Chapter Ten
The next morning, the raid still hadn’t come, and the kitchen smelled of butter and spice, warm as always, but Rosine’s hands were busy tying her apron tight around her waist when the door opened.
Sander filled the frame, silent as ever, his shoulders blotting out the corridor beyond.
He didn’t wear the formal coat he usually did in the gaming rooms; his shirt was open at the throat, his hair a little mussed, as though the night had pressed against him and he hadn’t bothered to smooth it away. Disheveled suited him far too well.
She frowned, though her pulse flickered. “I’ve work to do.”
“Please, come with me,” he said. His voice was steady, low, as though the words had been waiting for him to speak. He was following Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s orders, no doubt. “I have something to show you,” he pressed on.
Marta and Bridget, elbow-deep in sugar and pastry, perked up like hens catching the scent of scandal. Marta smirked, flour on her cheek, her gaze sliding shamelessly over his broad frame. “Go on, Rosine. We can mind the ovens. You won’t be missed for an hour.”
Bridget winked, her eyes lingering far too boldly on Sander. “He looks like trouble worth keeping.”
Sander’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He ignored their stares, as he always did, but Rosine knew the truth—he only ever ate her buns. And she knew, too, that he even kept them when they were dry and stale to dunk in his tea when he was alone in his chambers.
Rosine flushed, caught between irritation and something far more dangerous. She untied the apron again, fingers quick, but lifted her chin with deliberate slowness. She wouldn’t look too eager. He was the one who’d come to her, after all.
She reached for her pelisse from the hook and slipped it over her shoulders. “This had better be worth it,” she muttered.
“It will be,” he said. And the quiet certainty with which he said it was enough to make her breath catch despite herself.
They stepped out the back door into the cool night—a sharp contrast to the kitchen’s heat. Rosine tightened the pelisse around her as Sander fell into stride beside her.
For a while, they walked in silence. His steps were even, deliberate, as if he’d mapped every paving stone before. Finally, she tilted her head toward him. “So? What are we doing here?”
He looked at her—just looked—and then spoke with quiet conviction. “It’s what we’re not doing. We’re not hiding anymore.”
Her brows arched. “We?”
“Yes. You and me.” His voice deepened, almost reverent. “I’ve hidden long enough. So have you.”
She stopped for a moment on the narrow lane, her breath a small cloud in the dark. “I’m not asking for your approval, Sander. I don’t need protection.”
Her voice rang firm, but beneath it lived a shadow.
Strasbourg. The memory of her parents’ bakery with its sugared plums in winter, shutters nailed against the mob that came anyway.
Her parents had trusted laws and rules to keep them safe, and it had cost them everything.
Since then, she had sworn she would never let her survival rest in anyone else’s hands—not even his.
He exhaled, sharp, almost irritated. “That’s just it, Rosine. I don’t always understand you.”
Her brows drew tight, her lips parting. That hurt. She wanted him to understand—not only her strength, but her longing. Not to spite Nagy, not to avenge Strasbourg. She wanted something with him that she didn’t understand herself yet, but there it was. Freedom alongside him perhaps.
“If I court you openly now, before your lease is in your name and before Pembroke drops his question in the Commons, Nagy will claim the Den keeps ‘alien favorites’ and use me to shut your shop—and this house.”
“Then our order is simple,” Rosine said. “First the lease in my name, then Pembroke’s question squashed—then us.”
He held her gaze, roughness softening as he seemed to struggle for words.
But if Nagy wins, I have to go to Boston.
He froze before he could ask if she’d go with him, bakery or not with her name on it.
“I’m a guard. Your guard, even when you don’t want me to be.
That means I live en garde—always with my defenses up. ”
She blinked, and he pressed on, halting, clumsy, searching for a language that could carry the weight of what he felt.
“In chess… the queen moves where she wills. Strongest piece on the board.” His voice dropped lower, gentler.
“I’d be the knight. I can’t move as fast, not as far.
But I place myself between her and every threat.
” He swallowed hard. “Except sometimes, the other pieces block me. If I move, I open the queen to a discovered attack. Men like Nagy—waiting for me to leave you unshielded.”
His queen. The word settled in her chest impossibly warm and yet terrifying.
