Chapter Two
Blackwood Family Parlor, Highgate Hill
The night before…
Thea’s boots squelched as she stomped through the wrought-iron gate, skirt sodden and clinging to her legs like a second, swampy skin.
Her bonnet dripped in a steady rhythm, water slinking down the slope of her cheekbone, trailing along the collar of her coat, sliding with intimate certainty into places she’d rather not feel in public.
The parlor door of Gran’s townhouse slammed behind her. “Raining,” she announced, breathless and dripping, to no one in particular.
“I had noticed,” came the gritted reply.
Alaric Ward stood from the settee like it had personally insulted him.
His coat was still damp from his ride over, his cravat half undone, the brim of his hat crushed in his hands like he’d strangled it for courage.
His hair, dark and gleaming from the rain, clung in defiant waves around his temple, and his jaw clenched as if he were holding in something enormous and deeply unpleasant. Like words. Or feelings.
“Miss Blackwood.”
“Detective inspector,” she said with a smile, tugging off her gloves. “What a surprise. Were you waiting long?”
“An hour,” he said tightly.
“Oh. That explains the scowl.”
“No,” he said, eyes briefly flicking—unintentionally, surely—to the way her wet dress hugged the curve of her hips. “That’s just… my face.”
She gave him a bright grin. “Charming as ever.”
He cleared his throat. Loudly. Adjusted his ruined hat. Did not meet her gaze, or any part of her, really, except the fireplace. “I came to speak with you,” he said, stiff and official, as if reciting a crime report.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Am I being arrested again?”
His eyes snapped to hers. Hot. Startled—then flicked away just as quickly, as if he’d seen something dangerous in her expression and regretted ever looking. “I’m serious.”
“So am I,” she said sweetly. “I trespass a lot.”
He exhaled like she exhausted him. Which, to be fair, she did.
“I spoke with your grandmother,” he said abruptly. “And mine. Before they passed.”
“Oh good, starting a conversation with the dead. Very healthy.”
He ignored that. “They were friends. You know that.”
She nodded.
“They had… a wish.”
“Oh no,” she said, one brow rising. “You’ve come to fulfill a deathbed promise, haven’t you?”
Alaric’s hands clenched around his hat brim.
“I know I’m not,” he began, and immediately looked pained by his own words, “I’m not the most…
” He paused, floundered. His jaw clenched again.
He gave up with a grunt and started over.
“They wanted us married,” he said finally, blunt and awkward. “You and me.”
Thea blinked. “Is this your way of proposing?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
Another drop of rain trickled down her spine.
He tugged at his cravat. “It’s a matter of… honoring their wishes. Our grandmothers would’ve been pleased. They were good women.”
“Dead women.”
“Yes. But good ones.”
She tilted her head. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“It’s the right thing to do.”
“Chivalrous of you.” Her eyes snapped to his then. And she saw it.
The heat. The barely leashed something behind his control.
Something old and tangled. Something that had lived in him since they were awkward children growing up down the street from each other, throwing stones into ponds.
Since she’d tackled him off his pony at age twelve.
Something that had absolutely no business being there now while she was dripping in front of him, dress clinging to her skin, breasts pressed against the bodice like an offering to the gods of unfortunate timing.
“Right,” she said quickly, laughing some high-pitched squeak of a thing. “Well. I’ll think about it.”
Alaric blinked. “You’ll…?”
“Think about it,” she said again, unpinning her bonnet and giving him a bright smile that completely failed to hide the color blooming in her cheeks. “It’s a rather big decision, after all. Marriage. Honor. Ghost grandmothers. Quite the proposal package.”
“I’ll wait for your answer, then,” he said quietly, eyes hot and fixed somewhere near her collarbone, before he forced himself to turn away and strode quietly down the hall and out the door.
*
Back in the parlor, where the fire still burned low…
A teacup rattled. The curtains stirred.
“Absolutely not,” said the sharp voice of Celeste Blackwood, newly deceased, arms crossed in spectral indignation as she glared at the spot where Alaric had stood.
“He’s tall, he’s broad, and he still broods like a Byronic poem,” cooed Grandmother Blackwood from the chaise. “What’s not to love?”
“He ruined my azaleas with a slingshot when he was eleven.”
“He said it was a weasel attack.”
“Oh please.”
“I LIKE HIM.”
“I’m dead, not deaf, Alice.”
“Well,” Gran said, hands in her translucent lap, “that went exactly as I hoped.”
“You call that a proposal?” Celeste snapped, flicking rain off her ghostly sleeve with indignation. “He sounded like he was choking on a walnut. Or honor. Or both.”
“Oh hush,” Gran said, standing and floating an inch above the parlor rug as if offended by the idea of damp wool. “The boy was nervous.”
“He was a disaster, Alice.”
Gran turned with a look. “He’s always been broody. It’s part of the charm.”
“Charm? Please. He looked like he’d rather wrestle a basilisk than admit he’s in love.”
“Because he is in love!” Gran crowed. “Has been since Thea pushed him into the duck pond that summer in Kent. You remember. He came out looking like a drowned fox and swore vengeance and undying devotion.”
“I remember,” Celeste said dryly. “I also remember how he ruined her first Season by scowling at every suitor she so much as looked at. Jealous little beast.”
