Chapter 18 The Courtyard #2
Sometimes, she had caught him looking exhausted, but he seemed to work past even that.
In the very early mornings before the start of their consultations, she’d often seen him returning from what looked to be vigorous exercise at the gentlemen’s club, sweat darkening his hair to a midnight black, his muscles strengthened and defined from endless activity, before he disappeared into his private rooms, undoubtedly for his bath.
His energy was ceaseless, and not for the first time did she wonder if he ever slept.
Leena fought through her own growing response to him, because she knew it was becoming very dangerous. “I will leave you now.” She curtseyed. “I have only come to rectify what I said earlier—”
“There is no need,” he cut in without expression.
“It was not you I was speaking to.”
“Was it not?” Still that aloofness.
“No. I saw the ghost of the man who beat the boy standing over him. It was to him that I made the accusation.”
There was a breath between them. Whatever she had said seemed to momentarily arrest him. Finally, he ground out, “Is the ghost with you now?”
She shook her head.
He watched her for a long moment from behind the thin tendrils of smoke.
In the cluster of trees that encircled the courtyard, she heard the first trills of birds.
Soon, the city would start to awaken, rousing its inhabitants and forcing them from their beds.
All of that seemed to Leena like a faraway thing—as though the city might stir in the background, but she would always be here standing in a courtyard just before dawn, beside a man who was neither friend nor enemy.
It was not lost on her that, twice now, the awakening world had witnessed something unchangeable shifting between them.
St. Silas’s next question surprised her. “Why is it so vital that you correct my assumption?”
“Because it is the truth,” Leena replied stubbornly, although the way his eyes had sharpened on her face made her nearly doubt it. It was not curiosity in his expression, but a harsh inquisition. It was clear he was not satisfied with her answer.
“Could it not wait?”
She was confused now. It felt as if they were speaking of two different topics, and she was scrambling to link them together. “Could what wait?”
His gaze snaked down the entire length of her, the cigarette all but forgotten in his fingers.
“You haven’t even given yourself a moment to change.
Blood still stains your hemlines. You have not slept.
Yet it took precedence that you find me at the first opportunity, to tell me that I was mistaken about your opinion of me.
That you knew I had not harmed the boy.”
The porch had become a precipice. If she took a step either forward or backward, she would fall. Still, for better or for worse, she marched on. “I could not sleep otherwise.”
“Why not?” St. Silas’s question did not hold a sliver of softness. It was hard and bludgeoning, forcing an answer she did not know how to give.
Leena did not respond, wrapping her arms around herself to stave off the chill, her head turning to view the sky, which was just beginning to lighten.
“Miss Al-Sayer.” He said her name impatiently. “What is your opinion of me?”
He was a grave robber digging through the soil for the truths she had buried inside her body. But he would not have that truth. Not when he was so unforthcoming with his own. “Why does it matter to you what my opinions are?” she responded.
From her peripheral vision, she could sense St. Silas’s displeasure with her in the way he dragged at his cigarette.
She expected him to reply with a cutting laugh at the idea that her thoughts would hold any importance to him.
She expected his mockery. With a raised chin and turned gaze, she waited for it.
It did not come.
Instead, he said, “If you return to your chamber, will the phantom you saw tonight be waiting for you there?”
She narrowed her eyes, trying to find hidden meaning behind the sudden change of subject. Suspiciously, she said, “No. He disappeared once he saw that the boy would live.”
St. Silas nodded. “I’ll escort you there, then.”
He walked past her toward the door, terminating the conversation.
Leena’s voice stopped him. The words seemed to be pulled out of her throat by some foreign power beyond her control. “I think, Mr. St. Silas, that a part of you wishes you had never made this deal with me.”
He halted, then slowly turned back to face her. “Is that so, madam?”
“I think you may even regret it.”
His smile was indulgent. “You claim to know my regrets?”
The outside world dimmed to Leena. It was near morning, the night a wash of blue in the sky.
Carriages had begun to line the main walkways, the sounds of rattling reins and scattered hoofbeats broke the silence, but this went unnoticed by both of them, hidden away as they were in the enclosed courtyard.
