Chapter 1 #2
Reaching forward, she wrapped her fingers around the cool alloy of a plain bowl.
It might have been intricate once, but the prongs were broken off and it had no stem or handle.
The curve fit into her small hands as if it’d been made just for her.
The surface had once been etched with writing, but was now faded and encrusted with some sort of green gritty substance.
The inside, however, was remarkably smooth, and it pleased her to run her fingers over the rim.
It was a texture she couldn’t identify. Not hard like brass. Copper, maybe?
Some of the gleaming treasure might very well be gold, which was why she touched nothing that seemed valuable.
Her inner fiend released the band from around her ribs, curled up, and promptly drifted into slumber, freeing her from the untenable tension that’d wound into her bones.
This small, ordinary cup would surely not be missed from such a vast and astounding hoard of fortune. But, for her, it would mean days, if not weeks of priceless peace.
So long as nothing unduly stressful were to occur.
Turning back to the telescope, she pocketed the cup before opening the logbook beside the contraption. It had gone without any entries for quite some fifteen years.
Such a shame.
Upon the next blank paper, she wrote tomorrow’s date and the celestial event to which she’d so looked forward for nigh on six months.
A little press against her ankle told her that her kitten was feeling conciliatory, and she bent to scoop the rascal into her arms and turn it over.
“Orion, you scamp,” she declared with gentle reproach. “I should have known.”
It took some doing to secure the wriggling bundle of fur with her right hand as she pressed her eye to the lens of the telescope.
She turned knobs on one side, then shifted the beast to the other hand so she could adjust according to the numbers on the map in the astrology periodical her brother had gifted her.
Perfect, she finally decided. Now if only the weather would cooperate, she would have half a chance to catch—
With an explosive percussion, a door splintered beneath a heavy weight. Rosaline whirled around so quickly, she knocked the candle from its perch. It extinguished before it hit the ground, plunging the room into relative darkness.
She dove for the shadows provided by the bookcases.
A second, louder explosion preceded a clash and a spark just over her head.
The ricochet of a bullet off the brass of the telescope.
Someone had…shot at her?
Rosaline’s heart dove into the pit of her stomach, suddenly unable to pump blood into her paralyzed veins.
Scurrying behind a couch, she hid there, clutching to her chest a now panicking cat who seemed intent upon ripping her to shreds with tiny, vicious claws.
A pistol? In this part of the city? Who would even—?
“You’ve three seconds to show your fucking self before I light this room up like it’s the goddamn Fourth of July.”
Rosaline froze in terror, her brain struggling to process an excess of shocking information.
The voice. Male. Hard. Dangerous. Dark. Gritty. American.
American? That explained the pistol at least.
Heavy boots shook the floorboards as they advanced into the observatory.
“I let these shots fly, best pray one of them catches you before the cylinder runs out… I get my hands on you, you’ll be begging for the mercy a bullet can provide.
So show your face. Hands up and empty, or I shoot a hole through whatever you’re holding and take half your palm with it. ”
Her first thought was for Orion. If she let him go, he could dash around in the dark and the trigger-happy American might shoot him. If she lifted her hands with the kitten in it, the man would possibly carry through on his threat and shoot the poor darling and her palm.
No. What should she do? Even if he had the self-containment not to shoot her, he’d ask questions.
Questions like: What do you have in your pocket?
She couldn’t be caught stealing from Lady Clarkwell. Not when her new brother-in-law had only just been promoted to Commander over the entirety of Scotland Yard.
“One.” The graveled number landed like a stack of bricks. Closer. He was coming closer with those heavy boots.
Ye Gads. Her family couldn’t survive another scandal. Oh, why was she such a wicked fool? Why did her demon have to constantly overrule her common sense?
A nub of graphite poked her as she curled her fingers, reminding her she still held the pencil from the logbook in her grasp.
“Two.”
The ladder was only a few steps away, hidden in the dark. If she could distract the man, she might make it up the bookshelves and scramble out the window before he even thought to look up.
Up was where Rosaline had hidden her entire life.
People always looked in closets, cellars, nooks and crannies for missing girls. They never looked on the roof.
“Three.”
Without a second thought, she tossed the pencil over the back of the couch as hard as she could. Once it crashed into something on the opposite side of the wall, she leapt up and dashed for the ladder.
Another shot left her ears ringing, but she grasped the rung one-handed, and fought sweat-slicked palms and a writhing cat to climb.
“What the—”