“Oh, so you do admit it was jealousy,” Gran said, smug.
“I admit nothing. Except that I wanted better for her.”
Gran’s eyes gleamed. “You wanted titled.”
“I wanted easier,” Celeste snapped. “A gentleman who didn’t break into crypts or get into sword fights with grave robbers for his job, or show up dripping in rainwater like some tragic antihero. And what does he do the minute she walks in? Stares at her chest like it owes him money!”
“Oh, come off it, Celeste. You saw the way he looked at her.”
Celeste crossed her arms, translucent and glowing faintly around the edges. “She deserves someone who can say the damn words.”
Gran’s smile was sharp and knowing. “Give him time. Alaric Ward is like tea steeped in molasses. Slow to sweeten, but once it does…”
*
Metropolitan Police Station, Whitehall Place
Later that same night, 11:48 p.m.
It had been, by any measure, a very long day. First the rain. Then the proposal. Then the part where she’d accidentally broken into a crypt.
Again.
Now Thea was sitting in a Metropolitan Police holding room with mud on her hem, salt in her boots, and a haunted thigh bone in her satchel that might actually be cursed.
She inhaled sharply through her nose and tugged the shawl tighter around her shoulders. The wooden bench beneath her was unyielding. The walls were grim and dark. The lighting was gaslit and offensive. And the man storming through the door was her maybe-fiancé. Possibly. Technically?
He looked like wrath incarnate.
Oh dear.
Alaric Ward was not the awkward man from her grandmother’s parlor anymore.
Gone was the damp cravat and hat brim strangled like a cry for help.
Now he wore his authority like a second skin, coat fitted to a chest that clearly hadn’t skipped arm day since 1834, shoulders so broad she could’ve camped under them, and that dark hair now shoved back in delicious frustration with one gloved hand.
The room felt smaller instantly. So did her lungs.
“Theodosia Blackwood,” he said grimly, striding toward her like she was a problem he was absolutely going to marry anyway.
“You say my full name like it’s a sin,” she murmured.
He stopped three feet in front of her. His jaw twitched. “You broke into the old Whitcombe plot.”
“It was open. Technically, I fell in.” She tilted her head. “It’s next to the Blackwoods’. Things happen.” She shrugged daintily.
“You were seen climbing the gate.”
“Allegedly.”
“You were carrying a shovel.”
She crossed her ankles. “That is conjecture. And also rude.”
His nostrils flared.
And dear God, now that she was really looking—which, admittedly, was a questionable life choice—he had definitely grown into his scowl.
That coat hugged his waist like a dream, and she was uncomfortably aware of how tall he was.
How broad. How all that rainy awkwardness had melted away under gaslight and justice and—
“Are you listening to me?” he snapped.
“No,” she said honestly, blinking up at him. “But then, I am trying very hard not to.”
He closed the space between them in one step. “You’re under arrest,” he said, low and gravelly.
She blinked. “Wait, are you actually—?”
His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth, and when it rose again, and there was something else there. Something that made her heart trip and stumble like it had on the staircase at age fourteen, when he caught her looking at him shirtless in the mews and smirked.
Oh hell.
He leaned in. Bent close. Voice like thunder wrapped in silk. “If you ever drag me out of bed at almost midnight again over your outrageous antics, I will let them charge you.”
Goosebumps rose on her arms. He was close enough now that she could see the flecks of gray in his blue eyes, smell the faint trace of rain and soap and man on his skin.
One of his hands braced on the bench beside her hip.
The other hovered near her wrist, fingers twitching like he didn’t trust himself to touch her.
“Understood?” he said softly, dangerously.
She swallowed. “Not even a little bit.”
He closed his eyes like her entire existence was giving him a migraine.
Then leaned down even closer. “This is not a game, Thea,” he said, voice barely audible now.
“This—us—it’s real. So if I say you’re mine, and I tell them you’re my fiancée, then you’re mine.
Really mine. Don’t make me say it twice. ”
Her breath caught. Her pulse positively rioted. And when his fingers brushed the back of her hand—just a whisper, just a tremble—she forgot entirely how words worked.
Somewhere down the corridor, footsteps echoed. A door banged.
She blinked. Reality returned like a slap to the face. “Wait, what did you just say?” she managed.
But Alaric was already straightening and adjusting his gloves, mask firmly back in place. He turned to the constable approaching. “Let her go.”
“But sir, she was caught—”
“She’s my fiancée,” he said with the crisp finality of a gavel, and Thea nearly swallowed her tongue. “Isn’t that right, Thea?”
“Absolutely!” she chirped, playing along, and definitely reeling. “Yes, I’ve agreed to be his fiancée.”
The constable hesitated. Blinked. Looked between them. “Oh. Right. Yes. Congratulations?”
Alaric did not blink. “Release her.” And then, oh dear heavens above, he reached down, grabbed her shawl, and held it open like some kind of chivalrous demon escort from a fever dream. “Coming, darling?” he asked with a look that said she absolutely better.
Thea stood, wobbled slightly, and gave the constable a dazed smile as she swept out the door behind the man who had just claimed her with feral intensity and also legal documentation.
“Fiancée,” she whispered under her breath, trailing after him. For the first time that day, the rain didn’t feel quite so cold.