“Very wel ,” Tessa said. “I wil try.”
This seemed to signal the end of breakfast; Charlotte darted off to cal for a carriage to come for them from the Silent City; it was how the Brothers liked to do things, she explained. Henry returned to his crypt and his inventions, and Jem, after a murmured word to Tessa, went to gather his hat and coat. Only Wil remained, staring into the fire, and Tessa, seeing that he was not moving, waited until the door shut behind Jem and came around to stand between Wil and the flames.
He raised his eyes to her slowly. He was stil wearing the clothes he had been wearing the night before, though his white shirtfront was stained with blood and there was a long, jagged rent in his frock coat. There was a cut along his cheek, too, under his left eye. “Wil ,” she said.
“Aren’t you meant to be leaving with Jem?”
“And I shal ,” she replied. “But I need a promise from you first.”
His eyes moved to the fire; she could see the dancing flames reflected in his pupils. “Then tel me what it is quickly. I have important business to get to. I plan to sulk al afternoon, fol owed, perhaps, by an evening of Byronic brooding and a nighttime of dissipation.”
“Dissipate al you like. I only want your assurance that you wil tel no one what transpired between us last night on the balcony.”
“Oh, that was you,” said Wil , with the air of someone who has just recol ected a surprising detail.
“Spare me,” she snapped, stung despite herself. “We were under the influence of warlock powders. It meant nothing. Even I do not blame you for what happened, however tedious you are being about it now. But there is no need for anyone else to know, and if you were a gentleman—”
“But I am not.”
“But you are a Shadowhunter,” she said venomously. “And there is no future for a Shadowhunter who dal ies with warlocks.”
His eyes danced with fire. He said, “You have become boring to tease, Tess.”
“Then give me your word you wil tel no one, not even Jem, and I wil go away and cease to bore you.”
“You have my word on the Angel,” he said. “It was not something I had planned to brag of in the first place. Though why you are so keen that no one here suspect you of a lack of virtue, I do not know.”
Jem’s face flashed across her inner eye. “No,” she said. “You truly don’t.” And with that she turned on her heel and stalked from the room, leaving him staring after her in confusion.
Sophie hurried down Piccadil y, her head bent, her eyes on the pavement beneath her feet. She was used to hushed murmurs and the occasional stare when she went out and eyes fel upon her scar; she had perfected a way of walking that hid her face beneath the shadow of her hat. She was not ashamed of the scar, but she hated the pity in the eyes of those who saw it.
She was wearing one of Jessamine’s old dresses. It was not out of fashion yet, but Jessamine was one of those girls who dubbed any dress she had worn more than three times “historical” and either cast it off or had it made over. It was a striped watered silk in green and white, and there were waxy white flowers and green leaves on her hat. Al together, she thought, she could pass for a girl of good breeding—if she were not out on her own, that was—especial y with her work-roughened hands covered in a pair of white kid gloves.
She saw Gideon before he saw her. He was leaning against a lamppost outside the great pale-green porte cochere of Fortnum & Mason. Her heart skipped a little beat as she looked at him, so handsome in his dark clothes, checking the time on a gold watch affixed to his waistcoat pocket by a thin chain. She paused for a moment, watching the people stream around him, the busy life of London roaring around him, and Gideon as calm as a rock in the middle of a churning river. Al Shadowhunters had something of that to them, she thought, that stil ness, that dark aura of separateness that set them apart from the current of mundane life.
He looked up then, and saw her, and smiled that smile that changed his whole face. “Miss Col ins,” he said, coming forward, and she moved forward to meet him as wel , feeling as she did so as if she were stepping into the circle of his separateness. The steady noise of city traffic, pedestrian and otherwise, seemed to dim, and it was just her and Gideon, facing each other on the street.
“Mr. Lightwood,” she said.
His face changed, only a little, but she saw it. She saw too that he was holding something in his left hand, a woven picnic basket. She looked at it, and then at him.