“How long has it been since you allowed someone to be as close to you as I am? To see you day in and day out?” she continued when he did not reply. “Can you not guess what I’ve learned about you?”
His smile dropped into a snarl. “Enlighten me.”
This hearkened back to the conversation they’d had on the day Leena had touched the ledgers. Except, instead of circling each other, bloodthirsty for signs of weakness, now she was shying away from the things that were causing him pain. And what a stark difference that was.
“You do not document in your black ledgers every confession.” She tightened her arms around herself. “For some—the vulnerable, the infirm, the mad—you let them leave with compensation but without the pain.”
“It is to save space in my ledgers.”
“You never recorded my confession,” Leena persisted.
“Because your secret is mine to do with as I please.” His answer was just as reticent.
“Your servants are loyal to you. Mrs. Van would likely lay down her life for you.”
His nostrils flared. “I pay them well.”
Leena continued. “Yet there are many secrets about you, Mr. St. Silas, that are still unclear to me. I do not understand why you collect confessions, where you get the money to trade for them, or even how you can cause such misery to your customers without ever touching them.” She did not miss the way he inclined his head closer to her to catch her words.
“But there is one undeniable truth about you.”
“Pray tell.” Although he tried to keep his gaze steady, the intensity of it still bled through.
That you, despite all the indifference you pretend, are just as affected by these confessions as I am.
That realization struck her so hard she was sure the force of the blow would leave a physical ache. How had she not seen it? Had she been focusing so much on her own inclinations, on what she wanted to see of him?
Leena ran a hand through the loose strands of her hair that had escaped her pins. St. Silas followed the movement with his eyes.
This interaction had turned to wildfire; it scalded her skin. Leena was a fool for allowing it to ignite—not when she was still determined to break her contract, not when Rami was now also at the mercy of St. Silas, and not when her father remained imprisoned.
This had all gone far enough.
Leena smiled up at him suddenly, her voice teasing. “One undeniable truth I have learned about you, Mr. St. Silas, is that you always take two spoonfuls of sugar in your coffee. Which is surprising.”
St. Silas stared at her for a moment longer.
“Why”—his voice had still not lost its gravel—“is that surprising?”
Leena could’ve walked back to her chamber now and severed this current between them, hoping to save whatever control over herself she still held.
Yet she could not leave this rare and unguarded look on his face—not when she felt just as unraveled.
“Because I never see you eat or rest. Because you have endless and brutal energy. Because you almost never give in to sweetness.”
His sharp focus never wavered from her face. “Oh, Miss Al-Sayer, I would love to give in to sweetness.”
Leena’s wild heart, nearly beating out of her chest, knew in a way only a woman can that he was not speaking of anything but her. The very real fact that she was not frightened by the idea terrified her.
There would be no sleep for her anymore. Not tonight.
He must’ve seen her bewildered look, for another slow smile crept across his face, transforming his harshly handsome features into something almost otherworldly.
“Do not be frightened, Miss Al-Sayer. I was only curious, nothing more.” He threw the end of his cigarette on the floor, turning back to the door.
“You only take your coffee black. What does that say about you?”
“Well, it should say that I am unsentimental, but I am not.”
That halted him again. It seemed that twice now curiosity had got the better of him. “How so?”
“Tonight felt like the completion of a circle.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t allowed to be with Rami the day the surgeon came. That’s always lived with me. Tonight, I…” She trailed off.
The silence was soft.
“You did well, Miss Al-Sayer.” The acknowledgment of her service was also a stark difference for him, when only a few weeks ago he could not speak enough of her uselessness.
The words were like a balm, releasing a ghost she did not realize had haunted her ever since that day Rami’s arm was amputated.
It took a moment before she could speak steadily again. “Thank you. You did well, too. Without you, the boy would be dead.”
He bowed—one of the few times he’d ever done it without a trace of mockery—but he stilled when he looked up at her again.
When he spoke next, St. Silas’s voice was low and rough. “You should be wary of how you are looking at me.”
“How am I looking at you?” Leena asked softly, arms still wrapped around herself in a protective gesture.
“Like you no longer loathe me.”