found Apollo’s disk of gold laying on the floor, where it had dropped from her skirt pocket.
When she’d picked it up, a bolt of lust so pure and hot she’d almost melted to the floor had shot through her.
Her breasts had tightened, and an achy need had twisted her belly. Low. Pulsing. Insistent.
The same need, subdued somewhat, stretched and wakened in her now.
She’d spent all day in the coach pushing it down, suffocating it.
But every time she looked at him, and every time he made her laugh, which was disconcertingly often, that lazy lust took another breath.
And that breath filled her lungs. Filled everywhere else, too.
Much too flustered, she focused on the sights outside the gently rolling coach. “Two inns. We should have luck tonight getting a fireplace.”
He gathered his satchel into his lap.
“What is in that thing?” she asked. Whatever it was pushed the exterior of the bag out at odd angles. It was large and bulky and unusually shaped.
“Not much.” But the way he said it, as if he was trying to convince her.
“Liar.”
“Well, yes, but not about—”
She grabbed for the bag. When he didn’t try to stop her, she dragged it all the way onto her lap and, holding his gaze, opened it up.
He slunk down into the seat and flicked his wrist at her. “Go ahead.”
She opened it and something slapped her in the face.
“What…” It was a… a branch, green and soft and flexible.
“Is this a plant?” She reached into the bag and pulled it out.
“It’s a potted plant!” And the long, slender branches were familiar.
“It’s like the one you brought to treat my palms at Lady Guinevere’s shop. ”
He sat up taller, unrolling his shirtsleeves and donning his jacket, his chin held high. “His name is Governor Grimm, and he’s terribly useful in any number of situations. You’ll be glad I brought him along at some point.”
“You named your plant Governor Grimm? Wait…” She held it up to look at the pot. It was bright yellow, very much like the ones in Lady Guinevere’s shop. “Did you name Lady Guinevere’s plant Governor Grimm?” She raised a brow.
He shrugged. “She wasn’t using it.”
“I guarantee you she was.”
“Well not at the precise moment I stole it. Don’t look like that. We need it more than she does.”
“I should lecture you. Or rap your hand with a ruler.”
He held his hand out for her. “I’ll take my punishment with a courageous spirit.”
“I don’t have a ruler.”
“A shame. I’m sure I am in need some sort of consequence for my actions.” A sly grin, warm blue eyes that flashed almost golden. She’d never seen blue eyes like his.
“Transcendents,” she said. “Tell me something I do not know about them.”
He dropped his hand to the seat. “We’re almost to the coaching yard.”
“Then make it quick.”
He ran the tip of his tongue across his top front teeth, thinking. “We don’t study like your lot does. Talent, glamours—it’s not something we train. It’s something that we do.”
“So you have no formal education in casting glamours?”
“I suppose not by your definitions. There are some books that my grandfather had me read, the diaries of dead men of our family, who’d possessed the talent before us.
He said it was important to commune. Perhaps he was right, and I did not commune enough.
” He didn’t have to say what that lack of communion resulted in.
She could guess. After all he was famous for one thing: losing his talent to his female cousin.
And the lengths he’d been willing to go to get it back.
She shivered.
He whipped out his greatcoat between them.
“Lean forward.” When she did, he slung the coat over her, draping it across her shoulders.
It pooled about her, swallowing her whole as the coach stopped.
They busied themselves with disembarking, and when they stood side by side on solid ground, Apollo was merry as usual.
Inside, the innkeeper was glad to have them, said the inn has been mostly empty for quite some time, and he had the exact sort of rooms they were looking for. The rooms he escorted them to were nearly perfect. They were side by side in an empty hallway. They also both possessed a fireplace.
When the innkeeper disappeared and Apollo wandered into his room and Sybil into her own, they left their doors open, making themselves at home as a maid brought food and drink.
“Come over here and eat with me,” Apollo said after the maid was gone. “I do not like the idea of dining alone.”