His hand balled at his side and he inhaled sharply.
“I could never forgive myself if harm came to you. So I stay back. I stay away. We need to scatter Nagy’s targets.
That’s what I’ve done for so long, and it aches, Rosine.
Enough already! Every day and night, it aches.
Especially since you were there in person, in my shabby home—I can’t even sleep any more without thinking of you in my arms.” Heat flooded her face.
In his arms. In his bed. The images came unbidden, dangerous.
The admission hung between them as if he’d bared a piece of his soul without meaning to. It wasn’t triumph or victory—she could see it in the vulnerable set of his shoulders—he was a knight stumbling toward his queen, confessing he would rather ache at a distance than risk her fall.
Her lips parted, but no words came. The lantern light flickered across his face, shadowing the pain in his expression.
“That trust,” he whispered, “is everything.”
She watched something shift in him—not in words, he guarded those too closely—but in the tension of his posture, the set of his jaw.
As if whatever he carried pressed too sharply against his ribs, crowding his breath.
She had seen that look before, in the eyes of men who had survived more than they would ever confess.
He was irresistible. She had sworn after Strasbourg that she would never depend on anyone, never bind her survival to another’s strength.
To do so had cost her parents everything.
And yet here was Sander, with that haunted steadiness, wanting her—she could see it in every rigid line of his body.
If only he wanted her for herself, not just to protect.
If only it were truly me.
“We stand together, just like Mrs. Dove-Lyon said. If I trust you… will you trust me?” Rosine’s question was clumsy but burned with importance of the world as though asking it cost her more than she wanted him to know.
Sander swallowed visibly, his throat working. “Always,” he croaked. The answer sounded as if It had been dragged up from a place he’d kept locked for too long.
Her heart leapt—and faltered. Because trust was dangerous. She had trusted before. Strasbourg had taught her that protection promised by others could vanish in a night, and everything—everyone—she loved could be burned to ash. She had vowed never again to rest her safety on someone else’s strength.
And yet here she was, asking for it. Wanting him more than her independence.
“I have to warn you,” she whispered, the truth spilling before she could stop it. “I need you to hear what I mean,” she whispered. “Since Strasbourg I swore my life would never sit in someone else’s ledger. I can love you—but I must belong to myself while I choose you.”
His jaw tightened, the muscles shifting like stone under strain. “And I don’t want to fail anyone. Not you. Not Mrs. Dove-Lyon. I’ve lived too long with the weight of what happens when I’m not enough to protect those I love.”
“Why?”
“My distance isn’t doubt,” he said. “In the Pale, the night our street burned, I ran for the magistrate; the clerk told me to come back with a stamped paper in the morning. By morning my parents were gone. Since then I fear standing close and failing—giving a man like Nagy a way to reach you through me.”
Her breath caught at that—at the quiet pain beneath the words. The very thing that kept him apart from her was the same that drew her closer.
For a long moment, neither moved. The damp and cold London air pressed close around them.
Then he straightened, his voice low but fierce, cutting through the uncertainty.
“Not just fight, Rosine. Win. For the Lyon’s Den and for us.
Because if Nagy tears this place apart, I have to go to Boston because there’s nothing safe from people like Nagy in Europe and you’ll have a shop here still.
The choice will be yours entirely to stay or to go.
If Nagy wins, he makes me go. I just hope he won’t tear us apart. ”
The words slammed into her. Not a vow, not yet—but a glimpse of what it could become. His belief in her, in them, burned so hot it left no room for denial.
She wanted to look away. Instead, she lifted her chin and met that gaze head-on.
She’d spent years learning to survive. Now she wanted to fight back. It was daring the world to come for them and finding the strength to say, try. I won’t choose baking over you.
“Where are we going?” The question came like a logical intermission.
“To your bakery.”
As they walked on, she watched him from the corner of her eye.
His hand stayed loose at his side, not reaching for hers but close enough that she felt the pull of it.
Something had shifted between them—not in Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s office with its ledgers and strategy, but here, in the quiet alleys where no one was watching.
She’d spent so long measuring herself against what she could bake, what she could earn, what she could build alone. But walking beside him now, she wondered if standing together might be its own kind of strength.