Nolan balled his hands into fists. “My father is dead. The hellhound your brother was controlling ate him. He will answer to the Directorate in Rome for what he’s done.”
Gabby bit her lower lip to keep herself quiet. She wanted to argue. Insist that her brother was innocent. But then, her father had just accused Grayson of killing someone as well. He’d called him a murdering monster, a wicked beast. Gabby shut her eyes as if she could block out the memory. It couldn’t be true. Nolan and her father were wrong. Her father had always disapproved of Grayson, and Nolan … well, he didn’t know Grayson the way she and Ingrid did. Besides, he had just seen his father die.
Maybe all he needed was a little time. Space to calm down and see things clearly.
“Isn’t there someplace safe in Paris where no avenging gargoyles can find me?” she asked, the forced change of topic rough. It took Nolan a moment to adjust, but if anything, he only appeared more irritated.
“I doubt Lady Brickton will be open to your moving in with me at H?tel Bastian,” he said. Normally he would have delivered a suggestion like that with an arched brow and a sly grin. It would have kindled a blaze inside Gabby. But Nolan’s words were flat, his expression emotionless. “And then you wouldn’t have any gargoyles bound to you,” he went on, all cold logic.
Nolan’s glossy black curls swept over his forehead, falling over one eye. He pushed them back and looked at her. She had never seen him so sad before. Gabby wanted to go to him. Slip her arms around his waist, hold him close.
“There is no safe place in Paris. You need to go.”
She stared at him, willing him to take it back. Or, barring that, at least look regretful. I don’t want you to leave, lass, but I can’t have you in danger here. Or I don’t know what I’d do if you got hurt again, Gabby. She could imagine him saying such things.
He licked his lips and shifted his attention to the stacks of bowls and folded napkins on the table.
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she said, and then something awful came to mind. “Unless I go back to London.”
Her father would likely instruct his valet to begin packing as soon as he returned to the rectory. Whether he’d order them all to leave with him, Gabby wasn’t certain. He’d seemed rather frightened of his own children earlier.
“I’ll send someone with you for protection,” Nolan said. Gabby could only stare at him. How easily he’d accepted the idea of London.
“Can’t it be you?” she asked, grasping for a connection to him. He met her eyes, but only for as long as it took for her to see the rejection he was about to deliver. He’d broken her heart before he could even part his lips.
“I need to stay in Paris and deal with what happens here.” Because of you and what you’ve done.
“And what about the Directorate? Your father told you not to trust them,” Gabby said, desperate to think of a way to convince him to let her stay. To hear him say he wanted her to stay.
“I’ll speak to Ingrid and Marco and find out what he told them.” He still wouldn’t look at her.
“I don’t want to leave you.” Gabby cringed at how needy she sounded. She couldn’t feel sorry for it, though, because it was at least honest. Nolan had kissed her earlier. He’d told her that he loved her.
He struggled for a response now. Nolan, who always knew what to say.
He chose action instead of words, breaching the arm’s length he’d kept between them. He cupped the nape of Gabby’s neck and pressed his lips firmly against her forehead. He pinned her there, his fingers pressing on the back of her neck until she felt a tremor passing through them. Then he let her go and walked away, toward the door he’d burst through a few minutes before.
“Nolan—”
“I’ll come for you when I can.” And then he was gone, the door clicking softly behind him.
*
Luc took the last step up into the loft, ready to collapse and lay still for a thousand years. His unmade cot looked more welcoming than a bare, crepe-thin pallet had a right to. Still, he would have fallen into it had it not been for Marco. The Wolf was leaning against the loft door, which was rolled open to the sky purpling toward dawn.
“You weren’t exaggerating about those humans of yours,” Marco said.
Luc shifted his gaze from the cot, determined not to show how badly the mercurite had affected him. He’d never been subjected to so much of it before. He limped lightly toward the open loft door as if every step weren’t killing him.
“Of ours, you mean,” Luc replied.
“Oh, so now you’re willing to share them with me?”
Luc ignored him and watched the rectory. He felt Lord Brickton’s presence. Gabriella and Lady Brickton. One of the maids. Brickton’s valet.
Luc waited.